Top Ways to Earn Passive Income (And Why It’s Important!)

Earning more while working less sounds like an unobtainable dream to some people. It’s very possible though, as long as you establish some passive income. Passive income opportunities are great because it doesn’t require your direct involvement. You can earn money when you’re doing something else with your time or even when you’re sleeping.

It really is the best type of income because it allows you to have a better life balance and reach financial freedom quicker. On the flip side, people who are confused about how to create passive income opt out of giving it a chance and continue to pursue active income by trading their time for money.

While active income isn’t bad, it’s limiting. There are only so many hours in a day thus limiting how many things you can do even if you manage your time carefully. Often times, when you don’t work, you don’t get paid.

As much as I love freelancing, if I take time off for any reason, I won’t get paid until I produce some work. It’s best to diversify your income sources by mixing active and passive income strategies. This is why I freelance AND take the time out to build up my blog and my brand in the hopes that one day it can become a source of passive income for me.

Blogging does not allow you to get rich quick, but over time, you can build a stable semi-passive income from it.
The secret is, establishing passive income isn’t rocket science. We all can do it and get started early. Here are a few ways that you can start making money passively along with my favorite profitable passive income opportunities.

Start Investing, Like Yesterday

Investing is not for older people or rich people who are well off. It’s for me and you. Anyone can invest at any stage of their life but it’s best to start early so you can reap the benefits of compound interest. With investing, time is the key to success and every little bit counts. The small $100 sacrifice you make each month can yield big results later down the line.

Last year I started investing small amounts with Betterment, and I love it because it’s so easy to use especially for investing noobs like me. With Betterment, you fill out your profile and choose your investing goals, then start making monthly deposits of your choice to your investment account.

Betterment then distributes your funds into ETFs based on your portfolio allocation whether it’s stocks, bonds, or both. You can even open a Roth IRA with Betterment which was perfect for me because I’ve never worked for an employer who offered any retirement benefits.

Talk to a financial advisor about your goal to establish a diversified portfolio that can yield some passive income for you to try investing in stocks, bonds,  and ETFs on your own.

Create a Product

While investing is a slower route to earning passive income, creating a product that you can sell immediately will help create passive income quicker. Think about something useful you can create or sell again and again. Whether it’s a book or helpful tool, you’ll need to put in a lot of time and effort initially to launch the product, but once you release it and start promoting, income will flow in with minimal effort on your part.

The only thing about selling a product is that your income may fluctuate a lot because it’s hard to predict how sales will be each month. Nevertheless, it’s a great way to earn money on the side of the active income you earn.

Sell Your Products

There are many sites that help you sell your products. Here are just a few:

Etsy

Whether you’re selling digital or physical products, Etsy is a great way to get in front of thousands of customers and make some passive income. They even have a helpful forum and tools to get you started on the right foot.

TeeSpring

You can sell physical products without having to make them yourself. With TeeSpring, all you need to do is design the clothing you want to sell, and TeeSpring will print and ship them once they’re purchased. That way, you get the cash and don’t have to worry about the creation of a product.

While TeeSpring does take a percentage of your sales, it’s a great way to get into the clothing business without spending a ton of money on inventory or time creating products.

Shopify

If you want to have more control of your products and the amount of money you can make, having an independent store through a website like Shopify may work for you. You can still sell digital or physical products, but your earnings is more controlled.

Write & Sell Ebooks

If you aren’t sure what digital product to create and have writing skills, try writing and selling ebooks. With ebooks, you can write about anything you want. From romance to self-help, to fantasy, there’s not a single subject off limits when it comes to writing an ebook. As long as you’re passionate and have knowledge about the subject, you can write about it.

Interested in becoming a writer and making money with your ebooks? Check out this course.

Invest in Real Estate

Specifically speaking, become a landlord. This is one of my goals later down the road. While some people argue that investing in real estate and having tenants isn’t passive income because of the effort you will put in to maintain the property, I don’t agree.

Unless you’re spending time at your tenant’s house every day or putting in enough hours each week to justify making it a part-time or full-time job, I don’t think it compares to active income and leans more toward the passive side. Of course, you’ll have to do some work here and there and properly manage the property, but you’ll still be receiving a nice chunk of money consistently each month just for letting someone reside in a property you own. Sounds passive enough to me.

Rent Out A Room In Your Home

If you aren’t completely ready to become a landlord, you can always try renting out a room in your home first. Sites like Airbnb allow you to rent out a room, multiple rooms, guest houses, basements, and more.

Once you get the room listed, you can sit back and let the site do the work for you. All you would need to do is make sure the room is clean and ready for guests (which you could also hire out to a housekeeper).

Related: How to Make Extra Money Renting Out Space in Your Home

Affiliate Marketing

If you own a blog or website, you’re already well on your way to earning some passive income. Affiliate marketing involves a website owner or blogger promoting a third party product through a review, ad or link in order to earn a commission if their links lead to any sales.

Michelle, who owns the blog Making Sense of Cents is an excellent affiliate marketer and earns an average of $50,000 per month from affiliate sales. That’s NOT a typo. I recently took Michelle’s new course called Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing where she shares all her tips and strategies for affiliate marketing success.

The course is pretty affordable and a great investment. I’m already starting to see good results after implementing some of the things I learned in the course. There’s nothing better than making money in your sleep 🙂

If you have a good amount of traffic on your website and share information about a product or service that’s helpful to your readers, affiliate marketing can be very profitable for you.

To me, it’s passive income because once you post your review or ad, you don’t need to do much else to generate sales. If people are interested and like what you’re talking about, they will consider purchasing it. An older post has the ability to generate consistent affiliate sales.

Other Ways To Make Money Blogging

The important thing to remember about affiliate marketing is staying true to yourself and keeping your audience’s best interest in mind. It’s best to only talk about products and services that you’ve actually used and could benefit someone else.

Pursuing every random opportunity out there won’t help you earn any money or help your readers and you may have to turn down some opportunities that don’t seem right. A few months back I had someone contact me about promoting some type of eyeglasses. I declined because I don’t even wear glasses, so I don’t have much to say about what the best brand would be.

When done correctly, affiliate marketing can become a solid source of passive income.

Along with affiliate marketing, there are plenty of ways to make money blogging. Here are just a few of the posts I’ve written that cover making money with a blog.

• Start a Successful Money-Making Blog in 10 Days
• How Alexis Makes $3,000+ Per Month With Sponsored Posts
• How to Make Money with a Blog or Niche Site

More Passive Income Opportunities

While investing, blogging, and creating products are all great ways to earn passive income, there are a few more ways you can start earning passive income.

Get Cash Back

Why not get money back for the things you’re already purchasing? Most people purchase things multiple times a week, and sometimes even every day. While the cashback may not be much, it’s something you don’t have to work for.

Sites like Ebates can connect to your credit or debit card. Once you make a purchase (either online or offline), Ebates will give you a percentage of the money back. No matter where you shop, you’re almost guaranteed to get some money back.

Create YouTube Videos

While creating YouTube videos means you’ll have to put some money and work in up front, this could be another great way to earn passive income. Creating YouTube videos means you could link to your site, products, and affiliates. You could also sign up for Google AdSense and earn money when anyone clicks and watches your video.

Once you’ve created a bank of videos, you could even stop creating new videos and just use what you have to market to more people. And, you can still earn money on old videos too.

Rent Your Car for Ad Space

There are quite a few scams when it comes to advertising your car, so this is something you need to be careful with. However, there are quite a few legitimate companies that will pay you to wrap ads on your car. One of them is Carvertise.

With no upfront costs, you can apply to become an advertiser and receive a wrap for your car. While the earnings aren’t much (typically $100-$150 a month), you don’t have to do anything other than drive your car around. And since you’re most likely already doing that, that’s an easy $1,200 in your bank account every year.

Have you tried to establish any sources of passive income yet? Why or why not?