Learn how to make passive income online. No prior experiences are needed.
In this post, we’ll talk about passive income options you can start today with or without money to invest.
Why do you need one or multiple sources of passive income?
Passive income streams can help you:
- reduce stress knowing that you have a sure source of revenue.
- save time to spend with your family and friends.
- retire early.
Also, with multiple passive income streams, you probably won’t ask:
- What if I get fired?
- what if one source of income stopped working?
Therefore, I’ll list ways to make passive income, and I’ll review them for you.
Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links from which I may earn a commission per sale.
What is passive income?
Passive income is money you earn in return for your time or money invested with little to no maintenance required.
It does involve work or investment. You work upfront and rip benefits over and over. Some passive revenue sources require upfront work + maintenance.
Sometimes, a single source can generate both active and passive revenue. The setup and usage sometimes play a huge role.
But in summary: you either earn passive revenue from time or money invested.
What are examples of passive income?
Some examples of passive income are…
- ads income
- home rental
- residual affiliate commissions.
- and more methods we’ll talk about further in this post.
In this post, I’ll talk about ways to make passive revenue online. I won’t go deeper into offline methods such as house rentals, Airbnb, etc…
Best Online Passive Income Ideas to make money while you sleep
1.- Start A Money-Making Blog
One of the best ways to make passive income is to start a blog that makes you money.
Once you start writing about a lucrative topic on your blog, you can attract traffic passively with proper SEO and discovery media.
Then when your site gets visits, you earn passive income with display ads or affiliate marketing. The more traffic that you get, the more money you make. The more buyer-intent a topic has, the higher your income will be for your traffic.
Pros: Optimized articles can get traffic years later when little maintenance.
Cons: It takes time and effort to write blog posts and grow blog traffic.
Learn how to Blog for passive money.
2.- Do Affiliate Marketing For Passive Income Opportunities
In my opinion, the best among passive income streams is affiliate marketing. You can start with little to no investment and the sky is the limit in earnings.
You can make money with affiliate marketing with or without a blog. That’s why I list affiliate marketing separately.
Here’s how affiliate marketing works: You sign up to be an affiliate for a program and you are given an affiliate link. You market that product to potential buyers. When someone clicks on that link and buys the product, you earn a commission.
You’ll also find affiliate programs that pay per free sign-up.
With programs that pay per sale, you earn either flat or residual commissions per sale. So, when you promote affiliate products with recurring commissions, you earn passive income over and over for a single sale.
Also, some affiliate programs pay up to $7500 per sale.
As I told you, it’s the #1 passive income stream that I highly recommend.
Pros: high-earnings opportunities. Easy to start (even with no money).
Cons: Fierce competition. Affiliate terms can change.
You get paid to refer people to trusted products.
3.- Invest Money to Earn Passive Revenue
You can earn a revenue share from reputed companies by investing your money.
You put your money to work for you and get a monthly cash flow.
Here’s how to invest money to generate passive income.
Option 1: Open High-Yield Savings Bank Account
With high-interest savings accounts, you earn money at better rates on your savings. It works like this:
You open an account and put money into it. Then, you earn a return on your deposits every month.
It’s a good source of passive income. The more money you put into your account, the higher your recurring monthly income will be.
With online banks, you earn a higher APY because there are fewer costs than with typical banks.
Example of online banks to consider (They are FDIC insured):
| CIT Bank | Open high-yield savings and CD Accounts. Get up to 0.60% APY. Minimum deposit: $100 Open CIT Bank Account |
| AXOS Bank | Interest up to 0.61% APY. No monthly account minimum. No maintenance fees. Open AXOS Account |
Option 2: Buy shares / Invest in the stock market
An alternative strategy to generate passive income is to invest in the stock market. You can choose stocks on your own, get an expert to do it for you, or use robo-advisors.
Pros: You can invest and own shares in popular companies such as PayPal or Thinkific.
Cons: There’s the risk that companies you invest in go out of business, and stock prices may fluctuate.
M1 Finance is one of the platforms I recommend if you want to invest in dividend-paying stocks. It can automate your trading activities and you can sign up for free.
You’ll find more information about M1 Finance fees here
M1 Finance accounts are secured with FDIC and SIPC.
- no minimum balance to open an account.
- no minimum balance to get the promoted APY.
With the M1 Finance Plus plan, you can also:
- earn up to 1% APY for a checking account.
- earn up to 1% cash back on purchases with debit cards.
4.- Sell T-shirt Designs
You can create your designs and sell them on marketplaces to earn passive income.
The marketplaces I recommend are Teespring, Spreadshirt, and ViralStyle. You can create an account for free on these platforms.
You create the designs. The Print on Demand company prints and ships the apparel. You get paid the price of the design on sale.
Pros: You get control over designs. No upfront cost. No stress dealing with shipping and delivering.
Cons: Fierce competition.
It can be a great source of active income when you create designs and promote them intensely on social media and ad platforms. Furthermore, it offers passive income opportunities.
Print-on-demand t-shirt companies get a lot of free organic traffic per month. It’s a great opportunity to create passive income online.
Here’s how:
- Do competitive keyword research to find keywords the marketplace ranks for. You can try SEMrush free trial and put spri.ng in the search bar to find high-traffic volume where Teespring ranks on the first page. It is usually keywords with commercial intent.
- Create designs to appear on those ranked pages. Optimize with proper titles and tags for the platform.
Earn money the next time buyers find these pages and pick your designs.
5.- Sell Digital Products to Create A Passive Income Stream
A digital product can be created in a day or on a weekend. Thus, it is one of the best ways to make passive income online.
Also, it is a way to make money online without a website or upfront investment.
Because you’re selling digital products, you earn a better margin per sale. And it can be mostly automated.
Sell E-books to Make Passive Revenue Online
To sell e-books and other digital downloads, find the best platform where you can get paid easily and it’s free to start.
I recommend Teespring to sell digital goods online. They pay via Payoneer and PayPal. So, US-based sellers all around the world can use Teespring to sell e-books but also music, videos, and print-on-demand apparel.
You can create a store on Teespring. Build a brand, add your custom domain, and grow passive income selling digital products.
If PayPal or Stripe is available to you, you can sell online with Convertkit’s free plan. This email marketing platform has a shopping cart integrated which can help you with your workflow.
With Amazon KDP, you can sell physical books the same way you sell e-books. It’s a print-on-demand platform.
You create your books using a text editor on your computer and upload those books on Amazon. When someone purchases your book on Amazon, Amazon will print and ship that book to the customer. Again, no upfront cost, and no inventory for a physical product.
Ways to Make Passive Income With Stock Photos & Graphics
Another passive income idea is to sell photos, graphics, and videos.
You earn passive revenue when buyers find your photos, graphics, and videos by themself. So, I’ll recommend marketplaces where people need graphics naturally.
For example, you can sell your designs on Canva Contributor. You earn money when someone buys your design individually or a share when they use it with their pro plan.
6.- Get Paid For Daily Activities
You can make money doing tasks you’d do anyway to make a passive income. You’re doing something. It’s passive income because you’re making money without trying.
Here are daily activities you can get paid for:
- Get Paid to search on Qmee.
- Get cash back on qualified purchases.
- etc…
You’re not going to be rich with this passive income stream. But it can help to cover fees such as phone bills, web hosting fees, etc…
7.- Develop an app/software
You can make passive income with an app or software.
Developers make money with apps with sponsorship, ads, or subscriptions. So, the more app users you can get, the more money you’ll make.
The software usually requires updates. Still, it’s passive income.
You can hire a developer to build an app for you and add it to places such as Google, Apple, or Microsoft App Store.
Make Money Online with Multiple Income Streams
You can use one, two, or all of these passive income ideas at once.
You’ll find more articles on AskEustache with step-by-step instructions to complete most of those tasks.