Do you believe you don’t make enough money and are looking for ways to increase your income? If so, you aren’t alone. Reports show that 45% of Americans now have some kind of side hustle.
The question is, do you want to continue trading your time for money? If not, starting a passive income stream is a great choice.
If you’re ready to start earning passive income, this post will help you get started. Keep reading to learn all the best passive income ideas you can start today.
Start a Website
Starting a website is one of the easiest ways to create a passive income these days. It only costs a few dollars per month for hosting and your domain name and you can get a new website up and running with a few clicks of a button. Pages like WHMCS can help you find cheap domain names to get up and running.
That makes it simple to start blogs, e-commerce stores, and communities without much technical know-how. If you have something to say in an industry that pays for advertising, you can direct your website visitors to products and make money.
Most website owners rely on SEO to make money. They target keywords people search for on Google and write content to rank for those keywords. Check out this SEO pricing guide to better understand the costs involved.
Once you rank, you have two main options to make passive income.
The first is with display advertising. You sign up for an ad network and place ad blocks on your website. For every visitor who sees your ads and clicks to go to an advertiser’s website, you can get paid a portion of the advertising fee.
Your next option is affiliate marketing. You’ll place affiliate links for products on your website for this method. If someone goes to the product website and buys, you get paid a commission of the total sale.
Buy Rental Properties
Real estate is one of the most popular investments out there. However, many people only think of the buy and flip real estate investing model. They don’t believe they can generate passive income because they constantly have to search for and handle repairs for properties.
Luckily, you don’t have to sell properties after fixing them up. You can hold on to your investment properties and rent them to tenants.
Becoming a landlord is a great way to store your wealth in property and generate income every year. Unless you have a massive portfolio of homes, you likely won’t spend too much time dealing with tenant issues and actively working on your houses.
You can also check out a guide to property management to learn more about how to streamline operations. You can largely remove yourself from the process and collect rent checks every month.
There are even property management companies that can handle all the heavy lifting for you. They’ll get tenants, collect payments, and address rental property issues for a small percentage of the rent every month.
Start an Online Course
Do you have a unique skill set that you believe others can learn from? If so, you don’t have to stick to tutoring to help people level up their skills. When you do this, you have limited reach, so it makes more sense to go with a teaching method that lets you reach more people.
Online courses are one of the income stream ideas that will help you do that. Many online course websites allow experts to upload video content and provide it to their users.
You can teach anything you can think of:
- Mathematics
- History
- Computer science
- Physics
- Geology
- Engineering
As long as you can create great content, there’s a place for your videos on the internet. Some educational websites allow you to set your own price and take a percentage of the sales.
Other websites have a standard price for their educational material. In this case, you’ll get a cut off of everything they earn. As long as you can continue promoting your course and gaining new customers, you’ll make passive income for as long as your course stays popular.
Look for Dividend Stocks
Many people think of long-term stocks as a way to protect their wealth and grow their money over time. However, many of those same people don’t realize that many stocks pay out dividends every so often that can act as passive income investments. These dividends are created from company profits and distributed to shareholders.
One of the great things about dividends is that you don’t have to cash out your stock to take your earnings. You can cash out your dividend payments to your bank account or reinvest them in the stock market.
Once you own enough dividend-paying stocks, you can create a reliable income stream. Many stocks out there have a long history of dividend payments, so research those and invest in them to start generating income.
Rent a Room
Do you have some spare space in your home that you don’t use? If so, you can rent your extra room to people who need a place to stay.
It used to be more challenging to do this. You were on your own and didn’t have a platform to manage your rentals. Today, you have Airbnb.
Airbnb is a platform that allows you to put everything from a single room to a large home up for rental. You can do short-term or long-term rentals, and the Airbnb platform handles all the heavy lifting like rent collection for you.
If you price your rental right, you’ll have a steady stream of renters to provide passive income. You can then put some of your profits into maintenance and cleaning to ensure an excellent experience for your guests.
When you get enough great reviews, you’ll improve your reputation and have a line of people looking to rent from you.
Now You’re Ready to Start Earning Passive Income
You don’t have to spend your life working a regular job to make a life for yourself. You now have plenty of options to put your time and money to work to create systems that pay you every month. The above ideas are great for beginners who want to start earning passive income, so figure out what works best for you and start today.
Once you start getting passive income, you can start investing it in other assets to keep growing your wealth. Head back to the blog to find more investment advice to help you maintain your new wealth.