11 Passive Income Ideas

11 Simple Passive Income Ideas for Beginners

There are two kinds of income that most of us strive to make: active income and passive income. The active income type is what we all know about: income from our job. But, real wealth comes from allowing our money to start working for us in the form of passive income. Passive income is income that you NO LONGER have to work for.

Active income is usually when one exchanges time for money. You give your time and the boss gives you money. Unfortunately, while we all begin with active income we don’t need to end there. That is what passive income is for.

Passive income is an income-creating vehicle or strategy that requires very little maintenance once it’s set up

Some passive income products, like Ebooks or online courses, require a serious time commitment to create and launch. But once they have been created and are marketed to the public, you can sit back and watch the money roll in.

But Passive Income does require work. It takes work to earn the money to set it up and it will probably take some time and resources to get it going. Probably, no matter what the vehicle, there will be some time commitment on your part. For example, most people think of real-estate as a primary passive income vehicle. Yet, real-estate needs to be purchased, repaired, accounted, rented, etc. It is usually not just a “throw money at it” endeavor. So, you will have to learn some other skills to handle your passive income that may be different from your active income skills.

There are lots of ways to earn passive income, “mailbox money” or income while you sleep. Here are a few of them:

1. Write a book

This is the granddaddy of them all these days because it is now so easy for anyone to get their work published. You can easily write a book about something that you are an expert on and then get it printed, or better yet, transformed into an Ebook. Once you put it up on Amazon or even on your own site, all you will have to do is ship it (if it is a physical book) or have your auto-responder or Amazon deliver the book in electronic form. Write a great book and it could go viral earning you say, $9 per copy. Just imagine the passive income that would come from selling 100,000 books at $9. We’ll do the math for you: that’s $900,000!

2. Buy rental homes

Save up some funds, or find investors and you can start to buy one home or even a portfolio of homes or apartments. Just be sure that your costs including any mortgages, taxes, maintenance, insurance and other costs are less that you are charging for rent. Think of it like your tenant is helping you to pay the mortgage so that in the future, you will own the property free and clear. That means that you now would have “equity” in the property and could sell it (and keep all of the equity) or refinance the property and even purchase another rental property. Of course you can do the same with office space, industrial, strip malls, or whatever. And as a bonus, the government will give you some nice incentives to invest in real-estate in the form of “phantom income” and write-offs that you can use to offset some of the taxes you are paying from working your active income job.

3. Invent A Game

If you are really creative, you could invent a board game and sell it online, in stores or on a website. Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, invented a great game called Cash Flow that has earned him millions of dollars. I know, because I bought one of these games for $195 and his second game to boot. But I love it. It actually teaches the concepts of passive and active income in a fun and exciting way. So if you have a creative talent, maybe you could put it to use in creating a game like Robert and get a passive income stream for yourself.

4. Write Music

Can you write music or sing? Well then you can make passive income if you are good. It’s actually pretty easy these days. You can just record your masterpiece (professionally of course) and sell it on iTunes or put it on YouTube. With iTunes, you could actually sell your song and with YouTube, you could make advertising royalties depending on how much it is played. And with the amazing amount of great recording equipment available today, you can easily sound like a pro.

5. Create a course

Since you probably know some great stuff, you should consider putting it into a course, where you could teach others how to do what you do. As a passive income vehicle, this has some appeal as it helps the world get the knowledge that you have. The process would include creating the course, but also driving people to your site or other sites like Udemy, Teachable, Coursera, or Skillshare – all online learning venues.

6. YouTube

This could be a really fun passive income vehicle. If you like to create video content, this is for you. You just sit in front of a video camera and create compelling content. If you get enough views, you get paid for the advertising that YouTube runs before or during your video. Some of the most successful passive income makers have YouTube channels that are loaded with compelling videos. Heck, if you create a masterpiece, it might even go viral – making you lots and lots of passive income.

7. Build an App

While the heyday of just putting together a lousy app and putting it online and making millions are over, there is still opportunity for well-thought-out apps that serve a purpose (make peoples lives easier, save them money, etc.). Just a few years ago, AirBnB, Uber and others were just ideas that quickly morphed into very useful apps. Have an idea for something useful. You would just need to sketch it out, describe in minute detail its functionality, and find a team to develop it. It’s going to take some time, resources and money but with the continued growth of the internet, you could be accessing millions or billions of people if you do it right.

8. Sell your photographs or videos

Do you like to take pictures? Have people told you that you have a real talent for photography? Well, you could put them online and make money on them. People are all looking for digital photos for their websites or even for decorations for their homes or offices. Create a “gallery style” website and showcase your photos and create massive passive income. Better yet, license your photos to large aggregator resellers and let them do the marketing for you. Shutterstock, iStockPhoto and Getty Images are some places that can help you make passive income from your photos. They may pay you around 20% to 40% for each download. But they will help you greatly in your passive income pursuit – doing what they are good at while you do what you are good at.

9. Invest in the stock market

This could be one of the most tempting ideas, but watch out! There are big banks and traders with billions of dollars who control these markets. It is easy to click a mouse and invest in your favorite stock because you heard a great stock tip on TV. But, it is also easy to turn passive income into passive losses if you don’t know what you are doing. The basic rule is to have rules and stick to them at all times. Emotions are what loses money for traders. Many traders lose it all because they let emotions take over their decisions. If you do this form of passive income, you could make a lot of money too. Just take the time to learn how to do it right.

We have a free trading course available to get you started and you can graduate from there.

10. Buy a parking garage or parking lot

This is one of my favorites. You just take a piece of land in a busy area; pave it; paint some stripes on it; and start charging people money to park there. You may have to hire one or two employees and make an arrangement with a towing company, but that is pretty much it. (Oh, make sure that you buy insurance and legally structure the ownership properly to protect yourself from liability).

11. Invest in short-term AirBnB rental units (maybe even rent your house)

The short-term rental market has taken off in recent years. Now, people are renting out their homes, condos, apartments or even rooms in their homes to people for just  a nights. It’s giving the hotels a run for their money and creating passive-income millionaires around the world. You can do it too. I have a friend who bought a big house and loves to travel. He puts the house up on AirBnB and when he gets a rental, he takes his $800 per night and uses it as an excuse to go somewhere. PLUS, it pays for his travel. You can do this too with some rooms that you are not using (if you want to have people stay with you) or even your whole place.

The sky is the limit when it comes to passive income ideas. I would suggest that you start with one or two and just focus on doing them well until you become an expert on them. Once you do so, you will see extra wealth start to accumulate and you will wonder how it all happened so effortlessly. But real passive income gurus understand that the effort came first, then the income came next.