An increasing number of teens are making money through online jobs they can do at home. Some are even becoming millionaires through their online jobs. Yes, it’s true. Just check out this story of U.K. teen Ben Ewart, who turned his ebay selling business into a multi-million dollar business while still in high school.
In 2024, the landscape of jobs for teens has expanded beyond the traditional roles of bagging groceries, cutting grass, and babysitting. Now, earning money online is not just a possibility, it’s never been easier. You can work from the comfort of your home or even your room without the need to commute or adhere to strict schedules.
Today’s online jobs for teens not only provide flexibility but also impart valuable transferable skills and, most importantly, generate income.
Whether you’re interested in starting a business, a side hustle for extra cash, or diving into the world of freelancing, the online world offers a wealth of opportunities for teens to make money.
Below are the best online jobs for teens that we’ve found, organized by earning potential and flexibility.
15 Best Online Jobs For Teens
Here are the best ways for teenagers to make money online, with most requiring little to no experience:
- Virtual Assistant
- Data Entry
- Take Online Surveys
- Watch Ads for Money
- Play Video Games
- Review Songs
- Test Products
- Take Pictures with Your Phone
- Sell Stuff Online
- Online Tutoring
- Customer Service Rep
- Freelance Proofreading
- Freelance Writer
- Start a YouTube Channel
- Test Websites
1. Virtual Assistant
- Minimum age requirement: Varies
- Earning potential: 💰💰💰💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: FlexJobs.com or Indeed.com
A virtual assistant can complete a wide variety of tasks: scheduling appointments, designing publications, formatting presentations, and posting social media content.
You’d be doing these tasks for a business executive or small business owner without having to leave your home.
Believe it or not, you don’t have to be 18 to work as a virtual assistant. Some platforms don’t have minimum age requirements to sign up. You just would need some strong computer skills and to be well organized.
Teens should check out Fivver (ages 13+) or Indeed (ages 16+) if you’d like to assess the market for VAs.
Learn more:
2. Data Entry
- Minimum age requirement: 18
- Earning potential: 💰💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: FlexJobs.com
This won’t be very exciting, but if you’re 18 years of age or older, you can find flexible data entry work that pays fairly well.
Data entry work is easy. It requires an Internet connection, the ability to type quickly and accurately, and a comfortable place to work. This is a great summer job for a young college or high school student.
Check out my list of the best data entry jobs if you’re interested.
3. Complete Online Surveys
- Minimum age requirement: 13 (with parental consent)
- Earning potential: 💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: Swagbucks.com
Want to have your voice heard—and make extra money while doing it? There are tons of paid online survey sites that value your opinion. By completing surveys, you’d be helping companies make their products and services more appealing.
You won’t get rich from your earnings, but you can do this during breaks between your high school classes. You could earn enough money for a tank of gas or an Xbox or PS5 video game every month. Here are the best surveys for teens to try out today:
Freecash
Freecash is another popular survey site that’s available to teens 16 and older. You can earn money by taking surveys, watching videos, playing games, and completing tasks online.
The site helps you filter and search for offers that are available to you. Once you start completing offers, you can cash out your points via gift cards, PayPal, bank transfers, and crypto.
Learn more:
Swagbucks
Swagbucks (ages 13+) offers tens of thousands of paid survey opportunities each day. It’s one of the biggest and most legit platforms available. Plus, you get a free $20 credit or gift card, just for signing up and verifying your email address!
Learn more:
Branded Surveys
Branded Surveys (ages 18+ or 13+ with a parent’s consent) is a platform that pays you simply for completing online surveys and other tasks such as polls. You can easily redeem your points as cash through PayPal!
Learn more:
Survey Junkie
Survey Junkie is great because it saves time while providing an excellent platform for providing feedback and reviews.
Users build profiles based on their interests. The site then sends short surveys to match consumers with questions. Answering surveys can let you earn rewards in the form of virtual points. These points can be redeemed for PayPal and e-Giftcards.
Learn more:
4. Watch Ads for Money
- Minimum age requirement: 13 (with parental consent)
- Earning potential: 💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: MyPoints.com
Could you spend hours watching ads? Did you know you could get paid for doing this? Multiple sites offer money for viewing advertisements, such as MyPoints.
MyPoints (ages 13+) is another site where you can earn money for completing surveys, shopping, and watching ads. They’re offering a $10 welcome bonus when you sign up with our link and take 5 surveys!
Learn more:
5. Play Video Games Online
- Minimum age requirement: 13
- Earning potential: 💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: Mistplay.com
If you have an Android phone or access to a laptop, you can download Mistplay and make money playing video games online.
Once you create an account, you can discover new games to play and earn points, called “units”. After you have earned enough units, you can cash out via free gift cards such as Google Play or Visa gift cards.
Learn more:
6. Get Paid to Review Songs (Yes, really!)
- Minimum age requirement: 13
- Earning potential: 💰💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: SliceThePie.com
Do you like listening to music and leaving online reviews? You’ll love this teen job. Sites like Slice The Pie pay people to review songs, commercials, clothes, and much more. Your opinion helps brands, record labels, and artists shape their products before they go live.
You get paid depending on the quality of your review and your star rating on the site. You’ll receive your money via your PayPal account—and you can cash out when your account reaches $10.
7. Test Products
- Minimum age requirement: 16
- Earning potential: 💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: Toluna.com
Companies release new products all the time, and they need to complete market research to make sure their product is working properly. Queue, product testing. With a site like Toluna, you can apply to test particular products – which in turn you get to keep for providing a survey back to the company of your experience.
What you do with the products after you are done is up to you, but you could sell them online “like new” to flip a quick profit – or if it’s something you really like, hey, you pretty much got it for free!
Testers will be chosen at random, but there are typically 500 of each product available for each test. So make sure to apply quickly!
Learn more:
8. Get Paid to Take Pictures with Your Phone
- Minimum age requirement: 18 (under 18 with parent consent)
- Earning potential: 💰💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: Foap.com
What teenager doesn’t have their phone on them 24/7? If this describes you, start turning your camera roll into a money-making machine.
With Foap, you create an online portfolio of the best pictures you have taken, and when a brand or agency uses one of your images, you will get paid 50% of the earnings! Not too shabby!
Learn more:
9. Sell Stuff Online
- Minimum age requirement: 13
- Earning potential: 💰💰💰💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: Decluttr.com
Now we’re getting into the nuts and bolts of teenage entrepreneurship: selling stuff you already have lying around your room or garage.
Online marketplaces have replaced yard sales for a lot of shoppers who want:
- Books & electronics: If you have textbooks, electronics, or other items you no longer need, you could be turning them into cash on sites like Decluttr (ages 18+), Craigslist, or social media sites like Facebook Marketplace. BookScouter is another great place to buy and sell books.
- Arts & crafts: Sites like Etsy are perfect for selling unique handmade items—but not only that. You could also sell printables (think inspirational quotes or funny sayings), photography, and much more. You can start using the site at the minimum age of 13. However, it does say you’d need to be “supervised by an adult,” so bear that in mind.
- Gift cards: Got gift cards to places you’ll never shop? You can sell or exchange gift cards you don’t want on cardcash.com.
- Auction items: Don’t forget eBay, the grandfather of auction sites!
- Just about anything else: Amazon’s online marketplace is open for just about any product, from used vinyl to used electronics to small appliances.
If you get serious about making money like this, you may even want to start buying products so you can sell them and make a profit.
Learn more:
10. Online Tutoring Job
- Minimum age requirement: 18
- Earning potential: 💰💰💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: TutorMe.com
Tutoring jobs are one of the best online jobs for teens.
If you’re a great student in English, science, mathematics, or another core subject, you could find a tutoring gig paying a lot better than the survey sites—and you could still do a work-from-home job on your own schedule.
You no longer have to meet strangers at the library or coffee shops to tutor. You can communicate with your clients by email or even on social media through this remote job.
Try tutorme.com for starters. Or, you can reach out to your friends and community on social media to see if you can offer private tutoring. Private tutoring jobs usually offer more money! Also building up tutoring experience as a teen always comes in handy if you want to tutor college students later in life.
11. Work as a Customer Service Representative
- Minimum age requirement: 16
- Earning potential: 💰💰💰💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: Varies
If you are 16 or over, becoming a customer service representative is one of the best ways to make a regular income. Average pay starts around $10 an hour, or your state might have a higher minimum wage.
Customer service jobs are tough but they’re also character-building since you get to speak with all kinds of people—and it can help you gain confidence for the future.
All you need is a good-quality USB headset and high-speed Internet access to get started!
U-Haul offers customer service jobs to teens aged 16 or over. Check out their job board here.
12. Freelance Proofreading
- Minimum age requirement: 18
- Earning potential: 💰💰💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: Varies
If you enjoy writing, chances are you’ll also like proofreading. It’s a cinch if your grammar is great, of course!
Companies like Textmaster or MTurk, a part of Amazon, will allow you to earn money by proofreading other people’s work (even as a teen). This is the perfect online job if you’re hoping to build a career in copywriting or editing. Not only do you get paid for each job, but you are slowly building work experience for your resume.
Alternatively, if you’re 18 or older, check out Upwork. It’s easy to job search on their platform, and the median pay is usually higher.
To learn how to start a proofreading business, check out my friend Caitlin’s Proofread Anywhere course. She offers a free workshop to help you decide whether to complete the whole course.
13. Freelance Writer
- Minimum age requirement: 13
- Earning potential: 💰💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: Fiverr.com
Many sites offer tons of freelance writer jobs to young people, including high schoolers. For example, Hubpages.com is an awesome site that accepts teens (with parental consent). This is one of the best ways for young people to build up work experience in real-world freelance writing.
There are also other sites, like Fiverr, which you can join if you’re 13 or older. Fiverr is an online job marketplace where you can do jobs (referred to as gigs) for around $5.
Gigs can be anything you’re good at, such as writing, translation, animation, video, programming, graphic design, and even voiceover work.
Freelancer.com, which you can join if you’re 16 or over, is another site to try if you want to make money freelance writing as an older teen. It’s similar to Fiverr, but you could be earning slightly more.
14. Start a YouTube Channel
- Minimum age requirement: 13
- Earning potential: 💰💰💰💰💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: YouTube.com
Being a YouTuber can be a lot of fun. But just like starting a blog, you’ll need to build an audience before real money starts coming in.
But while you’re young, it’s a great time to start building a backlog of YouTube videos for your channel.
The number one thing you’ll need is a passion for your subject matter. Whether it’s fashion, literature, furniture, Motown records, video games, or personal finance, your energy and passion for your subject can draw viewers to your YouTube channel.
As your audience grows, so will your opportunities to earn extra money through Google Adsense ads and affiliate marketing. Social media is extremely powerful, creating a ton of online jobs and earning opportunities for young people.
You’ll just need a Google account to get started with YouTube. Check out some of the best finance YouTube channels for inspiration.
15. Test Websites
- Minimum age requirement: 17
- Earning potential: 💰💰
- Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Best website for jobs: UserTesting.com
Companies need users to test websites and mobile apps before and after they go live. Otherwise, how would they know about common problems users may experience?
If you’d like to test sites and apps, try UserTesting.com or TestingTime.com for starters. These sites tend to have a minimum age requirement of 17 or 18 years of age. They pay by the review, so you can work on your own schedule.
Summary of Online Jobs For Teens
| Flexibility | Earning Potential | Min Age | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual Assistant | ⭐⭐⭐ | 💰💰💰 | Varies |
| Data Entry | ⭐⭐⭐ | 💰💰 | 18 |
| Online Surveys | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 💰 | 13** |
| Watch Ads | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 💰 | 13** |
| Play Games | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 💰 | 13 |
| Review Songs | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 💰💰 | 13 |
| Test Products | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 💰 | 16 |
| Take Pictures | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 💰💰 | 18 |
| Sell Stuff Online | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 💰💰💰💰 | 13 |
| Online Tutor | ⭐⭐⭐ | 💰💰💰 | 18 |
| Customer Service Rep | ⭐⭐ | 💰💰💰💰 | 16 |
| Proofread | ⭐⭐⭐ | 💰💰💰 | 18 |
| Write Articles | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 💰💰 | 13 |
| YouTuber | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 💰💰💰💰💰* | 13 |
| Test Websites | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 💰💰 | 17 |
* you must build your audience first before generating any income
** with parental consent
Tips for Teenagers with Online Jobs
Here are some pointers to help you find success with your online job:
Keep Your Parents Posted
Remember to keep your parents or legal guardians in the loop—they’ll appreciate it. Plus, if you suddenly become richer than them—and they didn’t know where the money came from—they would be worried!
Your parents already know that you’ll learn the value of money when you earn extra cash as a teenager.
Learn on the Job
As you’ll learn, the road to financial independence is paved with patience and hard work. Earning extra money now, as a teenager, will teach you how to succeed when you start making more money later in life.
And these online jobs can teach you a lot about working in the professional world. The same is true for old-fashioned jobs for teens like becoming a babysitter, pet sitter, camp counselor, or grocery bagger. Nothing replaces work experience.
Watch Out for Scams
Unfortunately, the online world is full of scams. When you’re hopeful about starting a new online job, you could fall victim to one of these schemes.
To avoid this, stick to the ideas on my list or vet your job opportunities with these questions:
- Is the job asking me for money? Whether you’re being asked to buy software or invest in a product, you shouldn’t be parting with money in order to get a job. This is a huge warning sign.
- Does the employer want me to meet in person? You shouldn’t need to meet an employer in person to become a virtual assistant or a graphic design freelancer. If you do need to meet someone in person, make sure you’re meeting in a safe, public place. And make sure your parents or guardians know what you’re up to.
- Does it seem too good to be true? You won’t make a hundred grand a year as a proofreader. You won’t become a millionaire by working the survey sites. Over-the-top promises may be strong signals that the job isn’t for real.
- Are there too many personal questions? Your mother’s maiden name, your middle name, your Social Security number, your bank account numbers… all this info shouldn’t be required for you to get a part-time job or a side hustle gig. Be careful sharing personal data. Identity thieves love to steal credit profiles from young people.
One of the best ways to avoid scams is to source your side hustles from vetted sites. The Steady app compiles legitimate local and national gig economy jobs to help you start earning extra money. It’s 100% free and worth a try if you’re not sure where to start looking.
Get a PayPal Account and a Bank Account for Teens
You may have noticed a lot of jobs on this list pay through a PayPal account, which can link to your bank account.
But PayPal won’t verify an account unless you’re an 18-year-old. So to make this legit, you’ll need help from your parent or legal guardian to set up your accounts.
It’ll take some legwork upfront—and up to 30 minutes of your parent or guardian’s time. But it’ll be worthwhile when you have your own bank and PayPal account set up so you can make money and control where it goes. We recommend starting a checking account to store your money and start building savings for the future.
Learn more:
Online Jobs for Teens FAQs
Are there online jobs for teens?
Yes, as a teenager you have several options to make money online. Just be sure to check the age requirements listed and if you need parental consent.
How much money can I make online as a teenager?
The world is your oyster! If you have free time, check out several of the options we listed and do them all! You might not make a ton off of one singular thing, but if you do multiple, the dollars can start adding up quickly.
How do I get paid for online jobs for teens?
Most online jobs that are available to teens will have a couple of options for payout. I would recommend starting with ones that give you the option to get paid cash via PayPal or direct deposit. But many online jobs for teens also offer payment via free gift cards – which is just as good as cash if you can choose a store that you go to frequently or if you can get a Visa gift card.
Kids Can Make Money Online
So, there you go: the best online jobs for teens.
I started my journey to financial freedom in my 20s. By searching for online jobs for teens, you’re already getting a jump on me, and you’re smart to do so. There’s no time like the present to start making money online and building wealth.
Take a closer look at the job opportunities on the list and consider which ones match your interests and skills. From there, you can get started earning money online.
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