Ways To Making Money While You Sleep
For years I worked in print company in the South East of England. My hours were 6am to 6pm, 5 days a week and 6am to 2pm on Saturdays. I hardly ever saw my wife or young daughter. By the time I got home from work, she was fast asleep. I left far too early in the morning to see her wake.
As you can imagine, this made me feel like crap. I literally only had Sunday to spend time with my family and even then all I wanted to do was sleep.
I knew that I had to change my life and drastically. I needed more freedom, so the idea of passive income became very appealing to me. But the main thing I learned from creating passive income streams within affiliate marketing is that you have to WORK HARD to get them to that passive state.
My method of passive income that I chose was to start a blog, building up traffic through organic sources ( Google ) and then monetizing the site. This took me a long time to achieve, but when the money started coming in, I quit my job. My life could finally begin.
How Much Can You Realistically Earn?
Creating multiple income sources and ultimately creating a passive income isn’t a short-term money making strategy. You need to think long term.
10 years on since I started my first blog, I am now making over $150,000 per month. It’s taken me a decade to get where I am today. Please note that this is very rare to be able to make this much money from a passive affiliate income. I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but I am in the top 0.001% of affiliate marketers. This income is from multiple websites that I own.
But affiliate marketing isn’t the only way you can make a passive income from. The vast majority of people who generate a passive income will generally obtain this via small amounts from multiple income sources. In this guide I will go through over 100 ways that you can make a passive income from either making money online or offline or both.
So what exactly is a Passive Income?
Passive income is where you get paid multiple times, over and over again for work you only did once.
An example would be if you were to write an ebook on How to Master Microsoft Excel and sold it to your email list or website’s audience for $79. You would have made the time investment of say 200 hours writing this ebook, but it’s soon paid back to you in sales. You sell 100 of these ebooks a month which net you a passive monthly income of $7900.
200 hours time investment = $7900 per month
Passive Income Ideas That You Can To Start Today
Before you read on, I just want to reiterate the importance of hard work and persistence. Passive income doesn’t mean you don’t have to work for it. Most of these ideas need your full attention and tenacity. Passive income only works if you do the hard graft initially. You need to choose the right passive income sources for you, as you will be investing your time and effort initially to get your income source flowing.
As I mentioned before, your time will be paid back to you.
Passive income is more common in network and affiliate marketing activities. That’s what I will be touching on a lot in this guide, as its something I know a lot about. The opportunities out there to make residual income is phenomenal.
These passive income ideas are 100% legit. They all have the potential of providing you with a way to make money while you sleep, as well as being something that fits your personality, passions, experience, or skill-set.
All passive income streams will require you to invest one or both of these two elements.
1) An upfront monetary investment, or
2) An upfront time investment
Let’s jump right in!
Start A Blog
Starting a blog is often one of the first things people do when they’re trying to generate passive income. This is because blogs can be very flexible in its uses and purpose. While most people think of blogs as web diaries, they have evolved quite a bit since the infancy of the Internet. Today, blogs are important marketing tools that can generate income all on their own.
Setting up a blog is relatively simple. All you need is a blogging platform, such as WordPress, and a hosted domain. The costs of hosting a blog vary quite a bit based on the particular domain extension you have and the host itself. However, you can start a brand-new blog for only a few dollars a month. Once you have your website set up, you can start producing content and attracting your audience.
We highly recommend starting your blog with Bluehost . You can get up and running from just $2.95 p/m + you get a free domain name.
To maximize your earnings, you need to find an audience that stays with you and trusts your opinion. There are thousands of blogs about simple topics. The key to being successful is to find a suitable niche. The blogging world is vast and competitive. So, you’re more likely to generate income if you have less competition in the digital space. Furthermore, you need to produce high-quality content on a regular basis to keep your readers engaged.
How Blogs Make Money
There are many ways that blogs can generate passive income. One of the most lucrative is through affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you’re essentially promoting products to your audience. If one of your readers buys a product through a promotion on your blog, you receive a commission.
You don’t have to turn your blog into a promotional machine to take advantage of affiliate marketing. In fact, doing so would only turn your readers away. You can easily cater your content to include affiliate links and seamless promotions. Also, with the wide range of affiliate programs out there, you will never have to promote products you don’t believe in. You can stick to products that you love and can honestly recommend to your audience.
Another source of income you can take advantage of is ad space. Google AdSense and Adsense alternatives will pay you to place digital advertisements on your blog. Typically, ad revenue is paid for every 1,000 impressions. If you have considerable traffic to your blog, ads can be a profitable option.
Of course, you can also use your blog to sell products directly to your readers. Many internet entrepreneurs choose to sell digital products, such as guides, eBooks, online courses, and videos. Whatever you decide to do with your blog, keep monetization in mind. As your blog grows and attracts an audience, your income potential will grow with it.
Invest in Crowdfunded Real Estate
Real estate is a tried and true income source. Everyone needs a place to live, work, and play. While the real estate market does fluctuate with the economy, it’s a relatively safe and stable way to start making some passive income. Unfortunately, not everyone is a real estate tycoon with millions to invest in properties. That’s where crowdfunded real estate comes in.
- RichUncles.com
Crowdfunding experienced a huge boom in the last few years. Essentially, crowdfunding involves collecting investment funds from a large group of people. The returns from that investment are then divvied up based on the initial investment and the terms of the real estate investment trust. It gives everyone the opportunity to get their foot in the door and invest in their future without having to put up the cash to buy a piece of property alone.
There are many different crowdfunding platforms that are catered to real estate investments. Some of these include Fundrise, Rich Uncles, and RealtyMogul. Most platforms have a minimum investment amount. Some require you to invest at least $500 to join. However, others only have a low minimum of only $5. You can then choose which income-producing projects you want to invest in. Platforms offer a wide range of products in markets all around the country. These include apartments, commercial properties, student housing, and so much more.
Passive Income Potential
Investing in crowdfunded real estate couldn’t be easier. You’ll have the opportunity to invest in projects that you believe in. There are a lot of different factors that go into how much you can make. It all depends on how much you invest in the project and how successful it ultimately becomes. Real estate is not a quick, overnight thing. Generating income takes time. However, once the project starts to produce income, you can reap the benefits without doing a thing. The properties are all managed and planned by other people. You don’t ever have to visit the property or even live in the same state. It’s a hands-off investment that could provide you with a substantial stream of passive income for many years to come.
Dividend Income
If you have some money saved up, why not invest it into a reliable stream of passive income? Investing in stock is one of the oldest ways of generating income without doing much work at all. While the stock market does come with its risks, there is one type of stock investment that can provide you with long-term benefits.
Dividend stocks pay out on a regular basis. Shareholders typically receive a small payout every quarter. The amount that is paid applies to each share. So, your income potential depends entirely on how many shares you choose to buy. If you’re worried about the risks involved, you’ll be happy to know that dividend stocks are often considered to be conservative investments.
These types of stocks are offered by big-name companies that have a history of generating solid income and staying relatively stable on the stock market. If you’re looking through potential investments, you’ll probably recognize most of the names on that list.
There are many stockbrokers who can help you get started. Ally Invest is an established online broker that provides you with the tools you need to succeed. In addition to offering free educational courses, Ally Invest can connect you with a professional advisor who can help you make the most out of your investments.
Peer-to-Peer Lending
Peer to Peer Lending experienced a boost in popularity in the last decade. Some of the lending platforms that started the trend, such as Lending Club and Prosper, are still around today. With Peer to Peer Lending, you’re investing money by providing the funds for an amortized loan. Your initial investment is paid out through the life of the loan, with interest.
This lending process is very similar to a traditional bank loan, however, it offers more benefits to both parties involved. Many people seek these types of loans because they cannot qualify for traditional options from established banks or unions. Peer to Peer Lending can help them get a mortgage, car loan, or personal loan. For you, the investor, you’re getting a steady stream of passive income that could continue for many years depending on the type of loan you provide. Not only that, but interest rates tend to be much higher on these loans. With average rates above 10 percent, you can gain a significant profit from the loan.
How Peer to Peer Lending Works
To start your investment, you’ll need to choose which platform you want to work with. Platforms like Prosper and Lending Tree are designed to make the process as simple as possible. They will connect you with potential borrowers based on a wide range of parameters. These include the type of loan the borrow is after, their credit-worthiness, and more.
From there, you can decide which loans you want to fund. Ultimately, you can choose how conservative you want to be with your investments. You can start off with a single investment and grow your portfolio with the earnings you make. The lending platform handles all of the paperwork and payment collection. After your initial investments, you can reap the rewards as a passive income stream.
Write An eBook
Ebooks are very lucrative if you target the right subject matter. The big tip when it comes to writing an ebook is to keep it non-fiction and provide a valuable resource to your readers. Not go down the route of trying to write a novel or fantasy / drama story. This is a lot harder to sell.
Non-fiction works best. “How to” books are a winner. And they don’t need to be 40,000 words or 300 pages. Most are very short and to the point. Self publishing is big business and provides authors with another route to market other than trying to get a publisher to give you a book deal. The places that you can self publish your book are Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, Booktango, and Lulu.
How Much Could You Earn
I know people who have self published their own books and who are earning between $2k & $5k every month from digital and physical sales of their book.
Create An Audio Book
If you’ve written an eBook then why not create that content into another format to then sell? It’s easy to do. Ok there’s a little but more work involved in producing an audio book, but you can literally outsource the whole project to recording experts and voice over artists to make for you. I use Upwork and Fiverr for this type of work. If you do it this way then you avoid having to purchase or rent the specialized equipment you will need to record and format your audio files.
A great site to help you create and sell your audio book is AudioBook Creation Exchange.
Rent out a Room in Your House
One of the easiest ways that you can make some easy money is by renting out one or more of the rooms in your home.
Most people have heard of Airbnb, but there are plenty of other similar platforms such as Tripping.com, HomeToGo, FlipKey, HomeAway, VRBO, VayStays, VacayHero, HouseTrip, and Wimdu. All of these platforms work more or less the same. You advertise space in your home on their website in order to find renters. If both parties come to an agreement, you get paid just for letting someone spend the night in your home.
It’s often mistakenly assumed that you need to rent out your entire property when using Airbnb or other similar competitors. This is not true. You can rent out just about any part of your property, including in some cases, a loft, a garage, the shed out back, or even a vehicle parked in your driveway.
Just pay careful attention to local and state laws because in some jurisdictions, using Airbnb may be illegal or be classified as operating a hotel, leaving you open to fines, criminal action, or extra taxes.
How Much Could You Earn?
Per-night rates for renting out your home can be as low as $10 or as high as $100, depending on the size, desirability of the location (i.e. close to downtown or other major attractions), and amenities (like a separate bathroom). And while $10 a night may not sound like a fortune, that could easily add up to $250 or more per month, all for doing little more than clicking a few buttons on Airbnb and doing some light cleaning after each guest departs.
Airbnb and their competitors mainly deal in short-term rentals, i.e. people staying in your home for just a few days or a week at most. But a great way to make a steadier form of passive income is to rent out a room to long-term renters, whether that’s on a monthly, biannual, or annual basis.
For short-term rentals, local law will probably classify you as operating a hotel or guest house, but for long-term rentals, you’ll be classified as a landlord. Make sure that you familiarize yourself with all the applicable regulations on being a landlord, including services that you may be required to provide and the legal protections and rights that accrue to renters. For instance, you may be required to sign a formal written contract with your renter and keep their security deposit monies in an escrow account.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most common ways that bloggers and creators monetize their content. Essentially, the idea behind affiliate marketing is that you utilize your influence to promote certain products to your audience. If someone purchases said item with your recommendation and affiliate link, the company will pay a specified amount of that sale as a commission.
The world of affiliate marketing is quite vast. Many businesses utilize the reach of influencers to sell their products, so you shouldn’t have any problem finding products that you actually want to recommend to your audience. You can build a partnership with a company directly or work through an affiliate platform. Platforms allow you to connect with a wide range of companies and products, thus, expanding your possibilities.
Finding Your Audience
The key to being successful with affiliate marketing is to have an audience that trusts your voice. Blogs are one of the most common ways affiliate marketers establish an online presence. You can find your niche, attract an audience, and recommend products that they will find useful. One big mistake that new affiliates make is to push any product that comes their way. Unfortunately, not every product is made the same. To ensure that your audience trusts your opinions and recommendations, it’s important that you promote products that you believe in.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
Once you have your blog set up and ready, you can start promoting products through affiliate links. Whether you decide to work with a company or commission platform, you will often receive a direct link that you can give to your readers. This link will lead to the company’s website or a larger marketplace, such as Amazon. When your readers click on this link and make a purchase, you will automatically get credit for that sale. Some companies also utilize unique promotional codes so that they can keep track of where that purchase came from.
Affiliate Marking Income Potential
How much you can make with affiliate marketing depends on the commission rate and the number of sales you make. Commission rates vary dramatically from company to company. Typically, lower rates are utilized for products that are a bit easier to sell. The product may have a lower price tag or high demand. Higher commissions are the opposite. They may be a bigger purchase, thus resulting in fewer sales. However, with the higher commission rate, you will be making more money on the sales you do make.
Figuring out how much you can make per sale is quite easy.
For example, say you’re promoting a $500 dollar product with a 5 percent commission rate. 5 percent of that $500 is $25. So, you would be making $25 per sale. If you end up getting 10 sales through your promotion and affiliate link, you can make $250 on that single product alone. Needless to say, affiliate marketing can be quite a lucrative endeavour.
Here’s a quick start guide to Affiliate Marketing
- Find your niche to target: Find something that interests you or a subject you can research and write about. Please don’t think you need to be a professor in this niche.
- Start up your blog: I recommend setting up your blog with Hostgator (costs as little as $3/mo + you get a free domain + free email account)
- Start creating and writing content. The idea with affiliate marketing is that your aim is to help readers solve a problem. Create content that will help your readers.
- Build an audience. Not as difficult as you may think. You can build up an audience pretty quickly on Pinterest and via organic listing on Google (SEO)
- Monetize your content. You can do this with ads (Adsense or Alternatives), affiliate marketing, products — it’s up to you!
- Take a quick course in Affiliate Marketing. Michelle Schroder’s affiliate marketing course should be your first stop on your affiliate marketing journey.
Other resources on Affiliate Marketing
Receiving Affiliate Payments – Non-US
Rent Out Your Parking Space / Driveway
If you live in a congested area, your parking space or garage can be a big money-maker. People will pay a lot for convenience and safety. Typically, larger cities are dotted with expansive parking garages that can charge $20 or more for a few hours. Some municipalities even charge several hundreds of dollar for a year-long parking permit. If you live in a small city, you may still have some great opportunities if you live near the town center with steep parking meter rates.
You can utilize your unused designated parking space, driveway or garage as a source of passive income. As long as you own the space, it’s perfectly legal to do so. There are even apps and websites to help you make the process as streamlined and hassle-free as possible.
Passive Income Potential
When it comes to income potential, your location will always be a big factor in what drivers are willing to pay. Spaces within walking distance of event venues, offices, or other high-traffic areas will provide the most bang for their buck.
You can get a better idea of what to charge by taking a look at nearby parking options. Consider the price of parking permits, garage prices, and meter rates. It’s also important to think about how you want to manage your space. Do you want to charge a daily rate or do you want to lease to a single driver over the course of several months?
It’s possible to make upwards of $250 or more each month if you live in a prime location. That income is possible if you only rent out your parking space for a few hours each day. There’s the potential to earn even more if you consider overnight parking and long-term leases.
How to Rent Out Your Parking Space
One way you could get started is with some good, old-fashioned marketing. You could advertise your spot online or with a sign during busy traffic hours. With just a few minutes of work, you can easily generate some buzz and get your spot rented out.
If you don’t want to deal with the hassle of collecting fees or advertising, there are several services available. Apps like CurbFlip, Pavemint, and Parklee make the process a breeze. Everything is handled on your smartphone or computer, so you can generate income from anywhere in the world.
Buy An Existing Website That’s Already Making Money
For nearly as long as the internet has existed, people have been making money from their blogs or personalized websites. But these days, with millions of blogs out there, starting a blog from scratch, producing lots of great content, and acquiring favorable SEO in order to make decent profits from monetization of the blog is a very daunting task.
The good news is that there’s an easy shortcut – buying someone else’s already established blog!
Whether it’s due to diminishing interest, a career change, or other factors, there are plenty of successful blog owners out there who are looking to sell their website.
Websites like Flippa and Empire Flippers serve as brokers for people interested in selling or buying websites, including successful blogs. Before you buy, you can see all of the relevant statistics, including daily, weekly, and monthly page views, sources of traffic, historical performance, and other key indicators.
Flippa is the grand daddy of website marketplace brokers and the biggest name in the business, but they now have a lot of competition from Empire Flippers. There are pros and cons to both broker websites, but they both work as “middlemen” to ensure transparency and fairness in the buying and selling of websites business.
Flippa has been a separate business since 2009 (prior to that, it was a subsidiary of SitePoint Marketplace). Empire Flippers is a slightly newer company as it was founded in 2010, but both brokers are large, well-established companies with a sterling reputation. Empire Flippers claim that they have brokered more than $50 million in total transactions while Flippa claims that they have brokered over $140 million in total transactions.
Websites sold on either website can go for as low as a couple of hundred dollars all the way up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Both provide listings of websites being actively sold as well as analytic information about websites for sale. Both companies offer limited protection to buyers, including vetting sellers for accuracy in web traffic as well as earnings. However, each website has a different interface, so give yourself ample time to learn how to understand what is being offered.
Once you’ve purchased a website, you will take full control, including over ad placement and any intellectual property belonging to the website. If the blog is monetized via ads, keep in mind that you’ll need to replace the existing ads with ads generated from your own affiliate account(s).
Start An Amazon Niche Site
One tactic that I have employed over the years to gain a passive income source is to build out an Amazon review sites ( aka, Amazon Niche Sites ).
I’ve written a detailed guide on how to build out an Amazon review site here.
When it comes to making money online or side hustles, there are literally thousands of options at your disposal. So choosing a choosing an online business type that is going to suit you and your lifestyle can be overwhelming. In my opinion, Amazon niche sites are the easiest way to make lots of passively earned money online. Lots of people are drawn to the Amazon affiliate model because it can be easily integrated into their interests or hobbies. Example: If you have a blog about cars, then why not create some pages around “Best Car Waxes” or “A Guide To The Best LED Strip Lights For Your Car”. Then you can add in some Amazon affiliate links, publish and wait for the traffic from Google to convert into commissions.
Here’s a quick run-down of the process of setting up an Amazon Niche Site.
- Find a product niche that you can write at least 40 pages about. Example: Baby / Child related products
- Buy web hosting + domain for your website. You can get web hosting for $2.95 per month + a Free domain from Bluehost.
- Install WordPress and get your blog up and running. – Check out my detailed start a blog guide here.
- Competitor Research. Do a few related searched in Google to see who is ranking for the products you want to review. Example: If you’re starting a baby product review site, try seeing who is ranking for terms such as “Best Diaper Pail” or “Best Baby Toys”.
- Keyword Research.
- Start Writing Content. For my Amazon content I use Textbroker, but you can get cheaper writers on Upwork or Fiverr. I’ve written a detailed guide on creating solid amazon content so do have a read before you start writing.
Passive Income Potential
Sky is the limit with Amazon sites. You can easily get a 40 page site earning $500 per month within a year if you set it up correctly. I know people who earn as much as $25k a month with just one Amazon niche site, and most of that is profit.
Sell Products on Amazon – Amazon FBA
Ok, this isn’t what I would call 100% passive, but once you’re established and you have successful products selling on Amazon, you could in theory get someone to manage the day to day running of an Amazon FBA business.
Amazon FBA Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a program set up by Amazon where you send products to Amazon to then sell online at Amazon. They sell and send out the products for you. That means you can scale your arbitrage business quickly as you don’t have to store products in your own home or waste time with postage. This gives you more time and energy to channel into other parts of your business and life.
The trick is trying to find the right products to sell via Amazon. This type of business can be highly lucrative and it’s not unusual for people to be making $80,000 per month profit on just 4 or 5 products that he sourced from China.
To really understand the Amazon FBA business and to get the right information and know-how from a seasoned pro, then I suggest heading over to FBA Stars.
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Cash Back Earnings With Rewards Shopping Sites
These days, you don’t even have to leave your house to scratch that shopping itch. If you’re an avid online shopper, you can earn money buying the things you love. Cash back websites offer a percentage of the final sale amount. Not only do you get to save some money, but the money you get back from your purchase is saved for later. A few bucks here and there from every purchase you make will accumulate pretty fast, leading to a nice payout every few months.
One of the best things about cash back websites is that you don’t have to do a thing. Once you create an account, you can connect to your preferred online shop through the platform. When you make a purchase, all of that information is instantly recorded and transferred. There’s no complicated paperwork to fill out or annoying hurdles to go through.
Some websites, such as Swagbucks (review) and eBates (review), even offer a unique browser extension. The extension will automatically initiate the cash back savings each time you visit a partnering online store. It can show you the cash you’re making and help you maximize your earnings.
How Does it Work?
Modern Cash back websites work a lot like old-school rebates. Many brick-and-mortar stores offered rebates to customers who purchased a specific product. Those rebates could then be claimed to recuperate some of the purchase prices. Cash back websites operate similarly. However, instead of being limited to a specific product, the cash back rate applies to the final purchase price. Most websites also work with a wide range of companies, giving you more shopping options. The more money you spend at the store, the more cash you can get back.
Income Potential
The amount of cash you can get back will vary from store to store. Companies partner with these stores to attract new customers. They may offer different cash back rates during big promotions or product launches. Typically, you can find rates between 5 and 10 percent. However, it’s not uncommon to see rates as high as 40 percent.
Create and Sell an Online Course
Have you ever wanted to learn more about a particular subject or topic? Chances are, you’ve turned to the internet to find a tutorial, instructional video, or class on that particular topic.
The good news is that now, anyone can easily and quickly create an online course. And one of the most popular places to create and sell online courses is Teachable.
You might be surprised what people will be willing to pay to learn from you. Whether it’s DIY skills, painting, drawing, music lessons, foreign language instruction, marketing, sales, computer programming, digital design, cooking, or handicrafts, anything that you’re skilled in can be turned into an easy stream of passive income.
Some of the most interesting niche courses currently available on Teachable include blacksmithing, learning how to fly a drone, free diving lessons, and motherhood preparation classes.
Teachable’s intuitive interface makes it really easy to create and sell a course. You’ll be asked to create an account and then set up a “school” (the “brand name” for your business) in order to start selling. Teachable has a full range of tools to help you integrate video, audio, photos, and other media into your online course. Teachable will also do all the hosting or storing of your material so that it is always instantly available to students.
Teachable offers teachers different tiers of subscriptions, including a free tier. Paid tiers include extra features and better promotion of your course(s) on their website. Payment is made via Paypal and payouts occur 30 days after the end of the month in which a sale is made. The delay is to account for any chargebacks (refunds).
Teachable includes a wide variety of third-party integrations, including email marketing providers like MailChimp and ConvertKit, quizzes and polls from Vizia, webhooks (API connectivity), and multi-step actions from Zapier. Teachable also offers assistance with marketing and promoting your class (including via social media).
Teachable also allows you to implement an affiliate program in which you (automatically) pay a small commission to anyone who successfully sells one of your courses, a great way to boost awareness of your course and attract more students!
Create A YouTube Channel
With a good camera and a bit of video-editing know-how, you can create a substantial stream of income with a YouTube channel. While many people see the video-sharing website as a fun place to view videos, it’s actually a lucrative business opportunity. Thousands of content creators make a living by creating videos for an eager audience.
Content creators make money on YouTube through ad revenue. Once you start to develop a loyal following of viewers, your videos can be monetized. While YouTube’s monetization guidelines do change frequently, they’re not very difficult to meet. Currently, you have to have at least 1,000 subscribers or 4,000 hours of viewed content. Once your videos are monetized, companies can place an ad before your content.
Depending on the particular type of videos you produce, you can even get partnerships and utilize affiliate marketing tactics. Because videos stay on YouTube indefinitely, you can continue to generate income from a single piece of content for many years to come.
One common misconception about YouTube is that you need in-depth media training to be successful. While many talented filmmakers and animators do thrive on the platform, you don’t have to be Steven Speilberg to make some money. Vlogging, or video blogging, is an easy way to keep your audience entertained while creating a sustainable passive income stream.
How Much Money Can You Make?
The amount of money you can make on YouTube depends entirely on how many views you are getting. Ad revenue is typically paid to creators for every thousand impressions. This rate, also referred to as the CPM rate, usually starts out on the lower end for new creators. You can expect to have a CPM rate of about $2.00 when you first start out. So, for every 1,000 views you get on your video, you get two bucks.
While it may not seem like much at first, that amount quickly adds up. This is especially true if you have many videos on your channel. As your videos get more popular, brands and marketing agencies will pay more to advertise on your channel. Some of the platform’s most popular creators can get CPM rates as high as $7 or more.
Sell Your Photos Online
In today’s digital world, visuals are everything. High-quality photography is always in demand. If you have a creative eye, you can easily sell your images online. You don’t even need to have any fancy equipment to start making money. All you need is a camera or smartphone.
Companies like ShutterStock, iStockPhoto, and DreamsTime connect passionate photographers with potential clients. Your photos could be purchased or licensed by advertising agencies, creative professionals, and more.
How It Works
Getting started is quite simple. You must first create an account with one of the many stock photo companies. Typically, creating an account is free. While some of these companies do have some membership requirements, they’re relatively easy to meet.
From there, you can start uploading photos and building your portfolio. Some companies, such as ShutterStock, even have a mobile application so that you can upload smartphone photos on the go. The key to being successful with stock photography is to get your content seen. In addition to making sure that your images meet all the copyright and size requirements, you’ll need to provide a quality description. Depending on the platform you choose, you may also be able to attach certain keywords to your photos so that they come up when a potential client searches for a query.
Passive Income Potential
The great thing about selling your photos online is that they will always be available to clients. Once you take the photo and submit it to the platform, your work is done. That photo can then be licensed by clients for many years to come.
When it comes to income potential, there are a lot of factors to consider. Most stock photo platform will pay a predetermined rate each time the photo is downloaded. However, that exact amount varies based on the type of purchase the client made. Typically, you can expect to earn about 25 cents for each download. That rate can go up as more of your work is downloaded and your popularity grows.
Rent Your Car for Ad Space
You know you can make money by just driving your car? I’m not talking about becoming an Uber driver. There’s a company called Wrapify that offers drivers the opportunity to earn between $100 & $600 per month by having their car wrapped with an advert and driving around town in it. Ok it’s not passive, but you’re getting paid for doing something that you would normally do anyway…drive. There is no upfront costs and drivers are paid by the mile.
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Rent Your Car
In this fast-paced world of the “gig” economy, anything and everything can be rented on an as-needed basis, including motor vehicles.
Whether you’ve got a car, truck, SUV, RV, motorcycle, bus, scooter, or another type of motorized vehicle, it’s quite an easy process to rent it out for short periods and make some fast cash.
Just as Airbnb allowed people to make money by renting out their homes (or rooms in their homes), websites like Turo allow anyone to rent out their personal vehicles on a short-term basis. Turo currently boasts listings of vehicles for rent in more than 5,500 cities around the world, including the United States, Canada, Germany, and Britain.
Whether your vehicle is a luxury car in cherry condition or a well-used stock sedan, there will always be people interested in renting it. Popular styles like electric cars (particularly Tesla and Toyota Prius), large SUVs, and sports cars (including vintage convertibles) can go for as high as $100 or more per day. Older vehicles in less popular styles (like sedans) though can still earn $20 or more per day.
Turo has a handy calculator that lets you preview just how much you can make per day or month based on where you live (which affects demand) and the model of the car you own. Turo only allows for the rental of vehicles made in 2006 or newer, however.
Competitors to Turo include HyreCar, FlightCar, Getaround, GoEuro, Silvercar, BookLogic, Enterprise CarShare, AutoLib, and Hertz Global. Each company has its own rules and regulations (including on how the renter will refuel your vehicle), so be sure to fully educate yourself before listing your vehicle.
Although some people are interested in only renting vehicles for a few hours, pretty much all of the private vehicle rental websites start with daily rates, meaning that it’ll be pretty tricky to try and rent out your vehicle during the day (such as when you’re at work) but have it returned the same evening, although many enterprising people have managed to do it!
Currently, most jurisdictions have little or no regulation or oversight over personal (non-commercial) renting of private vehicles, although this is expected to change soon as commercial vehicle rental companies push back against this intrusion into their marketplace.
Rent Your Stuff
One of the strangest yet easiest ways to make a steady stream of passive income is by renting out your personal belongings.
You’d be surprised just what people would be willing to rent from you. Popular examples include: tools, household cleaning equipment and appliances, kitchen appliances, sporting equipment, workout or fitness equipment (including home gyms), camping equipment, luggage and travel accessories, televisions, radios, high-end cameras, DJ and sound equipment, projectors, pool toys and accessories, bicycles, musical instruments, lights and lighting equipment, garden equipment and furniture, old computer systems, scooters, drones and remote-control vehicles, video game consoles and accessories, and baby and kid stuff.
There is also a huge market in renting out apparel, including shoes, dresses, men’s formalwear, women’s formalwear, casual clothing, and accessories like hats, scarves, gloves, and jewelry. This option is very popular in larger cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Probably the biggest website working in the personal item rental space is Fat Llama which is based in the UK. Founded in 2015, the company began after two London-area tech workers realized just how difficult it was to borrow tools or household appliances for short, one-off tasks.
Competitors to Fat Llama include Skipti and PeerRenters, all of which work on a similar basis. Users place “ads” for items that they have available for rent, and anyone interested in renting the item from you will make contact via the website. Items can be rented for time periods as short as one day (or a few hours) or as long as several months. And depending on where you live, posting a free ad on Craigslist can also be a great way to earn some easy income by renting out your personal items.
Whether it’s something seasonal that you rarely use (like skiing equipment) or an old item that’s slowly gathering dust in your garage or basement, practically anything that you own can potentially be rented. No matter how “niche” you think the item is or how unlikely it is to be rented, there’s probably someone out there who is looking for that very item and is more than happy to pay a few dollars to rent it from you. In some cases, there may even be more demand to rent your items than to buy them!
Always be sure to check the terms and conditions of the rental marketplace platform that you use to learn more about protections offered against theft and damage of your property.
Buy Royalties
The music industry is a multi-billion dollar money-making machine. While most people think that you have to be a musician or songwriter to take a piece of that pie, that’s not the case. Music royalties are very lucrative and can generate passive income for decades. You can purchase royalties for music that you had no part in creating. When you own those royalty rights, you’ll earn income each time that song is performed, played on the radio, or used in marketing.
It’s a relatively safe investment. Unlike real estate or stock market investments, music isn’t affected by the economy. Copyright and publishing law is also quite solid, favoring the content creators. As a result, there are a number of ways that music can make money.
Platforms like Royalty Exchange make the process of purchasing royalties very simple. When a rightsholder places their royalties for sale, the platform will perform an auction. The terms of the sale vary dramatically from auction to auction. This gives you the opportunity to make an investment that is right for you.
You don’t have to purchase all of the rights for a piece of music. Many rights-holders offer percentages. Some also offer full copyright control and other perks, allowing you to push your income potential even further.
Jamie Spencer
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That’s one heck of a list right there!
I’ve got to say, Passive income is King. Don’t get me wrong there’s a time and a place for saving, but passive income is what really changes your life.
I started my journey about 4 years ago with my first target to be to generate enough passive income to cover the cost of a case of beer a week (about $40). It took me a few months to build up the recurring income through affiliate marketing, but once I’d reached my target, I now never needed to pay for beer again.
Free beer for life :)
I then took this same approach to all of my expenses: fuel, food, electricity, mortgage… and once all of those expenses had been covered I was now officially free.
I can now live anywhere, and I choose to work on my terms. It certainly feels nice.
Anyway, thanks for the post. The more people we can get that are financially free, the more we can unleash their creative genius’. So pumped.
Peace out.
Rowan Clifford
I love that Rowan. Setting targets based on monthly outgoings :)
I think a lot of people enter affiliate marketing wanting to make $5000+ per month so they can quit work, but then they get disappointed after a few months – but maybe setting a $100 target to cover their phone bill and then another $500 target to cover their groceries would make it much more manageable.
Just an incredible bunch of ideas. You have given me and others so many valuable passive income ideas, that will no doubt inspire people to start building their own. Just one question for you….what would you say is the lowest cost passive income idea on this list?
Thanks Anup for the positive feedback on my post. I would say that the easiest and least expensive set up costs to starting a passive income source would be starting a blog. It can cost as little as $2.95 a month, but the real costs come in the form of your dedication and time sacrifice.