When it comes to ideas, there’s no age limit. You can have great ideas in your teens, 20s, 30s, and so on. It’s just that, as a teenager, starting a business can seem like this otherworldly venture that would just never work.
I’m here to say that you can definitely start a business in your teens. And I’ll tell you just how you can do that.
This one’s going to be a bit different. If you’ve ever read one of my posts, you’ll know that I often present a bunch of ideas and some pretty good insights with some really nice images. This time around, I want this to be personal. A 1-on-1 between you and me.
As someone who started making money online in my early teens and started my writing business right before becoming an adult, I want to help you do the same.
I’ll go over everything, and I mean everything, you should expect when starting a business as a teenager. The highs, the lows, the downright stress-inducing situations, and the ecstatic feeling of things just going right.
Let’s get to it.
(If you're just here for the ideas, jump ahead to these big business ideas for teens)
Why starting a business in your teens is the best time
Taking a trip down memory lane, I always had business ideas. Dropshipping in 2016, reselling in 2017, SEO in 2018, online tutoring in 2019, and a new idea every year ever since.
I’ll admit that I never wanted to start a business, though. Side hustles were alright; I was making some money on the side, and I was just on the road to pursuing academics.
That was until I started writing in 2020. What started as just another side hustle quickly turned into making me more than my entry-level job would after I’d get my degree 7 years later.
It was then and there that I said, “What could go wrong?”
Spoilers: way too many things to list.
Alas, just like you, I had a bunch of things going for me, making my teens the best time to start my business.
You can take the extra risk
Risk is one word that gets thrown around a lot. “Don’t start a biz, it’s risky”, “Don’t drop out of high school or college, it’s risky”. When I made things official with my business 5 years ago, that’s all I’d hear.
The thing is, I could take that big risk since it was calculated. I was spending more time doing client work and getting more clients than studying. Did that mean I wasn’t studying at all? Nope.
I was still getting ready for my entrance exams in a year’s time. It’s just that I was also investing the rest of the day in building the biz.
Now, why could I take that risk? Because even if everything went south, I was still ready to do something in my academic career.
And, even if the latter didn’t go as planned, I still had the opportunity to retry next year. I had no major expenses to take care of, and I could always just stay with my parents for a bit longer.
In your case, if you start as early as 13, you’ll have a lot more opportunities to retry.
The biz doesn’t work in the first couple of years? Cool, try something different, or focus on your studies and try again during college.
This is where one of my many tips comes in: Treat your business as just another option when you’re starting out. Focus on getting everything else done for the day and leave the biz planning for early in the morning or late in the evening.
I only doubled down and dropped out of university when I was making enough to live on consistently, 3 years after getting started. Up until then, I still went to my high school (and college) classes, I was still studying every day.
The more options you have, the less risky it’ll be to start a business. In your teens, you’ll have the most options available for your career. That is exactly why you can take the extra risk.
But, remember to not be oblivious. This is the first of many times you’ll see me say this on this post: I was one of the lucky few who managed to get a good business out of their first idea implemented.
You might not be as lucky, and luck is one of the main factors in running a successful business, regardless of what you might hear online. You have to put in the work AND be in the right place at the right time.
Of course, risk isn’t the only factor in starting your teen business.
You have more free time than ever again

Remember how I said that I was studying first and working afterward? That’s because, in your teens, you have more free time than you ever will after that.
I know that I sound old when I say this. When everyone was telling me that in my younger years, I was going on rants about balancing social, school, and personal life, all of which were impossible to do in 24 hours while also running a business.
The thing is, I was wrong. The adult day-to-day stuff isn’t necessarily time-consuming, but it takes a lot of effort and brain capacity to handle.
As a teenager, you don’t necessarily have as many responsibilities. In turn, those 2-3 extra hours you’d spend scrolling on social media can be better invested in launching a business. Plus, believe me, it’ll do you more good than bad in the long run.
Don’t get me wrong, you still have a bunch of activities to handle, and you should definitely not put your social life on the back burner.
But, at the same time, if you understand what stuff you do daily leads nowhere (like doomscrolling), you’ll open up even more free time, which you can reinvest in your business.

And here’s my second tip. Or rather an insight: Building a business needs ambition, but it also makes every little step a success.
What does this mean for you? By just putting in the work for a few hours every day, you’ll see progress. That progress will be enough to keep you going.
At your age, you’ll be able to open up even more time when something feels rewarding. More time = more rewarding work = more chances of the biz becoming successful.
I say that from my own experience. When I started, I was pretty much like you. I “didn’t have enough time”. When my content was performing well, I couldn’t get enough of it, and, out of nowhere, I was opening up 6-8 hours every day for the biz.
That’s the same feeling you’ll get when you land that first client, sell the first product, or simply get your portfolio live.
Or, if you just like to learn new things, you’ll get that feeling every day. Thankfully, you’re at the best age to learn new stuff.
You can learn new things quicker than ever
As a kid or a teenager, one thing’s for certain. You can learn things quickly. You can understand new concepts quicker than most adults. And, you can use that to your advantage when starting a business.
I was around 16 when I started learning about what it’d take for me to actually run a service-based business. Everything from tax stuff to business management. A year later, I sure as hell wasn’t ready to start, but I’d learned enough to at least give it a try.
At the same time, I had to learn the basic principles of copywriting and SEO, which, again, took me about a year.
And, that’s where everything I mentioned above comes together. For one, I had all the free time I needed to find different resources online for free. This would later help me in my business as a whole, as I spend most of the day researching different topics.
But I was also able to spend that extra bit of time and take the next step, regardless of how risky it was. Because, at the end of the day, I’d just be a 17-year-old who had some basic business knowledge and a failed or successful venture.
Was it going to be risky, and potentially a waste of time? Sure. At the end of the day, though, even a failed business would have taught me way more than the average person my age.
Now, back to you, you have to use all of this to your advantage. If you’re starting earlier than I did, spend the extra year on learning.
Your brain is literally like a sponge. And, since you’re learning stuff from scratch, you’ll able to set a foundation with the newest and best available knowledge.
Time for my 3rd tip, and this one’s pretty straightforward: Find one skill, spend 6 months learning everything about it, and then another 6 implementing it. That’s how you’ll be able to learn anything and everything to start a successful business.
That said, one of the things I didn’t have when I started was a network. Or, so I thought.
You already have a valuable network

One of my biggest mistakes when I started my business was that I didn’t take advantage of my already-existing network. The exact same network you have.
Your friends, your classmates. Hell, even your teachers. All of these people are part of your network, and every business owner raves about having a big network.
Let me take a step back. Why does a network matter? Well, for one, your network might consist of potential buyers of your product/service, potential mentors, or even business competitors. All of these give you tons of valuable data and knowledge across the entirety of your business.
For instance, one of my first small-scale ventures back in 2017 was selling fidget spinners. I learned about these before they became popular here, sourced a small batch of 25 different spinners at a buck each, and sold them at $3/spinner.
Before I got my second batch, the craze had already stopped, so I barely made some profits there.
At that point, though, I’d already built a network. Random people from school would come up to me asking if I could get them other fidgety gadgets. My mistake was that I didn’t double down on that audience and try to make a business out of it.
In your case, your network of classmates might prove to be helpful in different ways. Maybe they’ll want someone to build them a website. Or, a friend of your friends needs some help creating a logo and managing their social media.
Of course, most of your network at this age can also be your audience for your product or service. For instance, you can source the same exact stuff one can find on TikTok Shop and sell them in person for lower prices, while still making a profit.
Or, if you’re pretty good at maths, you can start a little tutoring business where you can teach maths to your fellow classmates. There’s no stopping you from doing that all the way up to college and beyond, as the curriculum will remain more or less the same.
And, at the end of the day, even if everything I’ve mentioned so far fails, this is still the best time to start a business for one simple reason…
You can easily apply your learnings to your next venture
As I’ve already stated, I never wanted to start a full-blown business. And I was pretty lucky to have that first true business become successful. But, in reality, it’s very likely that this won’t be the same in your case.
You might not be able to secure clients. You might invest a bunch on a product that won’t actually sell. And, you know what? That’s quite alright.
Because even if everything goes south, you’ll now know what to avoid in your next venture. You’ll know what worked in this case and where you made a mistake.
And that’s really the true reason why I started my biz in my late teens and why I urge you to do so as soon as possible.
The sooner you make mistakes or understand where you have an edge, the earlier you can start your successful business venture.
If I couldn’t scale my business from 17 to 19 to a respectable income level, I’d probably not have the time to balance a new venture and my studies.
If you start your venture at 15 and it doesn’t work out by 17, you still have another couple of years to fix the mistakes you made and double down on what worked.
What I mean to say with all of this is simple, and this is my last tip for now: Start today. Really. Once you’ve read this post, go ahead and start. Start learning, start your business, start selling a product, it’s up to you. But, start doing something.
This is just step 1. There are plenty more steps that you’ll need to learn on your own. But I also have some info below that’ll make things a bit easier for you.
Step-by-step of how to successfully start your business as a teenager

If you’ve read everything thus far, you’ve already taken one more step than I did when I was about to start my business. I couldn’t care less about what some random dude had to say, which is why I ended up making mistakes and not growing the biz as much as I should have.
That’s exactly what I want you to avoid, and I’ll try to cover what you’ll need in the rest of the article. For now, let’s go over a quick step-by-step of starting your business.
Find your industry and niche
Okay, so the first thing you have to do with any business is find what you’re actually going to offer.
Is it going to be a product or a service? Both are equally great to sell. But, selling a service will be easier for you, as you won’t need to handle inventory and other tax-related and logistical issues. At least, that’s my two cents.
Whether it’s a product or a service, what industry will it be in? Like, will you offer writing services or gym equipment? Coding or digital products? Again, that’s totally up to you, but the digital or service-based offerings are usually the best.
And, once you have the industry in mind, what niche will you work in? Will it be writing for ecommerce businesses or creating websites for enterprises? If you’re going to sell digital products, who are they going to be for? Courses for freelancers, communities for fellow students?
These are all the questions you’ll need to ask yourself before you even get started. Of course, if you already have an idea in mind, this step will be a lot easier.
In such a case, I’d suggest going deeper into who your target audience will be and how your product or service will stand out.
From my experience, my tip would be to not get overwhelmed by all the different metrics when you’re just starting out. There’s absolutely no reason to stress over having the most optimal CAC or ROAS when you’ve barely sold a product or landed a client. Remember: one step at a time.
- Digital product niches: Finding the most profitable ideas to kickstart your next online venture
- Lucrative niche market examples
- Best ecommerce niches for selling online
- Best dropshipping niches for launching winning products
- How to make money online as a teen
Understand legal and tax-related implication
I know what you’re thinking: “Legal stuff? Taxes? I’m just a teenager!”. I know that because I said the exact same thing when I reached out to a tax advisor before starting my business. But trust me, this part is essential.
Every country has different rules about teens starting businesses. It’s very likely that you’ll need to be over 18 to start a business in your country. So, as a teen, you’ll need a parent or guardian to sign off on legal documents.
You’ll also need to understand basic tax requirements, like when to report income and what deductions you might qualify for. Okay, all this sounds scary, I know.
But it’s not as complicated as it sounds, and there are plenty of free resources online to help you figure it out.
In my case, I didn’t even need to pay taxes for the first couple of years, as I wasn’t making up to a specific threshold. At the same time, since I was only offering writing services, I didn’t need to worry about any product taxes.
Again, as with everything else, put in the time and learn everything you can about legal and tax stuff. Contact a tax advisor for anything that seems too complicated. Believe me, it won’t cost that much compared to the valuable information you’ll get.
Work with a guardian to set everything up
So, here’s the only part I, unfortunately, don’t have much hands-on experience with. When I started my business, I only got my guardian involved for the very few payments that came in during the first year. After that, I was 18, so I set everything under my name.
But, in your case, you’ll need to work with your guardian to set everything up. And, when I say everything, I truly mean every single thing. Bank accounts, business entity, signing legal documents, even something as simple as a PayPal account.
Of course, you’ll have a lot of convincing to do. You’ll need to show your parents or guardians that you’re serious about this. At the end of the day, if they say no, starting your business will be much more difficult.
That’s why this is the last step you’ll take before you start your business. Without your guardian, you won’t be able to do so as a teenager. Thus, you have to put in the effort to turn your idea into a business plan.
Thankfully, Whop can help you out with that in a bunch of different ways.
How Whop can help you start your business when you’re under 18

While Whop can help you start and grow your online business, I first want to focus on the consumer side of Whop.
Look, as I hinted at above, throughout this business venture of mine, I’ve made a bunch of mistakes.
For example, I only used one method to get clients, that being through forums, for the first 2 years. I didn’t care about building a public portfolio. I charged pennies when I could be charging dollars.
When I started, there wasn’t any platform like Whop where I could hop on and learn from business experts. The online courses that I could get my hands on were either outdated or the most basic stuff with no real value.
So, how can Whop help you with your business? Well, that’s simple. First, you can get expert business tips for just about any idea out there. There are tons of different business whops that are run by experts in their industry, and I’ve actually covered some of the best online business courses you can find on Whop.
Even if you can’t join these communities right now, you can always have a look through Whop’s blog. There, you’ll find many business-related articles to help you get started, written by our expert team of writers and, of course, yours truly.
Alas, I still urge you to look at some of the whops on the Discover page. See what they offer, and try out their free trial, or hop on for just a month. The info and tips you’ll get from these will be a huge catalyst to go from idea to action.
With that said, let’s get back on track.
5 big business ideas for teenagers
Now, you might wonder why I only mention 5 ideas here. Shouldn’t there be more? That’s true, but I want to cover what I call pillar ideas.
These 5 give you a starting point, and it’s up to you to find which one you’d like to dive deeper into.
1. Sell a service

I’m obviously a little bit biased, so I’d have to put selling a service at the top, instead of selling a product.
So, the idea here is simple:
- Learn (or already have) a lucrative skill. Think coding, writing, graphic design, something along those lines.
- Find people or businesses who are looking for people with that skill.
- Package and sell that skill as a service.
In practice, this can go down different paths. You might offer writing services to companies and personal blogs like I did when I started.
You can offer tutoring services to individuals through different platforms, much like one of my first gigs back in 2019.
Or, you can utilize your skills through coaching sessions or mentorships. You can, for example, teach your peers how they can create sneaker bots.
Whatever service you sell, you can sell it with Whop. Simply create your whop, set your offer, and start selling with online courses, downloadable templates and ebooks, webinars, mentorships, masterminds, and more.
2. Sell a product

This is the classic way of making money: sell something physical (or digital), instead of a service.
Here’s how you go about it:
- Find a product you’re excited about. It can be handmade (like crafts), sourced (like reselling), or even digital (like templates or art).
- Figure out where you’re going to sell it. You can start with platforms like Whop, eBay, or even just social media.
- Start selling and tweaking your approach based on what works.
For example, if you’re into art, you can sell your prints online or offer custom commissions. If you’re good at finding cool stuff cheap, you can flip those items for a profit.
Even something simple like selling snacks or accessories to your classmates can be a great starting point.
For digital products, you can sell these with Whop. Online courses, ebooks, PDFs, downloadables, software - if it's digital, sell with Whop.
3. Turn your hobby into a business

This one’s my favorite because you’re building a business around something you already enjoy.
Here’s what you can do:
- Think about a hobby you’re really into. It can be gaming, photography, or anything else you genuinely love.
- Figure out how that hobby can bring value to others.
- Turn it into a business by packaging it in a way people would pay for.
For instance, if you’re into photography, grab a camera and create a stock photo business or offer photography services. If you’re a gamer, start streaming or offer coaching sessions.
It’s a win-win. You get to keep doing what you love, and it might actually pay off big time.
If you need more inspiration, check out these hobbies that can actually make you money.
4. Turn your chores or side hustle into a business

This one’s for anyone who’s already doing something on the side, whether it’s babysitting, mowing lawns, or dog walking.
Here’s how you level it up and turn it into a business:
- Take whatever you’re doing now and make it look more professional. Create a simple flyer, post on social media, or just tell more people about it.
- Expand your reach. Instead of babysitting just for your neighbors, offer your services to friends of friends or other families in your area.
- Slowly build it into a proper business with regular clients.
This is pretty straightforward. You basically go from 1 to 2, compared to other business where you go from 0 to 1.
- Side hustles for students – Make money alongside your studies
- Lucrative side hustles for college students
5. Become an online creator

This one’s more recent and, not gonna lie, my dream business after I started writing. Create content, gather a following, and monetize it.
Here’s how to start:
- Pick a platform: YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, even Whop, whatever you like using the most.
- Create content that’s interesting to you and valuable to others.
- Grow your audience and start monetizing, whether that’s through ads, sponsorships, or even selling your own stuff.
For example, if you’re into fitness, you could post workout tips. If you’re passionate about gaming, you can create highlight reels or tutorials.
It’s not an overnight thing, but once you build some momentum, it gets easier.
- How to become a content creator and earn money with social media, podcasts, and blogs
- How do content creators make money?
Create your online business with Whop today
So, if you’ve come this far, I’m certain that you’re ready to start your online business today. And I’m proud of you for that. You’re already way too many steps ahead than I was when I started.
But this is only the beginning. One thing I quickly found when I started selling my writing services more professionally was that I needed a platform, be that social media or a portfolio.
The thing is, even back then, Whop wasn’t around. Now that it is, though, you’ve got much of the work cut out for you.
If you want to sell anything digital, be that digital products, a service, or your knowledge packed up in a template or membership, Whop is the place to be.
When you create your whop, you open up your business to millions of users who use the platform daily.
And, with all the apps you can find on your whop, you’ll be ready to manage everything effortlessly. From something as simple as using a “Chat” for your community to the “Events” app for coaching calls or the “Courses” app for your… well, courses. You want it? Whop’s got it.
Best of all, Whop is absolutely free to use. So, realistically, there’s no risk on your side. As soon as you make your first sale, you’ll be able to keep up to 97% of every dollar you make.
I’ve already yapped on for way too long with this, so I’ll leave you to it. Take an extra few minutes to sign up on Whop, create your whop, and start your online business today.