Have you ever asked yourself this: is it possible to make money even while I sleep? In this post, I will show you my 11 best ways to make passive income online that work for me personally.
Here’s exactly how my morning starts. I open my eyes and ask my husband, any news? He checks on the phone how was the traffic to my website during, how many eBooks and other products were sold during the night.
We live in Europe and most of my audience is in the United States, so most of the activity on my website and a lot of purchases happen literally while I sleep.
Anyway, I am telling you all of this because a lot of people don’t believe that passive income is even possible. Well, I am a living example of this because a lot of my income streams are passive and I’ll talk about them in this video along with a few others which I don’t use personally but I know they work great.
Now, you might be here because you just recently left your 9-5 job and you dream of working from home. Or, you still have a 9-5 job but you are also looking for a side hustle that can eventually become your main source of income. Well, I am here to give some ideas on how you can make passive income online! Yes, you can just be in the comfort of your own home wearing pajamas and earning money!
What is Passive Income?
But first, what is passive income? Is it any different from the income you receive at your regular 9-5 job?
To simply define it, what you earn from your daily 9-5 job is called active income. This type of income requires you to do some kind of work or basically trade your time for money. Active income stops the moment you stop doing your work or putting your time and effort onto your job.
On the other hand, passive income means that you are earning regular income without constantly putting effort into it! Unlike active income where you have to consistently work and sacrifice time, passive income usually requires you to do most of the work at the beginning. You will only invest a considerable amount of time and effort during the initial setup. After that, it will be a breeze. Sounds like a dream, right?
How can I make $1000 a month in passive income?
Again, remember that if you want a consistent and efficient stream of passive income, then you have to do some high-quality work first. But don’t worry, after you are done with the leg work and all the initial setup, you can sit back and wait for the money to come to you. And because you are doing this online and the Internet never rests, you can even earn income while you sleep!
If you are still interested, then here are the 10 online passive income ideas for 2023.
- Making Youtube Videos
Have you ever noticed that almost everyone seems to be on Youtube nowadays? It’s not just celebrities and game streamers, like it used to be a few years back. Now it’s everyone! Your mom and your grandpa, dogs and cats, your classmates… and of course lots of businesses starting their Youtube channels because… well that’s where we all spend hours and hours of watch time!
But did you know that if you switch the roles from a viewer to a content creator, you can make a great passive income from Youtube?
So here is how it works. Youtube shows ads in your videos and you get paid for it. How much you will get paid often depends on the niche you chose and on the type of audience you attract to your channel. If you are targeting teenagers for example and a global audience, your average CPM (cost per thousand of impressions in your videos) will be lower than if you are targeting some other demographics. For example, if you target a business audience between 25 and 50 years old, form the United States, you’ll get much higher CPMs. And you probably understand why you will get paid differently. When the audience has a stronger purchasing power, advertisers are willing to pay more for showing ads on your videos.
Becoming a Youtuber is one of the strategies where you have to invest time and effort into creating a video. But once it’s published, it will keep brining you ad dollars for as long as you keep your video on the platform. Of course, you will have to consistently work on your channel uploading new videos if you want it to keep it growing. But the passive part of the ad income on Youtube is possible because all of your old videos are always driving you views even a year or two years after you published them.
I know this works 100% – I started making over $1000/mo only with ads on my videos, and my channel has still a relatively small subscriber base, and the topics I cover mostly are pretty narrow, focused on a specific topic. I already mentioned, I talk a lot on this channel about Pinterest marketing and blogging for beginners.
You can seen here a screenshot for my Youtube income it’s over $1000/mo and last month for example, the video that generated the most income on my channel, was a video published over 6 months ago and it’s trending right now because Youtube algorithm just decided this video deserves more views and shows it in suggested videos which helps me generate passive income from a video I published many months ago.
Now that I mentioned it’s a video about making money with a blog, I think it’s time to talk about the second way I earn passive online – it’s through my blog!
2. Blogging
First, what is blogging? Short for a “weblog”, a blog is considered to be an online journal or a source of online information that can be updated anytime. A blog is a perfect platform for writers to share their works or for business owners to promote their business and/or products. The content of a blog typically includes texts, photos, videos, animated GIFs, illustrations, infographics, and more!
Blogging is one sure and most effective way of earning online passive income and it’s all thanks to display ads. There are different types of ads you can put on your blog including pay-per-click ads, pay-per-view ads, video ads, and more. For beginners, you can easily apply to Google Adsense and Media.net. And when you have enough traffic, you will be able to apply for higher-paying display advertising networks. If you have reached 25,000+ sessions per month, you can apply for MediaVine Publisher Network.
The good thing about ads is that they are always on your site and whenever users visit your blog and see your ad, they can either click on it or even just view it, and you will already gain money from that simple action! So yes, as long as your blog is up and running, you can earn income anywhere and any time of the day.
If you want to know more about what a blog is and you are interested in starting one, then I have the perfect video for you in which I talk all about what you need to know about blogging as a beginner:
3. Online course sales
If you have expertise or wide knowledge in a particular field or subject, you can create your own online course. Depending on your preference, an online course can either be a video or text-based but generally people these days tend to learn from video and video courses are usually at a higher price range.
You can teach any topic or subject as long as you know what you are talking about. It can range from science to business, fitness, yoga, to even arts and crafts. Seeing where the things are going, online education will become even more in demand in the near future, so it’s a huge opportunity and it would be a pity to miss it, especially if you’ve been already teaching and training people offline. So you have the teaching skills, you have the expertise, you just need to learn a few online platforms to help you deliver your content to the customers, and well… learn how to market your courses as well.
In my most recent income report I shared that in my best month so far, I made over $15,000 selling my signature program – it’s an online course called Pinterest SEO Traffic Secrets. Because my expertise is in Pinterest Marketing and SEO, and because I achieved impressive results with my own Pinterest account and I’m consistently getting over 200,000/mo pageviews to my blog just from Pinterest, I created a course to teach my Pinterest strategy other online business owners and bloggers. So, if you are interested in checking it out, here it is.
4. Crypto Bots Trading
I’ve been testing crypto bot trading following the program by Dan Hollings THE PLAN.
These bots are not making a profit when you sell the coin, they make thousands of micro-transactions and take small profits to your crypto exchange account every day. So even if the coin goes down in price, there is a certain price range that you set in the bot configuration, so it will still keep buying and selling while the coin is within the price range.
For more info on this passive income idea, check my detailed review of Dan Hollings The Plan program here.
5. Affiliate Marketing
If you have a website, then you might want to try affiliate marketing. It is another great strategy for bloggers when it comes to making passive income because of its convenience and efficiency. Simply put, affiliate marketing is when you recommend a product or service to your audience by placing your own special tracking links. Once your readers purchase something using your link, you will get a referral commission. You can basically make passive income from this with very little to no effort! For beginners, you can easily apply to Amazon Affiliates, ShareaSale, and VigLink.
And if you do not have a website, no need to worry as well because you can still do affiliate marketing on Pinterest and any social media or online platform! If you have a good number of followers on Instagram, then you can simply put some products on your stories and do the “Swipe Up” strategy where your followers will be immediately redirected to a product page. If you have a Facebook page with a lot of following, then you can make a text or photo post with your affiliate link. And if you have Pinterest, you can simply make pins and make directs affiliate link to the promoted products page. Personally, I believe that Pinterest works best for affiliate marketing. Here is another video of mine where I teach you about Pinterest Marketing and how you can earn affiliate income even without a blog:
6. Digital product sales
If you want to earn passive income while showcasing your skills and making use of your passion, then why not create some digital products that you can sell? Some examples of digital products are printables which can range from planners, stickers, stationery, templates, worksheets, and others. Another example is eBooks and audiobooks. To start, you can easily sell your ebooks or audiobooks on Amazon and do a little bit of marketing to promote your products. If you have a website or an Etsy shop, then you can also sell your online products through those platforms. Selling digital products is also another way where you can put effort initially and establish your name as an expert in a certain topic.
7. Do a subscription-based service
Providing a subscription-based service is another way of gaining consistent passive income. If you don’t know what this means, just imagine a gym membership or even your Netflix account. You pay monthly to get the services they offer, right? That’s what you can do as well. If you are good at art, teaching, or you have some resources that you can share, then you might earn money from it. What you can do is make the things you can offer beforehand and give them out to those who subscribed to your service in batches, once a month. You can even send the information through email if you don’t want to invest into a platform for hosting your membership content.
Other ways to build your subscription-based service, include creating your own website or landing page or sign up on Patreon or Ko-fi. These two websites I mentioned can also be used as a platform for your fans or audience to “donate” to you for all your hard work.
8. Sell stock photos
Are you a photographer or at least likes photography? Then you may want to earn money from the photos you have taken! There are tons of paid photography websites such as Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, and more. What these websites usually do is they offer either a percentage or a flat fee for each photo of yours that is sold. So if there are tons of people who like your photo and buy it, then the cash flow will be quite high. If you want to set your own price for your photos, you can either upload it on your own website or an online eCommerce platform like Etsy.
9. List your place on Airbnb
If you have a house, an apartment, or even a spare room or a large backyard, then you might want to consider listing your property on Airbnb. Airbnb is a property listing website that actually has a lot of active users looking for a place to stay or a venue to hold events in. Airbnb has a big audience of travelers so if you live in a place where it is known to be a tourist destination, then go ahead and take advantage of it.
You just need to take photos of your place, write a short description, and you can start earning! What’s good here is it is up to you to set the price of the property you are currently listing.
10. Create a mobile app
If you are someone who is techy, then you might want to consider creating an app. This is another example wherein you will have to put some work and effort at the beginning but once you do, the result will be worth it. The good thing about this is that you can also place display ads within your app. Another thing is that you can even make in-app purchases for some features of your app. Everyone is basically on their phones almost 24/7 so I bet that if you produce a really high-quality and entertaining app, you will have a steady passive income flow. I mean, if Angry Birds could do it, then I know you could too.
11. Earn Royalties
If you are a talented musician, voice actor, or author, then you can earn royalties from your work. This basically means that people will pay you to use your work. So you can just produce pieces of music or content at the start and just wait for people to purchase your work. For example, a beat or a piece of music you made. You can have your work uploaded on streaming sites like Spotify, Apple Music, and even Youtube.
I know there are more ways where you can make passive income online but these are just the examples that I found most effective and successful. If you are doing another strategy that I wasn’t able to mention, then feel free to share it in the comments section below.
I’m Anastasia and I’m a full-time blogger, online entrepreneur, and Pinterest marketing strategist. I help digital entrepreneurs and bloggers drive targeted traffic from Pinterest either through my online courses or through Pinterest consultancy.
