Passive Income Ideas – 37 Best Opportunties to Start Today (Detailed)

Passive income is the greatest kind of income you can have.

Because with passive income you earn money even when you aren’t actively working (for example, when you’re sleeping, eating, or spending time with your family).

It’s a fact that very few people get extremely wealthy in this world by directly trading hours for dollars.

Instead, with passive income you can have multiple income streams running simultaneously, each earning you money around the clock.

Sound too good to be true?

I used to live paycheck to paycheck, but almost by fluke came across some of the passive income ideas and methods below and decided to try them.

And it’s how I made several hundreds of thousands of dollar over the years, $36,000 in the beginning with a tiny blog (on auto-pilot), and how I had an over $40,000 month with one of my small online stores (which I don’t even have inventory for).

Nowadays all of my income comes from passive income streams and I earn more money than I ever could have before when I was trading dollars for hours.

Today I’m going to show how you can do the same.

What is Passive Income

Passive income is simply earning money when you aren’t actively working.

In other words, you’re no longer trading hours directly for dollars.

Instead, what you’ll do is put in the hours up front at the beginning and create something of value, which then earns money when you aren’t actually working on it.

Sure, it can require maintenance, and depending on what your passive income idea is a lot of things can vary, such as how much maintenance and ongoing work is required or the time it takes to initially create.

But it’s always a heck of a lot better than trading dollars for hours and making some other passive income entrepreneur (your current boss) rich.

One classic example of a passive income model we all know of is an author.

The author puts in time and work in the beginning to create a book which then continually sells despite the fact he/she isn’t working on it anymore.

Thus, the author ends up earning money around the clock (assuming the book is good and actually sells).

Yes, a lot of time and effort might go into advertising and marketing the author’s book, but once that’s taken care of the book essentially earns money day and night as stores sell the book for the author.

At this point, the author can go and work on other books or projects while income from their previous book keeps flowing in.

Now I know what you’re thinking, we all know about being an author, and if you could be a successful author you would.

That’s why you’ll love this next part.

Earning Passive Income Online

What you might not know is that the internet has opened up an entire new realm of opportunities for earning passive income, and often without the level of skill or investment required for more traditional passive income models of the past.

That’s why, having no prior skills myself, and literally only a few hundred bucks to my name at the time, I was able to create multiple online passive income streams which allow me to earn a full-living.

A good example of online passive income is a blog that earns money from advertisements placed on articles, or even just your favorite youtuber (for example, earning through ads in videos or by donations).

Because both of these are earning money around the clock even when the owner is not present… of course, they’re also online.

But let’s get to what’s most important.

What can YOU do to make hundreds or thousands of dollars per month with passive income whether offline or online?

That’s exactly what this list below is for:

Passive Income Strategies

Since there are many ways to earn passive income online, this is a long list and guide.

The list is divided into two parts:

• Part 1: The Most Profitable Methods (which contain the most details since there is more to do here).
• Part 2: The Quickest and Easiest Methods (stuff that can have you either immediately making money or in a position to ASAP).

Below is a table of contents of passive income sources; clicking on any of the links within it will take you to that part of the guide.

1. Start a Blog

This one is my favorite.

I’ve learned that over the years having passed up multiple money-making opportunities to further pursue blogging.

Blogging is what has made me over $36,000 when I first started, and several hundreds of thousands of dollars since.

The beauty of a blog is that it’s incredibly versatile and the possibilites are practically endless.

Blogging can therefore become an incredibly versatile passive income money-making-machine if done correctly.

Consider:

• If you’ve ever wanted an outlet to express your thoughts and ideas, then a blog might be for you.
• If you have any particular skills, passions, or hobbies, then a blog might be for you.
• If you want a new hobby, or even if you don’t think you have anything to write about but are willing to learn, then a blog might be for you.

Have you worked as a real estate or travel agent? Sold cars? Good with financials?

Are you into fitness or nutrition? What about conspiracy theories, recipes, or food? Good with photography, photoshop, graphic design, drawing, or making comics?

Do you have crazy kids or mommy stories? Are you a clean freak? A vegan? Have strong political opinions. Into DIY stuff, science, home organization, decorating, etc?

Ask yourself: do you have any hobbies or interests you’d like to pursue and could potentially write about after learning something?

The point is that no matter what topic you pick there are always going to be people in this world who are interested and know less about it than you do.

And you can earn money from this.

You would be amazed by the amount of people earning over $100,000 a month posting food recipes/pictures, telling mommy stories, or even posting a seemingly endless amount of funny cat pictures on their blogs.

Buzzfeed, for example, is a multi-million dollar blog that essentially just posts other peoples funny and interesting pictures all day (they literally just take other peoples images from reddit and blog posts), as well as those really basic quizzes, and earns over a hundred million dollars in annual revenue.

But you don’t have to run a blog like BuzzFeed.

Blogs can earn money by:

• Placing ads (for example, Google Adsense) within articles, which then earn you money whenever someone sees them or clicks on them.
• Leveraging your blog audience to sell your own e-books, guides, or other informational products on your topic to people.
• Having a store section on your blog where you can sell merchandise, supplements, or physical products to your readers.
• Recommending someone’s products or services (for example, Amazon or BestBuy products, other people’s courses or books, services, etc) for a cut of the sale (known as affiliate marketing).
• Renting out digital advertising space on your blog to an established company for a fee.
• Reviewing an established brands product(s) (for example, Sephora makeup) for money.
• And more.

For example, when I first got into this online income stuff I didn’t have anything to write about (I’m unimaginative), so I made a blog reviewing/overviewing popular treadmills you could buy from Amazon.

I actually never used the treadmills; I simply reworded the reviews from Amazon customers and did some product/company research to give people a good idea of what that treadmill offered and the public’s opinions of it.

Now whenever someone was sent from one of my treadmill articles to that particular treadmill on Amazon, I received a commission % on their entire purchase order if they bought something (anything).

My first check I made this way was $40 (i.e. someone bought a treadmill), then $80, then over $100, then $800, etc.

Nowadays, I like making more authoritative-style (like food or nutrition, etc) or passion-driven blogs (food or DIY, etc), but the prior kind of product review blogs still work too.

Overall, blogs can be a fantastic platform to bring your personality, ideas, creations, and your products to life, and to the attention of others who are interested.

They can earn anywhere from a couple of bucks to tens of millions of dollars.

I offer a guide on my site on how to setup your blog along with a lot of other steps to make it successful after that.

2. Create an Online Store (Ecommerce)

Thanks to the power of the internet you can now run an entire store by yourself, from your couch, in your underwear, and without even having to spend any money on inventory.

It has never been easier to create an online store than it is today.

For under $10 a month ($2.95 with our coupon), you could have a store up and running by tomorrow if you really wanted.

Best of all, it’s a passive income business because you don’t actually have to be there selling stuff like you would in a traditional brick and mortar store.

Basically, you’ll be using your online store as a front to list your products and accept payments.

Everything can be set up so it’s hands off and the money from customers purchases goes immediately into your bank account. Then you simply send them the product.

There are many ways to do this:

• Make and ship your own products (for example, soaps, crafts, bath bombs, beef jerky, etc).
• Sell your old stuff (for example, clothes, collectibles, antiques, etc) online.
• Buy stuff locally and re-sell it higher online (for example, garage sales, clearance stores, local shops, discounted products from big box stores, etc).
• Sell and ship products you’ve already purchased (like a regular store typically does).
• Buy cheap products from China and then sell them online on your store for significantly more.
• Dropship someone elses products at the retailer, wholesaler, or manufacturer level (no inventory and no risk).

My first online store was just a little one selling about half a dozen beauty products.

Since I didn’t have much money back then, I managed to find a dropshipper so I didn’t have to carry any inventory.

Dropshipping is when you sell a product but don’t actually own it (have any stock).

So lets say a customer buys a product from your store, you would then go to another store that actually sells the product and buy it on behalf of your customer (without telling your customer).

Then, that company would ship the product to your customer without their branding (or they could put your branding) on the box.

This way the customer thinks the product came from you all along.

Technically, you could do this with any store, but unless they offer a dropshipping program your customer is going to see another companies logo on their product and wonder what’s going on.

Dropshipping is basically just a way of being able to sell products without carrying inventory, and its a tried-and-true model that many people have built massive multi-million dollar businesses from.

In my case, I found an online retailer with a dropshipping program offering 30-50% off every beauty product I bought from them.

I’d then sell it to the customer on my store for full price.

Then, I’d head to the my dropshipper, buy it at the 30-50% off and tell them to ship it to my customer without their branding on the box.

The customer gets their order and everybody wins.

I actually only make around $10-$20 a sale on average this way.

But that tiny store (still tiny; 6 products) ended up making over $40,000 a month.

Here’s an example of some sales I made today:

Again, dropshipping is just one angle; there are many different ways to work an online store based on how you want to run things.

Overall, stores can be easier or harder than blogs for some people, a potential pro of a store is there isn’t so much focus on writing.

However, there is no doubt that online stores make for a fantastic passive income source.

3. Become a Domainer

You know website names.

Well, they can make you a lot of money.

Basically, you can buy a website name (a domain) like www.*yourwebsitename.com* for about $10 a pop at sites like Namecheap or Godaddy.

And this means that you own that name for however long you want to keep paying for it (it’s about $10 per year).

There is an entire industry of people who buy these domains, hold out until someone else wants it, and then sell it at a premium.

If you had bought domains like sex.com, business.com, or insurance.com back in the earlier days of the internet, you would now be a multi-millionaire.

Okay, but what about today?

These days all of the obvious good website names (i.e. single word .coms) are taken or will require a significant investment to buy in the hopes of reselling for more later.

However, there are still tons of opportunities to flip even $10 domains into hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars down the line.

For this reason, domainers will register dozens or even hundreds of domains hoping to snag that one really good one that a future company or website developer might want.

For example, a member from Namepros.com (a domaining internet forum) recently registered the name MessengerKids.com on a whim for only $1.99, only to then sell it a year later to a company for $20,000.

The company actually ended up being Facebook, who liked that domain name for their new kids app.

Another example is the cryptocurrency boom we saw in December 2017.

A lot of $10 purchased crypto[insert catchy word here].com and [insert catchy word here]crypto.com domains were being registered for the price of a coffee and then being sold off for thousands of dollars only weeks later.

Here’s some examples:

Now, while it sounds really lucrative, being a domainer also isn’t without its difficulties either.

You have to register domains which companies or website creators actually will need — this can be much harder than it initially seems.

You also can’t pick trademarked names (for example, your domain name can’t contain CocaCola in it).

What you want to do is use generic words or made up words to create potential brands before they are actually a thing.

MessengerKids.com is a good use of generic words, whereas something like Zillow.com (now a popular real estate website) would be a made up word (which also probably made some lucky domain owner a lot of money).

Facebook.com is another example of generic words being used (face + book) to create a good domain name, and Google.com being a good made up one.

There are marketplaces where you can actually list and sell your domains names too, such as Brandbucket, Sedo, and GoDaddy Auctions.

I have some domains listed in these places for sale at the time of writing this article.

Another method for acquiring potentially profitable domain names is to buy a domain name based on upcoming technology before anyone else is aware of it.

For example, if you had anticipated those flying drones being a thing you could have made a nice chunk of change.

You can learn more about domaining from places like NamePros along with getting ideas from sold listings from places like DNJournal and NameBio.

I like domaining because it’s fun, can be really cheap, and it’s sort of like buying a calculated lottery ticket.

4. Become an Affiliate Marketer

Affiliate marketing is a great passive income stream.

Because you are simply:

1. Promoting, discussing, mentioning, or reviewing someone else’s product.
2. Directing them to where they can get it.
3. Then earning a portion of the sale when they purchase from the place you’ve sent them to.

How do you direct them?

Well, affiliate programs will give you a custom url (website link) such as “amazon.com/12345”.

In this case, the “12345” part is your unique affiliate tracking code, which lets Amazon ultimately know you sent the customer to them when they buy something.

Example:

1. Someone clicks your “amazon.com/12345” link.
2. An internet cookie is stored on their computer for 24hrs.
3. They either buy right away or eventually buy something from Amazon within the 24hrs.
4. Amazon sees the customer was sent their way by use of your unique “amazon.com/12345” link.
5. Amazon gives you a commission of 4-8% on the customers entire purchase order.
6. You get a check in the mail or direct deposit each week.

So how do they click your link in the first place?

Well:

• You can put your link in your articles on your blog (for example, a review article, shoutout article, or just mentioning the product in a relevant blog article).
• You can put them on your social media posts as product recommendations (facebook, twitter, instagram, etc); Example: “Hey friends, check out these yoga pants I love: “yogapants.com/12345″<– your affiliate url.
• You can write an e-book or some type of informational product or online document and put your affiliate links within it.
• You can put your affiliate links in videos or in the video descriptions (for example, mentioning a product in your Youtube video and then putting your affiliate url in the video description).
• Through emails (for example, emails you likely will acquire from your blog; you can pitch products via email as recommendations).

Here’s an example of a Youtuber using affiliate marketing to promote makeup products which then earn her a comission. All the website links lead to Amazon and other makeup stores with her unique affiliate tracking code.

When I first heard about affiliate marketing I thought it was to good to be true, and if it were true, I assumed the commissions were probably extremely low.

Therefore, you probably wouldn’t make a lot of money.

Boy, was I wrong.

Many popular retailers offer affiliate programs such as Amazon and Bestbuy along with just about any other type of store/niche you could imagine (clothing, electronics, fitness stuff, organic food, milkshakes, dog food, slippers, circuit boards, etc).

Really, you can find an affiliate program for just about anything you can buy online these days.

Most retailers will offer around 4-10% of the customers entire purchase order in commissions — this adds up.

For example, Amazon offers around 4-8% comissions based on your sales volume (last time I checked), but they offer that on the entire purchase order of the customer you sent their way, not just the product you were promoting on your blog.

When people buy anything from Amazon, you will earn a commission on everything they buy within that 24hr period

And people tend to not just buy 1 single product from Amazon, but instead they bundle things up, earning you more money.

For example, I have blogs I haven’t even looked at in 1-3 years, which I’m still getting Amazon checks in the mail for.

And when I look at the products I’m getting these commissions checks from, they are completely random items such as lipstick, dog food, lawn mowers, kids toys, etc.

In other words, people are bundling stuff, earning me more money.

As I said previously, there are tons of other stores and brands besides Amazon that offer affiliate commissions.

Others will also offer much larger commissions %’s, such as 30-80%.

For example, Clickbank.com is a marketplace for affiliates to promote digital products on a bunch of different topics ranging from fitness to green energy.

And they typically give around 75% of the total sale in commission.

Some affiliate programs or services also have recurring fees (for example, membership websites or software), so you earn commissions months on end from that one single customer as long as they continue their membership.

My first attempt with affiliate marketing was a website reviewing Amazon treadmills which made a couple hundred dollars a month, subsequent attempts made me thousands of dollars a month in passive income earnings.

My favorite way to do affiliate marketing is through a blog (why is why I say blogs are so versatile).

5. Write an E-Book

Writing an e-book can be ridiculously profitable and rewarding in its own right, although it’s also a great source for generating passive income.

One of the benefits of writing an e-book is that you typically won’t require a publisher like you would with a physical book.

Technically, you can whip up an e-book, edit it yourself (although an editor is advised), and then sell it as you please.

I have even seen people in non-English speaking countries who had never written a book before in their lives, and without a full grasp of the English language, selling e-books to Westerners by hiring a cheap editor and making a good monthly revenue from their e-book sales alone.

My point of telling you this is that you don’t have to be an established author or word-wizard to create an e-book.

Some of the best ways to sell your e-book is:

• On your own blog (for example, by writing a good article on a subject then promoting your book for the rest of the details).
• Through emails (for example, emails you likely will acquire from your blog; you can pitch products via email).
• Through a marketplace that sells e-books (for example, Amazon Kindle).
• Through a marketplace that allows other people to sell your book for you (for example, Clickbank.com)

Here’s an example of a popular muscle building book written by Michael Matthews. He sells his book on Amazon but promotes it heavily through his MuscleForLife blog as it appears at the bottom of every article he writes.

Many people choose to go down the Amazon Kindle route and see huge successes in that marketplace.

I’ve seen even small time really specific, really unpopular, really niched down books on Kindle earning an easy $1,000 dollars a month.

Then, of course, popular books earning in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One of benefits of putting a book out on Amazon is that you can also use your kindle sales page to sell a hard and paperback copy as well, since many people still prefer physical books.

I’ve also seen short stories (for example, on subjects like romance, erotica, drama, mysteries, and thrillers) do very well on Amazon Kindle marketplace for their authors when priced even as low as 1-3$ a piece.

Some people make a full-living from passive income just by cranking out short stories for Amazon Kindle.

Others make great money by using their blog as their sole passive income stream for selling their e-books on auto-pilot.

At the time of writing this post I am actually working on a larger e-book and hope to release it soon.

6. Create Digital Product or Educational Course

Digital course can be another great way to earn passive income.

With digital courses you will typically film yourself in person giving instructions; record your screen performing some type of instruction-related actions related to your product; or record a powerpoint-type presentation with voice over.

Digital courses can be priced much higher than e-books ($10-$10,000), since there is a greater perceived value with video even if the information is essentially the same.

With digital courses you can also include written downloadable content like lesson overviews, lesson plans, etc.

There are plenty of services online dedicated to helping you set up and sell digital courses such as Clickfunnels, Udemy, or Kajabi.

Ways to sell your digital course includes:

• On your own blog (for example, by writing a good article on a subject then promoting your digital course for the rest of the details).
• Through emails (for example, emails you likely will acquire from your blog; you can pitch your products via email).
• Through a marketplace that allows you to sell your course (for example, Udemy or Clickbank).
• Through a marketplace that allows other people to sell your course for you (for example, Clickbank or JVzoo).
• Through Youtube videos, by providing great content, getting people to recognize the value you have to offer, and then pitching your course. For example, I saw people doing this and profiting heavily with cryptocurrency lessons after the popularity spike in December 2017.

The idea of selling a course when you don’t have an online income stream or perhaps even a business probably sounds unrealistic to you.

Or perhaps you feel that you can’t sell a course on something unless you are the reigning expert on the subject.

Neither of these are true.

As long as you have a relatively firm grasp on the subject your are teaching you can create and sell a digital course.

One way to do this is to start a blog, acquire an audience of people who become fans of your blog over time, and then pitch your product to them.

People buy from people they believe have the answers to their problems.

You can even use the best of your blog posts to create your digital course down the line, which is essentially a more concise version of your best posts.

Tons of people sell digital courses on every topic you could think of.

There are digital products out there on recipes, home organization, couponing, meditation, spirituality, essential oils, cleaning your house, productivity, nutrition, medicine, health, fitness, relationships, self development, business, computers, drawing, math, astrology, psychic-related, teaching, painting, knitting, manga, marketing, DIY, etc

I’ve even seen successful digital courses on building backyard chicken coops.

It’s not uncommon for people already working in a particular industry or trade to leverage their existing skills to create a digital product.

I see people in fitness, health, nutrition, medicine, blogging, finance, etc doing this all the time.

For example, here’s Jaysen who is a drawer; he created a digital course on teaching people to draw:

Best of all, digital courses can be extremely profitable, earning many people 6 or 7 figures annually, and some even well into the 8 figures.

Many people use their blogs solely as a funnel for their digital courses, earning their years worth of income during a single annual product launch.

7. Sell Stuff Through Amazon FBA

Selling products online through Amazon is another highly lucrative passive income model.

There are a few ways you can do this:

• White label a product and sell through Amazon.
• Buy products from China and sell through Amazon.
• Buy stuff elsewhere online or offline and sell it on Amazon.
• Buy stuff locally and sell it higher on Amazon.

There are many blogs or companies I’ve seen that create a white label product and not only sell through their website but also on Amazon.

Amazon offers some significant advantages over selling through other platforms like only a blog.

For starters, the Amazon marketplace is massive and gives you access to millions of potential customers each day.

Amazon also has built significant amounts of trust in the eyes of the average consumer, so when you sell something through Amazon people know they are going to get their product as described.

One model that is particularly popualr for selling on Amazon is to buy products from China (through places like Alibaba, Aliexpress, DHGate, etc) at a significantly cheaper price and then sell them higher on Amazon.

Generally, the more product you buy at once from China the cheaper each individual unit will be.

You’ve probably bought something on Amazon from a seller who has done this without even realizing it.

For example, at one point I bought one of those adjustable laptop stands, which was just a bought and re-sold version from China.

Although the seller had sold thousands of these things and earned himself over six figures from just that one product alone.

You can sell almost anything on Amazon from sex toys to sponges using this model.

The FBA acronym in Amazon FBA has a meaning to it.

It means “fulfilled by Amazon”.

Amazon allows you to order products from elsewhere (such as Alibaba), ship them to one of their warehouses, and they will then bag and tag them for you so you can immediately begin selling them.

An alternative method, and preferred for quality control, is to have them first shipped from China or elsewhere to your house, bag and tag them yourself (for quality control), and then ship all of it to Amazon at once.

In either scenario, you allow Amazon to ship the products for you to your customers, which takes away the burden of having to individually ship your own products to various states and countries of the world.

Amazon just charges you a flat shipping fee for each package.

I’ve seen people use this model to make upwards of millions of dollars each month.

Even landing just one good product which gets a lot of reviews can make you over $100,000 a month.

For example, here’s someone doing this model that has earned an absolute killing selling essential oil diffusers.

And notice below someone is selling the exact same product from the exact same manufacturer but just branded differently with their brand name.

Both are selling for $15.99 each on Amazon.

And here is where they are likely getting it from for less than half the price. I’m sure they have a deal worked out where they are probably getting it for less than $5 a piece.

Considering that you can make over $100,000 a month once you break 500 Amazon reviews for good products, and these products each have 10,000-20,000 reviews, you can imagine just how much money these sellers are making from only a single product.

8. Create Youtube Videos

Youtube can be a great way to earn passive income.

You don’t have to be the next PewDiePie (#1 Youtuber) to make decent money; I’ve seen many people with even a relatively small amount of followers (like 20,000) earn a full-living from Youtube.

Making money through Youtube is typically done with ads that appear on your videos.

Then, every time someone sees or clicks on those ads you earn money.

In the past few years, Youtubers also started asking for donations via Patreon, and it’s become socially acceptable at this point.

Patreon offers another way for Youtubers to earn an income, since all of your subscribers now have the option to donate anywhere from $1-$100 or more per month to support your channel.

For example, Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell makes well animated explanation videos about global issues, and they are not only well compensated through ad revenue but also receive over $38,000 a month in Patreon donations.

Here is an older screenshot before their amount earned each month was made private:

Another example is Jordan Peterson, a university professor of psychology, who decided to take his rants and opinions about worldly issues online, and he’s earning over $100,000 a month in Patreon donations from his fans.

Creating Youtube content about something you enjoy doing or are passionate about can be a good road to go down.

Alternatively, some people also do well making those slideshow-like, voice over viral top 10 videos (simply because of how many views they tend to receive), which are essentially just regurgitating the best bits of interesting stories or topics they’ve read elsewhere online.

For example, this channel gets a whole lot of views and revenue, and appears to have been started by someone in their teens, before he seemed to have gotten someone older to do the voice-overs after his channel grew very popular.

You don’t have to be a celebrity, popular, or an excellent video editor to profit well on Youtube, as you probably know having been around their platform.

Another Youtube niche that isn’t really dependent on prior knowledge of a particular subject is ASMR, which is quite popular.

Other good ones are makeup and beauty related, or even vlogging.

Of course, if you have any skills or passions you can discuss over video, those will be great too.

9. Acquire or Make Products and Sell Them at Online Marketplaces

If you’re more passive income ideas, consider this:

Apart from creating your own online store to sell products (which you can certainly do in combination with this), you can also sell your products, creations, or crafts elsewhere on the internet.

You could sell:

• Used items.
• Items purchased from China.
• Items purchased at discount online.
• Items purchased locally.

At places online like Craigslist, Amazon, or Ebay.

For example, I recently bought a pack of 200 bubble wrap-generic envelopes for shipping for one of my online stores off Ebay, because they were cheaper than I could find at any local office store.

However, I knew the seller had just bought them cheaper from somewhere like Alibaba, had them delivered to his house, and then just resold them to me through Ebay at a significantly higher price.

And you could do this too, with any product you think people would buy.

To sell your own creations or more crafty stuff, places like Etsy, Artfire, and Zazzle are popular online marketplaces for this.

Of course, you could also create an online store and sell these products there as well.

10. Start a Vending Machine Business

Vending machines are a very simple means of earning passive income.

Although the key with them it to find high-traffic areas.

You’ll also want to think about what to provide that people will want.

You aren’t limited to only candy, chips, and soda, and can get creative selling other things.

Phone cases, perfumes packs outside of night clubs, condoms, umbrellas — get creative.

Heck, maybe you could design them in some unique way to get people to notice them as “special vending machines” in your area if you had more than one.

Remember, vending machines require no staff to sell things, and you don’t even have to be there yourself.

This will save you a ton of money and make smaller profits actually bigger profits.

This one guy got creative and seems to be doing well for himself, earning what looks like $20,000 a month in passive vending machine income.

11. Sell Internet Business-Based Services

There are a lot of services that companies need for their online businesses these days.

And these service are highly in demand thanks to the explosion of the digital world.

Many of these services aren’t taught in school, meaning there are few people who actually know what they’re doing.

An example of such a service is SEO (search engine optimization).

When I first got into the world of online marketing the first thing I did was start a blog.

From blogging, one of the first things I got good at in order to improve my blogs success was SEO.

I debated for a while about going down the route of selling SEO services to other companies, but ultimately did not as I wanted to put all of my efforts into blogging and other projects.

However, some people have literally gone from nothing to starting an SEO service, and then scaling it to tens of thousands of dollars a month (I know of one person who went from 0$ to over $500,000 a month in revenue).

Others just make a good living from it.

SEO is the process of optimizing a website to increase the odds of it ranking on the first page of the search engines (primarily Google) for whatever term (keyword) you want your website to rank for.

You can probably imagine how important (profitable) it would be for a company who sells something like insurance to rank number 1 for the keyword “insurance” in Google, or a company who sells weight loss pills to rank number one when someone searches for “best weight loss pills”.

So, it’s not uncommon to charge anywhere from $500 a month (typically for smaller businesses) to thousands of dollars a month depending on how hard the term is to rank for.

You can have dozens of companies paying you at once, since you can have multiple clients at any time.

You probably won’t be working with multi-million dollar companies, but acquiring small, local businesses like dentists, massage places, yoga studios, etc in small cities and ranking them for terms like “dentist [small town or area]” can be very profitable and comparatively much easier.

12. Develop an App

Apps are extremely popular as most of us know.

There are a lot of them, but there’s also a lot of money to be made if you create one that people need or like.

For example, Chad Mureta got the idea for creating a fingerprint security app while recovering in a hospital from a car accident he was in.

He then found an app developer online who quoted him $1800 for his idea.

During its first month, his app Fingerprint Security-Pro made $12,000, and from there he took the profits and continued making apps netting him millions of dollars down the line.

Another guy named John Hayward-Mayhew managed to earn $1 million dollars in passive income from developing apps, and he also couldn’t code.

Although his story is a bit different: He paid someone thousands of dollars to build an app game which only then made a fraction of what he paid.

However, not wanting to be defeated, he got the idea to take his app game and just re-skin it (change the cosmetics/look of the game) to coincide with popular trends.

So if dentist games were popular he’d take his underlying game and then just re-skin/re-theme it to look like a dentist game.

He’s now got over 600 games from applying this model and has profited very well.

Other app creators make tons of money by creating apps that help to fulfill basic real world issues they’ve noticed.

If you can’t code you can learn, and if you don’t want to you can always hire a developer if you think you have a good idea for an app.

13. Snap Photos or Create Graphics & Vectors and Earn Easy Money

Stock photo sites are used by companies all over the world who need graphics, vectors, and photographs for their website, advertising campaigns, products, etc.

If you like snapping pictures you can earn some nice residual income, and it requires virtually zero effort or work besides taking the pictures.

Graphic designers can also earn more money by creating vector images and the other kinds of digital illustrations.

By signing up as a contributor on Shutterstock, you can earn either a flat fee or percentage on every photo/graphic you add on their website that sells.

This can be a great way to earn some easy passive income doing something you already love.

Want to ramp this up?

If I was really into photography or graphic design, I’d probably do something like this:

• Sign up on one of these platforms and earn some income by listing my photos.
• Earn some easy income and start to see what people like by the sales of my pictures/graphics.
• Create a blog/image/business portfolio website and advertise myself and some of my work; perhaps write some articles on my site to drive traffic about graphic design/photography tips, etc.
• Direct clients to my website, where they can see my work, read some of my articles, thus increasing the odds of them hiring me.
• Take on clients and if I like, keeping working on my website adding more articles/tutorials as my experience in graphic design/photography grows.
• Eventually, start selling products on the subject of photography/graphic design through my site.
• Alternatively, start selling other peoples products on photography/graphic design through my site.

For instance, Digital Photography School is a popular photography website that allows you to sell their products and earn a 40% commission.

And while their site might look impressive with all of their posts, products, and other stuff that’s going on, they started out as a very simple blog at one point just like you might:

14. Buy a Website

You can buy websites that have already been developed.

And you can buy websites that have already been developed and are already earning monthly revenue.

Marketplaces like Flippa are specifically for this.

Alternatively, you can scope out abandoned websites that you see ranking in Google (those which don’t have new content and don’t appear to have been updated in a while) and send the owner an offer.

To do this, you would just run the website through a WHOIS database search and send an email to the owner of that website.

The email would just be you asking if they are willing to sell it.

Sometimes website owners are too busy in another project and might sell the website for cheap.

If you think the owner doesn’t know what they have is worth, you could try the passion-driven buyer approach by sending an email acting as though you simply love the niche of the website and want to develop it because you love [topic of site].

This can make it seem like you aren’t just purchasing the site for profit, and the owner might sell it to you for cheaper.

Often, websites that are already ranking just need their content edited better for visitors or more content, along with maybe a nicer looking design or better use of color.

You can then add affiliate offers, better utilize ad placement in articles, create your own products, add more articles to increase profits further, or even flip the site on a marketplace like Flippa where people are willing to pay more for websites.

The idea is that since these sites are already getting traffic (visitors), earning money from them becomes much easier than starting something from scratch.

I have a website on the back burner that gets a few offers a year from people who are obviously into buying neglected websites.

I also see a lot of neglected websites ranking well in the search engines too.

In many cases, the owners don’t really know what they’ve got and aren’t leveraging their traffic properly, and with the right ads or offers there’s a lot more easy money to be made.

15. Sell T-Shirts Online

Here’s another passive income technique you might like:

There are websites online like Teespring that allow you to create t-shirts for free and then sell them online using their stock.

You will customize your shirts by creating a design either in their online drag-and-drop design editor or by creating your own designs in something like photoshop.

Teespring even lets you create an online store for free all within the Teespring platform to sell your custom t-shirts.

You also won’t pay any money at all throughout the entire process, since Teespring only prints your shirts once they’ve already sold.

Teespring basically will put a flat fee on each shirt, then you can choose the price you wish to sell it at.

Typically, you will make somewhere around $10-$20 profit per shirt sale.

Good places to promote your shirts are:

• Over social media like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.
• Through emails to your friends, family, or blog audience.
• Through a blog you’ve created and acquired an audience for (for example, by having a merchandise section).

Many bloggers will sell merchandise to their audience who are obviously fans on whatever particular topic their blog is about.

For example, if you run a UFO, Paleo, or Mommy blog, you could sell relevant, funny, or interesting shirts on your subject to your audience.

The Oatmeal is a sort of blog website where the owner creates comics in a weird illustrative fashion; he then sells merchandise like t-shirts that are related to his illustrations.

Shirts that tend to sell well include funny or clever sayings, quotes, puns, etc.

I’m sure you’ve probably bought a novelty shirt at some point in your life that was either funny, clever, or a reminder of a place you visited on vacation.

Clever or funny shirts about specific inside topics related to particular professions, hobbies, trends, etc also do well.

For instance, I’ve seen a lot of nurse shirts like “Hello, my name is Hey Nurse” or “[something here]…It’s a nurse thing, you wouldn’t understand” which appear to do well.

To get more exposure for your shirts, you can run ads on a platform like Facebook.

Facebook ads are unique because they allow you to show ads only to specific groups of people, meaning you could specifically target only those people who are nurses for example, to show your nurse t-shirt ads to.

Some people make an absolute killing (tens of thousands of dollars a week) selling shirts while others make nothing.

If you’re a creative, funny, or a graphic designer, you might like the custom t-shirt game.

16. Sell Other Custom-Made-Online Products

There are places like Teespring—those which allow you to easily create a product and it’s associated graphics/artwork/print online and sell them using their stock—but for other kinds of products besides just t-shirts

In fact, Teespring itself now offers the ability to create a bunch more products besides shirts.

Currently, you can create your own custom canvas prints, socks, beach towels, iphone cases, wall tapestry, leggings, posters, flag, indoor pillows, stickers, mugs, tote bags, hoodies, and some other stuff.

This opens the door to making a lot more money.

Say you decided to start a blog on something like paleo or veganism.

You could write articles, promote affiliate products like fish oil or algae supplements, but also sell your own unique products.

You could sell vegan bags, iphones, or other items to your readers who are vegan or paleo fanatics.

For example, here’s a vegan tote bag designed on Teespring.

The possibilities when it comes to selling your custom apparel or accessories here are pretty much endless:

Sell different products on your blog, or on other platforms like ebay or amazon, to your social media friends or group, or promote them within your vegan Youtube videos.

You aren’t restricted to vegan or paleo obviously, you could sell branded household objects to engineers, cat lovers, dog lovers, or anything people are passionate about which you could picture on a phone case, apparel, mug, bag, etc.

Politics is another good one I see people promoting their own custom stuff on places like Youtube or their own blogs.

17. White Label or Private Label Products

White labeling or private labeling products is another passive income option when it comes to selling your own products.

White/private labeling is where an established company that already sells or manufactures something allows you to put your logo on their product and sell it as your own.

For instance, many supplement companies operate like this.

They will often buy the entire product from a manufacturer, slap their label on the bottle or container, and then sell it you as if they were the manufacturer/original creators all along.

This model works great for selling through your own personal online blog or store as your own personal product to your audience.

A lot of physicians, nutritionists, personal trainers, etc like this model because they can put the name of their business on the products they sell.

This creates more reputation and brand-awareness about who they are, and all without needing to invest heavily in any manufacturing equipment or expensive manufacturing orders/contracts.

White labeling also works great for selling products through Amazon, since you can literally just print, emboss, engrave, or slap your brand label on some white/private labeler’s products and then literally become your own product company as simply as that.

The logos these companies can create for you don’t have to look bad either; they will look like “real products”.

For example, here’s a logo design that NutraBusiness could make for you if you wanted to sell Garcinia Cambogia (popular type of fat burner). You could simply change the NutriPlan logo at the top to your logo or anything else you wanted, or have them redesign the entire thing.

Also, since someone else has already created these products for you to use, all the legal stuff, certifications, quality control, etc has been handled already.

You can often find companies that allow white/private labeling just by Googling variations of something like “[product or industry] whitelabel or private label”.

This can be a highly lucrative passive income business idea.

18. Sell a Service on Fiverr

Fiverr is a marketplace where you can sell virtually any service imaginable over the internet.

This includes anything you can think of that someone might want, such as custom meal plans, random video reviews, voice overs, psychic readings, celebrity impersonations, holding up signs with someones brand name on it and selling the picture, etc.

Many people are making money selling their very unique things or services, and leveraging their unique skills.

Fiverr used to be all about doing things for $5, but has now made it so you can pretty much charge any price you want.

Fiverr fits into the passive income model because you can also provide services that are relatively automatic.

For example, you could sell the same 2,000 calorie meal plan you created to 1,000 different people, etc.

Getting started on Fiverr is easy.

19. Earn Money Doing Stuff You Already Do Online

SwagBucks

SwagBucks is a platform that allows you to earn money for searching the web, buying things from places like Amazon, taking polls, filling surveys, watching videos, using their grocery store coupons, performing tasks, and playing games.

There are similar sites out there but SwagBucks is one of the better and most popular ones.

Most of the things you do will be non-passive, however, I’m including Swagbucks in the list because some things you can do are passive.

For example, you can earn SB (SwagBucks) just for doing your regular internet web searches through the SwagBucks search engine which is similar to Google.

Getting rewards for shopping at places like Amazon, BestBuy, etc is another one.

Earned SwagBucks can then be exchanged for cash or items like Amazon gift cards.

As an average user, you should be able to make around $600-$4000 extra per year given your level of commitment.

This can be a nice way to earn some extra cash each month without having to exert much intellectual effort.

You can receive a free $5 sign up bonus by clicking here.

Inbox Dollars

Want to earn more money?

Another similar platform you can also use to earn is Inbox Dollars.

It’s similar to Swagbucks as you’ll also earn money for giving your opinions on surveys, playing games, watching videos, shopping from popular stores, and a lot of other stuff.

20. Get Cash-Back on Stuff You’re Already Buying

Ebates is a place that will pay you in cash-back for buying things that you’re already going to buy from popular online stores.

This company essentially gets paid to direct you to popular stores like Amazon, and then when you buy something they share some of those profits with you.

They also run specials like double cash-back which will earn you twice as much passive income.

Since you’re already going to buy this stuff anyway, why not get some of that cash-back.

21. Use Cash-Back Credit Cards

Another passive income opportunity is to use cash-back credit cards.

Now they won’t make you rich like some of the other options here might, but it’s still easy money for something you’re already doing.

If you’re using your credit card to make purchases, you can profit at % back by signing up with ” ” credit card.

This is some really easy money for doing nothing—it all adds up over time.

22. Invest in REITs and Earn Passively

Another passive income idea for you is real-estate investing… with a twist.

If you want to invest in real estate but don’t have the money, services like Fundrise might be another option for you.

Fundrise is an online real estate company that lets individuals who aren’t accredited investors invest in real estate.

In other words, it opens up options for real estate investments to anyone who has a minimum of $500.

You can buy shares in a piece of real estate that can be rented out to a businesses, earning you money on the rental fees and appreciation.

Your money could also help Fundrise find an undervalued home and renovate it, to then sell for a nice profit that’s distributed among the company and shareholders — including you.

Fundrise pays their dividends quarterly. And they can be directly sent to your bank account or reinvested.

Their 2017 returns were 11.44%, which are higher than you would get from other passive income investments out there.

You can put your money into seven different kinds of Fundrise funds.

Five are location based:

• D.C.
• L.A
• Heartland
• West Coast
• East Coast

Two are goal-oriented, focusing on either:

• Income
• Growth

As with all investments, err on the side of caution, read over everything to make sure you’re getting the whole story.

23. Lend Your Money and Gain Money

With Lending Club you can earn passive income by loaning people your money.

Lending Club is a peer-to-peer lending platform: when people are looking for loans they can go to Lending Club and borrow money from people like you.

You’ll then earn passive cash on the interest rate from that loan, which is significantly higher than other interest-earning investments at potentially over 10% interest per year.

The other benefit of Lending Club over other platforms is the risk is very small on your end.

You can invest in increments of $25 per loan, meaning if any one loan went sour you’re only out $25.

This makes it so you can spread your money across hundreds of different loans, only investing $25 in each one.

With low risk and high interest rates, Lending Club might be a potentially great source of easy passive income for you.

24. Invest in Dividend-paying Stocks

Investing in dividend stocks allows you to earn passive income each year.

When you invest in dividend-paying stocks you get to own a portion of a company, which then pays back its shareholders with its profits.

In other words, you get cold hard cash in your bank account.

There are a lot of online platforms for investing, but Ally Invest is a popular one these days because they offer the lowest trading rates.

Ally Invest charges as low as $3.95 a trade compared to places like TD Ameritrade ($6.95), E Trade ($6.95), and Wells Trade ($5.95).

Overall, Ally Invest is a better platform and is lower costing than a lot of other investing options out there.

25. Get Free Cash from Your Emails

Paribus turns your emails into money. They help you get free money back from your purchases from the past.

Basically, many stores have price adjustment policies that make it so if you buy something which soon after goes on sale, you are given the difference in cash back.

Typically, you as the customer would be responsible for noticing the drop in price and then requesting a refund from the company you bought it from.

However, Paribus will monitor your emails in order to identify online receipts and look for drops in prices on the items you’ve purchased. If it finds something, it will alert you and the retailer and work to get your difference in money back.

They cover a lot of popular stores like Amazon, Target, Kohls, Walmart, Bloomingdales, BestBuy, Nordstrom, GAP, Zappos, Macy’s, etc.

Best of all, this service is entirely free!

26. More Cash for the Shopping You Already Do

Another simple way of creating passive income from doing the stuff you’re already going to do anyway is through Ibotta.

With Ibotta you can get cash back on the things you buy all the time from popular retailers.

All you have to do is take a photo of your receipts.

It doesn’t get much easier than that.

27. Get Cash Back for Your Gas

Trunow gives you 1% cash back on your gas if you simply take a photo of your receipt.

Over time, this can add up and earn you a nice chunk of free cash.

28. Earn Cash for Your Regular Groceries

You can even earn passive income now by telling companies what’s in your fridge.

Nielsen Consumer panel is a company that wants to know what you buy, so you can help influence retailers and manufacturers.

If you’re accepted into the program, they’ll send you a free scanner in the mail.

Once you get your scanner, all you have to do is scan the barcodes of the foods you buy.

In doing so, you’ll earn gift-points that are exchangeable for name-brand merchandise like electronics, household items, jewelry, toys, etc.

They also run sweepstakes, meaning you can win big prizes just from being a member.

Since you have to buy food anyway, this might be a no-brainer for you to sign up for

29. Rent Out Your Unused Living Space

If you have more space than you need consider renting it out to someone.

Rental prices are through the roof these days, and depending on where you are, places to live are probably in demand.

You can also use places like Airbnb for daily, weekly, or monthly rentals of extra living spaces.

Airbnb can help to facilitate a smoother rental process since guests are screened beforehand.

Plus, there’s property damage and guest bodily harm insurance to cover you should a problem occur.

Many people temporarily rent out their spare living spaces with AirBnb before transitioning into having a full on roommate.

30. Rent Out Your Car

Rather than driving people around, which isn’t passive income, you can rent out your vehicle when you’re not using it.

Peer-to-peer vehicle rental companies like Turo allow you to do this.

You’ll earn about 75% of all rental fees when using Turo, be covered under their $1,000,000 liability policy, and you can screen requests ahead of time to approve renters.

There have been cases of renters dinging the car or denting the rims, and Turo appears to have covered all maintenance costs.

Some people will rent their spare car, or buy a spare car just to rent it out for the extra income.

If you go down this road, getting a practical rather than sporty car would probably draw in more responsible renters.

Color psychology would likely be another factor; getting a pale blue car rather than bright red will probably influence the type of customers you get as well.

Rental prices tend to range from around $15-$200 a day.

Services like this can possibly help lead you into bigger business and passive income opportunities.

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone kept buying spare cars and then eventually opened their own rental car company as a result.

31. Rent Out Your Parking Spot

If you have a parking spot that you can do without for a while, you can rent it out.

Whether its your curb, your driveway, your garage, your own lot, or your designated apartment/condo spot, you can earn an extra income.

There are specific services for this like Spot, although Craigslist will also work too.

Spot takes 15% of your earnings, while Craigslist is mostly free.

Spot will give you pricing suggestions based on location and type of spot.

You can earn anywhere from a few dollars to $50 a day.

It is not uncommon to earn around $150-$400 a month depending on how good the spot is.

For example, if you have parking downtown in a major city, you can probably charge quite a lot for it.

Living in vehicles is becoming a somewhat trending thing lately.

If your spot is big enough or if its a driveway you could potentially rent it out like land to a vehicle dweller.

32. Rent Out Your Bicycle

Bicycles

If you own a bike, you can rent that out to someone as well.

Spinlister is one site which allows you to do just this.

Basically, you list your bicycle and people who want to rent it will make a request for a certain day and time. Then when they return the bike you get paid.

Spinlister offers protection in case your bike is damaged or stolen.

How much you earn depends on where you live and your bike. Bikes seem to go for around 5-20$ an hour or 50-$100+ per day.

The company takes 17.5% of your earnings.

33. Be Your Own Shipping Service

If you’re already heading somewhere you can deliver someones package on the way.

And there are specific services that allow you to do this like Roadie and CitizenShipper.

You can simply check if someone needs something to be delivered where you’re already heading and earn money.

Gigs will earn you probably between $8-$20 on average and upwards of $60 locally. Whereas long distance trips will earn up to $200.

34. Rent Your Clothing Out

Do you have clothes you barely wear? Well, you can potentially earn money by renting them out to people.

Services like StyleLend know that buying clothing for events and outings can be a hassle and expensive, so they you rent them out to people who want them.

They suggest you price your clothing at 10% of retail price (5-20% based on brand/newness/type of clothing).

You will simply list clothing items you want to rent and StyleLend will approve your listing. From here, they’ll supply you a shipping label to print out and drop off along with your clothing at a USPS store.

They also offer insurance on your clothes in case of theft or damages.

35. Invest in Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is “digital money” leveraging underlying new and revolutionary technology known as the blockchain.

But at this point cryptocurrency is really more of a gamble than a solid investment.

The market is extremely volatile as the prices swing up or down by large amounts on even a daily basis.

No one really knows which cryptocurrencies will succeed, if the majority of the current ones will be replaced in the coming years, if any of them will succeed, or even what will ultimately become of the underlying technology itself.

In other words, it’s risky.

However, you can’t exclude the fact if you had invested even a small amount of money prior to the winter of 2017 you would have made an absolute killing.

For instance, $100 in the cryptocurrency known as Verge would have earned you

While the prices have gone down since the hype of winter of 2017, they are still way up from earlier in 2017.

Who knows where some of these cryptocurrency coins will be in a few years from now.

I wouldn’t invest anything I wasn’t comfortable with completely losing, but it’s certainly a gamble that could pay off if your digital coin succeeds.

I recommend you check out Coinbase for an easy place to instantly buy cryptocurrency.

36. Get Creative and Earn Passive Income

Like I was saying near the beginning of this post, the internet really has opened the door to making passive income for everyone.

In the past, you were constrained to more traditional models such as real estate or bank investments, which weren’t something everyone could do or would do.

However, nowadays there are just so many opportunities out there… and even more if you can be creative.

One of the things I really like about creating blogs and websites is that you can use them as a platform to launch this creativity of yours.

For example, Scott had an obsession with finding cheap air flights, which he would often tell his friends about.

To keep them informed, he created an email list for them (i.e. a service like Mail Chimp that allows you to send bulk emails to subscribers of your website; we all get these kinds of emails from websites and online stores).

He also created a website called “How to Fly for Free” as a way to promote his email list and sell his ebooks about getting cheap air flights.

Pretty soon he noticed people were very interested in his emails about being notified for cheap flights, and so he grew a business from that.

His email list now contains over 600,000 subscribers and he charges money for getting on his premium email list.

That email list, that started from a passion for finding cheap flights, some creativity, and starting a website now earns him over $320,000 per month (not a typo).

37. Leverage Your Pre-Existing Skills, Talents, or Interests to Earn Money

All of us (including you) have something we are better at than most people if you really think about it.

And even if it’s not at the level you’d like it to be, you can always learn more and take it to the next level.

We will often learn things only for ourselves to solve a particular problem or for passions sake, or to just acquire greater knowledge.

However, that knowledge doesn’t have to only be hoarded to yourself; instead, you can share it with others and earn money doing so.

You also no longer need to be the reigning expert on the subject, open a brick and mortar store, or write a book to share your skill, product, or knowledge with the world.

Nowadays, creating a simple website can often be the start to what can eventually flourish into a full time passive income business.

If you have a passion, skill, talent, or just something you’d like to learn a lot about, perhaps consider starting a blog and writing about it, and see where that takes you.

You never know, that simple blog might turn into a highly profitable blog, a platform to promote your future book, an online store to sell things, or the experience you gain will lead you on to greater things.

It’s certainly worked that way for me and for hundreds of thousands of other people.

Now over to you:

What are some of your favorite passive income ideas? Are you planning on trying any of the ones listed here?