These Remote Side Hustles Help Make You Extra Cash From Home

Most language practitioner jobs — editing, proofreading and the like — are jobs that you can easily do from home and on a freelance basis, making them some of the best jobs for single moms. However, translation work is a remote side hustle job with the one of the highest earning potentials out there. There’s plenty of work in this field if you’re fluent in both English and French. You can also find gigs in other language pairs and work online, so that you’re not just limited to finding work in Canada. To become a translator, you can take a degree or certificate course in translation, but it’s not strictly necessary. It’s most important to be able to prove your proficiency in another language by passing the entrance exams and registering with the translators’ association in your province or territory. The equipment you’ll need for your job are a computer — translation software is optional — as well as a variety of bilingual dictionaries and reference materials.

A virtual assistant is not just a glorified personal assistant. You can offer many more services, depending on your skills and expertise: managing social media and email, processing online orders, maintaining websites, blogging... If it’s a service that assists a client in some way and can be done via the internet, it would probably be something that could be classified as providing virtual assistant services.

To be a successful virtual assistant, you need to be able to offer a variety of services, which means that you need a broad range of skills, including great organizational skills. You also need access to good internet.

Unique clothing, the face masks, pet food or whatever else you can think of: you can sell it online. Simply set up your own store — you can do this through a site like Shopify or Etsy or you can get your own website — and make sure that you have a product to sell. This can be something you create yourself, making it to order or keeping an inventory, or it could be something you can provide to customers though drop shipping. You’ll need the same business sense and skills you’d need to run a successful brick-and-mortar store but you’ll also need to find a very reliable way to get your products to your customers fast and without hassle.

The richest YouTubers create content about a wide variety of topics: pranks and comedy sketches, tutorials, gaming, and so on. Of course, creating a video and posting it on YouTube or TikTok isn’t going to bring you instant riches automatically: in fact, you need to get thousands of views just to make a few dollars. However, you can increase your earnings with affiliate marketing.

For instance, you can create knitting tutorials and use the products of a yarn company that will pay you for showing how to use their products. Many video content creators start out by using their cellphones for filming but a decent video camera and editing software will help you create videos of higher quality that could garner more views.

If tech is your thing, coding can be a very lucrative side hustle. There are plenty of coding courses online to learn the ropes. Then you need lots of practice and practical experience. Freelancing websites are good places to look for clients as you build up your reputation. You can also use your coding skills to create coding tutorials or ebooks, which will get your name out there and can bring in more business.

No, you don’t have to get out there to earn extra cash from your photography skills. You can sell your pictures through stock image sites and you don’t even need to be a professional — although you do need to be good. You probably already have plenty of pictures from those unforgettable Canadian road trips or nature hikes that you can upload to get started.

Stock image sites often look for pictures of products and of people too. Since clients of these sites typically want regular people rather than exquisitely beautiful models, you can rope in your family, roommates or whoever is in your social bubble to pose. To become a photographer, it will help to have taken a photography course or two. You also need a decent camera and if you’re going to take pictures indoors, lighting equipment will come in handy too.

Being able to work online has meant that there are more and more opportunities for tutors, whether it’s helping kids in your neighbourhood with their schoolwork or whether you’re helping students in China practise their English. You need patience, great communication skills and good knowledge of the subject matter to be a tutor. You’ll also need a computer with video chat software like Skype or Zoom and fast, reliable internet to be an online tutor.

Bookkeeping involves keeping track of a company’s day-to-day finances and transactions: the kind of job that business owners often don’t have the time or patience for and would rather outsource. This means that you should be able to find more than enough bookkeeping work to turn this into one of the best work-from-home jobs rather than just doing it as a side hustle.

Many tertiary educational institutions in Canada offer courses in bookkeeping and if you want to increase your chances of getting lucrative jobs, it’s a good idea to also become certified through the Institute of Professional Bookkeepers of Canada. As far as equipment goes, you basically need a computer with bookkeeping software.

There are many different things that may need transcribing: interviews, speeches, lectures and lessons, for example. While there is AI software that can transcribe audio and video automatically, accurate transcriptions are best done manually, especially when the audio involves strong accents or different languages.

As a transcriptionist, you listen to what is being said and type it into a text document. You don’t need special training for this but you do need to be able to listen intently and type fast. As far as equipment goes, you need a computer, transcription software if you prefer and a pair of good headphones: definitely not the type you can get at the dollar store.

If you’re a registered nurse, you have one of the most in-demand jobs in Canada for 2021 and probably won’t have much time and energy for a side hustle. But what if, for example, you’re pregnant and can’t risk exposure to all kinds of serious diseases? The good news is that you can use your nursing qualification and experience even for a side hustle.

As a telephone triage nurse, you deal with patients remotely: they contact you by phone or online and describe their symptoms. You then assess whether they have something that can easily be treated at home or if they need to go to the emergency room. If you’re already a registered nurse, you don’t need any extra qualifications to work as a telephone triage nurse. However, you need to register with the governing body not only in the area where you’ll be based but also in the one where people will be contacting you from.