Ways to Make Passive Income

Do you hate your job and drag yourself unwillingly to the office every day? Do you think you will quit your job but stop in your tracks thinking how else are you supposed to earn your daily bread? 

Fear not. You need not go down the beaten path of a typical office job. There are ways and means of earning passive income. That way you work smarter, not harder.

What is Passive Income?

Passive income is a stream of income earned without being actively involved in the activity/enterprise which generates it. Some passive income ideas require a degree of upfront work to start generating income. But they all get you financial freedom in the long run. 

Like anything in life, nothing is guaranteed, but with some research, upfront work and willingness, you can generate extra cash. As long as you keep your expectations realistic then you’ll be on the right track.

Like all businesses, a stream of passive income requires an initial investment — whether it’s financial or just your personal time.. Over time, you will get more money from the implementation of your passive income ideas than what you invested in them.

Ways to Generate Passive Income

Now that you know what passive income is, let’s get into how how to make it more than just a pipe dream. There are many different ways to generate passive income. They can be as varied as your interests and hobbies. This article will also give you some insight on how to make money online in general. 

Here are some passive income ideas.

Start a YouTube Channel

YouTube is the world’s most popular online video sharing website. It gets millions of page views daily, has over two billion logged-in users monthly and is viewed in over ninety countries across the planet.. 

Did you know that you can make money just by creating videos and posting them to YouTube? You can create what is called a “channel” on YouTube. It’s basically a list of YouTube videos to which a YouTube viewer can subscribe to. 

YouTube places advertisements in your videos as well as the side column on the page where viewers can watch your content. Depending on how long viewers watch your content you could make a few thousand dollars per month just from ad revenue alone.

Of course, the content of your video should be engaging, fun or informative for viewers to watch it in large numbers! So choosing a topic or issue that really interests you or is the current trend on the web might be a good idea. 

Start a Membership Website

You can start your own membership site. Simply put, it is a site that offers content for access, charging membership fees beyond a point. That is, a membership site offers some content for free as a foretaste of what is in store for paid members. 

The number of paid members you manage to attract to your site depends on how premium your content is. What you can charge as membership fee also depends on how engaging your content is. 

The advantage here is that you can enjoy a stream of recurring income without having to slog 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. For example, 100 members on one $10 USD a month website earns you $1,000 USD and so do 10 members on one $100 USD a month website.

The key here is to find a niche topic you have an interest in or have experience with. No matter what the topic is, you’re bound to be more knowledgeable in something that others would pay money to learn.

Buy An Already-Existing Business

If it’s already up and running, if you can drop the amount to buy it, then you’ve got a nice passive income stream you don’t even have to touch.

Start A Laundromat

It’s a big initial investment, but everyone always needs to wash their clothes. It’ll pay off quickly once you get past the initial startup costs.

Advertising On Your Vehicle

Do you have long commutes or are consistently errand running? Allowing people to advertise their businesses on your car lets you make money while doing your everyday tasks.

Become A Brand Ambassador

If you have a social media following, why not supply your followers with coupon codes to the places they shop? Every time they order with your code, you get paid.

Participate In Sleep Studies

There’s a little leg work that has to be done to get approved for the study, but after that, you’re literally getting paid to sleep.

Create An App

App building is a huge endeavor, but if you can think of something good and develop it, you can have a nice little extra revenue stream in a matter of months.

Invest In An Existing Business (Not Your Own)

Not interested in starting one on your own? Invest in one that already exists. If they have a good business plan, you’ll see the rewards for your investment in a short period.

The same goes for a start-up company, if you can drop the amount to buy it, then you’ve got a nice passive income stream you don’t even have to touch. Even though it may take a while depending on what the business is, it’s still a nice long term way to make money without working actively for it.

Rent Out Your Car

Just like you can rent out your house, you can rent out your car. If you’re not using it, or if you’re upgrading, keep your old car and make a few extra dollars off of it every month.

Rent Out Your Parking Space

Especially in a big city or for an event weekend, rent out the space in front of your house for secured parking.

Peer-To-Peer Lending

You become the lender, and you can earn interest up to 10%. It’s better than stocks and even better than a savings account.

Start An Online Store

Sell digital items or drop-ship items you’ve created through design programs. This is perfect for people already skilled with graphic design.

Buy Royalties

Even if you’re not an artist, you can still obtain royalty rights to music, art, and entertainment. Make sure you pick something that’ll continue making sales.

Write a Book (or e-book)

Writing an e-book is another passive income idea. An e-book is a book published online or in electronic form. A reasonably good e-book can earn the author about $5 USD per copy sold. So 200 copies sold per month can get the author $1,000 USD per month. 

Again, the e-book must be readable and fairly engaging. The best e-books that make the most money normally are non-fiction books that give people additional insight into a topic. Visit www.amazon.com and check out their best seller’s section and see what topics people buy the most.

Create a Lead Generation Website

Lead generation means supplying information about potential buyers or customers to businesses selling a service or a premium product. A lead generation website collects information from visitors and drives that web traffic to the website of a business selling a service or any premium product by pointing links to that business’s website.

Depending on the quality of leads generated, you can charge a commission per lead provided. What makes this interesting is that you don’t have to create the product or service — it’s already in place. All you have to do is help convince people why they should be interested in it.

Join the Amazon Affiliate Program

You must have heard of Amazon by now. Affiliate marketing for Amazon means selling Amazon products through your own website. It is about recommending Amazon products to users who visit your site. This is done by means of links on your website which point to product pages of Amazon. 

Whenever a visitor to your site clicks on your affiliate links, then that visitor is redirected to Amazon. If the visitor completes a purchase on Amazon on the page to which they were redirected, then you earn a commission of about 4 percent to 8 percent of the sale value.

Even if the user does not buy anything immediately after landing on Amazon, you still get a commission if the user returns to Amazon within 24 hours and makes a purchase. You need to sign up with the Amazon Affiliate Program to start earning commissions with sales on Amazon from your site. The more sales originate from your site, the more you earn.

Vending Machines

They do require an inventory supply, but aside from that regular expense, vending machines are a great way to earn passive income and develop relationships with other businesses at the same time.

Take Stock Photos

Taking stock photos and submitting them to sites like Shutterstock and Deposit photos will give you a little bit of change each time someone downloads your submission.

Supply Private Notes

If you don’t want to do the leg work of investing in real estate, you can lend other investors the money for their deals and make your money off of the interest rate.

Make An Alexa Skill

You can make content for Alexa and then benefit from it for years to come. It’s similar to making apps for smart phones and tablets, except it’s dedicated to the Alexa device.

Rent Out Storage Space Or Personal Items

Some people feel a type of way about renting a weird storage space next to hundreds of other spaces, so if you’ve got a big garage, consider renting out a portion for storage.

Have a camera or bike that you’ve gotten good use out of and aren’t ready to sell? Renting always makes more than selling, and you can rent out almost anything.

Market a Niche Affiliate Opportunity

Instead of marketing many different products giving piecemeal commissions, you can choose a single product that pays substantial commissions per sale. It works if you manage to create an audience for the product on the web, by creating, for example, a YouTube channel for the product. So, if the product costs $100 USD and you get about $40 USD per sale, selling 25 units of the product can get you $1,000 USD.

Blogging

You can write articles to make money. You can add value to your readers which drives traffic to your site and then monetize it with affiliate links. The more niche your website and topics are, the better. Niche topics have less competition. 

However, you will have to set up your blogging platform like WordPress and also rent a web server (also known as web hosting) on a monthly or yearly basis.

Create an Online Course

Another great passive income idea is an online course. If you have specialized knowledge about any field or topic and you wish to earn passive income from it you can publish that knowledge in an online course. This can be done either by creating your own site where you publish the course or by putting up the course on online learning platforms like Udemy.

On Udemy, you cannot charge a high price for your course. You typically earn half the price as commission. For example, you can charge $10 USD on Udemy, out of which you keep $5 USD per sale. 

On the other hand, you can charge a much higher fee if you create your own website for making the course available. On your own site, you can charge hundreds of dollars. Bear in mind that selling your course on your own site requires you to drive web traffic to your site. So you will need digital marketing and Search Engine Optimization to get people to visit your site. 

What you can charge for the course will depend on what kind of knowledge you impart through the course. Does it create value for your students?

Invest in Real Estate

Investing in real estate can be a monthly income generator, especially if you invest in rental real estate. Depending on the area your rental properties are located in, you can earn hundreds of dollars in profit in rentals every month. 

It’s even more profitable if the property that you rent out appreciates in value as you go along. So if you have four properties to rent out and you earn $250 USD per property each month, you can make a profit of $1,000 USD per month!

Rent Out a Room in Your House

If you do not wish to invest in a separate property and you have some extra rooms in your home that you do not use, you can rent those rooms out via a website like AirBnB. How much you can rent out those rooms for depends on the real estate market prices in the area where you live. 

For example, you can rent out a room anywhere between $25 USD a night to $200 USD a night. To earn $1,000 USD a month, you will need to rent out your room for most of the month if the rent is $50 USD or 20 days in other words. 

Investment In The Stock Market

You can earn dividends from a company’s profit if you own stock in it, either directly or through a fund. You can also invest using robo advisors without knowing a thing about money or investing to get started. 

With robo advisors there is no minimum amount required to be invested. Robo advisors are digital platforms that provide automated, algorithm-driven financial planning services with little to no human supervision.

Start An Information Business

An information business is typically an online business where you sell some kind of information. It could be a YouTube channel, an online course or a paid membership. Basically, you create some content and sell it online. 

You may prefer this passive income idea to others because it involves very low risk. You get to create content on a topic you already know about or you are researching something and want to share it with others. 

It’s fun to do and doesn’t require a large investment in terms of money or effort to get it off the ground.  It is a highly passive income generator where you get to sell a product over and over again after creating it once. 

While many people rely on one source of passive income to live on, you can easily diversify into multiple passive income ideas.  Multiple streams of passive income can add up to a substantial amount.

Start A Podcast

Not really one for blogging? If you have information, but you’re better at spoken word, then divide your information into episodes and turn it into a podcast. Podcasts can earn money from affiliates and advertisers just like blogs.

Now Take Action!

Choose a few things you are interested in trying out, come up with a plan to put those ideas into action and put forth the effort or investment required to get your ideas off the ground.

You may not become a millionaire (or maybe you will!) but you can earn a substantial income from the above passive income ideas. If you get it right, you can quit your boring, dead-end job and become financially independent.

Or you can just keep the additional money you make to pay extra bills, take more vacations or to invest in something even more long term. The bottom line is — additional passive income will give you more financial freedom and flexibility than you have today!

If you liked these passive income ideas, then check out our article on side jobs that can make you more money.