10 out of the ordinary careers people build online

You make long videos and Shorts and earn from ads, sponsors and fans once YouTube lets you into its partner program: 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 watch hours in a year, or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days. A long video pays roughly $1 to $45 per 1,000 views after YouTube's cut, depending on the topic and where viewers live.

Typical income: $0. Most channels never get paid at all. Goldman Sachs estimates about 4% of creators worldwide earn over US$100,000 a year, about $135,000 here.

The ones who make it pick a narrow topic they could make 100 videos about, upload every week and study the retention graph in their analytics. Google says more than 90% of views on Canadian channels come from outside Canada, so you are competing for a world audience. The catch: two to five years of mostly unpaid work, and the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) taxes it as self-employment income.

You build a following on TikTok or Instagram and brands pay you to post. Under 10,000 followers, a deal is often a free product or up to about $140 a post. TikTok's Creator Rewards Program has not been reliably open in Canada, so plan as if the app pays you nothing.

Typical income: about $4,000 a year, and that is among creators who already got paid. Across 14,400 creators paid through CreatorIQ campaigns in 2025, the median was about US$3,000 and the top 10% took 62% of the money.

Those who earn a living serve a specific audience brands want to reach, pitch brands with a media kit and ask for a fee on top of the free product. The catch: the Competition Bureau says you must disclose every paid deal or free product clearly, and a $2,000 jacket sent to you counts as $2,000 of income.

You broadcast live on Twitch, YouTube or Kick and earn from subs, tips, ads and sponsors, mostly paid in US dollars. Twitch's standard split gives you half of each sub. Since June 2026 you can reach Affiliate, the first paid level, with 25 followers, 4 hours streamed on 4 days and an average of 3 viewers within 30 days.

Typical income: $0. A channel with 5 to 20 viewers at a time often makes $0 to $250 a month. The 2021 Twitch leak showed 81 streamers earning over US$1 million from Twitch alone.

Streamers who grow keep a fixed schedule, choose a game or format that is not already crowded, and post clips to YouTube and TikTok, which is where most new viewers find them. The catch: four to eight hours live at a time, often late if your viewers are on the US west coast, and no sick days.

You film casual, real-customer style videos that brands post as ads on their own accounts. You need no followers, which is why it spread on TikTok as the way to get paid without being famous. One video usually pays about $70 to $700, priced in US dollars, and letting a brand run it as a paid ad for months is often worth 50% to 150% extra.

Typical income: about $2,500 a year, an estimate for a part-timer landing around 10 paid videos. A full-timer with regular brand clients can clear $80,000. It is crowded now: on Collabstr, the share of creators offering UGC (user-generated content) jumped from 26% to 66% in a year, and the average rate fell about 44%.

The people who earn steadily build a portfolio of 5 to 10 sample ads, deliver finished edits fast and win brands that order every month. The catch: it is freelance work with no benefits, and the Competition Act bans testimonials that claim results you did not get.

You buy and sell stocks, options or futures within the same day with your own money. Canada never had the American $25,000 minimum for day traders, so anyone with a brokerage account can start. Starting is easy. Winning is not.

Typical income: $0, because for most people the result is a loss. In a study of everyone who day traded Brazil's main futures contract for more than 300 days, 97% lost money and only 1.1% earned more than the minimum wage. In Taiwan, fewer than 1% of day traders were reliably profitable after costs.

The few who last practise with fake money for months, risk a tiny slice of the account per trade, keep a journal of every trade and keep a job. The catch: frequent trading can be taxed as business income, and day trading inside a TFSA (Tax-Free Savings Account) can make its profits taxable, as the Tax Court ruled against one trader in 2023.

You run an online store, usually on Shopify, and a supplier ships each order straight to the buyer. AI tools can build the store in an afternoon. The hard part is finding a product that sells at a profit through paid ads.

Typical income: $0 or below. A first store often loses $700 to $4,000 on ads, apps and sample orders, many billed in US dollars. Stores that do work often keep only 10% to 20% of each sale. Canada's duty-free limit for courier parcels from most countries is just $20, so buyers often get a bill at the door.

Those who make a living test products with small budgets, switch off losing ads fast and usually end up holding their own stock in Canada or the US. The catch: much of the dropshipping content on your feed is about TikTok Shop, which as of 2026 does not accept Canadian sellers.

You buy or make products and sell them on Amazon.ca, often through FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon), where Amazon stores, packs and ships for you. Fees take a big cut: a referral fee of 8% to 15% in most categories, plus fulfilment, storage and ads.

Typical income: about $2,500 a year. In Jungle Scout's survey of active sellers, mostly American, 48% sold under US$1,000 a month, and 47% had made under US$25,000 in total profit since they started. About 6% had passed US$1 million. People who quit at a loss are not in the survey.

Sellers who last run every product through Amazon's fee calculator with duty and the exchange rate included, start small, keep every supplier invoice and grow by adding products. The catch: most packaged products need English and French labels, and since 2024 Amazon reports sellers with 30 or more sales or over $2,800 a year to the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency).

You package a skill you really have into a course, coaching, a paid community or digital products. Platforms take their share: on Udemy you keep 37% when its marketplace finds the student and 97% when they come through your own link.

Typical income: $0. Most first courses sell a handful of copies or none. A $250 course sold to 50 people is $12,500 before fees, ads, refunds and tax, and getting those 50 strangers to pay is the whole job.

Creators who succeed got good at something first, taught it for free in public for months or years, then sold a small version before filming 40 lessons. The catch: passive income is a myth here, because sales stop when posting stops, and much of the course content on your feed is people selling courses about selling courses.

You run social media and ads for local businesses such as dentists, gyms and roofers for a monthly fee. SMMA (social media marketing agency) became a YouTube and TikTok trend around 2019, spread by creators selling courses.

Typical income: about $5,000 a year, our estimate, because most starters sign no paying client, or one or two who leave within months. A first client often pays $500 to $1,500 a month.

Owners who last learn one skill properly, usually paid ads, get proof with real numbers, pick one industry and report new customers and sales instead of likes. The catch: the American cold email scripts in most courses can break CASL (Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation), which needs consent and carries penalties of up to $1 million per violation for a person.

You build chatbots, voice receptionists and automations for small businesses with tools like Zapier, Make and n8n, plus AI models. In 2023 YouTube creators began pitching the AAA (AI automation agency) as the next big side hustle.

Typical income: about $3,000 a year, our estimate for a market that only took off in 2023. A first project often pays $700 to $4,000. The real business is a monthly fee of $250 to $2,500 per client to keep things running.

The few who earn a living usually had programming, operations or sales experience already, pick one industry and sell monthly support, not one-off builds. The catch: most starters sell nothing, and you inherit your client's privacy duties, including Quebec's Law 25, which says people must be told when a decision about them was made only by a machine.