While building wealth is attainable at any age, starting from a teenage is definitely an advantage. Not only will you get there while you are still relatively young, but it is also a much smoother journey.

If you are still in the care of your parents/guardians, congratulation you have an added benefit, no financial responsibilities.

This means you will be able to build wealth without bills absorbing your income.

Depending on your age you might need your parent/guardian to co-sign and in some instances, your parent/guardian might have to sign up with their information to give you access to certain resources.

With that aside, let’s get into the 5 ways to start building wealth from a teenager.

1. Stock Photography

Stock photography is a great passive income to start building wealth from a teenage.

If you have a camera that takes good quality pictures, you are in luck! If you don’t, that’s not a problem because a smartphone with a decent camera will get the job done too.

Before I jump ahead of myself, let me clarify what is stock photography for those who are not familiar with this business model.

Stock photography is a platform/website that contributors publish their imagery for sale or free use, under certain licenses. This means you can post your pictures on a stock photography website, giving buyers the permission/license to use your images in their projects.

What I love about this business model is, if you post pictures that are in demand, you can make sales on that one picture over and over and over again. Imagine if you have 1 thousand pictures in demand, now imagine if you have these 1 thousand pictures across several stock photography websites.

Photos In Demand

* People – Daily lifestyle

Photos of people are always selling and always in demand. A person curled up on a sofa having a warm cup of cocoa, someone sits around a computer, a happy-looking couple, etc.

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Be creative. The best photos of people are candid “looking” photos. Create a script for your photoshoot without it looking scripted. In other words, you should plan out what type of story you want a picture to tell when someone looks at it, at the same time it should look candid.

Where Do You Find Your Subject?

Utilize the resources you have – mommy, daddy, relatives and friends.

No logos. Don’t let logos get caught in your photos whether on clothing buildings or signs, be very mindful when doing your shoots.

*Animals – Cute animals

What can I say, always have your camera ready for those cute moments. You can also stage the cute moment, like have someone plays with the animal and catch the moment. Dressing up your animal in cute glasses, hats, and or scarves sells too.

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Go where you know you will likely find cute animals and ask permission to shoot their pictures.

*Architecture and Décor – Home interior décor

Please note: you can’t sell photos of famous buildings and landmarks without a release.

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*Food and Drink – Appetizing

An appetizing display of food and drink is another big seller on stock photography platforms. Hotels, restaurants, and students often source these photos for their projects.

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*Landscape and Sceneries

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*Holiday Images

Holiday photos are a true top seller. Even though these photos are seasonal, demand for these images is very high during their relevant season. A Christmas decorated front yard, cute animal dressed up for the season, even some Easter eggs in a basket. Get creative.

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Top Selling Stock Photography Platforms

There are several stock photography platforms available but I’m going to focus on the 3 top sellers.

The top 3 stock photography platforms are:

1. Shutterstock
2. Adobe Stock
3. istock

These are the 3 platforms you will make the most sales from, with Shutterstock being the number 1 seller and istock being third.

These websites do have their posting criteria. Examples file type accepted, minimum size, maximum size, quality, etc.

You will need to head over to their website and for more information.

Rejection

Base on criteria, photos can be rejected if all criteria are not met.

Your photos will be rejected if they don’t 100% meet the agency’s requirement but the good thing is, it will tell you the reason for the rejection. This gives you the chance to fix the reason of rejection (improve photo) and try again.

You will need to get familiar with an editing software to tweak photos when necessary.

Even though rejection might not feel good, it is actually good because it: 1. helps you to upload better pictures, which heightens your chance of sales. 2. helps you to become better at your craft.

To become a contributor on any of these platforms, head on over to their website, scroll down to the footer area and look for the relevant link.

Shutterstock

Adobe Stock

istock

Let’s move on to the second way to start buiding wealth form a teenage.

2. A YouTube Channel

Starting a YouTube channel is another awesome passive income free source to start building wealth.

Another awesome thing about this business model is, it is very easy to start, all you need is a smartphone with a camera.

Choose a niche based on popular searched content and upload on a consistent basis. 1 video per week / 52 videos per year is fair.

Niches that do really well are “product reviews” and “vs content”.

As a teenager, I’m not sending you to go out there and buy products to review.

You can always use the resource available to you.

For example, you may own the Samsung Galaxy Xyz and your friend, mom or dad, whoever in your space may own a phone that is a different model or brand, do a review on each, then do a comparison review.

Other products that might be available to you are, boom boxes, headphones, earbuds, etc.

For best result, if you have a Samsung Xyz and you are going to do a comparison video type in the YouTube search bar “Samsung Xyz vs” and you will see the comparison people are searching for, do that to all the product available to you so you can know what type of comparison videos to make.

Timeless Content

Bear this in mind

Even though “vs” videos do really well on youtube, if you are comparing products that are always upgrading your videos will become dated with the product.

A great strategy to keep your video relevant is to do timeless videos. Do videos on things that don’t go out of date.

Remember you are building wealth so you need your videos to stay relevant as long as they possibly can.

Do review videos and versus videos on things that don’t go out of date.

“How to” videos also do really well on YouTube, Just think timeless in whichever niche you choose.

To find commonly searched “how-to” content, in the youtube search bar type “how to” and see what comes up.

Monetize Your YouTube Channel

You can monetize your YouTube channel once you’ve met their requirements, which is 1000 subscribers, 4000 hours of watch time. This can change at any time so you will need to do further research.

3. Create Books

Continuing on the path of passive income, writing books is another great choice to start building wealth from a teenage.

Passive income is an overall briliant way to build wealth.

You set it once, then it keeps making you money over and over again.

If you are good at writing stories, why not use your talent to make money?

Types of Books

*Book Series – Entertainment

Creating a book series is a brilliant way to grow a following of people, typing in your book name looking for the next series.

Your book series can be based on a specific character or characters – same characters different day, different event or it could be different character same theme.

The easiest way to write a book series is not to try to come up with the entire series, instead, start your first story then base your next story on the first one. Take it one book at a time.

When that series is played out start a new one.

*Helpful Books

Books that teach something or help someone to resolve a problem are always in demand.

Are you really good at something you think could be of value to someone else? Why not write about it?

*Low Content Book

I know not everyone is good at writing stories and most teenagers, might not have the expertise to write pages of content. If this is the case for you, it is no problem because you don’t have to have something to write to create books. YEP, YOU READ CORRECTLY.

Low content books are a quick and easy way to create books and create passive income without having to write.

So what are low content books you might be wondering.

Low content books are books that have very minimal to no text and are intended for your end-user to do the writing. Examples of low-content books are notebooks, journals, meal planners, activity books, guest books, coloring books, puzzle books, etc.

How to create these books

Let’s start with storybooks and books that offer value

These books will be in the form of both E-books and paperback.

To create these books create your free account on canva.

From your home page scroll down, you will see all types of templates specified for different platforms.

Look for A4 documents.

Select see all at the top righthand corner, then choose “create a blank A4 document”.

This will take you to the Canva editor with template options to the left.
Choose a template with more than one page. To see the number of pages in each template hover over each template, it will reveal how many pages are in the template, for example, 1 of 3 pages or 1 of 5 pages.

If it doesn’t reveal the number of pages when you hover, it means that the template only consists of 1 page.

Once you are happy with your template, select your template and start editing. Download “pdf print” when you are done, don’t download at “pdf standard” because the quality will not be so great make sure pdf print is selected.
For a more in-depth Canva tutorial, you will need to do further research.

*Low content books

To create low-content books, you will need to create an account on Book Bolt. This platform is not free. They do have a fee of just around $10 per month but they do offer a 3 days trial so you can go test it out and see if it is for you.

Creating these low-content books is super simple using this platform.

With this platform, even if you don’t know how a planner should layout or how your dairy page should look, you can still create these low content books like a pro because all the templates are there, you just need to choose what you like.

Templates for both the exterior and interior of your books.

Inside the book bolt platform, you can also do keyword research to find which low content book is the most searched on amazon. You can use this information to determine which book to create.

You can also check the going price on amazon for a particular book within the book Bolt platform.

Selling low content book is quick and easy.

Let’s say you decide to do notebooks, once you decide on your cover design pretty much your book is done. All is left to do is choose the temple with regular book lines, select the number of pages you want, choose book size and your book is ready.

Where to sell these books and make passive income

To sell these books you will need to have an account with Amazon. If you already have an Amazon account then you are ready for the next step. If you don’t have an account create one.

Once you have an account with Amazon, go to kdp.amazon.com and sign in with your Amazon account.

If you decide to do storybooks or books that offer some value, you will be choosing both paperbacks (physical books) and Kindle ebooks (digital books)

For low content books, these will be paperbacks only.

For paperbacks, Amazon will print and bind these books and ship them to your customers.

This is why this is so awesome! Once you are done with the design of the book, you upload it to amazon and the rest is history. Just watch the money roll in!

Amazon does have some fees for paperback, include printing costs, you just need to make your cost to include the fees. For example, if the total fee is $5 then you could price your book at $11.

Amazon does give price suggestions as well. You also can look at the price of other books in the same niche to help you decide the price.

Uploading your books on Amazon

For the kindle version

Under Create a New Title click + kindle ebook fill out the form, choose your language, your book title, subtitle. If it is a book series fill out that area, if not leave it blank. Fill in your name in the author section, contributor choose none, publishing rights choose I own the copyright.

For keyword use keywords you know people would use in search, that would be relevant to your content.

You can also use the Book Bolt keyword research tool to help you find the most relevant keywords.

Continue through the process, upload your book, set pricing, etc.

For paperback version

Under Create a New Title click + paperback and go through the form just the same.

Amazon takes 48 hours to approve the book after setup is completed.

4. Practice Good Financial Habits

Practicing good financial habits is the most important. If you don’t practice good financial habits, building wealth will become impossible.

So what is good financial habits and how do you practice them?

Good financial habits are setting and sticking to meaningful financial goals that help to propel you into financial freedom.

Saving

If you are a teenager, living at home with parents, and have no financial responsibilities, I am going to recommend that you save 70% of your income.

If you are 18 or older and already on your own with financial responsibilities, you might not be able to save 70%. I do recommend you set a percentage to save from your income and stick to it. try to save the highest amount you practically can save. This process is very important so make sure you prioritize this.

This 70% saving or whatever the percentage you set for yourself, will be broken into 2 very important funds. 1. your retirement fund and 2. your stand-by fund.

Let’s say the 70% is equivalent to $100, you are now going to put 70% of the $100 in an account you call retirement funds and the next 30% in an account you call standby funds.

Your stand-by fund is the fund that stands by for that big opportunity or if there is ever an emergency.

You must never be 100% broke. You should always have stand-by funds, just keep growing it so when opportunity knocks, you are ready.

For your retirement funds, the goal is to invest a minimum of 3000 USD or the equivalent into a long-term investment for maximum returns. This can be done in bite-size, like a 3 step process. Your goal is to reach a milestone of $1000 on each step.

After reaching your first $1000 you will put this money in a long-term investment fund. Repeat the process each time you hit that $1000 milestone until you reach the total investment of $3000.

The 5th way to start building wealth from a teenager, further explains long-term investment

Once you have completed your retirement investment you can then split the 70% from your income into two funds call vacation and stand-by fund 60% to your standby fund and 40% for the vacation fund.

Budgets

Budgeting is super important in the process of building wealth. Budgeting keeps your finance organized and prevent impulsive spending if you stick to it.

Always budget for the things you want. This means, If everything you wanted does not fit in the 30% in 1 go, then you need to set a long term budgeting plan to achieve this without touching your 70%.

Avoid debt, plan ahead

Never go on a spending spree, with the money you have available. Always try to have money to meet your next income. (Super important) This will keep you out of debt.

Demand will expand to consume all available resources.

Your spending will expand to consume all available money
whether you have $50 or $500 your demand will keep increasing to consume all available funds. This is why you have to be very mindful of your spending.

Don’t take loans unless it is absolutely necessary. Make sure you have a full-proof plan included in your budget how you are going to pay back. Never stock loans on top of loans.

Money Discipline

Being discipline plays a critical role in this whole good money habit practice. You must have good money discipline to succeed financially. This means to set your guidelines and be disciplined enough to stick to them.

5. Investing In Stocks And Bonds

Before we get into investing, let me first explain what stocks and bonds are.

Stocks

Stocks are companies. When you buy stocks you are buying a percentage of ownership in a company.

If you buy Disney stocks it means whatever amount of money you invest into Disney stock will give you the equivalent amount of shares/ownership in Disney.

Shareholders receive money on their investment on a monthly or quarterly basis. This money is called dividend.

The more the company thrive the more dividend you will receive.

This also rings true, if the company is losing money your dividend will become less and if the company crashes, well so will your investment.

Bonds

Bonds are essentially loans. When you buy a company’s bonds it means you are lending money to the company for an agreed interest rate and time period.

The company will hold that money for the time period agreed upon and will pay you the agreed interest monthly. When the time period agreed upon reaches its expiry date the company gives you back the capital (the original money that was lent)

Index Funds

Index funds are a great way to start investing safely because you are not putting all your money in one or two stocks, like all your eggs in one basket kind of thing.

Index funds are the best way to create a diversified investment portfolio that will grow your money exponentially over a long-term period.

Before I move on any further let me properly explain what index funds are.

Index funds are mutual funds that are monitored by an index instead of an acutual person. Unlike regular mutual funds that are monitored my a money manager, “an actual person” index funds expense ratio (annual fees) are usually much cheaper.

All index funds are mutual funds but not all mutual funds are index funds.

Both index funds and mutual funds are investment packages that consist of pools of companies, which give you a percentage of ownership of all the companies in that pool with one purchase.

For example the S&P 500 index, (which is an index fund) this index is consists of the 500 largest U.S. publicly traded companies.

Buying the S&P 500 index will instantly give you a percentage of ownership of all 500 companies in that index.

Instead of choosing the company you want to invest in one company at a time, an index fund creates packages of highly successful long-standing companies that you can invest in, with one purchase. Purchasing hundreds of stocks instead of 1 or 2 stocks, diversify your portfolio and expose you to less risk.

Because your money is shared up in hundred of stocks your ownership in each stock is only a small fraction of a percentage. This means if one of the companies in your portfolio crashes, only a very small fraction of your portfolio would be affected, which would not be any real damage to your investment.

What to look for When Buying Index Funds

There are a few things to look for when buying index funds.

The first thing you need to look at is the account minimum investment amount. Some brokers have a minimum investment amount so you will need to look at their minimum investment amount to see if it is within or out of your investment budget.

The second thing to look at is the expense ratio. The expense ratio is a fee charged annually for your investment in the fund. A good rule of thumb is to look for an expense ratio of under 0.2%

The expense ratio is usually found on the fund summary page.

The third thing to look for is automatic reinvestment of your dividend.

When you invest in the stock market, the dividend you receive on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis, you need this money to be automatically reinvested.

It is important to use your dividend to buy more stock, this is how you expand your investment and make more money on your money.

When choosing an index fund ensure that it is a fund that automatically reinvests your dividend or it has a DRIP option (dividend reinvestment plan) that you can turn on.

The fourth thing to look for is transaction fees. The transaction fee is whatever the fund charges for you to buy into the fund and also to sell out of the fund. Some funds charge for both other funds don’t charge for either

How To Choose Your Index Fund

The best index fund method is to diversify as much as possible. A 3 fund portfolio is the most popular index fund investing strategy.

It is consists of 3 funds, the US stock market index, an international stock market index, and a bond market Index. This gives you the broadest diversification and is going to give you the highest returns overall.

From a teenager up to age 30, it is good to hold about 80% in stock and the next 20% in bonds for ideally 20 years. If you are closer to retirement like under 10 years it would be best to hold on to more bonds and fewer stocks

Choosing A Broker

Choosing a broker is pretty much the same carteria as choosing an index fund

• Minimum investment amount – needs to be in your price range
• Expense ratio – maintenance fee
• Transaction fees – commission charge to buy in or sell out of your investment
• They offer the products you are interested in – in this case, index funds and bonds
• History – a rock-solid company that is not going anywhere soon

TD Ameritrade

TD Ameritrade is a long-standing broker that has been around since 1975. They are U.S based but they also have opened their doors to over 100 countries outside of the U.S.

TD Ameritrade now offer

• $0 Transaction fees
• No minimum balance
• A wide investment opportunity -include – stocks, bonds, mutual funds, index funds, ETFs (another type of index fund), options, futures, forex, ADRs, IPOs, and even cryptocurrencies

TD Ameritrade currently offers 4100 mutual funds that have absolutely no trading fees, this means you pay nothing when you buy or sell that particular fund.

They have over 10,000 mutual funds with invest minimum of $100 or less, which makes it a great broker for beginner investors.

Fidelity

Fidelity is one of America’s most favorite brokers. They have been around since 1946 and is one of the largest asset managers in the world with $4.9 trillion in assets under management as of June 2020 and a combined total customer asset value number of $8.3 trillion.

Fidelity is U.S based and their services are not open to other countries.

They now offer

• $0 transaction fees
• $0 minimum investment – this means if you want to open an account with Fidelity with $1 you are welcome to do so
• $0 expense ratio
• A wide investment opportunity

If you are under the age of 18 you are not yet qualified to open an account with any of these brokers , in the mean time just focus on growing your savings.