If you decide to provide a service for people, you will be confronted with the fundamental problem that all businesses face: you have to find a need and try to fill it.

Think of your immediate community (ie: your neighbourhood, apartment block, school, youth groups, religious groups, etc…). What kinds of people live there? What kinds of needs do these people have?

Let’s say you live in an apartment complex. You know that in a few of the apartments are older people who have trouble carrying their groceries to and from the store, and don’t much like to do it themselves. They have a need: the older people need help carrying groceries. You can help fill this need: you are able to walk to and from the grocery store with their groceries without much difficulty.

You could therefore, offer to get groceries from the store for them on a weekly basis. You could charge a fair price for this too: say $5.00 a bag, or perhaps $25 for the week (remember, lots of people are on fixed incomes, so in this case you’d have to keep the financial needs of your clients in mind when you’re pricing your services, because anything too high will mean they won’t employ you).

Alternately, you could offer to accompany them to the store and carry the groceries on the way back!

If you had 7 people in your community who signed on for this service for $25 dollars a week, you would make $175 (25×7=175). If you manage to deliver groceries to people on a different day every week, you probably wouldn’t have to spend more than a couple of hours a day buying and transporting the groceries. Of course, if everyone wants their groceries delivered on Saturday, you may end up having to take a bit longer.

But you are your own boss: you can take on as many clients as you want. If you only need an extra $25 dollars a week, just take on one client. If you want $200 dollars a week, you’d need 8 clients.

Also remember: just because you’re your own boss doesn’t imply you should simply quit after you have all the money you need, say for an iPod or a laptop. Remember that you now have people who like the service you provide, and clearly still have a need for it. If you stop, they may be disappointed, and less likely to become clients in the future if you ever decide you need money again.

You can always set limits, but be sure to tell your clients.

Don’t be shy in saying that you’re on vacation until exams start up, or until school starts again, or whatever, and for the next 8 (or 10, or whatever you decide) weeks, you will be providing this service: would they be interested?

We used grocery transportation in our example, but you could do this with many other services as well, such as:

• House/baby/pet sitting
• Dog walking while owners are at work (one less thing for the owner to worry about!)
• Organizing garages (no more clutter! No more mess!)
• Watering gardens (owners won’t have to deal with messy sprinklers!)
• Weeding lawns (this is actually harder than it sounds though)
• Wash cars
• Collect bottles and cans for/from people!

After Googling a bit, I found a few other suggestions I hadn’t thought of. These are from the Motley Fool:
http://www.fool.com/teens/teens02.htm

• Caddy at a golf course
• Teach something (teach what you know – tutor school children, teach piano, etc…)
• Deliver newspapers
• Computer services

Remember: only deal with people you trust if you have to enter their homes!

If you can fill a need, you can charge for it!

A note about surveys:
Whenever anyone posts a question like this on Yahoo! Answers, there’s always a few trolls who come out and post links to various survey sites. I really wouldn’t recommend surveys, for 2 reasons.

1) If you’re not “legal” to work in real life, remember it may not be legal for you to work for one of these survey companies.

2) Working on the internet takes WAY more time and effort than you think. I know this from personal example. I had been working on BTG for almost 10 weeks before I made my first quarter in advertising revenue (to be precise, I made $0.26). I write an average of two hours a day for the site, and that’s not counting the average of two to three hours a day extra in reading, learning, and site maintenance that running a website requires. And that’s after I finish my regular work. I love my job, but one shouldn’t expect to make much money per survey or per click online either: if it was really that easy for someone with no skills (in our case, younger people) to make a ton of money from surveys, you’d probably notice a lot more rich 13 year olds.

Your number 1 job: being a student:

In the immortal words of my parents: if you’re in school, you already have a job; your job is to be a student.

If you’d read the “How Can I Make More Money” personal finance article, you’d already know that getting educated or becoming skilled in a trade is the best way to earn more money in the long run. But in order to do that, you have to do certain things: you may have to study for certain qualifications, or you may have to get certain grades to enter into schools or programs later on.

My advice: if a job on the side is going to impact negatively on your schoolwork, don’t do it. It’s much better for you in the long run: nobody is going to care that your grades dropped so you could make an extra $200 bucks for an iPod on your college apps, they’re just going to care that they dropped (especially in countries where competition for certain spots is fierce).

You may, though, be able to turn this to your advantage: if your parents have the means, consider asking them for a wage while you are in school. After all, you’re working, and working very hard at your primary job, so why not be paid a little for it if you can (if you can’t get an allowance and you’re knowledgeable in a subject, consider tutoring!).

Good luck!

Part 1- Selling Things - Part 2- Selling a Service

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