How does a teenager make money?

[Miridian09]

I've got a few thousand dollars to spend on what I want, but in getting to those few thousand I took the slow route of saving. Now I want to go into the fastlane and quickly make it in a few hundred thousand. I did start an eBay business in December to take advantage of the Christmas rush and by the end of the month I had revenues of over $2000 and profits of $350+ (don't know whether that ratio is good or not) but quickly got shot down by PayPal because I'm not 18 and they thought I could have been laundering money or what have and they had to verify my ID. So basically is your teenage years literally just for learning for the later years or is there a shortcut to the later years now? My parents won't let me use their ID btw

 

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[GPM]

I was not the most savvy teenager, but a few things I did were

• Go to really sleezy pawn shops and look for items that I knew the real value of to sell on ebay (or kijiji or craigstlist or anything). My topic was NES and SNES video games
• Buy a lawnmover and snow shovel. Knock on every house on your street and tell them that you are saving up to go to college (people love that) and you are willing to shovel their snow or mow their lawn for cash

This forum is literally bursting at the seams with practical advice to make money or provide services to people. Good luck!

 

[JDawg]

Hey! Welcome to the forum.

There are still so many opportunities to make money at your age. A few things that I did:

- Freelanced with SEO
- Made iPhone apps (I ended up making over $5 thousand dollars)
- I am a guitarist. So I went downtown and just busked on the streets.

 

[CJWalne28]

This isn't fastlane, but when i was in highschool I was really into sneakers (still am) and I resold popular sneakers for cash, it wasn't a reliable source of income but it was helpful for me to get my foot in the door to making money.

 

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[luniac]

I tried selling candy bars in high school but then ate most of them myself...

Rule 1: Don't get high on your own supply. :embarrased:

 

[GPM]

I tried selling candy bars in high school but then ate most of them myself...

Rule 1: Don't get high on your own supply. :embarrased:

I did that back in elementary. There was a gas station about 1.5km from our school. I used to run there on my lunch breaks, buy as much candy as I could, and run back to school.

I would literally buy a pack of 5 sour gumballs for like 50 cents, and sell them for 50 cents PER gumball. All these dumb kids who wanted candy but were too lazy to go that far to the store to get it would buy it from me at 3-10x the cost. I then spent all my money on Magic cards and stuff. Haha, oh well.

That ties in well to your situation. Go find some warehouses and find out what their scheduled break times are. Go to Costco and buy a bunch of hot dogs and a little portable BBQ. Cook up the hot dogs and sell them to the workers for like $5 with a pop and chips. Boom, easy money.

 

[Miridian09]

Hey! Welcome to the forum.

There are still so many opportunities to make money at your age. A few things that I did:

- Freelanced with SEO
- Made iPhone apps (I ended up making over $5 thousand dollars)
- I am a guitarist. So I went downtown and just busked on the streets.

It's just sad that it's so much more difficult to make money with SEO now compared to what it used to be back in the 00s . Tried doing some over the summer and spent over $250 with no results , quickly put my motivation down and I ended up just quitting. Probably not the mentality I should have had but I'll probably restart it again and work harder this time and learn from my mistakes

 

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[Ecom man]

An option you have is continue to go the eBay route but have your parents put their social etc on the PayPal account.

You could also learn to repair iPhone/ iPad/ iPod touch screens. You can charge a really good price per hour and have a lot of possible customers since people are always breaking them. This obviously isn't fastlane but is a good way to make some money on the side.

You can also buy things on Craigslist/Facebook and resell them on the same sites at higher prices after fixing them etc.

 

[Miridian09]

An option you have is continue to go the eBay route but have your parents put their social etc on the PayPal account.

You could also learn to repair iPhone/ iPad/ iPod touch screens. You can charge a really good price per hour and have a lot of possible customers since people are always breaking them. This obviously isn't fastlane but is a good way to make some money on the side.

You can also buy things on Craigslist/Facebook and resell them on the same sites at higher prices after fixing them etc.

I'll actually do the fixing screens route! Very good idea at this age, it's just hard to scale up but it'll be good getting more seed money for something far bigger!

I was not the most savvy teenager, but a few things I did were

• Go to really sleezy pawn shops and look for items that I knew the real value of to sell on ebay (or kijiji or craigstlist or anything). My topic was NES and SNES video games
• Buy a lawnmover and snow shovel. Knock on every house on your street and tell them that you are saving up to go to college (people love that) and you are willing to shovel their snow or mow their lawn for cash

This forum is literally bursting at the seams with practical advice to make money or provide services to people. Good luck!

I've tried it once but gave up because I couldn't find anything but I'll actually start trying to commit and going to better shops! Unfortunately everyone in my neighbourhood already use the same person for their lawn (he takes a trip here every 3 weeks) and I doubt I'll be able to compete with him because he only charges $5 for each garden

 

[The-J]

Lots of opportunity offline. Including but not limited to:

• Lawn care and landscaping
• Cleaning houses, yards
• Dog walking, pet sitting, grooming
• Sealing driveways
• Painting houses, interior and exterior
• Computer repair, PC or MAC
• Phone repair, unlocking, jailbreaking (legality dubious depending on where you live)
• Reselling refurbished ANYTHING (phones, computers, equipment... be careful with this though, don't break anything)
• Revamping websites
• Local advertisement design
• Tutoring (SATs, AP/IB tests, school subjects)
• Music lessons if you're already a musician (guitar and piano are super popular)

Just off the dome, all of the above are $20+hr and most of them are pretty scalable (locally anyway). Get enough work and you can hire your friends at a wage just slightly above what McD's pays, then just scale from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Get your first clients from family and friends, do a kick-a$$ job for them and get testimonials. Use Every Day Direct Mail in WAMP (white, affluent, middle-aged, professional) neighborhoods for access to scale.

Don't let your age limit you. I did computer repair as a teenager and I regret not scaling it up just a little bit further.

 

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[sWALK90]

i also did the sneaker thing, buy and resell at the value price..even if you had to stand in line for them...

also learn how to code and design then over charged alot of people for website designs that couldnt maintain them so then i would charge a monthly fee to do that...

 

[jlwilliams]

If your parents won't sign on to a PayPal account, resist the temptation to find another adult who will. Two reasons; first it could get a well meaning individual into real trouble, second the adult you find may not be well meaning. It can just go bad in so many ways. Keep making your case to your parents that you are doing something constructive and that you will re reimburse them for whatever tax liability you income brings on them as signatories to your account.
The touch screen repair is a huge need that goes un-met in many places. It won't likely make you a millionaire before you turn twenty, but you can make money.
Most important is that you keep your forward momentum. Keep hustling. Keep adding cash to your war chest. It's not really slow lane to save slowly at your age. Use this time wisely and you will have the cash to jump on something significant when the time is right. Buy an apartment building in five years (not a bag of weed this weekend) and this will all be worth it.

 

[Miridian09]

If your parents won't sign on to a PayPal account, resist the temptation to find another adult who will. Two reasons; first it could get a well meaning individual into real trouble, second the adult you find may not be well meaning. It can just go bad in so many ways. Keep making your case to your parents that you are doing something constructive and that you will re reimburse them for whatever tax liability you income brings on them as signatories to your account.
The touch screen repair is a huge need that goes un-met in many places. It won't likely make you a millionaire before you turn twenty, but you can make money.
Most important is that you keep your forward momentum. Keep hustling. Keep adding cash to your war chest. It's not really slow lane to save slowly at your age. Use this time wisely and you will have the cash to jump on something significant when the time is right. Buy an apartment building in five years (not a bag of weed this weekend) and this will all be worth it.

Thanks, I wasn't going to convince anyone else because I don't want to be accountable as well as responsible for the likes if they have missing taxes or something because of my income.

I'm going to hopefully do some screen fixing stuff to get some more cash flow

Keeping forward momentum is actually a good piece of advice, never heard of it before but hearing it now it just makes sense. Thanks very much!

 

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[Motley crue]

if you've got pickup truck or a big suv or a trailer you could pick up furniture from the free section on craigslist and resell it for a hundred bucks. It won't make you rich but it'll be quick easy cash. I did it in high school and really enjoyed it. If your parents won't let you keep it at there house you can post an ad and wait for a buyer to bite than pick up the furniture and deliver it directly to the buyer (delivery is huge, it makes you way more valuable than anyone else selling furniture on craigslist).

 

[Miridian09]

if you've got pickup truck or a big suv or a trailer you could pick up furniture from the free section on craigslist and resell it for a hundred bucks. It won't make you rich but it'll be quick easy cash. I did it in high school and really enjoyed it. If your parents won't let you keep it at there house you can post an ad and wait for a buyer to bite than pick up the furniture and deliver it directly to the buyer (delivery is huge, it makes you way more valuable than anyone else selling furniture on craigslist).

Really good idea actually! Good grind idea, unfortunately I don't drive yet and won't be for a while because in the UK insurance is about $3000 in my area so my parents aren't too keen on the idea of me getting a car or something yet