Top Side Hustles For Teens 2026 - How To Make Money as a Teenager

In today's video, I'm going to be going over the top side hustles for teens. Basically, if you want to make money as a teenager in 2026, this video is for you. Now, in my teenage years, I did a ton of different side hustles. And obviously, things have changed. So, I basically done the research. These are the 10 best side hustles that you guys can do in 2026 and beyond. It led me down a path of entrepreneurship, and now I have stuff like this. So, let me show you guys. So, this is my car, one of my cars, uh, on the second story in my house. And this just proved to you guys that entrepreneurship, doing side hustles, it can lead to this. So all these side hustles have a really good combination of being really realistic things that you can actually do while making a lot of money. So without further ado, let's get started. Okay, the first side hustle I want to talk about is painting house numbers on curbs. Now you guys are young watching this video and trust me, you have a huge advantage when it comes to doing stuff like this. If I were to go up to a neighbor and ask if I paint their house number on the curb, they'd probably tell me to off. Well, you guys are young and they're going to be way more likely to actually say yes and pay you well. So, if you live in the suburbs, you'll know that almost every single house on the block is going to have their house number painted on the curb. Now, a lot of these are really aged and dated, so you can barely see them, and they look a lot better if they were basically just repainted. So, basically, all you have to do is go out there, get some materials. Essentially, it's going to be spray paints, uh, stencils for different numbers. So, what I would just recommend doing is walk around through your neighborhood or through any neighborhood. Basically, knock on doors, ask them if they'd like you to paint their house number on their curb. And yeah, you guys will get rejected. Definitely, that's a certain, but there are going to be people that say yes. And this is going to teach you guys so many lessons about sales, about door knocking, as well as client fulfillment. So, basically, if you knock, let's say, a 100 different doors, you might get 10 clients from that. And it's up to you guys how much you want to charge. I'd say something between $10 to $30. You can also do a donation based, so you can just say you guys can pay whatever. I think most homeowners would give you at least 20 bucks if I'm being honest. Yeah, super great side hustle. Definitely one that I recommend doing. One of my best friends actually did this when he was in his teenage years and he absolutely crushed it. Like I think he made hundreds of dollars in a single day and use that money to buy a bike. So yeah, really, really cool. Next up is going to be Tik Tok Shop. Now, chances are you guys use Tik Tok and you'll know that Tik Tok shop is absolutely blowing up now. The greatest thing ever right now is that anyone with a phone, so all you guys watching this probably can literally pick it up, start making short form content for Tik Tok, and sell products on Tik Tok shop. You guys can easily browse to see what products you guys can promote, and it's going to show you what percent commission you guys are going to get or the dollar amount. And then all you have to do is create these UGC user generated content videos, post them on your Tik Tok account, tag the product, and when someone actually watches your video and buys the product, you're going to get that commission. So, I know creators doing tens of thousands of dollars per month, and it's a really interesting and cool way to make money. What I would do is just browse Tik Tok shop, find products that are doing really well on there, that are selling really well with solid commissions, sign up for them, maybe purchase the product if needed, or maybe you don't need to, and then just start making content. I would film three to five videos per day. And if you guys do this enough, you are basically guaranteed to have at least one viral video. And those viral videos are going to sell a lot of volume. And you can actually make a really solid amount of money doing this. This teaches you guys affiliate marketing. It teaches you content creation and it basically teaches you how to hustle. Not all of your videos are going to do well, so do not expect that, but a small percentage of them will and those are the ones that are going to, you know, result in a lot of commissions. Perfect side hustle for anyone that's good at content. So, highly recommend this one. Okay, the next side hustle I want to talk about for teenagers is going to be selling candy at school. This is something that I actually did when I was in middle school. I would go to Costco, buy big packs of candy bars in bulk, and then I would sell them at school. Now, this doesn't need to be candy, right? It could be something else. It could be snacks, anything that you can sell to your friends. Now, the only thing with this is that it's very likely that your school probably doesn't allow this. So, you're going to have to operate somewhat discreetly, right? sell out of your backpack, locker. And I know I did this until I was told I couldn't do it, but I still made some good money. And it really taught me how to buy low, sell high, right? Like the whole concept of buying stuff in bulk and then selling individual items for a more expensive price is something that you'll do later on in the future if you want to get into e-commerce, basically anything. It also teaches you how to deal with clients, right? You also need to be discreet about it. And yeah, all the people I know selling candy back in middle school or high school are pretty successful now. So I think there is some type of correlation and that's why I think you guys should try this one out. Obviously, to get sales, right, you just need to ask your friends first. We're just going to travel by word of mouth. So, people are going to hear that, oh, you're selling this candy, you're selling these snacks, whatever it is. They're going to start coming up to you, and yeah, it's going to be a pretty interesting business to run at school. Okay, the next side hustle I want to talk about is building websites for local businesses. Now, this is probably not going to be for those of you that are like really

young, but if you're in high school and beyond, I think this is a fantastic side hustle that is a perfect blend of like technical expertise, making a lot of money, as well as being fully online. So, essentially what you guys will do is just basically learn how to build websites on one platform, and then get pretty good at it. This should probably take you 2 to 4 weeks. And then what you're going to do is you're just going to either door knock local businesses around you or you're going to call up a bunch of businesses in the surrounding area or wherever you want to call. Ask them, I can actually build you a website uh that looks a lot better for X price. I recommend doing either a flat fee or doing some type of retainer where you charge them monthly for, you know, keeping the uh website up to date, helping them change things, stuff like that. And there's so much demand for this, you guys. There are so many businesses out there, especially local businesses that are brick and mortar that have really, really bad websites. So, young people, they're really good at designing websites, building websites. You're probably also going to charge a lot less than some gigantic website agency out there. And so, it's really a win-win for everyone. Now, for the software I recommend for this, one way you can do this is through Hostinger. That's probably the cheapest way, and one single plan can help you build multiple websites. I'll have a link down below as well as some videos that I made on how to build a website with Hostinger. But if you really want to take this seriously, I recommend using something like Gohigh Level. This is a bit more expensive at 97 to $297 per month. But with that $297 plan, you can actually build unlimited websites for unlimited clients. It's really, really amazing. This is probably what I would do. And yeah, if you guys use my link to sign up for High Level, I'm going to send you all of my snapshots, all of my website templates. You're going to get $15,000 of bonuses that are only for my audience. And like I said, you use one plan, you create different sub accounts for all of your different clients. You can build those websites within there and then basically sell those to all these local businesses. Fantastic way to make money. You can easily make $5 to $10,000 per month or more. And definitely one that can scale into a real big business. So, I'll put a link down below to High Level if you want to check them out. It's basically the platform I use to run all of my online businesses. The next side I want to talk about is reselling. So reselling has been something that you know kids have been doing for decades, right? I used to do it when I was young. Uh I would buy stuff for a low price and then sell it for a higher price. It's a very simple concept, but this concept literally applies to business everywhere, right? All businesses resell stuff that they get for a lower price for a higher price. So, you're going to learn a ton about e-commerce, about dealing with clients, finding clients, uh listing products online, listing products uh in person, and you also get to understand the pricing for a niche really, really well. Some things you can resell are, for example, shoes. So, you have to be really well-versed in the different types of shoes, the market rates for all of them, buying low, selling high, of course, clothes, right? Furniture. This is a great one that's a little bit more challenging since you'll probably need a bigger truck or car. uh collectibles like Pokemon cards, pretty much anything. This is a great side hustle because you can literally do it anywhere, right? You can also do it completely online if you want. This will teach you e-commerce, right? Like packing, shipping products, dealing with customer service, stuff like that. You can also do reselling in person through Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, Offer Up, all these different types of apps. And yeah, you can make a lot of money, guys. If you know the markets well and you know what to buy at what price, you can easily sell it for, let's say, a 20 to 40% premium. Now, in terms of where to buy stuff that's cheaper, I would say slicks. net has a lot of great deals. Probably the one that is going to be the most relevant to you guys is just looking on Facebook Marketplace, looking on Offerup. Look for used things that people are just trying to dump. They don't care what price they're going to get. It might need some paint. It might need something like a really quick fix. do that, take better photos, and then just relist the product for a lot more money. A lot of entrepreneurs I know today used to do reselling. So, I think this is a great way to get into entrepreneurship and make some money. Next up on the list is going to be lawn care or some type of yard work. So, depending on where you guys live, you might do grass mowing, right? Or you might do snow shoveling. Whatever it is, you're basically doing a service, which I call a rather high value service. It's something that people need done but really don't want to do. And so they're actually willing to pay a solid amount of money for it. Like you should easily be able to make between 20 to $40 per hour doing lawn care and yard work. This is a classic service-based business, which is one of the best business types that I recommend for new entrepreneurs. And the reason for this is because it costs almost $0 to start. You might need a few tools and supplies, but beyond that, right, nothing else. It's all service- based, meaning you are trading your time for money. And some of you guys might be like, I don't want to trade my time for money. Well, for young people and for people that are learning, trading your time for money is one of the best ways to actually make money. The only thing is you need to do something that is a high value skill. Don't trade your time for money at, let's say, uh, a local fast food spot.

Yes, you will learn stuff about working and jobs and stuff, but you're not really going to get any entrepreneurship experience. Plus, the pay is going to be a lot lower than if you to do any of these side hustles on this list. Obviously, you need to be okay at the lawn work. You need to have some skill in it. So, don't do this if you are a complete noob. But if you're, let's say, at least intermediate level, then you can easily offer this as a service. And what I would do is basically create ads on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. Maybe print a flyer and put it in your neighborhood. Put a phone number or an email and then you'll talk to potential clients. Tell them your pricing. I recommend just getting clients on a monthly retainer. So, basically, they pay X dollars per month. You go in and do X services per month. And that just creates really consistent cash flow, which is amazing. If you do a good job, you're going to start getting more clients by word of mouth. You can also start doing ads if you want to really grow this into a full-fledged business. And so, yeah, there's a ton of different ways you guys can scale any of these side hustles, but just know that the potential is there for all of them. The next side hustle on this list is drop shipping. Now, drop shipping is definitely on the harder side of actually being able to make a profit, at least for the things on this list, but I think that every entrepreneur needs to do some type of drop shipping store at least once in their life. I know that I did it. I know that all my friends did it. And the reason for this is because it's a really easy way to actually start building an online store, learning about e-commerce, learning about inventory, learning about Facebook ads, all that stuff. Now, when I was doing drop shipping back in the day, I had to build a website using Shopify and I had to do it manually, so it took a ton of time. These days, there are AI tools that help you build a Shopify store in literally like 5 minutes. And so, the web design part is no problem at all. All you guys can literally just use the link down below. It's a free Shopify store builder that builds your entire site and gives you items to sell in about 5 to 10 minutes, completely free. And there's also a Shopify trial. I do recommend trying that if you want to at some point get into e-commerce. And yeah, all the resources and links that we talk about in this video, I'm going to drop them in the description. So, make sure to open up that description, check out all those links, and if any of these resonate with you, I recommend just taking action. That is the most important thing. Yeah, with drop shipping, obviously, it does take some time for you to actually start making money. The hardest part isn't setting up your store anymore or finding products. It is actually the marketing part. So, if you want to get really good at marketing, then drop shipping is a really great side hustle to start. Facebook ads, Google ads, creating content, working with content creators. There's so much cool stuff that you guys can learn within drop shipping and e-commerce in general. And the great thing is that all these skills you're going to take with you and it's going to help you on your next business. The next side hustle on my list is going to be photography. Now, I did photography all throughout my teenage years, also throughout college and even past college. And this is one of those perfect high-v value services that you can offer where you can get paid a pretty ridiculous amount of money hourly while building skills that help you in the future. So for me, I really like doing portrait photography and I recommend this for you guys too if that's something that interests you because portraits you can make the most amount of money from, right? So we're talking graduation shoots, we're talking family photo shoots, weddings, engagements, all these things can command a huge amount of money per shoot. So, I was regularly making between a hundred to $500 per shoot throughout my teenage years. And that's because I learned a high value skill like photography, invested a bit of money into some decent equipment, learn photography as a skill, and got really good. If you guys are watching this video and you are really into video or photography or any of these like creative disciplines where you can do a service for a person and they'll pay you, then I highly recommend trying that out. Building a service-based business around photography or video, stuff like that can make you a ton of money. And the way that I grew my business as a teenager was I essentially did a few free photo shoots. I did a good job. They told their friends, got paying clients, and as long as you're delivering a good product, more and more people are going to hear about you. There's going to be more word of mouth, and you're just going to get clients really organically. If you really want to take your business to the next level even faster, though, you'll do content creation. So, you'll make IG reels. You'll have an Instagram page. basically showcase all of your work, tag your clients. That is a great way to use social media to actually, you know, get clients. With photography, you should easily be able to make between $50 to, let's say, $300 per hour depending on your skill. You also really learn customer service, being personable with your clients. And yeah, I highly recommend this as a side hustle. Next is selling a digital product and pairing it with social media. So, this is something that is rather new, but it is a great way for young people to make a ton of money online. So essentially what you're doing is you're creating a digital product. So this could be a course, PDF, this could be a template, something like this that can be made in Canva or High Level can uh host courses. Yeah, there's tons and tons of different softwares you guys can use to actually create the digital products. And the great thing is that once you create it one time, there's basically zero fulfillment costs, right? You create a template one time. You invest some time and maybe a little bit of money to create it. And then every single sale you make, it costs you

basically zero dollars to fill it. All you do is send that PDF or template to that person. It's a lot different than e-commerce where there's costs associated with every single purchase. This means that you have a 100% profit margin, which means that you can spend more money on ads. and time on creating content. And yeah, if you pair this with social media by creating some type of niches specific social media page, then this can absolutely blow up and make tons and tons of money. So, for example, one way you guys can do this is let's say you want to sell notion templates, right? Notion is a platform that people use to organize their life as well as even run their business. And you can create different templates and sell these templates to people. Now, what I would do is I'd create a notion focused Instagram page. Name it something with notion in the title and then only put out educational content talking about notion, showcasing your templates, all that stuff. This is the number one way to get sales for your digital product. And if you do this correctly, this should become a six can even become a sevenf figureure business. And yeah, if you're good at content, this pairs really well with you. Just make educational content in that specific niche of your digital product and sales will come naturally. Okay, next and our last one on this list is selling art online on websites like Etsy. Now, a lot of you watching this are probably really creative and quite talented at some form of art. And the great thing is that art can be made for not too much money, right? It's more of an investment of your time and effort, but can be sold for pretty ridiculous amounts of money. Art is subjective, right? And the price that someone is willing to pay you, well, it just depends on what they want to pay you. So, if you create something that's really unique, it's really special in some type of way, then you can make a ton of money selling this on websites like Etsy. Personally, if I were to do this, I would do canvas art. I think canvas art carries a huge premium because the amount of money that like rich homeowners are willing to pay for nice art that's hung on their walls is absolutely insane. So, for example, if you like cars, you can do a type of art where it's a canvas. You can have cars on the canvas, like little smaller cars. You can paint and you'll have art that maybe some car collectors might really like. You can also buy a huge, let's say 4x6 ft canvas from Michaels for maybe 100 bucks. Buy paint, create a more like abstract piece of art on it using all the paint. You can do different textures and stuff like that. And if it looks good, right, you can sell the artwork for a lot more. One way to put a huge premium on this is to actually frame it. So, there are tons of different services online where you can actually get these custom canvas frames made. And if you install those frames on your completed canvas artwork, it makes it look like 10 times more valuable and people are going to be willing to pay a lot more money. You can sell on Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, on Craigslist, you can create your own social media page. And yeah, overall, there's a ton of money that can be made for art. So, yeah, this is something that aligns with your passions and your talents. Definitely give it a shot. So, those are 10 of the best side hustles that I recommend for teenagers that want to make money in 2026 and beyond. We covered a bunch of different types of side hustles. And so, obviously, not all of them are going to work for everyone. You probably watch this video. Some of them really stood out to you. And what I would say is just take action, you guys. The beautiful thing about side hustles is that you don't need to do it forever. They are great stepping blocks to learn entrepreneurship to make some money. Making money when you are young is way cooler than making money when you're older. Plus, doing all these will lead you to getting into entrepreneurship, which I think is the greatest thing in the world. And so, hopefully, this is the start of your entrepreneurial journey, right? Maybe one day in 30 years, you'll have a massive Fortune 500 company and will all be because you started one of these side hustles. Don't just do it for the money, skills. And yeah, wish you guys all the best of luck. Again, I'll have all the links to the resources we talked about in this video down below in the description. So, make sure you take advantage of those. And if you guys got any value from the video, make sure to give a like, a comment, share with a friend, and subscribe if you want to see more content just like this. I make content about entrepreneurship, personal finance, business, and yeah, it's all stuff to help you guys live a more financially successful life. Thank you so much for your time, and I'll see you in the next video.