What do we mean by passive income? Essentially it is money you make while doing nothing. Imagine earning hundreds of pounds while you sleep. Then several hundred more while you take a shower and eat breakfast. How amazing would that be? Earn money without having to do anything to get it.
The truth is, passive income isn’t exactly passive. It takes some kind of action from you to initiate the eventual income. Earning money on the stock market is an example of passive income. It requires you to first research what to invest in and then invest your money. Then you sit back and watch your investment grow (and hopefully not bomb).
But if investing isn’t your thing or you don’t have a lot of money, there are plenty of other options for earning ‘passive’ income.
Passive Income from Writing
Writing for Medium (this is a referral link) is a good way of earning passive income. You blog about various topics, publish them in publications or self-publish, build your following and earn money from people reading your posts. It’s not truly passive in that you have to put the work in on writing your posts and building an audience, but once your content is on there, you can potentially earn money each month from all your posts.
Quora and Vocal are other platforms where you can earn money. Or if writing for another platform isn’t your thing, you can always set up your own blog. It will take time to build your audience but you can easily monetise your blog using Adsense or affiliate marketing.
Another option is to write a book and self-publish it on Amazon. Once the book is written then you only need to worry about marketing it. What you write about will depend on your skills and experience. Have a browse at the existing self-published books to get some ideas.
Create a Digital Product
If you have any kind of artistic skills, and even if you don’t, you can still try this. This service is available on numerous platforms such as Etsy, and RedBubble.
The idea is that you create a digital file with a design, upload it, and sell it. As it is a digital product, once a sale is made, it will automatically be downloaded; you don’t have to worry about packing and posting a physical product. If your designs are popular enough then you’ll be able to earn from your products day after day.
Create a Course
If you have specialist knowledge then you can put that to use creating a course to coach others. The hard work is in creating the course but once it’s done, you can upload it to a site like Udemy or Skillshare and watch the money roll in. If you’re stuck on how to put a course together, hire someone on Fiverr to help you.
Start a Podcast
Podcasts require planning, a decent microphone, and software though there are free options. It can also take time to build an audience – a site like Anchor.fm can help solve many of the drawbacks, and the best thing is that it’s free.
Start a YouTube Channel
Yes, people are still making big money on YouTube by showing ads on their videos. The hard part is coming up with and producing content that other people will want to watch, plus growing your audience. Eventually, you will start to see the pennies rolling in while you sleep.
If YouTube is not your thing, then you might want to consider TikTok.
Affiliate Marketing
This does involve work but you basically sign up to an affiliate network such as Amazon Affiliates and gain money with every purchase your audience makes. Your links can be on your website or blog or on social media. The hard part is growing a large enough audience to make it worthwhile.
Write an Ebook
Again, not strictly speaking a passive income option but in theory, once your book is written, then you only need people to buy it. The hard part is working out what to write about, actually write it, edit it, and design it. You can then use Amazon to publish it and handle the sales while you promote it. Once it’s written, you can be earning from it for many years to come.
Final thoughts
There’s plenty of passive income ideas out there. The great thing about the world wide web is that it opens up so many possibilities. It’s a lot easier these days to create a side hustle that brings in a few extra pennies as well as ones that bring in a lot of money. All you really need is time, effort, commitment, and possibly some startup money.
