Home Business Ideas For Teens

girl-with-braceletsIt can be difficult when you are teen to find the work you need when you are not in school so you can earn a little extra money to pay for whatever expenses you may have.  Fortunately, in today’s world, there are many home business ideas and opportunities for teens to make money without having to punch a clock and be at work at certain times.  Starting a home business is one of the easiest ways for you as a teen to earn the income you need part time and it will allow you to continue your class schedules while you do it.

Start a Website

Perhaps one of the easiest ways a teen can make money is by starting a website.  While it may take a little while to gain a large following, almost anyone can set up a website with minimal coding knowledge.  Your website can be an online store or a blog. 

Whatever it is, be sure it is on a subject that you can passionately write about and one that you have at least some knowledge about as well.  With a website you can place advertisements on your site and get paid each time these ads are clicked.  In addition, you can become an affiliate marketer and make a commission on the products you recommend to your visitors.

Sell Your Creations

Do you enjoy working with your hands to craft beautiful creations such as jewelry?  Maybe you have learned to sew over the years and would like to use this ability to make a little extra income?  In today’s world selling your own creations has never been easier. 

There are many sites available such as eBay and Etsy that allow you to list your items for sale and even create your own store that you can market to attract customers.  Using these sites and your talent you can easily make a little extra income while you are not in class.

Sell Your Services

Another one of the options available is selling your services.  Selling your services to others is an easy way for you to find work after school or on the weekends.  For example, if you have access to a car you could run errands for people who are short on time or simply can’t run the errands themselves.  If you are a little more technically minded, you could offer to repair computers or smartphones for an hourly fee. 

Before you begin this type of home business idea, take a few minutes to examine your skills and what you enjoy so you can provide the best service to your customers.  Utilize family members to find some of your first jobs and branch out using your social media accounts to attract business.  If you are able, create a great looking business card that you can print yourself and give your customers several copies to hand out to their friends and family.

But don’t take any risks. That includes not going into customers’ homes or getting in cars with them. Those rules don’t change just because you’re trying to make money.

Leverage Your Social Media Knowledge

The world of social media has been growing by leaps and bounds and it’s showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.  However, many business owners are older and not quite as social media savvy as your generation. 

Use this knowledge to your advantage and offer your social media knowledge to small businesses.  Help them create the pages they need and teach them how to properly use various social media sites or offer to take over their social media needs entirely and watch the money roll in fast as more and more businesses look to gain a larger following on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Become a Designer

Just because you are young, doesn’t mean you don’t have something to offer the design world and if you are already experienced in computer design, you can easily market yourself to individuals and small businesses who need small design jobs completed such as business cards, logos and even full websites. 

Many businesses will work with your schedule so you can complete their jobs on your time away from school and if you do great design work, you can easily expect to begin receiving repeat customers as there is always a need for excellent graphic design work.

These home business ideas for teens offer the flexibility that is needed by any young person.  However, while these opportunities are a great way to earn extra income, they do take work and dedication in order to be successful.  The hard work can most definitely pay off and earn you the money you need while allowing you to create the schedule that meets your needs and the needs of your classroom.

The Best Free Affiliate Programs

Best free affiliate programs
Do you need to find the best free affiliate programs for your online business? There are many companies out there and you just need to pick the right one. You will have to consider many things, and here 5 of those factors which you may want to consider:

1. Is it really free?

This is something that you really need to investigate as a lot of companies will offer promises that they cannot keep. Essentially, a lot of companies are quite selfish and economical with the truth and may not actually be free. You need to discern whether they are free or not, something which comes through extensive research.

There are some sites which require you to pay a lot for marketing tools and other such equipment whilst saying that the program is free, so be very wary of these sort of claims.

Of course, whatever affiliate program you join, you will need to send traffic to it. You can find out about both free and paid traffic methods from a good training course.

2. How much is the commission worth?

Again this is something that you need to look at as you do not want to be losing any profits that you derive from your affiliate marketing. Essentially, you want to keep as much money as you can although some companies may charge up to 60% of what you offer, although this may come with the benefit or guarantee of making more money with the services that they provide.

This is the key thing to consider when deliberating between each company as you want your profit margins to be quite high.

3. How are sales tracked?

The majority of sales are tracked by cookies. However, some of these will expire within a certain time period such as 30 days if a user is not active in using the link perhaps because they are disinterested or by other reasons.

It could be assumed that some cookies will last forever, in theory. As soon as a customer deletes the cookies from their computer, your commission is lost which is something that you certainly want to avoid. This means that you are not guaranteed to get some money from everyone that visits your link, something which you should bear in mind.

On the other hand, some affiliate programs track their customers by e-mails instead of cookies which is not a bad alternative. This saves you losing the commission if they delete the cookies, although if the consumer switches their e-mail then this will leave you not receiving the commission.

4. Does the program pay commission for repeat links and visits?

Some companies only pay for unique visits to your link and will not compensate you for any repeat clicks. Some may pay you for repeat clicks for a certain duration of time such as 6 months or maybe slightly longer in some cases.

The advantage of repeat clicks being compensated is that customers tend to purchase more from a site later on after they have built up trust in the company. This means that the slice of commission you get is bigger.

5. What is their payment system?

Essentially, signing up for an affiliate program is all about the money that you receive from it. You need to know when you are going to get the money and what payment options that they offer such as bank transfer, check, PayPal or some other method.

Once you have determined all these things then you will be sure of the correct free affiliate programs to go for.