Working from home is a great job option for teens. Unemployment rates are typically higher among adolescents than the rest of the population, so having the opportunity to work from home without prior work experience can be a great leg up. With fewer responsibilities, the teen years can be a great time to explore entrepreneurial endeavors.
Finding jobs as a teen can still be challenging. Many employers look for experienced workers, even for entry-level jobs. Many of the best jobs for teens are positions that you can do online. With school and sports, scheduling work shifts can be a significant challenge. For most businesses, you will be unavailable when they need help the most.
Here are a number of jobs teenagers can do from home.
1. Virtual Assistant
The average salary for a virtual assistant nationwide is $24.77 an hour. Many roles require little to no experience and can lend themselves well to fitting around a school schedule. The first step to becoming a virtual assistant is to identify what skills you have that can apply to the business world.
Many virtual assistant roles involve:
- data entry
- researching projects for an employer
- organizing schedules and making appointments
- assisting with communication
Teens who don’t have any formal experience can cite school projects to demonstrate their proficiency in these skills.
2. TikTok Creator
TikTok is a lot of fun. The platform needs a lot of fresh content in various niches. To incentivize creators, TikTok pays for content based on view count. You can monetize your videos by consistently creating exciting content that grabs eyeballs. While TikTok only pays between two and four cents per view, the platform is enormous. Getting tons of views with viral content is clearly possible, although not always easy. Many TikTok creators also monetize their content through sponsorships.
3. Online Surveys
You will only make a little money with online surveys, but they are easy to complete. Online surveys pay money because companies want to know how consumers view their products.
The two most popular apps for online surveys are Swagbucks and Survey Junkie.
4. Blogging
On the opposite side of quick cash from online surveys would be blogging. It takes a long time to build up a blog that is large enough to earn money. However, most teens don’t need to pay their own rent, and so they may not need such a consistent income. In this way, adolescence can be the perfect time to start a business that takes a little while to come to fruition.
5. Start a YouTube Channel
Being a YouTuber sounds fun! You make exciting videos and get to work from home. You can get started creating content on YouTube with a smartphone. Have the proper equipment to keep viewers interested and keep growing your audience. It is very frustrating when your YouTube views are dropping. To avoid this, you will want to release new videos on relevant topics consistently.
6. Freelance Writing/Copy Writing
If you love writing, freelance writing is a great way to make money online. Sites like Upwork have many companies looking to hire writers. The work can range anywhere from writing blog posts to ghostwriting entire books.
Just note that there is a difference between writing an essay for school and writing an article for SEO or compelling copy to sell a product. It would help if you familiarized yourself with these differences before getting started.
7. Design T-Shirts
T-shirts are a saturated market, so don’t expect any overnight success here. However, designing t-shirts can be a lucrative way to make money. Print-on-Demand services keep startup costs low. For example, Mike Pasley, with his shirt shop Famous In Real Life, made $700k in revenue in his first year.
8. Create Printables
Printables on Etsy are a vast business. However, it takes trial and error to find what works. Also, the Etsy algorithm prioritizes successful products and creators. So you will have to make something interesting with a unique angle to start building your printable business there.
9. Selling Stock Photography
Selling your photography on sites like Shutterstock is a great way to earn money online. You can take photos in your spare time and then load them onto the platform. Fun fact: Shutterstock has paid its content creators over $1 billion.
10. Proofreading
Proofreading can be an excellent choice for those with patience and an eye for detail. There’s quite a lot of demand for this work because many writers either despise proofreading and editing their own work (or they could be better at it). This hesitancy creates an opportunity for others to do the work for them (and profit accordingly).
11. Freelance Computer Programming
Computer programming is what I did as a teen to earn money. First, I learned how to program websites and eCommerce sites. Then I sold my time both hourly and on a per-project basis. If you like coding, consider learning a few marketable languages or frameworks. JavaScript, for instance, is great for freelance programming. There are plenty of web projects that are of the scope that you can work on them on weekends and get a fair amount done.
12. Freelance Graphic Design
There are tons of businesses looking for someone to help them with design. These projects can range from super creative branding jobs to more of a production design role where you would be implementing design changes across the employer’s portfolio.
13. Freelance Video Editor
Video editing is time-consuming and requires proper tools to process in a timely manner. Video editing could be an excellent option if you are already into video work. Once you are set up and ready to start, editing can be a lucrative online job for teens. Upwork’s statistics show the average earnings for video editors is around $15-30 an hour.
14. Online Tutor
Being from the United States allows you to teach English to non-native speakers online. Most apps focused on this are for students who have had some formal education in English but are looking to pick up on the nuances of the language from direct interaction with someone living in America. Many of these apps require a college degree or enrollment in a university program. Chegg pays its tutors $20 per hour of live instruction.
15. Become a Brand Ambassador
A brand ambassador is one of the main ways influencers make money by leveraging their audience. It is where the brand pays you to represent its products with your online presence. The first step for this is to build that presence.
If your online presence has cohesive messaging, there is a much better chance that a brand will want to work with you. With a coherent message, a brand can quickly identify what you are about and decide whether your messaging and followers fit the profile they want to grow in.
Once you have an online presence, start reaching out to potential brands. These will likely be small businesses that want to sell to your niche first. You will then want to reach out to them and pitch them the benefits of working with you.
16. Data Entry
Beyond doing some data entry tasks as a virtual assistant, you can also take on roles dedicated solely to data entry. Data entry jobs can vary between typing to a bit of research and entering the results into the employer’s software. Usually, this is a job that you can only do with experience.
17. Flip Products Online
There are so many ways to flip products online. The basic premise of flipping is that the local market will be weaker than the entire internet. Sources for products locally can be Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, discount retailers, and liquidation auctions.
A friend of mine specializes in flipping bicycles and bicycle parts. He often buys them on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist and then deals with listing them on eBay and the shipping process. Since the shipping process for a bicycle is somewhat involved, local sellers usually can’t be bothered learning how to do it. Since my friend ships these bicycles routinely, it is not too big of a hassle for him.
18. Create an Online Course
Creating an online course might be a different way to make money online, but it can be lucrative. If you are an expert on something, you can create a course to share your knowledge. It is also fun to use it to research a topic you are interested in. Become enough of an expert to create a course and publish it.
You can create a course with Teachable or use Udemy, a platform for course creators. They have a marketplace to list your course so that you don’t have to do 100% of the marketing yourself. While the payout per sale is lower, this allows you to focus on creating valuable courses rather than on bringing in customers.
TLDR: There are Plenty of Options to Work From Home as a Teen
This article gives you some ideas for jobs you can do from home as a teen. It is a great time to consider doing something more entrepreneurial. Most work-from-home jobs are flexible with their schedule, which can be an excellent thing for a teen with a busy school schedule.
This article originally appeared on Wealth of Geeks.