How to Make Money Online Canada: 15 Ways That Work
Are you looking for ways to make money online in Canada? Here are some ideas that actually work today.
In this article, I’ll share 15+ ways to make money online. These methods can be broken down in several ways. To make learning what to do as easy as possible, I’ve separated this blog into four main sections:
- How make money online FAST
- How to make money online FREE
- How to make money online as an ABSOLUTE beginner
- How to make money online with a website
The methods outlined below include affiliate marketing, freelancing, and even taking surveys and doing other mundane tasks for pay.
This article contains affiliate links. If you follow them and then make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no additional expense to you. Thanks for reading!
Also, this content should not be considered professional or personal finance advice. It’s merely an educational resource meant to inspire those who want to earn online money.
Table of Contents
How to Make Money Online Fast
Let me start this section with some cautionary advice: If you always focus on trying to make money fast, you’ll miss a lot of important things, both inside of your business and out.
The truth is, “get rich quick” doesn’t exist. Almost every “overnight success” you see referenced online is someone who a) got lucky and b) had a pre-existing skill set that contributed to their success.
That said, sometimes you do need to make money fast. For example, maybe you’ve got a rent payment you can’t quite afford and need to make $100 or $200 in a couple of weeks. That’s the focus of the following section.
How You Can Make $100 Fast
There are times when $100 can make a big difference, and other times when earning it seems insurmountable. So here are two of the easiest ways I know to earn $100 or more quickly.
Earn Money With Drop Servicing
Drop servicing is like drop shipping for service providers instead of product sellers. Services are a great way to make more money faster because you can generally charge more than if you sell products online. Here’s a quick example of how to sell online drop services:
Step1: I get a new content writing client who wants six blog posts written.
Step 2: I tell the client it will cost $1200, but if they give me a $500 deposit, I’ll knock $200 off the price. They say yes.
Step 3: I keep $100 from the down payment for whatever purpose I need and use the remaining $400 to outsource the writing to a service such as Human Proof Designs.
Step 4: After Human Proof Designs delivers the content, I check it for quality and give it to the client, and collect another $500, which is pure profit.
The drop servicing business model is great for two reasons; if you’re already good at sales, you can use it to scale your business rapidly. On the other hand, if you’re not good at sales, you can use drop servicing to force yourself to practice selling.
Make Money With PLR Products
PLR products refer to private label rights content, which is content you can resell or repurpose as if it were your own. It’s possible to get high-quality PLR products for as little as $5 and then potentially resell them for 4x-5x the value.
There are also a number of other ways you can make money with digital products with PLR rights. Here’s an example:
Step 1: I buy a PLR bundle from PLR.me. These typically cost around $20-$60.
Step 2: I use one PLR article or ebook as a lead magnet.
Step 3: I sell the rest of the pack on the back end via email marketing.
This is a fairly standard sales process in which the lead magnet builds trust and proves you can offer value, and then the rest of the PLR enhances that value for a low investment.
While it’s faster to get started if you buy some PLR, you can get started using only free PLR downloads if you don’t have a budget yet.
How to Make Money Online Without Investment
PLR and drop servicing are two excellent ways to make money fast, but they both require that you spend a little as part of the earning process. If you have no money to spend, here are some ideas that can still work.
Making Money For Free
Is there any better money than free money? Of course, nothing is really free. These methods all involve using your time, skills, and other leverage to earn income.
Online Services
Providing online services is one of the most direct and low-cost ways to make money. For example, you can provide:
- Freelance writing services
- Virtual assistant services
- Online tutor services
- Web design services
- Graphic design services
- Online teaching jobs
- Data entry jobs
- Transcription services
The list could go on for a long time. If you have a skill and you know how to use it to help others solve problems and reach their goals, being a digital service provider may be right for you.
Remote workers are needed in almost every industry, whether you choose to be your own boss or an employee. Some people prefer being small business owners, others like the paycheck that comes with a job, but in either case you can earn with nothing but an internet connection.
I started out as a freelance writer, and there a number of writing platforms that pay writers just for publishing on them. This is an ideal way to earn a little money while also building your portfolio and attracting potential clients.
Online Surveys
Surveys are much less exciting and lower-paying than providing services. Still, they are an easy and direct way to make extra money online. If you have some spare time and want something to do while watching TV, taking surveys on paid survey sites might work for you.
While it doesn’t take much effort to complete online surveys, you’re unlikely to earn more than a few extra dollars. Also, you’re just trading your free time for cash rewards when you could be learning a new skill that will compound and create wealth over time.
I don’t know of any great websites of taking surveys online, but I will include them here when and if I find any.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a great way to build a brand. When done correctly, it can create opportunities to sell anything from digital to physical products.
If you love meeting new people and networking, social media marketing could be perfect for you. For example, Facebook marketing is an easy way to get started because many people are already on Facebook.
If you’re pulled to a specific social media platform such as TikTok, don’t hesitate to start there! Doing something you enjoy will increase your chances of success, especially if you have relevant skills.
You can earn on social media either by promoting your own products or services or by managing social media accounts for others. This can be a quick way to pad your bank account with cold hard cash.
Make Money on YouTube
YouTube is among the world’s largest search engines and content distribution networks, making it an ideal place to find interested customers. If you thrive on video creation, this is a fantastic opportunity to start making money online by creating videos about topics related to your niche.
You don’t need to become a professional videographer to make money from YouTube. In fact, you don’t even need to create good quality videos; providing value and having decent audio is usually enough.
My YouTube channel currently has over 2000 subscribers, and most of my videos are simple screen recordings and how-to videos. I’ve had my YouTube channel making money since it had around 200 subscribers, and I did it via affiliate marketing, which you’ll learn more about further down.
Make Money on Twitch or Facebook Live
While Twitch is the most popular, there are many platforms where you can become a live streamer for free and earn income from your viewers. Streaming can be a lucrative career, and many streamers are able to make money doing things they enjoy like playing games or just chatting with friends.
If you have charisma and love being on camera, live streaming may be for you. But you don’t necessarily have to have those skills. There are some streamers who never show their face on camera, preferring to focus on their gameplay or other activities.
Sell Digital Products
There are plenty of platforms that make it easy to sell digital products. The great thing about selling digital products is that you only need to make them once, and you can continue to generate revenue month after month through your sales.
You can sell your products by creating a free account on an online marketplace such as Etsy. Of course, usually the platform takes a cut of your profits, but it can still be an excellent way to get started.
You can also sell courses online, which is a great way to expand on other sources of income. As an entrepreneur and freelancer with my own business, I buy a ton of online courses.
If you’re a solid photographer, you can even earn cash by selling stock photos to image licensing websites.
Become an Influencer
Becoming an influencer (especially a “micro-influencer”) is not as hard as it sounds. If you’re willing to put in the effort, you can generate some income by gaining an audience’s trust and helping them decide what to buy.
To become an influencer, you must decide whom you are going to serve and then how best to help them via content creation. If you can get enough people to appreciate your content and follow you for more, eventually brands will start to seek you out to promote their products or services.
Of course, if you struggle to create engaging content on your own, you can rely on social media channels for inspiration and AI content creation tools for generating your copy and creatives. You don’t need to be a graphic designer to make beautiful visuals these days.
How to Make Money Online as a Beginner
Being a beginner at anything is tough, but with online business there are so many distractions and fake gurus that it’s challenging. Here is my top recommended way of making money online for beginners.
How to Make Real Money Online
When you’re just starting, in most cases focusing on doing less will bring in more revenue. What I mean is that rather than trying to do multiple things on this list, you should focus on one.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to get started as a beginner because it allows you to earn money without selling anything yourself.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is nothing like multilevel marketing, although they do often get compared. Affiliate marketing simply means promoting someone else’s products or services in exchange for commissions. The best affiliate programs use special affiliate links that track who clicked on your link and attribute appropriate commissions.
Many business owners can make easy extra cash just by doing a little affiliate marketing. If you promote the right products, it can quickly turn into passive income. Whether you have a blog and publish product reviews or promote offers to your existing customers, affiliate marketing is a great way to enhance an existing business.
Some of the better affiliate programs for beginners to promote include Fiverr and Systeme.io. To learn more about effective affiliate marketing strategies follow that link!
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is leveraging the influence of content creators to get more traffic to your offers. Usually, this involves a payment to the influencer, but if you make a good deal it can potentially be much more lucrative and cost-effective than running ads.
The trick is finding an influencer with the right audience, so if you don’t know where to start, try looking on sites like Instagram and Facebook for accounts related to your target market. Remember, engagement is more important than follower count.
How to Make Money With a Website
While a website is not necessary for making money online, it can make the process more scalable and effective overall. Here are the best ways to make money with a website.
How to Start an Online Business
The first thing you’ll need is a domain, professional email and office tools, and web hosting. Unless you decide to use a more expensive website platform, these can all be purchased for reasonably low prices.
Start a Blog
Before you even get started, it’s crucial to think about what content you will publish and why. You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself in one tiny niche, but at the same time, you can’t go too broad or it won’t be easy to establish an audience and topical authority.
For example, making a blog about karate might be too specific. Making a blog about sports might be too broad. But a website that focuses on martial arts-related content could be a sweet spot. To determine search volume for relevant keywords, you can use a tool like Keysearch.
To start your blog, I recommend getting some premium WordPress hosting and a premium theme to go with it. This will make your website more secure and better looking. I also recommend using a good Search Engine Optimization plugin like Rank Math, which has a robust free version.
There are many ways to monetize your own blog, but the most practiced are affiliate marketing and display advertising. You can promote products relevant to your articles in exchange for commissions, and you can allow advertising companies like Google Adsense to publish ads on your pages.
While blogging can be a great way to earn decent money, it’s also a powerful way to invest money online. It’s simple enough to outsource the work of getting a blog up and running, and once it’s earning money you have a cashflow asset you can potentially sell in the future.
Follow this link for my complete guide on how to start a blog!
eCommerce Stores
An eCommerce store is more complicated to maintain than a blog, but it also has a massive upside, especially if you successfully sell products with high profit margins. While you can use WooCommerce and WordPress for an online store, I recommend a platform like BigCommerce or Shopify because they’ll make your life much easier.
While eCommerce appeals to many people (especially dropshipping), it is a difficult way to get started if you have no business experience. If that describes you, consider starting with affiliate marketing and eventually replacing your affiliate offers with your own products.
To Me, Working Online is the Best Way to Make Money in Canada
There is no doubt that the internet has changed the world we live in today. It has made life easier for many people by providing them with access to information and services they were once unable to obtain.
However, the same technology also allows us to do more from behind a computer is killing off many of the old jobs. Artificial intelligence and advanced robotics are replacing many people in the workforce.
That’s why I wrote this article – because if you’re searching for ways to make money online, I want you to realize that the internet is still an ocean of opportunity. You need to choose the right waters to dip your toe and then dive in.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Making Money Online in Canada
Here are some common questions about online business and my answers.
How do beginners make money online?
The easiest way for beginners to make money is usually through affiliate marketing or selling or reselling simple digital products. Both of these can be accomplished with few skills and minimal operating costs.
Which site is best for earning online?
If you’re just starting, a good affiliate marketplace such as ShareaSale or Impact will probably be your most helpful resource. There are many products on these sites which you can sign up to promote in exchange for commissions.
What is the fastest way to earn online?
The fastest and most direct way to start making money online is usually selling services such as digital marketing or social media management. There are always tons of entrepreneurs who need these services, so you have to connect with the right people and prove you’re worthy of their investment.