This modern time has lots of advantages. In the past, it was difficult to make money as a kid but right now, a teenager can start making money even as a 13 year old. Yes, there are lots of legal ways a 13 year old can make money both online and offline, and this can help children gain financial experience from a young age.
In this post, we highlight some of the easy ways to make money as a 13 year old.
How To Make Money Online As A 13 Year Old
1. Take paid surveys
There are many websites available that pay you in cash, points, or gift cards to take surveys. This may sound too good to be true especially with lots of scam survey sites around. But, the key to protecting yourself from scam is to check if the website is legit before joining. Read their privacy policy, and make sure they won’t sell your information to other companies.
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To increase your earnings, you need to join more than 1 survey site and know how they pay or what they give in return for your opinion.
Some survey websites give you free products instead of cash, so if you want cash only, you have to find out if they pay in cash before signing up.
Some legit and well-paying survey websites you can join are:
2. Offer your skills as services
If you know how to do graphic designs, web design, edit photos and videos, create logos, printables, record videos, or even write a good letter, you can convert these skills to cash.
Use what you love doing and create a gig for yourself in the neighborhood or on freelance websites like Fiverr, and earn a good amount of money doing so.
3. Sell your crafts online
If you can make crafts like wooden items, draw and paint, create things with air-dry clay, make jewelry, bags, cards, make abstract arts, etc. You can sell all these online and make good money.
A good place to sell crafts is Etsy. You can fix your selling price by calculating the amount of money used in buying the materials and also the time it took you to complete the project. This will surely help you make good profit.
4. Sell your unwanted items
Check your room, wardrobe, the garage, or storage box and see if you have old or unwanted items like games, toys, DVDs, books, clothes, old furniture, kitchen wares, etc.
These unwanted items may not necessarily be yours only, you can even include that of your parents and siblings but with their permission of course.
You can make a decent amount of money selling old or vintage items on websites like eBay, Etsy, Decluttr, or Amazon.
If you have money, you can find and buy vintage items at yard sales or second-hand stores and resell them on these sites at a profit.
5. Test websites
Website testing is also one of the easy ways to make money online as a 13-year old.
This is how it works: Websites pay you to test their sites and give your opinion. You will also be paid to check for bugs in digital applications, mobile apps, games, online stores, etc.
Developers and designers want their work to be perfect and free from errors, so this is where you come in. You test, give your honest opinion and get paid for it.
Also, you will be paid extra if you find any bug. And the pay varies depending on the level of difficulty. But you can make between $8 to $50 per website test.
A good company you can start working for is Testbirds.
6. Review website
Testing websites is a different job from reviewing websites. In reviewing websites, you will be given easy tasks like reacting to advertisements or even comparing websites, and your activities will be recorded through your webcam and microphone.
This may sound creepy but it is done this way because the feedback they need from you will actually be spoken reviews. From your voice, they can gauge if you are angry, frustrated, or satisfied.
You can be paid more than $10 for every completed test.
Userlytics is a good place to start reviewing websites.
7. Review recorded calls
All the calls you’ve ever made to your bank, mobile service provider, a customer care service for any organization (for instance, an online store), etc. have all been recorded.
The reason your entire conversation was recorded is for quality assurance purposes.
So guess who listens to those calls and reviews them? People interested in reviewing calls and getting paid for it.
The pay is quite low but it’s nothing considering the easy nature of the job. All that is required of you is to listen to the pre-recorded calls and put them into categories.
One of the leading websites that pay people to review recorded calls is Humanatic. They pay between $1 to $4.50 per hour depending on the requirements of the tasks and they pay via PayPal.
8. Earn money via game apps
Teenagers love playing games a lot. If you are a gamer, you can use the time you use in relaxing and catching fun to earn money.
You may be wondering how. There are some game apps that pay people to play games. They use this to lure people to play their games and also to get honest feedback.
A few apps that pay people to play games are:
9. Start a blog
Don’t think that you are too young to start a blog. You can easily use a blog to make money online by either selling items or your services.
If you are a teenager that feels like you have a lot to say but don’t know how to say it, or you fill your dairy faster with stories or your experiences, you will be a good blogger.
You can start a free blog, or a paid blog. You can start with a cheap hosting for as low as $3.95 a month with Bluehost. In your first year, you will be given a free domain and a free SSL certificate.
10. Invest your saved money
If you have savings or you have money coming in from doing some of the jobs listed in this post, you can make money from your profit by investing it.
Most of these investment apps allow people to start with as little as $1. Some of the best apps for investment are:
How To Succeed At Making Money Online As A 13-Year Old
The first thing you have to do when seeking online jobs is to avoid scams. Don’t give out personal information like your house address, credit card details, etc and don’t pay any money.
If you are in doubt of a company, check their customer reviews on TrustPilot or BBB. This will help you know if they are legit or scam.
Avoid companies that don’t have any customer ratings and reviews.
The second factor is payment. You cannot create a PayPal account until you are 18. But you can get around this by having your parents or guardian sign up for you.
Also, for bank accounts, minors are not permitted by law to open a checking account. You will need your parent or a guardian to open a joint or custodial account.
This account will be managed by your parent or guardian until you turn 18.
But you can always withdraw your earnings from them when you want.
Most online jobs pay via PayPal. So when your parents have helped sign up for you, you should get the GoHenry debit card for kids.
This debit card will help you get paid, save, shop online, budget, and buy stuff.
The age requirement for using a GoHenry debit card is 6 to 18 years old and you will pay a monthly maintenance fee of $3.99.
How To Make Money Offline As A 13 Year Old
1. Walk dogs
Teens who are animal lovers will love this job. Apart from getting paid, you will enjoy other benefits like spending time with your 4-legged friends and you also get the opportunity to exercise which is good for your health.
You can talk to your busy neighbors who have dogs, to pay you to walk their dogs. Also, you can share it on your social media or even set up fliers in your neighborhood.
You will be able to get steady cash as a teen when you start getting regular clients.
2. Tutor students
If you are very good in a subject like algebra or chemistry, you can tutor students and they will pay for it.
This will not only help you make money but you will also become exceptionally good at the subject.
The first step to make money this way is to look for the subject or subjects you are good in. This should be a subject that most of your classmates come to you when they need help with it or if you are called the “math or chemistry whizz”.
One thing with offline tutoring is that there is no age limit while online tutoring demands that you be at least 16 years old.
You can start small and even start from your school compound. Once you reach 16, you can now take your services online.
There are factors you have to consider and put in place before going into tutoring, some of them are:
- The age range to teach (e.g. grade 5 to grade 8)
- How familiar you are with the syllabus and examination criteria of the grades you’ve chosen to teach.
- The materials you are going to provide for your students
- The venue for conducting your lessons
- How much you will charge per hour (remember to factor in your costs for marketing, materials, and transport).
3. Sit pets
Don’t think that this is an outdated way of making money, it isn’t. There are lots of busy pet owners who would pay people to look after their pets for them.
Pet-sitting requires you to look after someone’s pet when they are away from home. The pet can either stay with you or you stay in the client’s home during this period.
Before you commence work with any client, you must have them sign your pet care agreement. Make this form as detailed as possible and it should include health conditions the pet may have.
You can use this format here to create your pet agreement. Then you can join pet-sitting platforms like Petsitter and Rover to get more clients. These pet-sitting platforms accept people as young as 13 years old.
How much you should charge depends on what you include in your services but the norm is $10 to $20 per hour.
You should also think of ways to make your pet-sitting business stand out from the crowd. You can add grooming and obedience training or offer it as a separate service.
Also, you should consider offering your clients an incentive when they recommend you to their friends and families.
4. Dropshipping
Dropshipping is one of the best and easiest ways to own a business as a teen. In this business, you ship products directly from producers to customers without even seeing or touching the products.
The start-up cost for dropshipping is almost nothing. Here is a comprehensive guide to help you in this business.
5. Administrative assistant
If you would love to work in a corporate environment, you can pick up a part-time administrative job which you can do after school.
As an administrative assistant, you will be asked to:
- Do basic computer service like receiving phone calls or send emails
- Manage files and documents
- Operate printers and other relevant machines in the office
- Enter data, etc.
Frequently Asked Questions On How To Make Money As A 13 Year Old
How do I know a genuine online business?
There are many online businesses that promise people getting rich quick without leaving the comfort of their homes, you have to be careful of such before you fall for scams.
Any business that sounds too good to be true and that asks for payment before you can start making money should be avoided.
If they offer a quick and easy way to make money, then it is a scam.
What should I do first in order to make money online?
The first step in making money online is to check if a website you intend to use or a company you intend to join is legal. You can check them on TrustPilot or BBB, and check their reviews and ratings to guide you in your decisions.
After this, you have to pick up a certification course to help you make money online. You need proper training and understanding of how online businesses work so that you won’t fall for scams.
How much money do I need to invest in making money?
This depends on the kind of business you want to do but most online businesses require little investment compared to offline businesses.
How long will it take to start making money?
Again, this depends on many factors like:
- The kind of business you choose to do
- Your experience/skill levels
- The number of clients you have
- The number of sales you make
- Your advertisement/publicity
- Your efforts
So it depends. Just make sure you are doing the right thing and putting in enough effort.
How much money can I make online?
This is another tough question because it depends on you and the factors given above.
I don’t have any products and I don’t know how to sell. How can I make money online?
You don’t need to have your own products before you sell online, you can sell other products which you can get on Amazon through affiliate programs.
If you are not good at selling or convincing people to buy things, then you can offer your skills as services. This can be design, writing, translation, etc.
Conclusion
Kids who learn how to be financially independent from their teenage age grow up to be financially smart and literate adults. We hope this post helps you in your quest for financial independence and growth.
You should also check out our post on Money books for kids.
