How to Make Money Online in Canada
Ever want to find out how you can make money online? Oh good, you’ve come to the right place. This is a look at some of the most popular ways you can earn extra cash.
Make Money Online in Canada
To get started, we’ll mention that most if not all of these do require some to a lot of work and that it should not be presumed that there is a ‘cash machine’ to click and the riches come your way. As you read through the options you can determine what is most suitable if you want to make money quickly or what kind of effort you want to put into it. Depending on the path you choose and hours you put into it, some will supplement your salary more than others.
Let’s look at some of the options that might be appealing. From side jobs and gigs to apps and other options, we’ve tried to cover all the main possibilities to help you make money online. While this might not cover every possibility, you should check back from time to time for updates as we continue to add to all the ways that might help. Without further delays, let’s get started!
Freelance Work
There’s a lot of different types of jobs you can do from the comfort of your own home to make money online. Depending on your skills, some of these options might include being a writer, graphic designer, by consulting for something legal or finance if you have the experience.You could also teach English online, or find a need for tasks like repairs, assembling furniture and similar jobs.
The following are a few sites where you might find such opportunities to make extra cash.
TaskRabbit, Freelancer.com, Fiverr, Upwork, AskforTask, Staffy,
But there is all kinds of freelance work to make money online, let’s take a closer look.
Be A Freelance Writer
The need for content practically increases daily, making it a good time to be or become a writer. But this job isn’t for everyone, as it requires some skill, creativity and actually enjoy the process or it probably won’t work out. Speed will affect your income, which develops with time, but it shouldn’t cause you to sacrifice quality. Experience helps, and there is a definite need to have decent project management skills when juggling multiple jobs at the same time.
Market:
Entry Level – Fiverr, Upwork, Guru.com, Freelancer.com
Experienced – writingjobz.com, contena, writer’s den, working in content, media bistro,
What’s Involved – Dive in. When starting out, experience helps sell your ability.
Getting Started – You’ll need a computer, access to the internet, and ability to write.
Also look on Indeed.ca and LinkedIn for writing jobs as well. This type of work can be remote and another way to make money online in Canada. Also, there are many types of writing, so if this interests you even a little it could be worthwhile to explore the topic further.
Be A Freelance Proofreader
Perhaps being a writer isn’t your thing, but you’ve always been one that can easily spot grammatical mistakes. Something you may not have thought of could be to become a proofreader, which doesn’t require a lot of specialized training or equipment to start. What you earn would depend on how quickly you work. As you gain experience you could make anywhere from $25-$50 per hour.
Market:
Entry Level – Fiverr, FlexJobs, Upwork, Guru.com, Freelancer.com
Experienced – proofreadingpal.com, reedsy.com, writingjobz.com
Create and Sell Courses Online
If you have certain skills, you might be able to provide online courses and teach. There is now a course available (or instructional video) on just about everything. People are much more open to online learning and platforms like Udemy, Teachable, Thinkific and Skillshare could help get you started to a new income stream by teaching others.
Become a Tutor
Become an English Teacher
If you like the idea of teaching English online, there are lots of students out there to get started. The opportunities are more abundant for native speakers but it isn’t always a requirement. Some may require certification like TESOL or TEFL but this isn’t always the case either. You can also choose to teach languages other than English as well. If you are multilingual you may find opportunities to be a translator too.
Market:
Become a Virtual Assistant
You might find that becoming a virtual assistant (or VA) could be appealing with the right skills and experience. Being a VA can mean many different types of jobs to provide assistance, from repetitive tasks people prefer not doing, to providing administrative support, doing research, data entry and more. The tasks are often similar to that of an office assistant but it can be a variety of things.
Market:
Upwork, FlexJobs, Freelancer.com and more.
This VA guide provides lots of great info if this type of work interests you. Look on Indeed.ca as well for VA jobs, along with Linkedin and Fiverr. Most VA jobs are remote work and another way to help you with making money online.
Sell Your Photos
Providing stock photos to sites like the example marketplaces below can be a rewarding and lucrative trade, but as always, nothing comes easy without some hard work. You would be best served to choose a specialty or niche style, from business or travel photos to lifestyle, food, nature or something else.
While a mobile phone might provide you the tool to become a photographer, if you become serious you might need to look into investing in your equipment, such as a DSLR camera. If choosing this path you would want to take some time to learn the basics about things such as creative commons, watermarks, royalty free versus right managed, aperture and other terms.
Market:
Shutterstock, Getty Images, Adobe Stock, Dreamstime, SmugMug and many more.
Flipping Items
Some people have managed to make money online in Canada by flipping items. This is where you purchase something and sell it for a profit. People have been doing this for years on Ebay, Etsy and Craigslist, and more recently on Facebook Marketplace. If you are familiar with pricing in certain areas you might come out ahead. Consider that with eBay you probably need to provide shipping, but you have a national buyer market, where if you relied on Facebook Marketplace it is probably more of a local buyers market. When you hear ‘flipper’ you might think of someone that buys and sells houses, but nowadays you can probably sell just about anything online.
Classic examples of successful flipping:
- A patio set purchased for $100 and sold for over $2,000.
- A baby stroller purchased for $10 and sold for $200.
All it takes is time to hunt down such treasures, a little cash, being able to spot an opportunity or deal, and getting to the seller before others that are also interested to buy. Some do this while specializing in books for good profits, and the latest to flip are NFTs, which are like digital art.
Surveys for Money
If you’ve looked into making money online for more than 5 minutes you’ve probably come across the topic of surveys as a way to make quick cash. They don’t pay a lot each, but if you are able to complete several per hour they can add up to help you earn extra cash. Most earnings are available as either cash, gift cards, prepaid Visa cards, or getting paid by Paypal.
Market:
Swagbucks, PrizeRebel, Qmee.com, ysense.com, Mypoints.com, Surveytime.io, MaruVoice.ca, Ebuno.net, Survey Junkie, Branded Research
Cash Back Shopping
With prices going up, finding ways to save never hurts. Inflation is on the rise, and it can pay to become a frugal or a thrifty shopper. The extra money could allow you to save more, build an emergency fund, or provide some financial breathing room when living from one paycheque to the next and having trouble making ends meet.
Market:
Checkout51, Rakuten, Paymi, Koho, ibotta
Another option is Ampli, which you would download from the Google Play or Apple App Store. You can also use budgeting apps to help you stay on top of your finances to save more too.
Earn With Your Ride
If you have a car it can help you earn, even though it isn’t exactly making money online. You could rent out your car using Turo, try Uber or Lyft, or delivery such as SkipTheDishes, DoorDash, Uber Eats or Instacart.
If you choose the delivery route, pun intended, you might want to check whether you would require changes to your auto insurance plan before you start.
If you were thinking of working for multiple food delivery jobs, there’s no official rule against it, but it’s worth noting this can create delays in how quickly you deliver and increase food wait times, which can impact your tips. Known as “multi-apping” and frowned upon, it’s your option. Although you might want to master just one before taking on a bunch at the same time.
Other Options
There are other ways to make money online and some you may have heard of, while others might be a bit different. How many of these have you heard of?
Win cash by losing weight? See HealthyWager for more.
Get paid to stay fit with apps like Evidation, Sweatcoin or Stepbet.
Try video game reporting, tournaments or streaming on Twitch.
Be a website tester to make cash while sharing your user experience.
You could also rent out a room or your entire home at Airbnb or Vrbo.
Get paid to talk by becoming a papa or sell your friendship.
Become an online juror for mock cases.
Sign up to be an online shopper or watch videos [DailyRewards]
Earn money receiving text messages (Android only) with McMoney.
Getting Creative
You might have heard how some have found success with blogging or becoming a social influencer. This has worked for some, but it isn’t a quick success story and takes a lot of work to get to a point that you can quit your job and rely on this as your main source of income.
If you want to be a content creator, that is only one part of the job. You also need to be able to develop an audience and a social media following to create followers and traffic. So you could say that if you get into this, you are part creator, along with marketer, sales, business manager and more to manage everything.
The latest trend in this area is people looking for how to make money on TikTok in Canada. As mentioned above, it requires content creation and developing an audience. When you have a substantial amount of followers you can apply to influencer networks and the advertisers will start to reach out. But it would really depend on the type of content you create. This can be about financial advice, beauty products, sports, travel, food, gaming, parenting or one of a dozen or so other possibilities.
Some choose the Youtube path, which would be similar to using TikTok to make money online, it’s just a different platform. Other options can include blogging and podcasts. Mr Beast is one example of a successful vlogger on Youtube.
When blogging, you will need a domain, webhost, and be able to set up and manage your blog, which would require technical skills, in addition to being able to write. It would also have costs for the domain/hosting.
When a video content creator for social media platforms like Tiktok or Youtube, you can often get away with using your mobile phone if it’s a recent model. Other tools you may need are video editing software and possibly lighting.
Doing the above can start like a side gig, but for some it’s become a business or brand. For those that have developed an audience and found success, they have gotten into affiliate marketing, receiving schwag, and selling merch. But as mentioned, it’s a tough road, but one that can be filled with riches for those that reach the summit.
Other jobs you can find online (while not ‘making money online’) might include house sitting, dog walking, cleaning houses, landscaping or other handy work.
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Megan Kelly
Wizard of words, macchiato maven, soothsayer, naysayer, aspiring wordsmith and Head of Content Marketing at GoodCheddar.