If you’re looking to create a side hustle while working a full-time job, you can start to build passive income. Here are the ten best ways to make passive income.
What is Passive Income?
Passive income is when you build a system to make money in the future with less effort. Usually, the initial setup will take a lot of time.
Often, passive income is misunderstood. It doesn’t mean there is no work involved with passive income. Instead, after the initial setup, you may only spend a few hours but earn a high income.
Below are some of the best ways to build passive income side hustles.
1. Rental Property
The rental property business is a popular passive income choice. You can either buy a home and rent it out to tenants or use sites like Airbnb for short-term stays. You can also hire a property manager to take care of all the daily tasks to free up more time.
You don’t have to buy a house if you lack capital. You can start by renting a spare room and using the income to buy a new home. This may require more time, but it can be a great way to earn an income.
2. Create Online Courses
Teach people about specific skills or knowledge you already have. By creating a video course, you can sell the course to people seeking to gain the same expertise as you. Creating a course can take a lot of time initially, but once it’s published and marketed, it can generate passive income for some time.
You can also use this opportunity to promote your current business via your online course. You can also use the course to promote your other content or use it to build your email newsletter list.
3. Sell Digital Products
While online courses are digital products, there are other ways to create passive income online.
You can sell digital art, e-books, guides, and templates. The benefits of digital products are that you don’t need to spend time on packaging or shipping. Once you create one digital product, you can sell it as often as possible. While initially it requires a lot of time and effort to create a digital product, you can reap the benefits when it’s online. You should spend time marketing it to ensure it reaches the right audience.
4. Buy Domain Names
You can buy domain names at a low price and sell them at a higher price later down the line. If you think a domain name will be popular, you can buy it cheaply, anywhere between $10 to $100. Later on, you can sell it at a much higher price. You can use sites like GoDaddy to complete a purchase through an online auction.
5. Start a Blog
If you enjoy writing and sharing your knowledge on a particular topic, then blogging might be right for you. It offers creative freedom, and with time, you get to build a community of like-minded people and monetize your blog.
Blogging can take some time to build and create a following, so you need to be patient.
You can monetize your blog using some of these strategies:
- Affiliate marketing
- Sponsored posts
- Google AdSense
- Selling products
6. Publish an E-book
Like creating an online course, you can create an e-book to share your knowledge. You can self-publish your book using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, iBooks Author, or Kobo Writing Life.
Once you’ve spent the time to write, publish and market your book, you can generate an income. Depending on what service you use, the royalties will vary. If you do more marketing, you may sell more copies. There are many online marketing strategies you can use to attract new readers.
7. Affiliate Marketing
Often, this method is used to add to an existing online income stream. For example, if you have a blog or a YouTube channel, you can link products in your content and get a commission on each sale.
If you create content focusing on a particular theme or subject, you can review related products and link them to your content. This is a great way to increase your visibility and help readers find the products they need.
Additionally, it provides an additional income source for you, as some platforms offer affiliate or referral programs that reward users for promoting specific products.
To make your efforts worthwhile, you must draw in a sizable audience with your content. You can also consider hiring other writers to free up some of your time.
8. Sell Stock Photos or Music
If you’re great at photography or know how to produce music, consider selling your photos or music. Many blogs, news publishers, podcasts, radio shows, and YouTube channels would be willing to pay for your photos or soundtracks.
You can use sites like AudioJungle and Pond5 to upload your music and gain royalties when people use your audio tracks.
To sell your photography, you have a few options. Sites like Dreamstime, Adobe Stock, and Getty Images will pay you a commission each time someone buys your images.
9. Build Single-Use Software and Apps
Many sites are created with one single service in mind. While such sites are free to use, the creator gets revenue through advertising displayed on the site. For example, some sites convert a PDF file into a word file.
If you don’t know how to code, you can hire a web developer to do the work for you.
You can create multiple single-use websites and apps to build a substantial chunk of passive income.
10. Buy a Small Business or Website
Since building a small business or website can take a while to generate substantial income, you can buy an existing business or website.
When looking for a business to purchase, seek one that is reasonably priced and offers the potential to leverage your skills to increase its value. This could be a great way to make a substantial amount of money quickly if you can manage it effectively.
The Cons of Passive Income
One of the biggest misconceptions about passive income is that you don’t need to work. But this isn’t entirely true.
Although you may not work the typical 9 to 5 hour day, you will need to invest a significant amount of time initially.
You will also need to manage each source of income, keep an eye on expenses, and plan ahead. Depending on the passive income type, the time commitment will also vary.
Final Thoughts
Passive income is a great way to generate income without actively trading time for money.
There are many ways to do this, such as investing in real estate or other assets; starting a business; renting out property; writing a book; creating an app; creating a course; selling photos; creating a blog; and developing a software program. These require initial effort and dedication but can be a great way to make money quickly.
Read the 10 Best Passive Income Books To Build Wealth to learn more about passive income.
Asma is a freelance writer specialising in finance and business niche topics. Her experiences include working at one of the world’s oldest and largest asset management firms.
Apart from writing, Asma also enjoys reading about finance, business, and entrepreneurship.
