41 Passive Income Ideas to Earn You Money in 2023

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Are you looking for the best passive income ideas for 2023?

When one builds passive income, they can significantly increase their wealth and better their financial security. 

While building passive income takes time and generally starts off as a small trickle, properly created passive income streams can eventually replace all of the income you earn from working, allowing you to reach financial independence.

In this article, we’ll discuss the best passive income ideas for 2023 and how you can get started on any of the ones that make the most sense to you.

Let’s jump right in.

What Is Passive Income?

Perhaps one of the most famous quotes about passive income of all time was said by Warren Buffet, who said, “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”

Passive income is money that you earn regardless of what you’re doing. It’s residual income that earns itself regularly from things such as something you’ve made, something you’ve invested in, or something you’re renting out to others. 

Cutting back your living expenses is also a way to earn passive income because you’re essentially earning more by spending less.

When you’re earning passive income, you’re no longer trading time for money, which is what you do when you earn active income. Instead, you’re making money even when you sleep.

Passive income is a way to reach your financial goals and become financially independent.

Note that passive income generally comes with a lot of work, or significant money, or both. As a result, it’s common for passive income streams to take some time to build up.

What are the Benefits Of Having Passive Income?

Passive income is essential for many reasons, and the benefits include:

• Giving you stability in your finances. With regular passive income coming in from multiple sources, if your primary source of income is lost, such as losing your job, you’ll have residual income sources to support you while you replace your primary income. The more passive income you have, the less you’ll need a paycheck.
• Enough passive income makes you location independent. When you’re earning extra income from multiple sources such that you can work less or not at all, you’re able to live wherever you want. You could travel for a living, or you could settle down pretty much anywhere, as long as you have the passive income to support it.
• You can retire at a younger age. If you earn a lot of money from passive income, then there’s a good chance that you can retire at a younger age. The idea of FIRE, or Financial Independence, Retire Early, is appealing to many, as they don’t wish to work for most of their lives.
• You’ll be less stressed about your finances. When you have multiple sources of passive income, you’ll feel more financially stable and less worried about not having enough money to cover an unexpected expense. Since numerous streams are coming in, others will be there to make up for it if one stops paying off.

Passive income simply means more freedom and an easier time with your finances.

How to Create Multiple Streams of Passive Income

Trading your time for money is the typical way most people earn money. But what if you could take that money and your spare time and create one or more streams of passive income.

What would you do with that extra money? Would you save for a big purchase, pay down debt, or fund a significant endeavor?

Money earned from passive income can also be used to create more passive income. When you have passive income-producing more passive income, your monthly earnings continually increase, which means more money in your bank account.

Let’s talk about different great passive income ideas that you can choose from to start earning more money.

1. High-Yield Dividend Stocks & Funds

Among dividend-paying stocks and funds are those that pay 4% or higher. You don’t need to be a personal finance guru to learn how to invest in dividend stocks on the stock market.

Instead, to lower your risk, you can invest in high-yield dividend ETFs. You can do the research yourself or use a tool provided by your investment bank. Speaking to a financial advisor can be helpful.

You can also check out M1 Finance.

M1 Finance handles all of your investing needs. You can create personalized portfolios or use premade portfolios that best suit your goals. M1 will also keep your portfolio balanced in any way that you choose.

Also available with M1 are high interest checking accounts, a credit card that has up to 10% cash back, margin loans with some of the lowest available rates out there, and a solid research platform so that you can make informed decisions.

Sign up for M1 Finance for free.

While previous data doesn’t imply future returns, you can get an idea of the performance of the stock or fund by doing research this way.

One risk to dividend stock investing that you should be aware of is that a dividend is not guaranteed, and businesses can do poorly or go bankrupt. Therefore, it’s always wise to diversify your investments into multiple stocks or a fund that invests in many companies.

2. REITs

A REIT is a Real Estate Investment Trust, which are companies that own income-producing commercial real estate. They may own the properties themselves or the mortgages on them.

REITs are required to pay out 90% of their taxable income to shareholders, meaning you often get a higher dividend return than a typical dividend-paying stock.

What’s great about REITs is that they provide high dividend yields and moderate capital gains as well. REITs are found on the stock market like other ETFs and funds.

If you don’t have the money to invest in your own property or properties, a REIT is an excellent way to break into real estate with less money while also keeping your investment diversified.

3. Crowdfunded Real Estate

Similar to buying and renting your own property, crowdfunded real estate allows you to invest with a company like Fundrise.

Fundrise is the first investment platform to create a simple, low-cost way for anyone to access real estate's historically consistent, exceptional returns. With as little as $10, you can open a Fundrise account and start investing in real estate.

Sign up here.

This hands-off solution gives you the power of being a landlord without having to do much except invest money and allocate it as you wish.

Investing in crowdfunded real estate can be a long game, and you’ll want to make sure you can have your money tied up for a few years or more as you earn regular dividend payments.

4. Bond Ladder

A bond ladder is when you purchase several bonds, generally maturing several months apart or one year apart each. So, as an example, you might purchase bonds that mature in 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, and then 5 years.

When your 1-year bond matures, you receive income, which you can then keep or reinvest into another 5-year bond, which extends the life of your ladder by another year. You can repeat this process indefinitely, gaining passive income each time a bond matures.

Bond ladders generally pay less passive income than other investments like high-dividend stocks, but they’re generally considered safer.

In general, a bond ladder produces somewhat predictable, incremental passive income.

Check out Charles Schwab bank if you’re interested in starting a bond ladder to earn passive income.

5. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Lending

P2P lending is a way to earn passive income by lending other people money. A site like Prosper will allow you to review potential borrowers seeking personal loans for things such as consolidating debt, paying off credit cards, funding a big event, starting a business, paying medical bills, and more.

To reduce risk, you’re able to lend as little as $25 per borrower. When you’re working with many loans of $25 each, you considerably lower your exposure to one or more loans defaulting, as the interest rates on the other loans will make up for this.

By stacking small amounts of money loaned out, you can create a cash flow of principal and interest coming back to you every month.

Rates vary significantly on P2P lending platforms, but you can expect to see in the 4% to 6% range on average, though it’s possible to earn more with some strategies.

Peer-to-peer lending performance generally has a low correlation to the stock market, meaning when the market is extra volatile, your P2P account may not be.

Get started with P2P lending at Prosper. If you are wondering if peer-to-peer lending is right for you, check out this article.

6. Certificates of Deposits (CDs) or High-Yield Savings Account

Certificates of Deposit (CDs) and high-yield savings accounts are safe ways to earn passive income as money stored this way is FDIC-insured.

While returns for high-yield savings accounts and CDs are very low, currently around 0.5% for many online banks, your money is safer than most other forms of passive income.

With CDs, you’ll put your money aside for a set time, and you’ll be able to lock in an interest rate to earn. With a high-yield savings account, you can regularly deposit and withdraw money, however, your interest rate may vary each month.

A savings account is an excellent place for an emergency fund, and finding a high-yield savings account will allow your emergency fund to earn a little bit of extra cash for you each month.

One such bank to open a CD or a high-yield savings account is CIT Bank.

CIT Bank offers high-yield savings, money market, CDs, and custodial accounts designed to help you maximize your personal finances.

View your rates here.

7. Real Estate Rental Properties

Investing in real estate properties can be a great passive income source. For example, if you’re interested in being a landlord, you can buy rental properties – residential or commercial – and collect rent from your tenants.

On the other hand, if you want to be more hands-off, you can hire a management company to take care of the property for you. This will reduce your gains a little but allow you to focus more on other things.

Rental income can be fruitful because you’ll earn predictable monthly payments from each property you have.

Of course, you or your management company will have to ensure that you have tenants in each unit and that rent is paid and that the units are maintained.

Real estate generally appreciates over time, and you might have the option to sell your properties for a further profit eventually.

Check out this book for some great information on buying and renting real estate properties.

8. Index Fund Investing

Unlike mutual funds, which are managed actively by a broker or investor, index funds are passively managed and come with much lower maintenance fees. 

What that means for you is that your money can grow faster in a typical index fund as less of your money will be absorbed by fees. So while you may not receive high dividend payouts in some index funds, your money will grow instead.

Index funds that follow the S&P 500 have grown in the 8-10% range on an average year for decades, making them an excellent place to grow wealth and passive income.

Charles Schwab Bank and M1 Finance are two places to get started with index fund investing.

9. YouTube Channel

YouTube is a competitive place, however, creating high quality videos can earn you thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Creating how-to videos or reviewing products are two ways to make money on YouTube.

YouTube has ad revenue built in, but you can also earn money via reviewing products and providing an affiliate link to the product. One or more viral videos where you review or show how to use affiliated products could become a passive income source for years.

Getting started with YouTube generally takes time, and you’ll want to learn good YouTube SEO so that viewers can find you.

10. Online Courses

Online education has become incredibly popular over recent years. Websites like Udemy and Skillshare have created platforms for educators to offer online courses to the masses.

If you have something you know a lot about and you’re able to teach it to others, then creating an online course might make sense.

Online courses are popular in the blogging world, and many blog owners offer courses as one or more of the products that they use to monetize.

Once the course is created, the income earned is passive, except for any updates or general upkeep you may have to do on the course – though you may hire out some of this work.

There’s no wrong topic to create a course about. Some popular topics we’ve seen are copywriting, social media management, bookkeeping, DIY projects, drawing, business management, budgeting, programming, and many more.

As you can see, the topics fall all over the spectrum, meaning if you’re good at something, there may be a need for a course about it.

11. Books / eBooks

Writing a book or eBook can earn you passive income for years to come. You might pitch your idea to a publisher or self-publish on a site like Amazon.

The best part about books is that they generally have little to no initial investment.

That said, if you don’t have enough time to write your own book, you could outline it and hire a ghostwriter to write the book for you. Ghostwriters frequently write books for authors who don’t have the writing skill or time to write their own books.

Books don’t necessarily have to be long. Many informative books are short and to the point, meaning that you could pull in recurring income each month if you can write niche books regularly.

One strategy is to write short but informative one book every 3-6 months, such as three books per year, and stack your income each year by continually producing more books.

The idea is that each book will serve as its own source of passive income, and you continually create more to buff up your monthly earnings.

You might consider using a tool like Grammarly to improve your writing.

Grammarly helps you write mistake-free in Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other app you use. You'll write better in seconds. Improve your spelling, grammar, tone of voice, and writing style with Grammarly.

Sign up today.

12. Print-on-Demand

Print-on-Demand (POD) is an interesting way to earn money passively. With POD, you sell things like clothes with designs on them or other printed things like journals, towels, shower curtains, wall art, and more.

You don’t have inventory as each item is printed when the item is ordered, hence print-on-demand.

Starting a print-on-demand store is made possible with sites like Printify. You can sell custom t-shirts, phone cases, and 600+ other products printed for you on demand. Printify handles the printing and the shipping.

Sign up for a free Printify account to get started.

You simply need to create an account with Printify, upload your designs, position them on the products, and price them out. Then, Printify handles all of the fulfillment. Once everything is set up, you can sell on your own site or on eBay, Etsy, or Shopify.

For more information, check out our print-on-demand article

13. Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a process where items are shipped directly from the manufacturer to the customer via a third-party retailer that sells the goods through their website.

In short, that means having a website where you sell goods produced by other companies, and you mark it up for a profit.

A popular dropshipping website is AliExpress, which ships all sorts of products from China. You can pay a fraction of the price for an item on AliExpress and then mark it up on your website for sale to your customers.

Let’s take a practical example:

• You find an item on AliExpress that costs $1.75 + $1.20 for shipping, a total of $3
• You list the product for sale on your website for $5
• Your profit is $2, less transaction fees.

From here, you could create a niche online store where you sell to a target audience. Then, as traffic to your online store increases, you make more sales per day, which is completed passively once set up.

Shopify is a complete commerce platform that lets you start, grow, and manage a business. Create an online store and sell to anyone on the internet. Shopify has dropshipping integration and comes with a 14-day free trial.

Start your online business on Shopify today.

14. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can be a profitable side hustle that leads to mounds of passive income if you get enough traction. You can do affiliate marketing through a website, through YouTube, or through sharing on social media.

With affiliate marketing, you’ll earn commissions in a variety of ways. You may earn when someone buys something, when they sign up for something, or simply when they click on your affiliate links.

Signing up for an affiliate network will put you in front of hundreds if not thousands of companies that are looking for publishers like yourself to market their products.

Some affiliate networks require you to be already established, but many will take on newcomers – and most are free to join.

It’s best to choose a niche rather than market random things. By selecting a niche, you’ll gain a specific audience looking for a particular type of product or service. Your platform will then talk about these products or services, and this will help maximize your earnings.

Once your platform is set up, you’ll start earning affiliate income passively.

Popular Affiliate Marketing networks:

• Commission Junction
• Awin
• ShareASale
• Impact
• Rakuten Advertising

Here’s our guide on how to get started with affiliate marketing as a beginner.

15. Blogging

Blogging is an increasingly popular way to make money online. Whether you talk about personal finance, parenting, education, crafts, gardening, or any niche you can think of, there’s always an audience out there.

Many bloggers get discouraged after not seeing quick results, and one must remind themselves that blogging is a marathon, not a sprint.

It can often take a beginner blogger over a year to start to earn any significant income, but that said, top bloggers earn a full-time income with their website, making blogging a great way to earn money while living the life you want.

You can earn money from blogging through on-page ads, affiliate marketing, writing sponsored content, and creating your own products and services. As you grow your traffic and your offers, your income will scale up accordingly.

Blogging is something you actively do to build passive income over time. Eventually, you may be able to hire out most of your blogging tasks to turn your income more and more passive.

Check out our complete guide on blogging for beginners.

16. Creating an App

If you have coding skills, you may consider creating an app. An app can be something you find on a mobile phone or software used on a computer.

Other apps include premium plugins used on websites, paid themes used by WordPress site owners, or games that draw in players.

It makes sense to think outside the box when creating apps because there are many apps out there, and competition can be fierce. Because of this, it pays to find a need that isn’t being fulfilled and capitalize on that.

Perhaps you have the capital to invest and an astounding idea but aren’t a proficient coder.

In this case, you could invest in an app developer and pass on your idea to them to develop. They then develop your app, and you can sell it as your own. Creating a subscription-based model may bring in even more income.

You can hire app developers at sites including:

• Toptal
• Hired
• Upwork
• Dice

Whether you hire out the app development process or you develop your own app, a well-created app that satisfies a need can provide passive income for years to come.

17. Instagram Sponsored Content

Gaining a following on Instagram can turn into a semi-passive income strategy that you can capitalize on.

Once you’ve gained a following, you can reach out to brands in your niche to discuss sponsored content.

The average micro-influencer can earn between $250-$300 for a sponsored post, whereas someone with over a million followers could earn six digits per year from sponsored content.

Partnering with a brand and including their products or services in pictures and videos you’re already creating is a great way to get started. You can also use affiliate links for items in your photos and videos and talk about them in your posts.

Aside from simply sponsored content on Instagram, you can advertise your own products via a link in your bio and then regularly reference your bio in your posts.

While this form of income requires some work, the passive part comes in people finding your profile at different times of the day and earning you money when you aren’t actively creating content.

18. Stock Photography

Stock photography is used all around the world in various forms of media for all kinds of companies. If you excel at photography, you can sell your photos on stock photo image sites like iStockPhoto.

At stock photo sites, you’re paid a commission every time your stock photo is downloaded.

As a skilled photographer, you could upload dozens of pictures over time, ranging from landscapes to typical office pictures to people sitting around with each other and more, and turn that into a lucrative passive income side hustle.

A site like iStockPhoto also has a section for illustrations, so if photography isn’t your strong point, but you’re skilled at sketching, you can make similar money with stock illustrations.

19. Printables

Printables are trendy on Etsy and can fall into a wide variety of niches. Some popular printable niches include:

• Budget planners
• Fitness trackers
• Home chore trackers
• Calendars
• Checklists
• Studying notes
• Personal goals and progress

Whether you do your own graphic design for your printables or come up with a rough draft and hire out a professional to finalize them, you can earn passive income selling your printables on Etsy or your own website.

One great thing about printables is that many people use them, each with their own preferences.

That means even if a particular type of printable is saturated, you may be able to wiggle into the market by providing something that your competition doesn’t, whether by something on the actual printable or via the actual design.

20. Rent Your Home

Have a spare bedroom? Use a site like Airbnb to rent out your spare room to people staying in your area.

If you live in a trendy area, you could make up to $1,000 or more per month renting out rooms.

A popular use of Airbnb is to own a vacation rental property and use Airbnb to rent it out during peak months.

For example, perhaps you have a home in a lake community that is popular for tourists during the summer or a home in the mountains that’s popular during ski season. One idea is to rent out weeks or weekends to tourists and hire a company to clean up between guest stays.

21. Rent Your Car

Do you have an extra car or aren’t using your car regularly? On a website like Turo, you can rent your car to people in your area. A quick lookup shows you can earn around $80 and upward of $250 a day or more, based on the type of vehicle you’re renting.

This is an excellent way to earn some extra income passively. If you rent through Turo, you can get insurance directly from their provider so that you don’t have to worry about what happens in case your renter damages your car.

The average person renting one car earns just over $10,000 per year.

Read this article to learn other ways to earn passive income with your car.

22. Rent Out Your Garage

Similar to renting out a room in your home, you can rent out your garage to someone who needs a place for their extra stuff or to park their car.

This can be especially good in the winter months for people who have nice cars that they want to keep safe from the snow or other inclement weather.

Neighbor.com is a site that lets you list your garage for rent to people needing a short or long-term parking spot. The website reports that you can earn between $200 and $400 per month, mostly passively, simply by renting out a parking spot in your garage.

23. Advertise on Your Car

Some companies will pay you to let them advertise on your car. You’ll be sent ads to place on the sides, front, or back of your car and paid to simply drive normally.

At Carvertise, you can earn between $350 and $1500 per advertising campaign, which averages $100-$300 per month, simply by wrapping your car in advertisements.

This is an option for commuters to earn money day-to-day, which can cover gas and car maintenance costs, leaving you more money each month for other things.

24. License Music

Songs and jingles are needed for typical media such as commercials, videos, apps, and more. So instead of getting signed for your music, what if you sold stock music instead?

Listen to music found in typical shows, YouTube videos, and mobile games you play, and then compose your own music.

License your music on sites such as AudioJungle or Pond5. By doing this, you can start earning money from your music without having to break into the music industry.

25. Cashback Apps

An interesting form of passive income is apps that pay you to spend money. That may seem counterintuitive, but if you’re already going to buy something online, wouldn’t it be nice to get a percentage of that money back?

An app like Honey offers discount codes at many online retailers, and you’ll also earn Honey Gold when you shop. Honey Gold can be converted into cash or gift cards when you reach $10 worth or more.

Swagbucks is a more expansive app that allows you to earn cashback from scanning your receipts, shopping online, and trying out products and services.

For grocery stores and retailers, check out Ibotta to start earning cashback whenever you shop for specific items.

When you combine multiple cashback apps, you can earn quite a bit just for shopping like you usually do.

26. Cashback Credit Cards

Some credit card companies pay you in the form of cash and rewards for using their cards. If you frequently use credit cards to pay for everyday purchases and bills, it may make sense to get a cashback credit card.

You may find yourself earning a base of 1% cashback with higher percentages for specific purchases. For example, some cash back cards specialize in things like gas, travel, groceries, and more.

Now, when you swipe your card, you’re earning a little bit of passive income sent back at you.

Two credit cards that offer great cashback rewards are the Chase Freedom Unlimited card and the Citi Custom Cash card.

27. Vending Machine Business

Perhaps a less common but interesting way to earn passive income is with a vending machine business. This income is not entirely passive unless you hire someone to do maintenance work such as restocking the machine.

That said, a vending machine business can provide steady passive income. You’ll pick a location and what to sell, and then you or someone you hire takes care of day-to-day operations. You might sell coffee, sandwiches, soda, candy, or non-food items.

There are lots of things to choose from.

Note that this form of semi-passive income is a business, and you’ll have some startup costs and risks involved.

Check out NerdWallet’s guide to starting a vending machine business to learn more.

28. Storage Rentals

A storage rental business can be a lucrative way to earn passive income. Typically, you can make $75 to over $500 per month for each unit. However, this type of business does have a high cost of entry, and you can expect to spend over $25,000 to get started.

With that in mind, if you live somewhere with a high need for storage, you can corner the market and earn a fair share of money each month simply by renting out space.

You’ll need land and money to cover building the units. You’ll make decisions like offering basic units or climate-controlled storage units, as well as the size of units and number of units.

Further information can be found here from Don’t Work Another Day.com.

29. Robo-Investing

When you use Robo-investing, an algorithm allocates your money for you based on the financial goals that you provide it.

Robo-advisors have become increasingly popular in recent years, though they should not replace getting sound investment advice from a financial advisor should you have financial questions and concerns.

That said, through Robo-investing, you may be able to up your returns and earn passive income without having to think much more about it except for determining your initial goals and investing money regularly.

Check out M1 Finance to get started with Robo-investing.

30. Refinance Your Student Loans

Refinancing student loans at a lower interest rate means you’re paying less money each month. This is a reverse form of passive income, meaning you’re saving money that you normally spend.

By paying less, you’ll have more money coming into your bank each month, which is a form of passive income in itself.

Check out SoFi to get more information on refinancing your student loans.

31. Make Money Watching TV

Watch a lot of TV? Would you like to be paid to watch shows?

When you join Nielsen, you can earn free gifts just for watching TV and other streaming devices.

Not everyone is selected, and you’ll have to agree not to disclose that you’re part of the Nielsen family. However, if you become part of the team, you’ll get occasional gifts just for watching everyday TV.

Read more about joining the Nielsen family here.

32. Laundromat Business

Another interesting source of passive income is a laundromat business. In the case of owning a laundromat business, you earn passive income for each washer and dryer machine you own.

Many laundromat businesses can be bought as they currently stand, meaning less work for you, as long as you have the money to buy into the business and optionally have someone to work with who can help you with day-to-day tasks.

This is a more advanced form of passive income and requires doing some due diligence. You’ll want to determine your startup and upkeep costs as well as figure out if the business will be profitable.

That said, a profitable laundromat business is relatively hands-off and can earn you a nice chunk of change each month.

33. Install Apps on Your Phone

You can earn passive income just by using your phone regularly or by shopping from it.

For example, with Swagbucks, you can earn passive income by watching ads, shopping online, and scanning your receipts. There’s also the Swagbucks search engine where you’ll earn money just for searching the internet.

Trim is an app that identifies subscriptions that you may be paying too much for or are no longer using. Trim earns you reverse passive income by saving you money every month that you had been spending beforehand.

Acorns is a simple investment app that rounds up your everyday purchases and automatically invests the difference. Your investments are then diversified across more than 7,000 stocks and bonds, while the app keeps everything balanced for you.

Acorns also offers a checking account and debit card so you can save, invest, and earn while you spend.

Check out Acorns right here.

34. Write and Sell PLR Content

If you’re a writer, a passive income idea is to write and sell PLR content. PLR stands for Private Label Rights and what that means is that you’ll be writing articles that you can sell to multiple other websites.

With PLR content, you write one article and sell it repeatedly to many website owners, and they will edit the article as their own to better fit their needs. You might sell an article for $3 each, depending on the length and the type of article, but you might sell that $3 article to dozens of businesses. This can be done passively once the article is written.

The key to earning passive income with this technique is to write high-quality articles and then find a platform to sell them repeatedly, such as in Facebook groups for bloggers. You can also place them on your own blog or e-commerce store.

35. Selling Digital Artwork on Etsy

Selling digital artwork on Etsy is an excellent passive income idea for artists looking to make money on their drawings, paintings, and other works.

There are many ways to sell digital artwork, and Etsy is a popular way to do it. Etsy is a great place to start selling your artwork because of how much traffic the site gets and how easy it is to set up a shop.

Etsy is free to use, and you can set your own prices. People trust Etsy, which means you don’t have to create a website to sell your art and worry about people not trusting the payment process.

36. Flipping Websites

This semi-passive income idea involves buying existing websites and selling them for a profit at a later date. You can buy and sell websites on Flippa. 

The website you purchase should have good content, a large audience, and making some income already. It is recommended that you spend some time improving the website before selling it. 

While improving the website, you’ll likely earn passive income from it as the website may be monetized with methods like ads, affiliate marketing, and products for sale.

37. Buying and Selling Domains

Another semi-passive income idea is to buy and sell domains. In order to make money with this method, you’ll want to buy or register domain names that you feel will become more valuable in the future.

Names that include catchy phrases or potential business names can be very valuable in the future because they’re easy to remember and may be desirable to someone one day.

.com sites are by far the most valuable domain extensions because they’re the most well-known. 

The best way to find potential domain names is to use a domain name registrar. These companies will let you search for domain names by keyword, extension, or TLD (top level domain). 

Check out Namecheap.com if you're interested in flipping domains.

38. Selling WordPress Themes

If you’ve got talent at web design, one form of passive income is creating and selling one or more WordPress themes. Some themes allow users to buy and customize them and rebrand them as their own. In this case, you can take a customizable theme and make your own version of it, and from there, sell it to bloggers and webmasters.

You’ll need to know how WordPress themes work and how to create or customize them. This is a skill that you can develop simply through practice. 

TemplateMonster is a great site to sell WordPress themes.

39. Earn Reverse Passive Income with Trim

Reverse passive income is when you save money on something you were spending money on, therefore giving yourself more money than you had before.

The app Trim saves you money by negotiating your cable, internet, and phone bills, as well as attempting to negate bank fees, lower credit card APR, and cancel your unused subscriptions. For this service, you pay Trim a small portion of your first year’s savings that they get you.

Trim reports that the average user saves hundreds of dollars, which means if you are the average user, you’ll earn hundreds of dollars of reverse passive income by saving money with Trim.

40. Be a Silent Business Partner

Silent business partners invest financially in a company while allowing a partner to take care of daily operations. 

You’ll receive a portion of the profits regularly because you own a portion of the company. Many companies, especially startups, seek funding, and some will give partial ownership of their company in exchange for this funding, which will allow you to earn passive income without having to run a business.

41. Rent Out Your Stuff

This passive income idea involves renting your stuff out online. You can do this on the site FriendWithA. 

You’ll take pictures of whatever is you want to rent and then create an ad online. Common things to rent out to people in the area include:

• Furniture
• Laptops
• Lawn care equipment
• Kitchenware

You can certainly rent out just about anything, which can be a great source of mostly passive income.

Different Types of Passive Income

When it comes down to it, there are four ways you can earn passive income.

Things That You Buy 

Sources of passive income can come from things that you buy. This primarily includes things that you invest in, such as stock, bonds, or hands-off businesses. Anything that you primarily pay money for and then earn passively from is a passive income stream that comes from a purchase.

Things That You Make 

You can make things for passive income. This includes creating your own business and running it while earning passively through sales. Creating digital products is another example of passive income because once you’ve created them, the sales process can be automated, and you can earn for the lifetime of the product.

Things That You Rent

It’s possible to earn money simply by renting things you already own, like your car. All you have to do is handle the renting out and returns of your items, and you’ll earn by the hour, by the day, by the week, and so on.

Reducing Expenses To Have More Money

Reducing expenses is sometimes called reverse passive income because you’re earning by not spending. Apps exist to help you cut expenses, such as Trim, which helps you cut out unused subscriptions and negotiate some of your fixed monthly bills.

How To Save Money For Passive Income Streams

Many passive income streams require some starting capital. Here’s how you can begin saving money to get started.

Create a Budget

Often the first thing you can do to save money is to create a budget, as this will help you identify where your money is going each month. Determine a weekly savings amount and use that money to create your first source of passive income. 

Your first source may simply be an online savings account where you prepare money for another, higher-yielding passive income stream.

Cut Back on Living Expenses

By creating a budget, you’ll have now figured out where you may be spending too much money. Check out this guide to see how you can lower your living expenses and how much additional money you can save each month to continue funding your first source of passive income.

Increase Your Earnings

Aside from earning more money through your passive income, you can further earn extra cash to fund more passive income streams by picking up a side hustle. Side hustles range from something you spend a few hours a weekend on to something you do daily after your regular work hours.

 

Why Is Passive Income Important?

Passive income is important because it allows you to build wealth over time while not trading as much of your time for money. As a result, you’ll further reach financial independence and financial security as you gain more passive income.

With enough passive income, work will become optional, which frees you to live your life the way you want.

Best Books on Building Passive Income

Three passive income books that will continue to grow your knowledge of the subject are below. Note that these links are Amazon affiliate links, and we earn a small commission on qualifying sales if you purchase them.

• Passive Income Ideas: 101 Passive Income Ideas $1000. In this book, you’ll find passive income ideas about affiliate marketing, investment funds, businesses, real estate, publishing services, consultation, mobile applications, and much more. All that you can start for less than $1000.
• Dividend Investing: The Beginner’s Guide to Create Passive Income and Achieve Financial Freedom with Stocks. As per the sales page, “this book contains proven strategies to create massive wealth with dividend stocks and by building a sustainable passive income over time.” This is an excellent guide for newcomers to investing who want to learn how to use dividend stocks to earn passive income.
• Passive Income Ideas: 50 Ways to Make Money Online Analyzed. A great first book on passive income that contains 50 ways to earn money online along with some analyses.

Wrapping It Up

In this article, we discussed what passive income is, its importance, benefits, and several ways to get started.

Finding one or more passive income sources will help you grow long-term wealth and create financial stability in your life.

What passive income sources will you and have you created?