7 Profitable Ideas for Passive Income in 2023
There are several profitable ideas for passive income anyone can leverage to make money online.
The phrase “making money while you sleep” sounds good, doesn’t it?
After all, one of the goals of financial independence is to build wealth that doesn’t take up too much of your time, so you can enjoy life and do what you want.
Building a passive income stream isn’t usually easy at first. Either time, money, skills, or all three are needed. But where to begin?
The first step is to save up a small amount of money that you can use in the future.
In the short term, having multiple sources of passive income can also make you more resilient and better able to handle changes in the economy.
Passive income is a long-term choice that requires tradeoffs in the short term. If you are willing to put your money and time into the steps and ideas below, you could make money easily for years to come.
You just need to know where to start and how much money you are willing to put into your ideas for passive income.
I’ll explain what passive income is and show you the list of ideas for passive income streams.
How do you get passive income?
Passive income is money that doesn’t come from a traditional job and requires little work to make and keep.
People can make passive income by investing in mutual funds or real estate, selling products online, making online courses, or doing other side jobs that don’t require them to work.
Passive income differs from active income in that it is often generated automatically.
This means that residual income can be made with little time and effort. It can help you save money and give you more time to do what you want.
When you don’t have to trade your time for money, you may feel less stressed and anxious. When you have more money coming in, you may feel better about your financial future.
Consider the following passive income ideas if you’re a service provider who wants to stop selling dollars for hours or a product business that wants to add income streams that don’t involve sending out physical products.
List of Ideas for Passive income streams for Beginners
1. Online classes
Online course sales are easier than ever for teachers.
You can make pre-recorded courses about marketing, illustration, or being an entrepreneur, and then start selling them right away.
Like digital products, you can sell online courses over and over again without having to keep any stock or inventory. This is called passive income.
To teach online, you have to put in some time in the beginning. You’ll need to plan out your course, record it, and give students things they can take with them, like templates.
Take Yegi Saryan, who started the company Yegi Beauty.
After making an online beauty brand that sells eyelash extension products, she made Yegi Academy, which is an educational branch.
Her online and in-person lash classes help entrepreneurs all over the world get their beauty careers off the ground.
Since you record your online course ahead of time, you can change it to fit a wide range of class sizes and experience levels by making it shorter, or longer, or changing it in other ways. This gives you more ways to make passive income.
You can take courses that students can download and finish at their own pace, or you can use software to release lectures and materials at set times.
No matter how you look at it, teaching an online course is a great way to make passive income with little investment other than time
2. Start an affiliate marketing business
Affiliate marketing involves telling people about a product or service.
It’s a great way to make passive income because when someone uses your referral link to buy the product or service you suggested, you get a commission.
This is also a growing business. Statista thinks that by 2022, the affiliate marketing market will be worth $8.2 billion.
Affiliate marketing is a way for online business owners to make money.
It’s simple to do: You only have to worry about marketing. The brand will make products and ship them to customers.
The risk is low: Affiliate programs are free to join. You can sell already-made money without having to pay money upfront.
So that more people click on your links, you’ll have to spend time making traffic sources.
Once that’s set up, you can make money through commissions in a pretty hands-off way.
It can grow: Most affiliate marketers don’t hire anyone else to help them.
You can tell people about new products and make campaigns while your old work is still making money in the background.
Affiliate marketing can be a great way to make money and bring in more money for your business. Only your time is needed. Once you’ve put in the time, you can keep getting the benefits.
3. Invest in cryptocurrencies
Investing in multiple cryptocurrencies, also called “staking crypto,” can be a great way to earn anywhere from 5% to 10% in passive income.
You can compare it to getting interested in your savings, but the returns are higher.
What do you do first? First, you should learn about proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies and how to get a cryptocurrency wallet.
Then you’ll need to learn about the different coins you can buy so you can choose the best one to invest in. When you’re ready, you can buy crypto on crypto exchanges like Kraken or Coinbase.
After that, all you have to do is wait for your investments to pay off and check on them every so often.
The more you learn about the world of cryptocurrencies, the better investments you’ll make and the more passive income you’ll have.
Keep in mind that staking crypto has its own risks, just like any other investment.
You’ll also need to spend a lot of time, in the beginning, learning about your options so you can make smart investments.
4. Sell digital products
Digital products are assets or media that people can’t touch with their hands.
These are things like Kindle books, templates, plug-ins, or PDFs that can be downloaded or streamed.
Digital products with high-profit margins are great ways to make money while you sleep.
You only have to make the asset once, but you can sell it many times through your online business. There’s no need to store or keep track of anything.
You can sell an unlimited number of digital products. Many people who make digital assets sell kits, printables, files, and other materials that professionals can use to make passive income. For example, UX Kits sells personas, flowcharts, and wireframes to help with the design.
The brand has sold its products to more than 10,000 customers in more than 100 countries. These profitable products are still being sold online, which shows how useful this passive income strategy can be.
5. Sell photos online
Photography is a service-based business, which is different from many of the other ideas on this list.
This means that you usually get paid for your time. To make money with photography, you have to be at an event or photoshoot.
Even if you’re making a lot of money, this can get old after a while.
But if you are a full-time photographer or have a good camera, you can make money from photography without doing anything.
You can do this by selling photos online. Stock photo sites like Pexels and Shutterstock will pay for good photos and videos, as well other online media companies.
Only your camera and laptop are the only things you need to keep around the house.
Once you upload your photos to these sites, they will market and sell them for you.
If you run your photography business on Shopify, it’s easy to add digital products like prints or print-on-demand products like shirts and hats.
This gives you even more passive income streams so you can work less and make more.
6. Start a channel on YouTube
You can still make a YouTube channel. 74% of adults in the United States use YouTube.
That’s a lot of people to earn money from without doing anything.
What is it? It takes a lot of work upfront with little or no payoff at first.
But if you think long-term and don’t mind putting in a lot of work upfront, a successful YouTube channel can bring in a lot of passive income.
Affiliate sales, sponsorships, branded integrations, and ad income can all add up passively as you add content, clicks, and views and grow your audience.
Use Ali Abdaal’s story as an example of what is possible. Within four years, his YouTube channel was making him more money than his job as a doctor in the UK.
7. Create a blog
Starting a blog can be hard, but as a passive income stream, it is becoming more and more popular as a business model.
You no longer have to be a big name on the internet to make money online. All you have to do is find your people on one or two platforms and send them to your website.
Building a blog takes a little bit of time. But if you make good content and share it on your platforms, you’ll build a large enough audience to make a good amount of money.
You could make money without doing anything with a blog by:
- Selling products from affiliates
- Putting together sponsored posts
- Making and selling your own goods
- Using Google AdSense to run ads
What’s the best? To start a blog, you don’t need to know how to design or code.
You can get a blog up and running quickly with a content management system and hosting service like Shopify.
You’ll need to spend time making an SEO marketing plan and creating and promoting content, but know that your work will pay off.
The return on these passive income investments can be as high as $30,000 per month, depending on how you monetize your blog.
Summary
You can make passive income work for you whether you have a million dollars to invest and no time to spare or nothing to invest, a lot of free time, and a little creativity.
Even though you might need some money and courage to get started, the Ideas for Passive income on this list will keep making you money for a long time.
So, look at what you have to work with. Set your financial goals and decide how much time, effort, and money you are willing to put into your venture.
You can do well with passive income whether you choose to invest, buy a business, outsource your own, or get paid for the things you do every day.
What’s holding you back? Use one of the ideas on the list to plant the seeds today.