Teen Business Help?

[mnt11592]

Any Business Ideas for a Teenager in High School? I need to run my business online or or in my school. No one takes teenagers seriously in today's society, and thats why I don't want to run a business within my community. I already have a t-shirt company, but it's not off on the right foot. I have good people skills, good with website designing, and general computer knowledge. Everyone is welcome to comment, but please let me know if you are a teen entrepreneur.

[rob2009]

You said that you know "General Computer Knowledge"...what does this entail? Are you good with hardware? If you are, look into getting an A+ certification and fixing computers, you can definatly make good money because most people dont know how to do it. (I charged people $50 for every hour I worked on it, always ended up being about 1/2 hour, so they paid me 25 and thought they were getting a big discount.)

[mnt11592]

General Computer Knowledge: Maintainence, Updates, not really hardware, more software. I would like to steer away from this option, a lot of liability involoved.

[mnt11592]

any more suggestions?

[onecorp]

You could try to build a website that promotes something special about your school. If it catches on you can expand the service to other schools.

There is a social networking site called myyearbook.com. It was started by 3 high school students who wanted to put their yearbook online. They have a lot of members.

This is just an example. You can talk with your friends and classmates to see what they would be interested in.

[adnan278]

Yep I like to consider myself as a Teen Entrepreneur (Im 16) and Im in college. A year back I bought loads of anti-racism bands and sold them at my school and made a bucket load of profit for each one.

Maybe try and cotton on to a craze thats picking up in your school and become a supplier.

Or why don't you start a blog like I've done and make some money. It does take around 4 months of time though to get one up and running properly but if you've got some time on your hands everyday its worth it for the long-term investment.

Just choose a niche, get domain name and hosting and start writing. PM me if you need anymore help.

[adnan278]

Yep I like to consider myself as a Teen Entrepreneur (Im 16) and Im in college. A year back I bought loads of anti-racism bands and sold them at my school and made a bucket load of profit for each one.

Maybe try and cotton on to a craze thats picking up in your school and become a supplier.

Or why don't you start a blog like I've done and make some money. It does take around 4 months of time though to get one up and running properly but if you've got some time on your hands everyday its worth it for the long-term investment.

Just choose a niche, get domain name and hosting and start writing. PM me if you need anymore help.

[etechsupport]

You may try out marketing through myspace & facebook, also check the list of top ten student site reviewed in this forum; http://www.webhosting.uk.com/forums/...ead.php?t=1181

[akula]

Any Business Ideas for a Teenager in High School? I need to run my business online or or in my school. No one takes teenagers seriously in today's society, and thats why I don't want to run a business within my community. I already have a t-shirt company, but it's not off on the right foot. I have good people skills, good with website designing, and general computer knowledge. Everyone is welcome to comment, but please let me know if you are a teen entrepreneur.

want my advice?

firstly, note what you don't want to do. this includes everything where you can't grow to make a fortune. namely, anything to do with low transaction value, consumer products. with a t-shirt startup, or a marketing thingy, the best you can grow into is another t-shirt and marketing thingy...

most importantly, and I'm saying this with all seriousness, if you want to be an outstanding success by the time you're in mid 20's, don't focus on your immediate venture - but where this venture is gonna take you in 5-10 years time.

the point: where you wanna be in 5-10 years time is doing million and billion dollar transactions with large, multinational companies. this means, you should focus on financial services, energy, and infrastructure industries. if you start selling biodiesel for people's lawnmowers in your teens - you're gonna be a cleantech tycoon by the time you're 30. likewise, if you sell savings programs to mothers who want to teach kids budgeting skills, you're gonna end up running billion dollar private equity portfolios that move entire economies.

do you understand what I'm saying? pick an industry that's dominated by high value transactions and start breaking into it one step at a time.

remember an important point: with opportunity selection (i.e. Any Business Ideas for a Teenager in High School? ) is a process of elimination. the professional way to do it is to list thousands (yes, thousands) of opportunities and eliminate all of those which don't fit a certain number of criteria.

YOU will need to make this criteria, and the starting filters should be;

a) ventures in industries dominated by high value transactions. these are typically business-to-business industries like financial services, waste management, mining etc..

b) industries with short supply chains. you wanna start off with a biz that's close to the primary resource. in other words, with t-shirts, there is a lot of intermediaries between the merchant who sells me the shirt, and the company that supplies 60% of the world's chemicals for cotton processing. YOU want to end up running the chemicals manufacturer (not the t-shirt company), but it will be very difficult for you to start off as a t-shirt retailer and work your self up to control most of the world's t-shirt production.

In other industries, that's different. With energy, for example, as a retailer, you might be working directly with one of the world's only manufacturers. That way, when you migrate down the supply chain later on in your career - the journey is less uncertain.

of course there is a lot of other criteria that you need to find to fit your particular tastes and circumstances...

is any of this making sense to you?

[akula]

personally, for an American teenager, I'd strongly recommend getting away from the computer and start getting experience with selling financial services.

if you want to be a captain of industry in your country, you must realize that America has only 1 competitive advantage as a provider of the world's capital.

everything else America is not good at as compared to emerging economies. ideally, you gotta start building a resume which is gonna give you the skills to run a hedge fund