How to Make Money Online as a Teenager
Every way here clears two bars at once: earned entirely online, and open to a 13-17 year old. 7 qualify, pulled from across every category, ranked by earning potential.
How to Make Money Online as a Teenager: Quick Answer
The short answer: 7 ways on this site fit "Online as a teen", spread across 4 categories. YouTube, Twitch, and DistroKid rank highest for earning potential here.
7 ways, by category
Turn things already sitting in your house, closet, or garage into cash. The fastest category here for same-day money, since you're selling something you already have.
List furniture, electronics, or anything else lying around your house for local pickup. No shipping, no fees, and cash can land the same day you post.
Small paid tasks like surveys, data labeling, and website testing. Genuinely low pay per hour, but zero barrier to entry and cash out fast, so they're honest pocket-money options rather than an income.
Earn points for surveys, watching videos, and shopping through their links, redeemable for gift cards or cash. Realistically pocket-money, not an income.
Build an audience on video, streaming, or newsletters and get paid through ads, memberships, or sponsorships. Highest ceiling on this whole list, but it takes months of consistent output before it pays anything.
Ad revenue, channel memberships, and sponsorships once you clear the Partner Program thresholds. You'll need to learn filming, scripting, and editing (or pay someone who can), and most channels earn nothing for months before the ceiling gets huge.
Live streaming with income from subscriptions, bits, and ads. You need to be genuinely entertaining or skilled at what you're streaming, plus a decent mic, webcam, and stable internet, and building a real audience takes consistent, scheduled streaming over a long stretch.
Puts your music on Spotify, Apple Music, and the rest for a flat annual fee and passes on the royalties. Streaming pays fractions of a cent per play, so this is only meaningful with real listener numbers.
Package what you know into a template, ebook, or course and sell it over and over with no shipping and no inventory. Needs real work up front to create, then scales without much added effort per sale.
Upload art once and it goes onto prints, phone cases, and home goods that Society6 makes and ships. Royalties per item are small, so this is pocket money unless a design really catches on.
A t-shirt and sticker marketplace with its own shopper traffic, which is the real reason to use it over a plain print on demand store. Base royalties are low and the site discounts heavily, so per-sale earnings are modest.
Frequently asked questions
Are these legit ways to make money?
Yes, every one of the 7 ways here is a real platform people genuinely earn on, hand-picked and reviewed by hand.
What's the best one to start with?
YouTube has the highest earning potential here, 90/100. Ad revenue, channel memberships, and sponsorships once you clear the Partner Program thresholds. You'll need to learn filming, scripting, and editing (or pay someone who can), and most channels earn nothing for months before the ceiling gets huge.