Ask HN: Making Money Online as a Teen

Coming from a current college student who spent his entire high school career doing this: it is very possible, but it isn't about your skills. It's about who you know.

I was very lucky. When I was 14, I ran into a very nice person, Mike, from South Carolina through a PHP forum that we both frequented. He had no idea about my age until I told him a few months after we started working together.

Mike had recently been laid off from his full-time IT job, and was getting into the swing of freelance development, much like I was trying to do. He and I explored business models together, shared ideas, and tried to encourage each other's success. When I told him my age (he asked a tax question), he was dumbfounded.

Mike's career quickly took off. He found an affiliate marketing company looking for an awesome PHP developer, and is currently making more than enough to live off of. However, he has absolutely no time for other jobs, nontheless to learn new programming languages. As a result, he sent any excess work my way. Since I am young and have an aptitude for this kind of work, I quickly learned whatever tool(s) were necessary for the job. Ruby, Objective-C, Python...I've had clients for tons of programming languages. (Unfortunately, this means I have to use good 'ol Google for a refresher on every one, but it gets the job done.)

It's all about who you know when you go into this at a young age. Make good connections now; spend a little bit of time asking questions and making personal connections. The opportunity cost of "wasting time" on forums and sending e-mails WILL pay for itself in the long run. Trust me.

I assume you're still in high school, and I can only encourage you to stay in school and take AP classes, especially AP Calculus AB/BC and AP Physics C. They'll teach you how to really use the critical thinking skills that you need to succeed in this business. That, and, if you plan to attend college, take AP Chemistry, because general chemistry will kill any free/development time you have in college. Additionally, whatever college you attend probably has a student employment system for their web development; check it out. I know the University of Michigan has a CAEN web team, which I am a part of (well, technically, I'm on the database team, but it's close enough).

Best of luck, and feel free to shoot me an e-mail!