How To Make Money Online in Canada: 20 Proven Ways in (2024)

If you’re looking for how to make money online in Canada, you’ve come to the right place. There are lots of opportunities available online to earn extra cash with nothing more than an internet connection and a mobile device, from freelancing and blogging to taking reviews and more.

Whether you need a source of income, want a side hustle alongside your 9-5 job, or are working towards a specific financial goal like saving for a vacation or paying off debt, all you need is a reliable internet connection and the right skills to make money online.

In this blog post, we’ve curated a list of the top 20 ways to make money online in Canada to help you tap into the digital world and make a living or earn some extra dollars.

How to Make Money Online: 20 Practical and Proven Ways

I will admit that sometimes it can seem like there is no winning in the online world. But you will succeed if you keep working at it and following the right advice. I have been making money online for years, and hopefully, these successful ideas will help you in your ventures. 

Here are 20 practical and proven ways to make money online:

1. Affiliate Marketing
2. Blogging
3. Dropshipping
4. Sell on Amazon
5. Creating Online Courses
6. Review Apps, Software and Websites 
7. Print on Demand
8. Become a Freelancer
9. Start a YouTube Channel
10. Become an Online Influencer 
11. Write an Ebook
12. Do Translation Work
13. Sell Digital Products
14. Take Online Survey
15. Sell Photos Online
16. Livestream on Twitch 
17. Start a Podcast
18. Become a Virtual Assistant
19. Take Part in a Research
20. Become a Social Media Consultant

Having listed all the 20 ways to make money online, let’s take an in-depth look at each of the 20 practical and proven ways to make money online.

1. Affiliate Marketing

• Type of business: Product-based
• Effort: Medium effort to start and very low effort to maintain.
• Startup time: A couple of hours
• Time for first payment: Varies based on the affiliate links, the payment terms and the success of the affiliate links.
• Requirements: A blog, website, or social media presence

Affiliate marketing is the fastest-growing marketing medium globally and one of the practical and proven ways to make money online. It harnesses marketers to promote and get paid for an individual company’s products.

It is a serious strategy with unlimited earning potential if you know how to execute it. Some affiliate programs offer a high payout for little effort, complementing an already low barrier to entry. But how ‌does one start this lucrative business?

How to Start Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can be a very effective way to earn money online. But it does take effort to get it right at the beginning. As in any other online business, you must:

1. Do extensive research about the product you want to sell
2. Identify your target audience 
3. Design a strategic marketing plan that helps you convert sales successfully.

2. Blogging

• Type of business: Audience monetisation
• Effort:  Medium to start, but it will take a lot of effort to maintain.
• Startup time: A few hours.
• Time for first payment: Varies depending on how you monetise your blog.
• Requirements: A blogging platform, interest, skill, or niche you want to write on.

You can make money online in Canada through blogging. Sitting at home for hours on end typing up posts, editing photos, and writing about your everyday activities is what blogging is. But blogging is also an art that requires a lot of patience, hard work and passion.

Why do people stop blogging? It’s a very common thing to happen, but there are quite a few reasons ‌I started blogging years back and kept on writing till now. 

When I started my blog, I did not know what was important and what wasn’t, so I experimented. My blog took a couple of years to grow and earn real money. I tried many different strategies during those early days because I didn’t know any better.

How to Start Your Blog

To succeed in this space, you must understand the 4Ps; 

1. Plan
2. Persuasion
3. Performance, and 
4. Profit. 

Blogging is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your industry. It can also help you land freelance jobs, find customers and build a substantial network of affiliates you can use to sell your services.

3. Dropshipping

• Type of business: Product-based
• Effort: Medium to start and grow the business. Low effort to maintain.
• Startup time: A few hours to set up a store and source vendors.
• Time for first payment: After selling a product, expect around five days to receive funds on most platforms. 

Dropshipping might be the easiest way to make money online as a beginner. However, imagine going to the top of the mountain and taking your first steps in this exciting new journey. 

Dropshipping is an eCommerce opportunity with many benefits. It is a retail fulfilment method in which the store owner does not stock or own inventory. 

Instead, when an order is made, the store owner purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer.

It allows you to sell physical goods without purchasing them upfront and gives you the leverage of outsourcing your inventory.

How to Start A Dropshipping Business

1. Find the best online platform for you or your niche. 
2. Choose a product and list it on your site
3. As soon as you make a sale, the platform dropship the item directly to your customer.

4. Sell on Amazon

• Type of business: Product-based
• Effort: Depends on your product and business model.
• Startup time: An hour or two to set up your account and add products.
• Time for first payment: Anywhere from the day after to 14 days after you make a sale, depending on the marketplace. 

You can make money online by selling on marketplaces like Amazon. What I love about selling on Amazon is that it is so simple. 

You make your product, and then when you are ready to sell, you list it. Boom. Easy enough, right? Well, selling on Amazon isn’t exactly a walk in the park, either. 

Your main goal as an Amazon seller is to market and sell your products while working with the guidelines set by Amazon. But how do you do this? It takes time to learn the ropes of selling on Amazon, and there are no guarantees in this business.

How to Start Selling Products on Amazon

The easiest way to sell on Amazon is

1. Interning with Amazon and then selling and also going through your courses. Amazon offers a 12-month internship program. So, this is the easiest way to start selling on Amazon for first-timers like you and me. OR
2. The Amazon Associates program also allows you to make money by creating links that let customers buy products on Amazon. It’s called an associate link. The products you link to don’t have to be related to the content on your site. 
3. The associate’s program pays twice: a per-click amount and a commission on sales (earned through the customer clicking the associate link and then completing a purchase).

5. Creating Online Courses

• Type of business: Audience monetisation
• Effort: Very high to start, but requires medium effort to maintain.
• Startup time: Writing, shooting, and editing an online course can take weeks or even months.
• Time for first payment: Varies, depending on your course and platform’s payment structure.

There are many ways to make money online. You can create your courses online, sell them or do freelancing. 

More and more professional online course creators have turned to the relatively new platform, Udemy.com, to start their journey. What many don’t know is that starting with your brand is even easier to accomplish.

How to Create Your Online Courses

An online course is a great way to scale your business and make it for the world. If you have a body of knowledge and can deliver it appealingly and easily, you can build a successful business. However, many steps are involved in making it happen successfully. This includes:

1. Look and search for the right platform
2. Creating the right marketing messages
3. Collecting email addresses
4. Developing the content and doing promotion.
5. You may use online teaching to improve your online presence. It is also a way to promote and share your expertise. As a result, your courses can help you establish an authority in your niche and get known by many more people. 

6. Review Apps, Software and Websites 

• Types of business: Service based
• Effort: Medium Effort
• Startup time: A few minutes to create an account on each site.
• Time for first payment: Varies by service and platform.

Reviewing apps and websites is now a much sought-after job, with the popularity of online reviewing platforms such as iAdvertise and many review sites such as Yelp. 

If you want to get started, here are a few information, tips and tricks you need to get started in reviewing Apps, games and websites.

How to Review Apps, Software and Websites

1. Start by learning online and reading reviews
2. Get different phones and tablets and computers
3. Then start the job and learn as you progress.

7. Print on Demand

• Type of business: Product-based
• Effort: Easy to start if you already have designs to upload. Easy to medium to maintain.
• Startup time: A few hours to set up an ecommerce platform and print-on-demand integration.
• Time for first payment: After selling a product, expect around five days to receive funds on most platforms. 

Print-on-demand (POD) allows creators and artists to customise white-label products with their unique designs without the need to hold inventory. It is a type of print publication wherein the books or other printed materials are not printed until an order is placed for it. 

You can generate demand based on the requirements of every customer. This process is completely automated, and print media are delivered to customers based on the assumption of demand for these products. To be more precise, Print on Demand (POD) precedes any form of traditional publishing known to date.

How to Start Print-on-Demand Online Business

Starting your own print-on-demand business has many advantages. The business model offers the opportunity to create a sustainable income and to run a flexible, low-overhead and scalable operation. This requires:

1. Careful planning – you can’t just jump into it without understanding what it takes to run a profitable print-on-demand operation.
2. You need a great idea for some stylish clothing with a target customer
3. It takes an investment in equipment, like an inkjet printer
4. Then, once you have the idea and the equipment, create your mockup design in Adobe Illustrator.

8. Become a Freelancer

• Type of business: Service based
• Effort: Medium Effort
• Startup time: Low. You can start freelancing through a marketplace even without a website.
• Time for first payment: Depends on your payment terms with your clients.

Freelancing is an excellent way to earn extra money online or even a full-time income if you are good at it. It is also a great way to get started in the world of business and learn how things work. 

Also note that Freelancing is a great way to make online money, with freedom and flexibility to work when you want. 

However, it can be very overwhelming if you don’t know what you are doing or where to begin. So here is a guide to show beginners how they can get started freelancing on Upwork and make a little money on the side while they still have a day job.

How to Start Your Freelancing Career

Freelancing is undoubtedly one of the fastest-growing industries today. If you are interested in becoming a freelancer, there are four things that you need to think about:

1. Find a niche
2. Select your skills
3. Build a website if you can
4. Make connections online via Fiverr, Upwork and many others.
5. On Upwork, sign up, create an account, and tell the world about your skills and what you do.

9. Start a YouTube Channel

• Type of business: Audience monetization
• Effort: High. YouTube requires an ongoing effort to create and publish video content. 
• Startup time: Starting a YouTube channel will take an hour or two.
• Time for first payment: Once you’ve reached 1,000 subscribers, you can earn revenue from ads to make money on YouTube. The time for the first payout via other methods varies.

YouTube is a sure way to make money online. Let me start by saying that this isn’t about getting rich quickly, but if you do the work, there is potential to see results.

YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google, so it makes sense to create content that targets the platform. But there are a lot of things to consider when you are thinking about it. 

How to Start a YouTube Channel

Consider all the pertinent information you need to know before starting a YouTube channel:

1. Choosing the right name for a channel which corresponds with your niche
2. Getting ready to go live. All you need is an idea and the willingness to do the work needed to make it happen.
3. Picking your niche
4. Buying your equipment
5. Create a channel
6. Succeeding with subscribers and
7. Get your videos seen by targeted viewers on social media.

10. Become an Online Influencer 

• Type of business: Service based
• Effort: High. Popular accounts need fresh content to keep audiences constantly engaged.
• Startup time: Varies, but generally, about three to four months.
• Time for first payment: Varies, depending on the type of monetization you pursue.

There are many ways to make money online as an online influencer. Some of the most popular ways are affiliate marketing, selling a product, crowdsourcing, and selling content or consultation services. 

But how do you earn any money? What do you need to do first to earn?

How to Start an Online Influencing Business

1. Create an account across the social media or platform you need
2. Start building your audience
3. You can also start crowdsourcing or selling content or start consultation online.

11. Write an Ebook

• Type of business: Product-based
• Effort: Hard to start but requires medium ongoing effort to market and sell the book.
• Startup time: Varies by book, but could take years to write, edit, and publish.
• Time to first payment: Depends on how and where you sell your books.

Have you ever thought about how to write your own E-book or sell your expertise in some area of your choice and make money online? I know that writing an Ebook seems like a great idea but ‌it also seems like a huge project.

Writing an ebook seems scary to many, but it’s not. It’s easier to write than you may think but it helps if you know how to go about going from no content to a complete document. 

How to Start Writing an Ebook

If you ask most people what they want, they will tell you they don’t know. But when you ask them to describe the perfect product or service, these same people will describe it down to the finest detail. Writing an ebook is like creating a product: 

1. You need to define exactly who your ideal customer is
2. Also, define what their problems are and
3. How your solution will help them.
4. Set up an email list (you can do it for free, by the way). One of the great ways to grow your email list is by creating an ebook (a.k.a., an informational product) where you help people solve their problems.

12. Do Translation Work

• Type of business: Service based
• Effort: Medium to hard effort
• Startup time: Many hours
• Time for first payment: Varies by marketplace

Translation work is the perfect freelancing career for anyone looking to make money online. If you don’t have experience in translation, it is a great opportunity for you to get into freelance. 

 Translating is a job that requires lots of time, effort and dedication on your part. There are two ways to do translation work online: crowdsourcing sites and freelance sites. 

Translation crowdsourcing sites are becoming more popular lately, and you can find a lot of work while still being free from the restrictions of freelance sites. The great thing about translation crowdsourcing sites is that you don’t need to set up anything; however, there aren’t as many opportunities as freelance websites. 

How to Start Your Translation Work

1. You could start by purchasing books
2. Attending courses and getting certification.
3. Identifying your niche and clients
4. Work in a cool environment where to find work
5. Know what ‌problems translators face
6. Find out several ways to target new customers by using freelancing websites.

13. Sell Digital Products

• Type of business: Product-based
• Effort: Medium to high, depending on product and ability to grow a customer base. Low effort to maintain.
• Startup time: Once the asset is created, it takes a couple of hours to get up and running online.
• Time for first payment: After selling a product, expect around five days to receive funds on most platforms. 

You can make money online by selling digital products like guides, ebooks, templates, plans, printables, tutorials, music samples, and other products that can be delivered digitally, in PDFs, or through log-in access to a portal.

How to Start Selling Digital Products

If you are reading this, I have ways that will show you how to sell your digital products:

1. Get the items you want to sell ready
2. Create an account on Facebook, eBay and other platforms
3. Pick up that smartphone and start posting on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist 

14. Take Online Surveys

• Types of business: Service based
• Effort: Low to medium, depending on the format.
• Startup time: A few minutes to create an account on each site.
• Time for first payment: Varies by service and platform.

Participating in an online survey is one of the 20 practical and proven ways to make money online. Companies conduct surveys to know how people feel about their services and products. 

These surveys give you a chance to share your views with the company, increase awareness about certain products or services, and earn reward points. 

While taking an online survey, you can win prizes for giving your valuable opinion. You can join any survey site to perform their survey with the help of the best survey sites list.

How to Start Partaking in Online Surveys

1. You can start by joining any survey sites
2. They conduct mostly online surveys via websites and email. Sign up on the site by providing your email address and other information.
3. You can also join through social media such as Facebook and others.

15. Sell Photos Online

• Type of business: Product based
• Effort: High to start as you build your portfolio and website but requires medium ongoing effort to maintain the business and develop new products
• Startup time: A few weeks or months to build your portfolio.
• Time for first payment: After selling a photo, expect around five days to receive funds on most platforms. 

Selling photos online can be a great source of passive income. Whether you are shooting with the newest iPhone or the latest Canon DSLR, you can sell your photos online as a photographer.

You can partner with a local printer to print your photos on speciality papers or other materials, then ship and sell numbered or signed versions of your photos to your customers.

How to Sell Photos Online

Selling photos online can be a tremendous way to make money. A huge market is out there, and you don’t need a degree to get started. All you need is the following:

1. A digital camera/smartphone/nice phone 
2. Some technical skills (not ‌programming skills). Learning how to edit and use your camera.
3. Open a free photoblog account. A short intro in which you explain that there are countless ways to sell images to people who want photos for their businesses.
4. Create also an account on popular sites like iStockPhoto, Shutterstock, and Fotolia and start selling
5. You can also start selling using Strikingly and a WordPress theme from Elegant Themes.
6. Use every website on your ranking chart to publish your own images before finding clients online. 

16. Livestream on Twitch 

• Type of business: Product-based
• Effort: High effort to start as you build an audience and high ongoing effort to create consistent content.
• Startup time: An hour or so to create an account.
• Time for first payment: Varies depending on the streaming service. Twitch pays out 15 days after the end of each month.

Twitch is a popular site for gamers and content creators, and you can make money by live streaming on Twitch or other platforms like YouTube and Instagram.

You can livestream anything you want, from gameplay and recipe demos to bike tours.

How to Start Your Livestreaming Business

1. Get a camera, microphone, or a nice phone
2. Register on a live stream platform like Twitch.
3. Build your brand around your niche of interest
4. Stay consistent by regularly broadcasting daily or weekly
5. Monetise your live stream by selling products, fan donations, ads, brand sponsorships, etc.

17. Start a Podcast

• Type of business: Audience Monetization
• Effort: High effort
• Startup time: Average nine to 14 hours per episode, including editing.
• Time for first payment: Varies, depending on how you monetise your podcast.

Podcasting is a great way to make money online, and it allows you to reach millions of people with your ideas and message. 

Creating a podcast may seem daunting, but over 500 million people worldwide listen to podcasts daily, and that’s a whole lot of money you can make.

However, podcasts require an investment of time, software, and talent, but the ‌result can be very rewarding. 

How to Start A Podcast

1. Get a microphone
2. Install the necessary software, and 
3. Set the space and start to talk

18. Become a Virtual Assistant

• Type of business: Service based
• Effort: Medium effort
• Startup time: Less than an hour.
• Time for first payment: Varies depending on the freelance marketplace or app you use.

Virtual assistants are a particular class of personal assistants that help clients remotely using information communication technology. You can make money online through this means. 

Most of them work with a computer and Internet connection from home, while others can be anywhere in the world with a suitable communications infrastructure.

How to Become a Virtual Assistant

Starting your business as a virtual assistant is a big step that requires the following:

1. Research
2. Planning. 
3. Find the best resources for learning recommended tools and other marketing tips.
4. Get your computer ready

19. Take Part in a Research

• Type of business: Service based
• Effort: Low to medium, depending on the format.
• Startup time: A few minutes to create an account on each site.
• Time for first payment: Varies by service and platform.

Research is the practice of gathering information from various sources, sometimes using scientific methods. It is a methodical investigation into a subject to discover or revise facts, theories and principles. 

Research can take the form of surveys and statistical analysis, but most commonly takes place as literature reviews, case studies, interviews and experimentation.

How to Make Money Online Through Research

1. Start by identifying the website and platforms that need researchers
2. Look out for research tools. These tools make work easy.
3. Find out ways to access data online, which makes your work appealing.
4. Sign up on the platform or create an account with them and start off

20. Become a Social Media Consultant

• Type of business: Service based
• Effort: High. You’ll need to consistently maintain client relationships and work on projects to be profitable. 
• Startup time: Several hours to reach out to prospective clients.
• Time for first payment: After you invoice a client, in most cases, they will have 15 to 30 days to pay you, depending on the terms you set. 

Do you enjoy using social media? Do you find ‌you could do more to promote your online presence? If so, you might have what it takes to start as a social media consultant and earn online from it. 

Social media marketing and management work offer huge potential for lucrative earnings, and those who can master it will always be in demand.

Having a social media presence has become fundamental to most organizations that seek to grow and get noticed online, and for this reason, expert social media consultants are in huge demand.

How to Become a Social Media Consultant

1. Proper preparation and planning
2. Building word-of-mouth clients by developing a strong online presence
3. Leveraging that expertise to build strong relationships with local businesses and non-profit organizations.

How to Make Money Online in 2024

With the internet, there are endless ways to earn money from the comfort of your own home. Whether you’re interested in dropshipping or becoming a social media consultant, there are plenty of options to choose from.

Not only is a side gig a great way to save for future goals, but if you’re passionate about it, you could even turn it into a full-time business. In this article, we’ve compiled a list of various online money-making opportunities, such as blogging, virtual assisting, and teaching children online.

If you’re willing to put in the hard work and dedication, you can earn money online as early as today. So what are you waiting for? Start exploring your options and see how you can turn your online ventures into a lucrative source of income.

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

• How to Make Quick Money in One Day: 33 Legit Ways to Begin
• How to Start an Electrical Business
• How to Start a Clothing Line Business
• How to Start a Cleaning Business: A Beginner’s Guide
• How to Start a Candle Business in 10 Simple Steps
• How To Make Extra Income from Home and Online in 2024

Final Thoughts on How To Make Money Online

As someone who’s tried various ways to make money online, I can tell you that it’s not always easy, but it’s definitely worth it. The internet offers endless possibilities; if you’re willing to put in the effort, you can turn your passions into profits.

You need to stay open-minded, try new things, and be willing to put in time and effort to achieve success. Remember that building a sustainable income stream takes time, but once you do, the rewards can be life-changing. 

So try it if you’re looking to make some extra cash on the side or build a full-time business! With hard work, dedication, and a willingness to learn, you too can start making money online today.