20 Best Passive Income Ideas That Actually Work: Making money is great, but making money without having to work for it is even better. That’s what passive income is all about. You want to money coming in whether you’re awake or asleep. You want to be able to take as many days off as you like without worrying about vacation days. The goal is to experience life without constantly worrying about money. It’s about becoming self-reliant in a chaotic world.
There are a lot of ways to make a passive income. Some require very little effort while others need a bit more work. But the best passive income ideas are the ones that actually work. There are lots of lists, guides and tutorials on ways to earn a passive income, but it’s usually the same saturated ideas that have been repackaged. I want to show you something different.
So, here are some of the best passive income ideas that actually work.
Passive Income Ideas Requiring Investment
There are plenty of ways to earn passive income, but of course, some of them will require some form of investment.
If you want to invest in real estate, stocks, or something else, you will need some money to start off with. Here are the best ways to get started.
1. Dividend Stocks
A dividend stock is a publicly traded company that shares profits with shareholders. These profits are called dividends.
Dividend stocks are easy money. You buy shares into a company and hold onto them – no day trading. Every month, your dividends are paid out to you automatically. This is how the company shares its profits with its shareholders.
One of the best places to buy stocks is with a company called eToro. They have a wide range of stocks to choose from and are available in most countries.
2. Crypto Investments
Crypto gets a bad name because of its volatility, but a lot of people have made a lot of money from it. Cryptocurrencies are simply a digital currency. Most of us use our cards or phones to make payments these days. Most people don’t carry physical cash on them. We are moving into only using digital currency, which makes bitcoin much less scary.
Crypto, like stocks, can go through bull (good) and bear (bad) markets. If you buy a good stock during a bear market and sell it during a bull market, you’ll likely multiply your investment multiple times over.
Yes, you can lose your money if you wait too long, but with the high risk, there’s also a very high reward. Just don’t get greedy. Do proper research on the coin that you want to invest in and make sure that you have a solid target to withdraw at.
My favorite website for buying and selling cryptocurrrencies is called Binance. They have excellent security on their platform, as well as an emergency insurance fund in-place to ensure that users funds are always covered, even if the platform is hacked.
3. Rental Properties
Rental prices are ridulous everywhere in the world. Landlords have been make a killing with these rises in prices. So if you want to build long-term wealth, property investment is where you should be looking. When you invest in property, you generate a monthly cash flow as well as knowing that your property will appreciate in value as the years go by. The sooner you get on the property ladder – the better off you’ll be.
Best of all, you don’t only have to be a landlord to enjoy these benefits. There are many ways to make money with rental properties without being a hands-on owner. You can make this process completely passive by outsourcing the running of your properties to a management company.
With the right property, you can enjoy passive income and long-term appreciation. Roofstock is the #1 platform for remote real estate investing and has tons of great properties to get you on the property ladder.
Passive Income Ideas Requiring Time
If you don’t have money to invest into earning a passive income, perhaps you have some free time on your hands. You’ll need to put in some elbow grease to get things up and running, but once you do, you can just sit back and watch the money come rolling in. Below are some of the best ways to use your time to make money online.
4. Sell Digital Products on Creative Fabrica
One thing that worked really well for me was selling digital products on Creative Fabrica. If there’s something that you’re passionate about, it’s not difficult to turn that into a full-time income. With digital products, there’s no inventory or shipping to worry about. You can sell your products and customers can download them immediately.
You might be a graphic designer, a photographer, a crafter, or just someone who’s willing to learn. There’s always a new emerging market on Creative Fabrica. You can sell fonts, images, patterns, vectors, etc. The options are endless and can be catered toward a theme that you have an interest in.
You can find out more here: Become a Creative Fabrica Contributor and Open a Shop
5. Sell Print-On-Demand T-Shirts
Print-on-demand has become the hot new way of making money online. Print-on-demand simply means that you create the digital design, upload it the POD company – and they will handle the printing, postage and delivery. Your design could be printed on t-shirts, mugs, bags, or a bunch of other products. The POD company will take their cut to cover all their expenses and you’ll be left with a bit of profit from every sale.
One of the biggest headaches with selling products online is having to deal with unhappy customers. Some POD companies handle complains and returns, so you’ll never have to deal with another angry customer again. All you need to focus on is making high quality designs. It’s not difficult to learn to do, as lots of people still purchase simple text designs on t-shirts. However, you can also buy professional designs to use.
The best place to buy designs for t-shirts is with a company called Vexels. They have a ton of high quality vectors (images that don’t lose quality when resized) that are made by professional designers. And they are the only company I’m aware of that allows you to use images as is. This means that you don’t need to alter images or mix them with text in order to use them on t-shirts.
Another great company for vectors is Creative Fabrica – which I’ve mentioned earlier. It’s great for digital products and they have lots of designs that you can use for your POD products as well.
And as for uploading your products. There are 3 main places that you need to know about. The first is a website called RedBubble. It’s a marketplace for unique and interesting designs. You can place your designs on t-shirts, water bottles and even puzzles. It is open for anyone to join.
The second one is called Merch By Amazon. This is where most people earn big bucks. You’ll be selling your designs directly on Amazon, so you’ll be reaching a huge audience. However, you have to apply to this program and it may take months before you find out if you’ve been accepted or not. It always helps to show a portfolio of previous designs, so I’d recommend getting some t-shirts up on RedBubble first before applying.
Finally, we have Printful. Printful is slightly different from the 2 options above. Instead of the price of printing and postage coming out of the initial sale of the product – you’ll need to cover these fees upfront, and then recover them when you get paid. Printful does this because it is not a marketplace, but rather a supplier of various products. You can sell your products on your own website, on Etsy, eBay or anywhere else you like. You’ll have access to their full catalog of products, but you will have to pay the basic cost price of each item whenever someone orders it. You’ll also need to deal with any complaints or returns.
6. Promote Affiliate Products
Affiliates earn a commission on every sale that they refer. And they don’t need to create any products themselves in order to do this. Lots of people advertise products of other companies and collect their commissions at the end of the month.
There are thousands of affiliate programs out there to choose from, so you can promote products that interest you, and that your audience will love. And once you get the hang of it, you can start earning passive income every day.
If you want to find out more about affiliate marketing, check out our article on the Highest Paying Affiliate Niches.
7. Start a Blog
Blogs are great ways to earn money if you enjoy writing content. You can write about topics that you’re passionate about and make money from readers. If your content is really good, your audience will start growing with minimal promotion. Once you have a large enough following, you can start to earn money from ads or from affiliate sales. And once your blog is setup correctly, you can automate mostly everthing.
You don’t need to be an amazing writer to be a blogger. You simply need to be committed to putting aside some time regularly to create content that people will enjoy, or to hire someone who will.
8. Create E-Books to Sell on Amazon
Another great option for writers is to write and sell ebooks on Amazon KDP. You can write about anything that interests you, and there’s a good chance there are others out there who would be interested in reading what you have to say.
The great thing about selling e-books on Amazon is that once you create the book, it can continue to sell for years with very little effort on your part. You can also create an ebook series, which is an even better way to make passive income. You always need to read the sequels.
It doesn’t matter whether you prefer fiction or non-fiction – there are always going to be people eager to buy different types of books – either to escape into a magical world or to learn something new. If you have a knack for writing, then why not try to make some money from that skill.
And if you’re not any good, there’s still hope. With the latest AI tools, you can write incredible fictional stories that read like they were created by a professional author. And I’m not talking about the garbage you’d get from ChatGPT prompts. This is exciting and inspired fiction.
You can find out more here: How to Write a Novel Using AI (ChatGPT/Sudowrite/Claude)
9. Sell Low Content Books on Amazon
Low content books are still creating passive income for lots of people online. Some say that it’s completely saturated, but it’s really more about finding the right niches to target. If you don’t know what low content books are, then here’s a quick walkthrough. Using Amazon KDP (a print-on-demand book service on Amazon) you can create books that have little to no content in them, and sell them on Amazon’s marketplace. These books include things like notebooks (simple lined books), organizers (books with dates) and log books (tracking books).
We created a lot of low content books ourselves, so we know that they still make regular sales. If you don’t have any ideas to get started, don’t worry. Here are 40 low content book ideas that you’ll love.
10. Sell Puzzle Books on Amazon
Puzzle books (or medium content books) are what you’d find between low content books and novels. They cover things like sudoku, word search and cryptogram books. Each page will have unique and interesting content, so they do not necessarily fit under the low content banner. However, that doesn’t mean that they are difficult to make.
Creating puzzle books used to be quite difficult but as the popularity of these books increased, better tools that have been developed to help people create beautiful puzzles with almost no effort. My favorite tool is the Puzzle Generator for PowerPoint . As the name suggests, you do need to have PowerPoint on your PC or Mac in order to use it. But it gives you access to a slew of different types of high quality puzzles, as well as tools to help you create and edit your puzzle books.
11. Selling Your Photos Online
Ever wonder where stock photos come from? People with good cameras upload their photos and videos to stock sites and earn a commission every time someone uses it for a project. You can make some decent money by simply uploading your interesting shots.
There are a few things to keep in mind when selling your photos, but it’s overall a fairly easy process. Plus, what could be better than getting paid to take pictures? Of course, not all of your photos will be sold, but if you have a large portfolio of high-quality images, you could be making a nice side income from this.
If you already have a good camera and a large number of images laying around, then this could be a great way to make some use of them. If you don’t then you may want to start with a different one of our ideas and come back to this one once you’ve built up your portfolio.
One of the best places to buy and sell images is on Shutterstock. They are known for providing high quality images. You’ll need to follow certain guidelines to get your photos accepted, but they will clearly explain their current guidelines to you in advance.
12. Licensing Music
Do you have a knack for making great music? If so, you could be making passive income by licensing your music. Here’s how it works: people who need music for their project will look through the catalog of a music licensing company and purchase the rights to use songs they like. If they use your song, you’ll get paid for it.
If you’re interested in making money from your music, look into the best music licensing company that focuses on your style of music. PremiumBeat is a really good company to submit your music to. They accept a diverse range of different genres, so you can let your creativity fly free. However, it can take up to 4 weeks for them to review your initial submission before letting you know if you’ve been accepted or not.
13. Starting a YouTube Channel
YouTube channels can make a lot of money if you can get enough views. I’m sure you’ve noticed ads popping up on YouTube videos that you watch. These ads create revenue for the channel owner. You have people watching your content 24/7, so you’re always making money.
While waiting to meet the requirements for monetization, you can still earn money by promoting affiliate offers. It’s the same as with blog posts. You create content and recommend products/software that you’re affiliated with. You’ll get a commission for every sale made.
And if you combine your channel’s main focus with other trending topics, you can bring in a wave of new views and subscribers and get monetized much faster. To get started, all you need is a camera, a good mic and some editing software. You can then film yourself talking about a topic you’re passionate about, or something that you think would be interesting to others.
That new mic and camera will also come in handy if you decide to try out our next few passive income ideas…
14. Sell Your Services on Fiverr
There are people looking for a variety of small jobs to have done for them. Fiverr lets anyone generate income by offering services to people who need these jobs done. You create a profile for your service on their marketplace, and you’ll get a lot of eyes viewing it. If you have a skill like graphic designing, being a voice artist or a developer, there’s always work for you on Fiverr.
Jobs on Fiverr are called gigs. A gig can be pretty much anything that’s in demand. If you can draw well, you can get paid to draw specific artwork for clients. If you can speak well, you can get paid to do voiceovers for other people’s videos. There are tons of different services that you can offer, and people may be interested in. If you have a very niche hobby or skill, try checking if anyone else is offering a related service on Fiverr. You may be the only person offering that specific need.
And if you can find something you’re good at that you can replicate at scale, you can turn these online gigs into passive income. Look at ways that you can automate your services to complete them in bulk. Some people even run agencies on Fiverr and outsource the outsourced work.
15. Create Courses
Courses are everywhere because they’re such a great way to make money. As soon a new product or software is released, there’s a new course for it. Whenever there’s a new technologic advance, sometone is sure to make a course on how to use it.
At the moment, AI is very new and hot, so if you can find a subniche to target, you could potentially sell a lot of course. Creating a course can be a great way to create a passive income. You can work at your own pace while creating it, and there’s no limit to how much you can earn. Anyone that speaks the same language as you can purchase your course from anywhere in the world.
One of the best places to upload your course to is a site called Udemy. It’s quite possible that you’ve heard of them before, or even done one of their courses.
Semi-Passive Small Business Ideas
There are a number of small business ideas that can be semi-passive in nature. This means that they require less hands-on work than most other types of businesses, but are not completely passive.
They will still require some level of effort and work on your part. Here are some great semi-passive small business ideas to consider.
16. Open a Dropshipping Store
Dropshipping is when you sell a product to a customer without keeping any products in stock. Whenever you get an order, you simply order it directly from a wholesaler and have it shipped directly to your customer. You work as a sort of middleman between the customer and the product. You find items that are priced low (usually from China), and you sell them at a markup. It still works and you can still make a lot of money doing it. You just need to find the right product.
Have you ever seen those adverts on Facebook for a free product (usually a watch/bracelet) that only requires you to pay a shipping fee? Those are dropshipped products. That shipping fee you pay is enough for the seller to buy the item from the manufacturer/wholesaler, pay for postage, and still make money on top.
You’ll also see a lot of similar dropshipped watches/bracelets on Instagram. If you have a lot of Instagram followers, you can start promoting similar products and start your own dropshipping business.
And if you don’t have a lot of followers, that’s not a problem either. Most large Instagram accounts earn money by promoting other people’s products through Sponsored Posts or Sponsored Stories. You can message your favorite Instagrammer and ask for their promotional post prices to see how much they charge.
See: Dropshipping 101: How to be Successful at Dropshipping
17. Rent Out Your Place
If you already have a place of your own, you can make some extra money by renting it out on Airbnb. Hell, you don’t even need to rent out your whole place – you can just rent out a single room and still make money. It’s a great way to passively earn income.
You’ll need to make sure that your place is up to code and meet all the safety requirements set by Airbnb. You might also want to give the area a paintjob to spruce it up a bit. If you make your place look good and inviting, you can start building up your review score and get more bookings.
18. Rent Out Your Storage Space
It’s not just your flat that’s in demand. Lots of people also need storage space. Neighbor lets you rent out your storage space to others in your community. You can rent out your garage or a room you’re not using. It’s a nice way to profit from your extra space without having people on your property often.
If you’ve ever had to move last minute and had too many boxes to cart away, you’ll know how frustrating it is. Storage spaces are usually very expensive and sometimes pretty far away. Services like Neighbor are a cost-effective way to store your belongings nearby at a decent price
19. Rent Out Your Car
The next thing left to hire out is your car. Instead of paying expensive fees for an Uber, you could hire a car from someone nearby and use it for as long as you need to. Hyrecar lets car owners list their cars for free and set their own rental prices. They can also choose whether to approve or deny each rental. And HyreCar vets each driver before they can use the service.
If you’re looking for a way to make passive income, renting out your car could be a great option for you.
20. Vending Machines
An easy business to start and run is a vending machine business. Vending machines are a great way to make passive income with very little effort on your part.
To get started, you just need to find a good location for your machine. If you can find a high traffic area, it’ll be easier to make sales. You’ll have to negotiate with the business owner on how much you plan to pay them each month. A percentage fee is best, as you’ll still make some money even if sales are low. Once you’ve secured a good spot, you’ll need to buy a new or used vending machine online, stock it and collect your profits.
Vending machines are a great way to earn passive income without having to put in a lot of work. You just need to ensure that they remain stocked.
You can find out more here: How to Start a Vending Machine Business
The Best Passive Income Ideas That Actually Work
Those are some of the best passive income ideas that actually work. They may not make you a millionaire overnight, but they can get you out of your 9 to 5 job. If you’re looking for ways to make extra money without having to put in a lot of effort, these ideas are worth considering.
There’s no need to be an expert in any of these areas to get started. Just pick one and give it your best shot. Soon, you’ll be able to start generating passive income.
