Best Passive Income Ideas To Start Making Money Without Working
As someone who wants to achieve financial freedom, passive income streams are what you need to be focusing on. These passive income stream ideas will help you figure out what kind of income streams work best for you.
When thinking about creating passive income streams, there are quite a few to choose from. Of course, the more you have, the better.
What Are Passive Income Streams?
Passive income streams are different ways you receive consistent income without needing to put much effort in.
That is not to say you don’t need to put in effort at all and the money will just start appearing in your bank account. Most of these will require some kind of initial investment whether it is your time and effort or money.
After you have set up systems for the income source, then it will require minimal effort to maintain it.
Real Estate
To build a passive income stream with real estate, you will need to be acquiring rental properties.
This could end up paying off in a very big way but it also needs a sizable amount of money. There are ways to use other people’s money as well as getting a traditional mortgage.
If you do have a cash down payment and can get a mortgage, then jump in, but not before doing your research. You will want to make sure that you will get a good return on the kind of investment you’re making.
As you may know, the properties do need to be managed but you can hire out for that. Ask around about the best property managers in your area and hire out the things such as maintenance and tenant placements.
Crowdfunded Real Estate
If you’re not that into getting rental properties, then crowdfunding real estate is what could be just the thing for you.
This is an online platform where you can invest your money. Then that money is actually invested into real estate and you get dividends payed out to you.
Of course, as with anything, the more you invest, the more you will see a return. Fundrise and Rich Uncles are two great platforms to start investing.
Lending Money
You can become a private money lender for real estate in your community or online. This way you can see bigger and faster returns on your money since you can control the terms.
Another way to get started as a lending partner, you can start lending on a site such as Lendingclub. Some lenders there reach a return rate of 12% to 14%. It is a great way to grow your money with minimal work.
This can be a great option to borrowers as well as lenders. Borrowers may get better rates than they might at a bank, while lenders are making their money work for them with great returns.
Blogging
Starting a blog takes up a huge amount of work in the beginning and you might not see a return for a while.
However, once you have content on your site, have a good amount of readers coming to your site and have monetized, you can sit back more and enjoy the income stream.
You will still want to maintain it and write a few articles but once other websites know you, people will still keep coming to your blog.
This works well if it is a blog teaching other people how to blog. You set up your courses and just keep on adding a few articles while maintaining a bit of customer service for your courses.
If you’re not much of a writer, you can hire out people to write posts for your blog. This will free up even more of your time and allow you to manage other things.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a big passive income part of a blog if you set it up that way. One post can keep on bringing in income years down the line.
As long as you know how to set up affiliate links well into your content, then you are well on your way to big earnings from affiliates. If you want to learn more about how to do affiliate marketing with your blog, check out Michelle’s course Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing.
The best part about this is that you don’t have to spend time creating your own courses. You can use affiliate marketing in other ways, including Pinterest.
You don’t even have to spend time on creating a huge amount of content for a blog if you use affiliate marketing on Pinterest. For that you will need to join affiliates and then create pins. If people click through on your pins and purchase something then you will keep on getting a commission just for them using your link.
Stocks
Purchasing stocks can help you increase your passive income portfolio. You have to do plenty of research to find the well performing stocks to make sure you get the most out of your money.
To see bigger dividend checks, you will have to invest a significant amount of money upfront as well.
To get started, a great place to invest is M1 Finance. It is a great and free investing platform that allows you to get started with just $100 dollars.
You can pick and choose how many stocks you want to purchase and what percentages of those stocks you want to keep in your portfolio pie. It’s a great platform to get started and easy to use if you have never invested before.
High Yield Bank Account
Why have your money just sit in a bank account and get nothing out of it, if you can put it in a bank account that is adding money to it?
There are bank accounts that actually have an interest rate and it doesn’t have to be a savings account. Check out some of your more local banks.
That is how I found a local bank that pays an interest on the checking account of up to 25,000 dollars which could be several hundred dollars of passive income per year. Unlike some national banks, local banks are more likely to have rewards like that. You can also use an online bank such as Chime.
Book
As you may have noticed, many millionaires and successful people have written books. In many ways they are trying to help people and give back to the society because many of them believe in the power of giving.
Although that is not the only reason. A book is also another passive income stream that once you’ve put in the work, needs very little maintaining. People just purchase your book and you get the proceeds.
Ebook
An ebook is similar to writing a book but it is getting more popular as the online world is growing. What is great about writing an ebook is that it doesn’t have to be that long.
Usually ebooks are a “How to” that teach people how to do something. Bloggers make use of this along with courses to have an extra income stream while teaching people to do what they do.
Printables
This one is also great for bloggers or if you have another selling platform. People are always looking for printables of budgets, meal plans, and workout schedules.
You can create printables for all to be a one stop shop or just pick a niche and do different printables for one category. This is great to sell if you already have traffic or an audience of some kind.
Etsy
Etsy is the biggest online platform for crafty sellers. You can create digital products to sell on Etsy and once you have the listings up, you don’t need to create or ship anything out. That way people can just buy and download them and you have to do very minimal work with managing some customer service.
Some things you can create:
- Planner Printouts
- Inspirational Quotes for computer or wall
- Art Printables
- Greeting Card Designs
- Editable Resumes
- Marketing Designs (Such as Canva Templates)
Get creative, especially if you are very good at design!
Create a Design
If you are good at design, then you can create logos or fun designs that people can buy for their mugs or t-shirts.
How this works is you upload your designs to a site like Zazzle and then just wait for a buyer to come by. Once a buyer picks out your design to go on their merchandise, then you get a commission for your design.
Storage Units
Self storage units can be a great way to increase your income with minimal work. While there is still work that needs to be done, it is mostly when a customer needs to move in or move out.
You can hire employees to oversee some of the things to make it even more passive and just collect your checks.
Youtube
Many Youtubers with a huge amount of followers have become self-made millionaires.
The best thing about it is that you don’t need a huge number of subscribers to be able to monetize. With a medium sized channel, you can still be making several hundred dollars a month comfortably. You just need to have a knack for creating engaging and interesting content.
Rent Out a Room
If you have a spare room that you’re not using, turn it into cashflow. Using Airbnb you can rent out your room whenever you like. After letting in your guests and giving them a key your role remain passive until the moment they leave.
If you have a separate place or entrance such as a furnished basement, you can even put a lock-box on the door to let your guests in so that you don’t even have to be present. Once they leave, there are just a few things to clean up.
You can do this yourself or again hire out for the cleaning and even the listing management and bookings, to make it more passive.
Rent Your Things
If you have equipment that people might not want to buy but just need for a little while, you might want to consider renting some of it out.
Some of these things can be camera equipment and outdoors gear. Let’s say a person is going camping and at the last minute they decide they want to grab a canoe with them.
They can easily look up who is renting a canoe and take it out for a few days without needing to go buy one. That way they don’t have the item laying around not being used to much and neither do you.
Make sure to not rent out anything that a person can get easily injured with so that you don’t have any complications.
Amazon
The reason Amazon can be pretty passive is because of the fulfillment warehouse they have. When you purchase your inventory, you have the option to send it into the warehouse.
From there, they store it for you and send it out once someone purchases your item. This is much more passive than other platforms such as eBay where you have to store and ship all of the items yourself.
Cash Back Apps
If you are already going to purchase something that you need, why not make an extra cash back on that purchase?
You are leaving money on the table if you are not using any of the cash back apps. If you’re making a purchase on your phone you can use apps such as Dosh and Spent. For purchases on the computer, Rakuten is a great option. Just sign up for an account and add the icon to your web browser.
Dropshipping
To start a dropshipping store, you will need to open an account with a platform such as Shopify. This lets you set up an online store website.
After that you need to find items you want to feature in your store. This can be through Alibaba or Oberlo. With just a few clicks, the products can be seamlessly added to your store.
The best thing for a store like this is to have a niche. Womens clothing and beauty items do very well, but you want to make sure to have things in your store that are unique and can’t be found easily in a local store.
For example, you can make a store with products for bearded men very successful. People will know to come to your store if they want something that they can’t get somewhere else.
When you have everything set up and have a good stream of people coming in, as people start learning more about your store, it can be pretty passive as you do not deal with any inventory.
Online Course
People go online these days to learn something new. Why not give them what they are looking for.
If you know how to do something well, create an online course. Bloggers are already catching on to that, although, you do not need to have a blog to create a course. You will just need to figure out a way to advertise to bring traffic to your courses.
Photography
Photography is everywhere. If you are someone who captures amazing photos, start getting payed for them. You can create stock photos and get paid every time someone downloads your photo. You will just need to upload your photos to a website like Shutterstock.
This site only pays 25 cents per photo downloaded and it may take a while to build up a portfolio. However, once you have several hundred photos, you may start getting hundreds of downloads a month which adds up and becomes completely passive.
You can also make your own photography blog or your own little stock photography website within a niche.
Create An App
There are thousands of apps that people use on a daily basis. Whether it is a health app, social app or a game, there is much potential here.
If you have an awesome idea for an app but haven’t done anything with it yet because you don’t know where to start, there is an online platform that was created to make it easier.
Goodbarber is an online platform that allows you to create an app even if you have no coding skills (like WordPress for bloggers). You are able to monetize and receive income by displaying advertising on your app.
Create a Business System
When you build up or purchase a business, you have the ability to put systems into place. This means you need to hire out and place the right managers to run the daily operations.
When that is in order you don’t need to be present every day for your business to run smoothly.
Bumped App
When you purchase through this app at partnering brands, you receive free stock in those companies. So, you are investing in stock at the same time as you are shopping.
You can either keep the shares and watch them grow which can benefit you greatly down the line, or you can sell off your shares and transfer the money into your bank account.
There are no fees but the downside is you do have to get on a wait list before you are accepted. However, if you refer a few people you will get bumped up to get invited earlier.
Musical Pieces
If you have a musical talent to create catchy songs, then you have the potential to earn passive income with it.
When you record a song, you have the option to license it and distribute. In a way this can be stock music (like stock photos). That way anytime someone wants to use your music in their production or performance, they have to ask permission and pay you.
You can earn thousands off of just one piece if it is used over and over again.
Ready To Start Making Passive Income?
In order to reach financial freedom, you will need to be setting up as many passive income streams as you can. It is a long-term strategy that will build up over time.
Choose a couple of things that sound interesting to you and start trying them out to see what kind of passive income streams you want. Then keep on building them up until your income is replaced and you can live off of the income that these income streams bring in.