10 Passive Income Ideas for Beginners: How To Start
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to earn money without having to trade your time for it hour after hour? That’s the dream of passive income – making money from sources that require little ongoing time and effort to maintain.
The exciting thing is, in today’s online world, regular people like us can absolutely start building passive revenue streams from home.
In this post, we’ll break down 10 realistic passive income ideas perfect for beginners, along with examples and links so you can dive in and get started ASAP.
Whether you want to earn a few hundred bucks a month or scale up multiple streams to replace your 9 to 5 entirely, these approaches can work. Let’s get into it!
1. Launch an Affiliate Marketing Website or Blog
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways everyday people earn passive income online. As an affiliate, you earn commissions promoting other companies’ products or services on your website.
For example, with Amazon Associates, you can recommend products on your site and receive up to 10% on any sales generated. Or as a ShareASale or Rakuten Affiliate partner, you can feature deals, coupons and special offers for thousands of top retailers and get paid per new customer, sale or click.
This income stream is considered passive because after setting up your website or blog, the earnings start coming in automatically as people click affiliate links after reading your content.
The more traffic your site gets over time, the more passive revenue you stand to make. Though it takes consistent work up front to start gaining momentum.
To get started, you can create a free WordPress site at WordPress.com or self-hosted at Bluehost using our affiliate link (we’ll both get a bonus if you do!).
Then apply to become an Amazon affiliate here or a ShareASale affiliate here. Feature affiliate product recommendations in blog posts and link to the sales pages. It’s that simple to put the wheels in motion!
2. Invest in Dividend Stocks
One of the more conventional passive income ideas that absolutely works is building a stock portfolio focused on dividends. Dividends are cash payments companies send out to their shareholders as a reward for investing.
You’ve likely heard of terms like “dividend aristocrats” and “dividend kings” referring to stocks that have impressive long-running dividend growth streaks – some over 50 consecutive years of annual dividend hikes!
Naturally, the more shares of dividend stocks you own, the greater your dividend payments will be. And better still, strong dividend stocks tend to increase their payouts over time through dividend growth, which combats inflation.
This makes them powerful long-term holdings to have in your portfolio as the compounding passive income really starts racking up.
We recommend opening an account with a top online stock brokerage like Fidelity Investments to get started.
Look for stocks with yields of 3-4% or higher to start seeing noticeable passive cash flow. Stocks like AT&T (T), AbbVie (ABBV) and Lowe’s (LOW) are dependable dividend payers, among many others.
3. Rent Out Your Extra Space
If you have an empty guest room, basement or other livable space in your home, why not put it to work earning cold hard cash? Renting out extra square footage to travelers, students or others in need of short-term housing can make for rewarding passive income you can count on month after month.
Airbnb has made it super easy for anyone with space to spare to get up and running as hosts. Just create your Airbnb account, provide details regarding what your space offers and its available dates, and set your nightly or weekly rental rate.
Once you get bookings, Airbnb will collect payments from guests and distribute your earnings after each completed stay, minus a 3% host service fee. It’s one of the simplest passive revenue streams out there requiring little from you beyond cleaning and key handoffs.
According to AirDNA, Airbnb hosts typically earn $924 per month on average renting out a full apartment or house. Rates for just a private room average $359 per month.
Not bad for rental income on the side, huh? The income stacks up especially considering minimal effort on your part after everything is set up.
4. Launch an Informational Membership Site
Do you consider yourself an expert on a certain topic that others may want to learn about, like personal finance, gardening, home repair/DIY, travel hacking, essay writing, or some other “how-to” field? Why not create an online membership site and charge subscribers for access to your specialized knowledge and expertise?
Using a site builder platform tailored to membership communities like MemberPress for WordPress, Mighty Networks or Circle makes launching very straightforward.
These tools handle key functions like creating premium content areas accessible to paying members only, setting membership tiers and pricing, accepting subscription payments, restricting forums to members, dealing with renewals and more.
Topics like personal development, job interview prep, tax planning/investing advice, fitness/healthy eating guidance, or language learning are all solid evergreen niches that tend to attract loyal followings.
Offering downloadable tools like templates, calculators, tracking sheets, or audio lessons can boost value. Mixing in a community forum creates incentive for renewals so members can continue connecting.
Just be sure to pick your niche carefully based on your credentials/experience and be ready to continually develop premium content worth paying for if you hope to retain subscribers month after month.
But grow a large enough base and suddenly you have a rather hands-off income source from members’ auto-renewing dues to enjoy for years potentially.
5. Sell Your Photos Online
In the digital age, stunning photography has never been in higher demand. Everyone from bloggers to major companies need eye-catching images to use online and in marketing materials, manuals, commercial products, books and more.
That means if you have a good eye behind a camera, you can actually make money from your photos without being a professional photographer. Huzzah!
Through stock photo marketplaces like Shutterstock, iStock, Adobe Stock, Alamy and others, you can upload your photos to start earning royalties anytime someone licenses them.
It’s 100% passive once your portfolio goes live, and agencies like Shutterstock even have contributors earning over $100,000 a year from license revenues. Plus your work gets way more exposure (pun intended) than you could ever manage sharing it just on Instagram or your own blog.
The type of content that sells particularly well includes lifestyle/business imagery, multi-ethnic visuals, nature shots and much more. Vertical portrait images also see strong demand today thanks to social media and mobile use.
Just be sure to use a quality DSLR camera, leverage props, models and lighting to make compelling compositions, and focus on popular yet underserved concepts searchers want. Then watch the royalty payments start racking up!
6. Invest in Real Estate Crowdfunding
Have you always dreamed of earning income from rental properties or big real estate projects, but lacked the money or experience to invest on your own? Well, now a hot trend called “real estate crowdfunding” opens the door for anyone to invest small sums in large commercial or residential deals vetted by experienced sponsors.
Essentially you pool funds with other investors to finance debt and equity investments the sponsor identifies and manages for you, usually focused on fix-and-flip homes, apartment/office buildings or new constructions.
The asset then gets leased or sold down the road for a profit you share in based on your investment stake. Typical hold periods range 1 to 5 years before your principal and returns get paid back out.
What’s great about real estate crowdfunding from an investor’s perspective is that after funding your investment, you essentially sit back passively receiving payouts over time without having to do any of the physical property work yourself.
Top platforms like Fundrise, CrowdStreet, RealtyMogul, Groundfloor and others handle all that, while providing transparency into deals and progress through your investor dashboard.
Higher minimums apply vs. investing in stocks, but for patient investors, annual returns commonly fall in the 8 to 12% range.
7. Launch an Online Course or How-To Series
Online education is still positively booming, which makes now a prime time to tap into the trend if you happen to be knowledgeable about a teachable skill or subject matter.
Using your expertise to develop an online course, series of video lessons or paid webinars can earn you passive income for years with huge upside if your content goes viral.
When it comes to monetizing educational content digitally, you have a number of options:
- Sell a course using a platform like Teachable or Podia
- Record paid webinars through Zoom
- Produce a MasterClass-style series on Outschool
- Tutor students in live online classes with Skooli
Whatever the medium, focus first on identifying an engaging niche and high-demand topics vs. competitors. Think through what specific problems you can help students solve better than others given your background.
Develop an outline plotting the curriculum before you start recording so content is cohesive when piecing lessons together.
Brand your material well with a memorable logo, color palette etc. With a polished premium offering, recurring passive income awaits as you continue acquiring new students over time via organic discovery or paid ads.
8. License Your Existing Content
If you already have a decent sized catalog of blog posts, videos, photography or other media you created on your site or for past clients, here’s a lucrative way to passively earn more from that existing content.
Rather than let it gather dust after creation, you can actually license usage rights to publishers, developers or anyone else looking to feature quality copyrighted material on their platforms.
For bloggers/vloggers, NewsBreak and Over provide platforms where you can upload and license your articles or videos to interested media partners.
You set your desired licensing fees and terms, which buyers must agree to upfront before obtaining rights to use your content in their apps, publications, productions or other properties.
You then receive payouts passively as your licensed material gets utilized month after month. Content licensing definitely becomes a scalable business as your media assets and buyer network grows over time.
Another route is custom content creation for buyers in need of blogs, eBooks, social posts, video scripts, other collateral for their brand.
Platforms like Scripted, Contena or Skyword connect writers directly with such clients for well-paying copywriting/content gigs. The relationships and work volume often continues on an ongoing basis too, leading to retained passive earnings.
9. Design Teespring Apparel Campaigns
Have a passion for graphic design and a knack for creating t-shirts people rave over? Teespring presents a chance to turn cool custom apparel ideas into passive sales 24/7.
As a Teespring seller, you design the shirts and set your markup price, with Teespring handling product listings, printing/shipping, and support when you make sales.
After you create and promote your initial campaign, you can essentially walk away as the site handles fulfillment automatically moving forward while you collect profits.
Most successful Teespring creators first brainstorm fun niche themes with viral potential rather than just trying to sell random t-shirts.
Capitalize on trends, meme references and pop culture fandoms to spur impulse buys tied to emotions.
Drive traffic to campaigns via social channels like Instagram or Pinterest along with promotions to convert site visitors into buyers.
As more people purchase and sport your designs as walking billboards, visibility grows. Before you know it, you have a passive side income popping off just from those initial uploads still spreading person to person.
**10. Collect Royalties Creating Music/Sound Effects **
If you’re at all musically gifted or skilled with audio editing programs, license your original tracks or sound effects with stock music platforms like Artlist, Epidemic Sound, AudioJungle, Pond5 and others.
These agencies then effectively act as your record label, promoting your portfolio to ensure widespread exposure with brands, filmmakers, advertisers, YouTubers and more in need of background music or unique sounds for productions.
Based on licensing activity each month, which often grows exponentially the more content you have listed, you’ll earn passively paid according to the specific stock site’s royalty structure and policies.
Leading microstock agency Shutterstock actually calculates payouts based on download volume, media length, exclusivity and history. Several of their top audio contributors now make over six figures purely from royalty earnings year after year off their initial uploads.
Because demand for high-quality, legal and affordable music/sound content remains so strong in the video world we live in, stock audio is absolutely a smart passive income pursuit if you have creative audio skills.
And there you have it – 10 passive income ideas prime for first-timers along with actionable advice to help you get started and ultimately succeed with each.
The opportunities to supplement earnings from passions or expertise by generating hands-off cash flow are plentiful right now.
With consistency and focus on the right revenue model for you, lucrative long-term residuals await. We wish you the best with whatever passive income approach you pursue! Let the semi-retired life begin. 😎
