Ordinary people build wealth in surprisingly simple ways.
Some live the “millionaire-next-door” lifestyle, forgoing status items — luxury cars, designer clothes, premium subscriptions — for a simple, budgeted life. Others invest in quality stocks, building wealth through compound interest. And still others take on high-paying side hustles, then funnel the extra income into their retirement and savings accounts.
That last one could be one of the most effective ways to earn extra income in 2022. The gig economy has taken off, providing Canadians with a rare opportunity to generate a tonne of money for surprisingly simple tasks. If you’re looking for a side hustle, here are five high-paying ones you should consider.
1. Become a transcriptionist or transcriber
With the popularity of podcasts and videos, transcriptionists and transcribers have perhaps never been more in demand.
As a transcriptionist, you’ll convert voice recordings, whether from a video or an audio file, into written text. Transcriptionists work in nearly every major field, from medical to legal to academic settings. As long as you’re good at typing (and listening), you could earn a significant amount of money from your couch.
The average transcriptionist earns around $20 to $22 per hour for beginners to $50 an hour for experts. But that’s only a rough estimate. As with blogging and other forms of writing, the faster you write, the more money you’ll make per hour. Most of the time, a client will pay you by the project. If you get a flat sum of $200 for a transcription project that takes you two hours, guess what — you just earned $100 per hour.
2. Become an English tutor
English has become a universal language. It’s the world’s second-largest native language (behind Mandarin Chinese) and the official language for over 70 countries.
The fact that a businessperson from Russia will most likely speak English to a businessperson from, say, Nigeria, means learning English has never been more attractive.
If your native language is English, you’re pretty much qualified to be an English tutor, and many tutoring services will hire you on the spot. As long as you have a computer, internet, and video capabilities, this could be an easy way to earn some extra income.
3. Take surveys
Now, I’ll admit: I’m a little hesitant to call survey work a “high paying side gig.” At the most, you’ll make around $10 per survey. Depending on how many you complete per hour, that means you could earn $50 to $60.
But surveys could become lucrative if you use them to fill your slack time. Got five minutes between work meetings? Earn $5 by taking a small survey. Waiting in line at the drive-thru? Take another survey, earn another $5. Waiting for your friend who is always late to your lunch dates? Yep, you guessed – make that time profitable by taking another survey.
Because you can take surveys from your smartphone, you can take them wherever you have internet. As long as you’re strategic, you can make money when you’re usually not making it at all.
4. Proofreading
The vast quantity of content on the internet has made editors, proofreaders, and grammarians in popular demand. If you have an eye for grammar mistakes, you know where to place commas and how to fix misplaced modifiers; you might want to take on some proofreading work. As with transcriptions, the faster you work, the more money you can make per hour, as most editors earn by the project.
5. Become a virtual assistant
Of call the high-paying side gigs on this list, this one is perhaps the most lucrative. For that reason, it can also become the most time-intensive.
Virtual assistants, also just called VAs, provide administrative services to businesses outside of the office. VAs take the place of your conventional assistant. They could handle bookkeeping, scheduling, or even social media accounts.
With more people working from home, VAs are in high demand. Some say you could earn as much as $10,000 per month as a VA, though at that point you’d probably be assisting businesses full-time. Still, it’s worth looking into, especially if administrative tasks come easy to you.
