The easiest way to make money as a kid is to sell things you can get for free. Here are a few really easy ideas.

1. Sell golf balls.
Recover golf balls at golf courses in the tall grass, trees, and bushes.  Golfers lose tons of golf balls, especially golfers like me.  I have found buckets and buckets of golf balls.  Wash them and sell them back to the golfers. Learn more about how to sell golf balls.

2. Strip wire scraps.
Collect wasted copper wire from constructions sites or from electrical contractors, strip and sell to metal salvaging companies.  You can make a lot of money doing this.

3. Recycle metal.
Collect aluminum cans, copper wire, or other metal and recycle for money. To learn more click here.

4. Metal detecting.
Use a metal detector in parks and public places to find coins and rings and sell them to ring stores.

5. Find bugs.
Find caterpillars on milkweed and put them in cages.  Sell the bugs in cages.

6. Raise spiders.
Raise spiders and sell their babies or find spiders in the wild. I knew a guy who paid his mortgage each month by selling baby spiders. A spider has like a thousand babies.

7. Find valuable rocks.
Collect geodes or other unique rocks and sell them. You can even cut and polish them to sell them for even more money.

8. Find ladybugs.
Find ladybugs and breed them and sell them to people with gardens.

9. Sell used stuff.
Get left over’s from garage sales, or offer to come pick up items people want to give to consignment stores like Goodwill and resell it through garage selling it or putting it on Craigslist.

10. Chop firewood. 
Collect and chop firewood in the woods and sell it in bundles to campers or people with wood burning stoves.

11. Raise crickets.
Find and raise crickets to sell to people with reptiles and spiders for pets.

12. Catch lizards.
Catch and sell lizards as pets.

13. Re-sale free stuff on Craigslist.
Get great free stuff on Craigslist and sell it for money to back on Craigslist.

14. Pine Nuts 
Collect pine nuts in the woods, shell them and sell them.

15. Pan for gold.
Go find a stream with black sands and pan for gold.