We all know how hard it can sometimes be to pay the bills on a budget. Whether you're saving for a rainy day, looking to fill up gas for your car or wanting to pay for a nice dinner out, we could all use a few extra income streams. Depending on your unique needs or skills, earning more money quickly could be very well within your means.
Regardless of what you do for your day job, making more money is now more accessible than ever with the internet. As long as you know where to look online, you can earn extra income — even if you don't have a ton of time.
Here are our favorite strategies that you can use to start a side hustle to earn some more cash. If you want to learn more about how to get started with any of these ideas, feel free to contact our team!
1. Sell items on eBay or Craigslist.
One of the easiest ways to unlock some more cash is to sell some of your unwanted items online. Two of our favorite sites are eBay and Craigslist. You can look at selling items like toys, furniture, dishes, household appliances, clothes and more.
If you're serious about this, you can even start flipping items that you find online. There are plenty of goods being sold on Craigslist, for example, for very cheap and often being given away for free. You can browse the "Free" section of the website for some great deals. If you're up for it, you can even refurbish some of the items before you re-list them at a higher price. This insightful post talks about how one reseller was able to flip multiple items and earn a full salary just by flipping Craigslist items.
2. Drive for Lyft or Uber
If you have a car, driving for a ride-sharing app like Lyft or Uber could be a fantastic way to earn some extra money in your spare time. In Canada, the sharing economy has really taken off in recent years and Lyft and Uber have become household names where passengers can secure rides in seconds. As a driver, you can earn money using resources (your car) you already own. Moreover, driving for one of these apps lets you work at your own pace, offering flexible hours and allowing you to make money anywhere, anytime.
In the most active cities, drivers can earn more than $18 per hour. All you need to get started is a driver's license, mobile phone, qualified vehicle, car insurance, and be over 21 years old (25+ is a requirement for Lyft in some jurisdictions).
3. Become a Food Delivery Courier
If you don't have a car or can't drive, you can become a food delivery courier with one of a number of apps, including Uber Eats, DoorDash, SkipTheDishes or Postmates. These are all on-demand delivery apps that connect couriers with customers. As a courier, you will deliver meals that customers order from their favorite restaurants — all without needing a car, and being able to earn up to $25 per hour. As with driving for a ride-sharing app, you set your own hours, making it super flexible for your schedule.
All you'll need to get started is a smartphone and a bike or car (optional).
4. Become a Virtual Assistant
Simply put, a virtual assistant is paid to make someone’s life easier. With online businesses becoming more and more popular, many business owners need help managing the day-to-day tasks of their companies. These tasks range from updating the company's Facebook page, bookkeeping, or sending emails to customers; all of which take up a lot of time. This would be where a virtual assistant can add tons of value.
The best part about this role is that the tasks you'd do are very wide-ranging. Depending on the business you work with, one day, you might be writing a newsletter and the next day, you could be organizing a conference in Mexico. Moreover, you would be doing all of this from the comfort of your own home.
Here are some of the tasks you could work on as a virtual assistant:
- Customer service
- Finance management
- Social media management
- Administrative support
- Content production
- Website / blog management
- Online marketing
- Email marketing
How can you find virtual assistant jobs? A few popular sites include: Flexjobs, Belay Solutions, Equivity, Fancy Hands, Zirtual, Fiverr and Upwork.
5. Give Music Lessons
If you play a musical instrument, you can think about teaching others. You can reach out to local customers through posting on Craigslist or Kijiji, or on your Facebook page. If you already have students, you can teach them online via Zoom or Google Hangouts.
Especially since lockdown started, teaching over the internet has become much more popular. Now, if you post on online forums, your potential clients could include people all around the world! Using video conference technology, teaching students is no longer limited to people in your local area. Plus, you don't have to deal with the extra time it takes to meet your students in person.
6. Clean Houses
There are tons of homeowners that are renting their homes out on a short-term basis that need housekeeping or cleaning services. As inspiration, here is a great post about how somebody spun up a cleaning business to earn some extra money. You can find housekeeping gigs on your local Craigslist or Kijiji site, HouseKeeper.com, Angie's List, Indeed, or any other local job board.
7. Become a Remote Bookkeeper
As a remote bookkeeper, you'll be able to work at your own schedule, set your own hours, and earn up to $60 dollars per hour or even more. You don't have to be a CPA to be successful in this business. All you need is an interest in solving real world business problems, familiarity in accounting, and decent computer skills.
This can become a great part-time gig for moms who want to work part-time, college students, or anyone else who wants to put their business skills to work on a flexible, part-time basis. You can post your services on Craigslist, Kijiji, Upwork, Fiverr, or Bark.
8. Become a Tutor
Nowadays, you can become a tutor without leaving your house! If you join Chegg Tutors, you can teach across a wide range of subjects, from math to biology and even astrophysics.
If you are a certified teacher with one or more of the following qualifications — Bachelor’s degree and teaching certification, Master’s degree or PhD, provincial teaching license or ESL or other language qualification — you can teach with Skooli. Convert your knowledge into cash and earn in your spare time. All you need is your expertise and an internet connection. As a tutor, you can earn $25 per hour teaching on Skooli.
After you provide your education qualifications and are approved, you will be given the go-ahead to start teaching students. If you add a criminal check, you'll receive the full Skooli verification, giving you a purple shield badge on your profile. By doing so, you'll receive extra attention from students and their parents, and you could even qualify for special programs that not all tutors can access.
9. Work From Home as a Transcriptionist
Transcribing is a convenient way to earn extra income without having very much prior experience or a specialized skillset. In addition to this, you can do it all while being at home, at your own convenience.
As a transcriptionist, you'll listen to audio files and convert them into text documents. There are numerous types of transcriptionists. However, general, legal, and medical transcriptionists are the most common ones.
While the work can get tedious and repetitive, the pay is attractive, ranging from $15 to $25 per hour for general transcription. Pay can increase substantially if you learn to work in a specialized occupation such as in the legal or medical fields.
You can find transcriptionist jobs on a number of sites including: TranscribeMe, Rev, Crowdsurf, Scribie, Daily Transcription and Birch Creek Communications.
10. Find Micro-Jobs on Mechanical Turk
Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform is a site hosted by Amazon that allows requesters to post tasks at a certain price. You'll be able to find and take on these micro-jobs, posted by universities, researchers, business owners and others that can take a few minutes each to complete. However, by doing multiple tasks, you'll earn some cash that can help you out in a bind, especially if you have some time to kill during your day.
Tasks are called HITs (human intelligence tasks) and each HIT is listed with its price and the time that has been allotted to it. You can browse through the list of available tasks and accept the ones that you want to work on and complete. To give you an idea of what you could be working on, HITs include filling out market research or survey data on a variety of topics, writing content for websites, or editing and transcribing audio content to name a few, although this list could go on and on.
11. Let Somebody Borrow Your Place on Airbnb
If you have a spare room, you can rent it out on Airbnb. If you're a good host (read: you're responsive and your place is tidy and desirable), you could make hundreds or even thousands of extra dollars per month. Some people earn their primary income or even run their full-time business by renting out their spaces on Airbnb.
You can list your guest house, apartment, or single room, but you can also list a couch if that's all you have available. If you want to maximize your income, make sure that you make your space available during peak times, such as when there is a music festival, convention, or sporting event in town. Make sure you're a good host. Keep your place stocked with toiletries, soap and towels, and make sure to keep it clean for the next guest. This way, you'll be able to rack up good ratings and earn more over time.
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