Last Updated on May 30, 2025 by BusinAssist Editorial Team
In 2025, people are looking for ways to supplement their income to keep pace with inflation and increasing needs. In Canada, inflation has pushed people to look for additional income sources to cover expenses and improve their lifestyles.
Finding extra ways to make money online in Canada has become more accessible with the evolution of technology. While still working full-time, people can get a part-time job or set up a business. How can I make money online in Canada? Here is a guide to help you understand ways to make money online.
Top Ways to Make Money Online in Canada
Dropshipping
This is a low-cost investment side hustle anybody can start in Canada. When you choose this side hustle, you will become a merchant who markets manufacturers’ products to customers without incurring huge costs.
As a dropshipper, you will not go through the hustle of producing products from scratch; all you have to do is look for manufacturers, wholesalers, or distributors and start marketing. To start the business, find a niche, look for distributors with the products, and start marketing.
To choose a niche:
- Identify the problem in the market
- What needs will the product or service address?
- What are the profits?
- Costs of sourcing, marketing, and shipping
The niche should align with your skills, interests, and passion to make it easier to navigate marketing and selling. With a genuine interest in the products you sell, you’ll be enthusiastic about communicating accurate information and confidently promoting the full range.
Ensure to conduct market research to understand the practices other dropshippers utilise or adapt to succeed. To conduct business internationally, you can partner with e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Shopify, or eBay to set up an online store and start your dropshipping business.
How does it work? A customer will make an order on the platform where you are marketing the products or services, and then you as the seller (dropshipper) will forward the order to the supplier who will package and ship the products to the customer.
Affiliate marketing
Over time, affiliate marketing has become one of the most trusted online businesses. Affiliate marketing is where a third party promotes the merchants’ goods or services and receives a percentage when you make a sale.
With affiliate marketing, you can make money online in Canada and earn money while helping merchants meet their marketing goals. For compensation purposes, most merchants offer their affiliates:
- Commission on the percentage of sales
- Free products
- Access to training
- Exclusive reward
It is important to understand what the business will compensate you with before you sign up to be their affiliate marketer. Just like dropshipping, to start affiliate marketing, you will have to choose a niche that can reach a specific audience you have created. To choose a niche, you should ask yourself a couple of questions such as:
- Which topic is of particular interest to me?
- What products will I enjoy selling?
- Are the products on demand?
- What kind of content will I create to market the products?
Once you choose a niche, start creating content with keywords to market the products. Using relevant keywords helps ensure your products appear at the top of search results when customers are looking for similar items. Ensure you are consistent with content creation.
You can decide to join an affiliate network to make it easier to build relationships and increase your potential to earn affiliate commissions.
How affiliate marketing operates is that when you create content about the product, you ensure to put a link in the content for consumers to click it and lead them to the website where they can purchase the product or service.
Amazon FBA
Selling on Amazon is not new at all. Being the largest online e-commerce marketplace, Amazon offers entrepreneurs a platform to sell goods and services without the need to store or ship their goods to customers. Amazon offers FBA an acronym for Fulfillment by Amazon, a service provided by Amazon to take care of sellers’ inventory storage, returns, order fulfillment, and even customer service.
To get started with Amazon FBA you will need to:
- Create a store on Amazon
- Set a shipping plan on Amazon Seller Central
- Create a discounted shipping label to use Amazon’s shipping carrier
- Package products according to your shipping plan
- Schedule a pickup or drop off your package(s) to a UPS location
- Be patient for Amazon to process your inventory shipment
With this side hustle, you will need to pay a variety of fees to fulfill orders using FBA. You may want to use FBA if you sell
- Lightweight products
- Don’t have time to package orders
- Can’t afford a warehouse for your products
- Your products to be Prime shipping eligible
- Want professional customer service from Amazon
Virtual Assistant
With virtual assistant skills, you can start a part-time job. Various online platforms offer virtual assistant job boards full-time and part-time. If you do not have virtual office skills, there are many online courses to help you learn those skills.
Being a virtual assistant may entail meeting scheduling, social media management, scheduling appointments, responding to emails, and office admin.
Podcasting
Podcasts are increasingly becoming popular. Without the need of sitting down and watching it, you can listen to podcasts while going about your day, making it an interesting online job to start in Canada.
Starting a podcast doesn’t require you to shoot every day. By delegating a weekend to shoot a week or two weeks episode saves you a lot of time and energy.
You can choose to talk about a topic that interests you in a captivating manner to capture your audience’s attention.
All you need to start a podcast is a good microphone that will enhance your sound. It’s all about listening though some take videos to upload on YouTube, the sound should be top-notch.
There are software that offer free podcast editing like Audacity or GarageBand (for Mac users).
Private tutor
The service-based business is cheaper if you are not setting up an office. With a basic website, you can conduct remote tutoring, which is way more affordable.
Being a private tutor does not necessarily mean tutoring academically. If you have skills in a certain industry, you can start tutoring people who need to gain them. Skilled-based tutoring can include social media management, digital marketing, web design, or even lead generation.
How can I make money online in Canada by being a private tutor? The requirements for this position may not necessarily need certifications; however, you ought to have skills that will benefit your future clients. No one will sign up for a course where the tutor is not skilled in teaching.
You can decide to start a private tutor business as a freelancer or register a company in Canada and operate remotely. To be profitable and your business gets recognised more, you can join tutor platforms such as TutorHunt.
Social media management
Starting a social media management business does not entail a lot. It is a flexible business that can be done in the comfort of your home. This is ideal for creatives and involves content creation, scheduling, content strategy, audience engagement, community building, trend analysis, crisis management, and audience engagement.
The cost you will have to consider when starting a social media management business is the company registration cost if you want to set up a limited company and software subscription that includes social media tools, analytics tools, and graphic design tools, which are relatively low.
Conclusion:
How can I make money in Canada? With the online business opportunities mentioned above, you can start a business and make money. It can be service-based or selling products online to make extra money.
To do all these, you can start by registering a business and making money online in Canada. Registering a business in Canada makes it easier to protect your assets in the case of debts or legal implications.
Setting up a new online business in Canada doesn’t have to be complicated. BusinAssist helps entrepreneurs to seamlessly register their company to easily set up an online Canada business.
For more information on starting a business in Canada, contact us at [email protected].
FAQs
Q: How to make legit money online?
Ans: There are various and legit ways to make money online. You can make money online by creating content, starting a blog, selling products, affiliate markets, virtual assistants, taking surveys, online tutoring, podcasts, and e-commerce.
Q: How to make money online without paying anything?
Ans: To make money online without paying anything or with minimum investment you can start a dropshipping business, take surveys, offer freelance services, participate in microtasks, create and sell digital workspace, content creation, and graphic designs.
Q: How to make money writing online?
Ans: To make money writing online you can start blogging, copywriting, content writing, script writing, paid writing on Medium, academic writing, SEO writing, and ghostwriting.
Q: What to sell online to make money?
Ans: You can sell digital products, other brands’ products through affiliate marketing, handmade products, online courses, books, jewelry, pet products, toys, mugs, fitness equipment, and home accessories. Ensure to research customers’ preferences and needs to make sure you sell what is in demand.
Q: Can I make money doing online surveys?
Ans: Yes, you can make money online by doing surveys. Some platforms offer legitimate surveys that companies use to conduct market research and gather feedback.
Q: Can a teenager make money online?
Ans: With the evolution of technology, even teenagers can make money online with the help of their parents. Platforms like Fiverr, offer 13 years old and above an opportunity to start a freelancing business. Those under 18 years old will need a parent’s or their guardian’s account to use the site. Other online platforms that teenagers can use include freelancer.com, Etsy, and eBay. Teenagers can also do online surveys or sell stuff online.
Q: Can I make money online without investment?
Ans: Yes, you can make money online without investment. Freelancing is one of the ways people can make money online without investments. Other jobs you can do online without investments include selling homemade items, data entry, starting a blog, online tutoring, working as a translator, affiliate marketing, selling photos, online typing jobs or even selling courses online.
Q: Can you make money selling photos online?
Ans: Yes, you can make money by selling photos. There are stock agencies where you can sell photos as long as they are nice collections. Platforms where you can sell photos include iStock, Shutterstock, Alamy, or even Freepik.
Read Also:
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- How to Incorporate a Federal Corporation in Canada: A Guide
- Should I Incorporate Federally or Provincially in Canada? A Comprehensive Guide to Choosing the Right Option for Your Business
The BusinAssist Editorial Team has 15+ years of experience writing about small business and company formation in the UK, Canada, and the USA. We simplify complex processes and provide practical insights to help entrepreneurs succeed. Business Assist with BusinAssist – your partner for business success.