The pursuit of passive income is nothing new. It provides a means of being able to net money that doesn’t always involve actively working. People like the idea of passive income because of the appeal of “making money while you sleep.”
It most certainly appealed to me when I first heard of it, so I decided to write on the subject and share it with you. There are so many passive income ideas that are out there; it is hard to choose just one.
Passive income does not mean sitting on your rear end and expect money to appear on your lap magically. There is still work and some investment involved. Your future passive income sources require both for you to see the results in your bank accounts. Entrepreneurs like Robert Kiyosaki, Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi developed their wealth through specific asset classes that net them passive income.
This form of income is how rich people make their wealth. It’s how it helped me get money and on the side, and it’s something I’d like to share with you. Here are four passive income ideas that I’ve come up with to help you get started:
1. Blog creation
Blogs have a great degree of utility that can help net you passive income. Starting a blog for earning money can be difficult, but it can pay dividends in the end. Not only can you write blog posts for your desired audience, but you can also tie in affiliate programs into your blog. People that are interested in specific products can purchase them through links integrated into your blog.
When it comes to starting up a blog, you’ll want to pick a niche that you’re comfortable using. Examples of niches to write on include: marketing, how to write blog posts, technology, etc.
One of the things you’ll need to keep in mind is that now and then you’ll need to periodically update your content to keep up-to-date with the latest trends of whichever niche you’re covering.
2. Real estate
2008 marked a bad year when the housing market tanked due to a multitude of forces that affected the economy as a whole. Real estate is still an excellent source of passive income where properties can provide massive returns on investment. Some examples of real estate that you can take action on are:
– Turnkey real estate: Purchase a property that does not need any maintenance done to it. The monthly checks come in when tenants pay for their rent. This form of investing ties into AirBNB where if you have a property or multiple rooms that you can rent out, you can gain passive income based on how much you are charging your tenants to live within those spaces.
– Crowdfunded real estate: gain passive income by investing money into crowdfunding real estate sites such as Fundrise, Rich Uncles, and GroundFloor. Crowdfunded real estate involves a pool of investors pooling together money in a project to get profits. You would need to invest between $10 to $500 based on which platform you choose.
I did a mix of both, and they worked relatively well for me. Real estate investing is ideal for those that are looking for alternative forms of cash-flow instead of relying solely on their job for money.
3. Online courses
I pride myself on being able to teach people on specific subjects. Online learning expanded on traditional learning, where people used to be restricted to the confines of a classroom. Online course repositories such as Udemy and Teachable can be used to host courses for people to learn.
Creating a course itself is not easy. You would need to spend a reasonable amount of time, possibly weeks or months on end, to craft a class geared towards your customer base. It also needs to be priced in such a way that it will deliver value and make an impact on their lives.
In my case, I had to spend several weeks crafting my course before posting it online. It wasn’t until I uploaded my course into Udemy and let it sit there for a time that I began to see the money coming in. I sold my course at $200, and there are discounts regularly on Udemy’s classes throughout the year.
An alternative to this is utilizing Youtube as a medium to reach your audience. Youtube can be a useful source of passive income, and educators of multiple trades use it to reach their intended viewers in a one-to-many fashion. You can link in Patreon, Google Ads and Paypal so that you’ll get money coming in through either the videos themselves or your viewers actively submitting payments to support your content.
4. Kindle eBook Publishing and Audiobooks
Nowadays, it is straightforward to self-publish a book. Entrepreneur Stefan James often quoted that he made huge chunks of passive income off being able to publish eBooks via Kindle quickly. Ebooks are in abundance on Amazon today.
If you bought an eBook from Amazon, chances are it’s most likely self-published. Creating an eBook is almost similar to that of an online course is that you’ll need to spend some time drafting it up before publishing it for market consumption. I am a big fan of writing up content like eBooks that delivers value and improves your lives.
Also, you can tack on an audiobook option for the eBooks that you publish. It doesn’t necessarily have to be you that provides the voice work for the audio version of your book.
You will end up smiling cheek to cheek as you see the money come in. Keep in mind that there’s still marketing involved to get your eBook known before you start making real passive income.
Conclusion
When it comes to passive income, there is no one-size-fits-all model. Everyone’s financial situation will be different. While there is still work involved, passive income is still achievable. It becomes a matter of how much effort I was willing to put in to achieve my goals.
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