Passive income. That is everyone’s wish: to be able to enjoy life and earn money without going to work. In this article, I will go over some smart passive income ideas that you can take advantage of online.
So the question is: where can you start making passive income online?
This is a great way for you to quit your job and retire early. But you have to work for the passive income first before it finally comes! Passive income is NOT a get-rich-quick scheme. You will need to work to get it going. But once it is set up, you won’t have to worry about making money for years to come!
So, let’s go over these 11 smart passive income ideas using the power of the Internet.
1. Selling stock photos
How It Works
Stock photos are photographs that people can purchase the rights to use in their content to help visualize their work. You may see stock photos used in news articles, blog posts, and even YouTube videos.
If you’re okay with selling the rights to your work, then you can simply take good-looking shots of random stuff, from humans to landscapes to animals and more. Upload them to a stock photo website, and then earn sales from your photos consistently.
How to Get Started
I have an article where you can learn more about how to earn money selling your pictures, and what websites you can use to get started!
The only work you do is take the pictures. Once you list them and sell them, you make passive income.
2. Selling books and e-books
How It Works
If you like writing, you can write one awesome, outstanding book and consistently make hundreds of dollars selling your books.
When someone purchases your book, you earn a good portion of the sale.
If they buy paperback, Amazon will print your book for you and send it to your customer for you. This saves you the trouble of stocking up on books! Or, if they choose the e-book version, it is instantly sent to them through Kindle.
How to Get Started
There are several websites where you can sell your books and e-books online, but the best place I recommend is Amazon, the world’s largest online store!
After you write, format, and proofread your book on a specific topic, head over to Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). There, you can upload your book and sell it as a paperback or as an e-book in the Amazon marketplace.
As you can see, you don’t need to worry about anything! Just create the book, upload it, sell it, and make that passive income!
3. Selling courses
How It Works
Do you know anything at all about things like computer troubleshooting, a foreign language, or something simple like auto repair or cooking? You can take your knowledge and sell it to others as online courses!
Simply split up your knowledge into lessons. Then create lessons by writing in-depth articles or creating in-depth videos showing the skills that you are teaching. In some cases, you can even add a quiz for your students to complete and a certificate of completion.
How to Get Started
There are several free websites to create and sell an online course. This article will also show you how each of these websites works so you know how to get started!
After you put up your course, students who want to learn your skill will eventually find your course, buy it, and make you a passive income online! Not only do you enjoy making money, but you help hundreds of people learn in the process. Now that is rewarding!
4. Dropshipping
How It Works
Now, what is dropshipping? It’s basically where you sell a merchant’s products on your online store at a higher price and buy the product from the merchant for your customer, and you earn the profit.
Still confused? Here’s an article explaining how dropshipping works.
How to Get Started
All you need to do to get started is to create an online store with Shopify. You can also use Magento or WooCommerce. Then, just list a merchant’s products on your store at a higher price.
And, typically, dropshipping requires you to buy from the merchant every time you make a sale. However, you can turn your dropshipping into a source of passive income by simply adding a special plugin to your Shopify store, such as Oberlo.
This plugin will do the work of paying the merchant for you whenever you make a sale on your store. This basically automates the dropshipping process for you and you get to earn profits from your sales passively!
5. Affiliate marketing
How It Works
This is my absolute favorite way to make passive income online. Affiliate marketing is simply recommending someone else’s products and earning a commission for every sale you make.
To recommend a product as an affiliate, you share information with your potential customers and recommend a specific product using an affiliate link. Whenever someone buys through your link, you earn a commission. And, if you create enough information for people to see, it can turn into passive income.
You can learn more about how you can get started with affiliate marketing here.
Tips to Earn More
What’s awesome about affiliate marketing is you can actually scale your income. The best way to do this is through email marketing and creating a sales funnel.
By getting into email marketing, you can collect emails from potential buyers and continue to reach out to them, provide them with value, and promote other products that might interest them. Email marketing can really increase your chances of earning affiliate commissions.
By creating a sales funnel, you can better teach people about what kind of product you are promoting and why you believe it can really help them out. The sales funnel can convince your potential customers that the product is right for them, and with that, they might become convinced to buy it.
As you can see, affiliate marketing is powerful, and so it is my favorite way to earn passive income online!
6. Blogging
How It Works
A great way to earn passive income without showing your face is by running a blog. Simply create blog articles with information that can solve people’s problems. Then, rank your content so it is seen by search engines like Google to get traffic.
There are several ways you can make money using your blog. One way is affiliate marketing, as I talked about earlier. You can promote your products in your articles or get people to sign up for an email list and promote using email marketing.
Another way you can earn through a blog is by placing advertisements. Every time someone sees or clicks an ad, you earn a little bit of money. But the more viewers you have, the more you can earn from advertising.
How to Get Started
Starting a blog is a process, and I explain in this article how to start a moneymaking blog in six steps. Then just create good content for your blog that visitors will enjoy.
You can then promote your content and get some traffic through social media, forums, other blogs, and so on. You can also drive traffic by doing SEO and getting your articles to show up on search engines like Google. I have an article on the best ways to get free traffic to your blog here.
After you get visitors, you can monetize your content by putting affiliate links, doing email marketing, or placing advertisements through sites like Google AdSense, AdThrive, Adsterra, and many others.
Once your blog is up and you get visitors reading your blog, you can make consistent passive income for as long as your blog is online!
7. Creating YouTube videos
How It Works
If you have a good personality and don’t mind getting on camera, you can earn passive income by creating YouTube videos!
All you do is leave your videos up, get subscribers and viewers, and you get to earn money on autopilot! Just like with blogging, create content that viewers will enjoy, and then get the right people to enjoy your YouTube videos.
How to Get Started
I went over 7 ways you can make money on YouTube, and pretty much all of these ways can earn you passive income. These include placing ads, selling merchandise, and offering perks on Patreon.
Simply publish your videos, promote them on social media, and optimize your videos for SEO so they rank toward the top of the YouTube search engine. You can learn how to do SEO here.
As your videos get views and your channel gets subscribers, you get passive income!
8. Google Ads (paid)
If you have products to sell or affiliate products (see method #5), a great way to sell them is by buying Google Ads. These are ads that appear at the top of the Google search engine.
Now you will end up paying a little money for every visitor that clicks on your ad (Obviously, you pay a lot for a lot of people who view your ad) But the key here is that you earn profit for selling your products.
Just make sure you have a great product and that you have attractive landing pages that will make people want to consider buying it.
To help you out, I put together a step-by-step Google Ads guide that you can follow.
9. YouTube Ads (paid)
Just like Google Ads, you can buy paid ads in the form of videos on YouTube. I’m sure you know all the many ads that get in the way of your YouTube videos. You can become one of those ads and try to sell your product or an affiliate product this way.
Again, you end up paying a little for every view, so make sure you have a really compelling video that can convince new people to buy your product can help them out.
10. Bing Ads (paid)
Another search engine you can use to advertise your products is Bing. It is the second most popular search engine after Google. There are search visitors on Bing that can also become your potential customers.
Simply follow the same technique as you would with Google Ads. If you have a good product and sales pitch, you can make some passive income profit by paying to run ads on Bing.
11. Facebook Ads (paid)
A great place to advertise your products is on social media because so many people hang out there to interact with friends and brands they follow. One social media site that allows you to run ads is Facebook.
Simply use the Facebook Business Manager to create an ad and target the right people who would be interested in your products. The best part about Facebook Ads is that people who see your ad can be tracked and retargeted so you have a higher chance of getting someone to click on your ad, see your product, and buy it.
Again, if you do everything right, you can spend money on Facebook ads that can earn you passive income using the power of social media.
Conclusion
All in all, passive income is a great dream to pursue! But as I mentioned earlier, this is not a get-rich-quick method. You have to put in a lot of time, effort, and sacrifices before you see any passive income coming in.
This is the part not everyone is willing to do, so if you want passive income bad enough, you’d do whatever it takes to get it! Ultimately, you can enjoy the fruits of your labor as they come in. That will be the best part about passive income.
I hope this article encouraged you in any way to pursue passive income and do the work it takes to get to that point. I also hope these passive income opportunities gave you some ideas of where you can get started.
So take action and reach for the passive income that you’re meant to have in this life.