12 smart passive income ideas to actually start making money

I’m always on the hunt for relevant info and I loved this - one of the best articles I’ve seen on this topic for a while. Here are a few paragraphs as a taster...

Have you ever wondered what a Financial Advisers do?

How much you can earn

It's important to manage your expectations when you set your goals around how much money you can earn with a passive income. This is especially important when you’re beginning as this is going to be the most challenging time - when you are working hard and not making money (yet).

1. Get paid to shop or for searching the web

There are a lot of apps and programs where you can sign up and then get cashback from shopping, or earn points for watching ads.

Aside from the fact these aren’t really ever going to become truly passive incomes, since you need to engage with it to earn money, personally I think they are a bit of a waste of time. Most of them will only pay out cents when you watch ads.

2. Start a drop shipping business

You’ve decided to sell metallic laptop stands because you think there is a demand for them. Normally you would have to purchase X number of laptop stands. You’d then keep the stock at your house, and then once someone orders one you ship it to them.

The biggest limitatios of this type of selling is that if you don’t sell all of your metallic laptop stands, you take the financial hit.

Unlike this strategy, drop shipping is a fulfillment method where you don’t keep any stock at all. Instead, when your store sells a product, you then purchase that item from a third party (typically a wholesaler or manufacturer) who ships it directly to the customer. As the merchant, you never see or physically interact with the product being sold.

3. Run an e-commerce brand

If you'd prefer to create your own brand and do it the old fashioned way, setting up an ecommerce brand may be for you! This requires more time and initial investment, but once you're set up you can do it as little or as much as you like.

To sell products online, building brand awareness is key. Unless you're selling your own handmade goods, your products are likely to be very similar to your competitors.

The advantage of running your own brand is that you can differentiate your product and therefore have more varied pricing and increase your profit margins. The biggest downside is the added financial risk.

4. Rent out your car

If you own a car, chances are you don’t drive it every minute of the day. However, regardless of whether you drive it once a week or once a month, a car is always going to have fixed costs like insurance and registration. These can add up to around $1500 a year on the low end. That's $125 a month you’re spending on your car before you’ve even driven it.

Why not rent out your car when you aren’t using it and start offsetting its costs? You could even make enough money to cover all your car's costs, so you essentially own it for free.

5. Write your own ebooks

Did you know you can self publish e-books on Amazon and Smashwords? Thanks to Kindle and other e-readers, e-books are becoming increasingly popular. Traditionally if you wanted to be a writer, you’d need to find a publisher and convince them to publish your book. Your publisher would need to organise a cover design, the printing and promotion.

6. Own a herd of goats or sheep

This one may sound a little bizarre but would you believe me if I said a friend of friend is doing just this? There are companies who offer goat and sheep herds for rent as a way of clearing weeds, unwanted vegetation or fire hazards. You just plonk the goats on some land and let them do their thing. Of course, you’ll need to purchase the goats, but once you’ve got them there they’ll just munch away and earn their keep.

7. Create an app

If you’ve got some technical skills, building an app is a great way to use your existing knowledge to earn some passive income. If you don’t know how to build an app but have a great idea for one, team up with someone you know who can code.

Once you’ve decided on an idea and built your app, there are five ways you can generate passive income from your app.

• Purchase price for the app. You can give the app a price so people have to pay a few dollars before they download it.
• Freemium app. You make the app and a number of limited features available for free free, then upsell users to the full version.
• Subscription based app. You charge users a monthly fee to access your app.
• Selling items through your app. Offer add-ons or additional feature that users can purchase that make the app more useful or enjoyable.
• Advertising. Make your app free, and earn money from advertisements that run when somebody downloads it.

8. Rent out your stuff

I’ve already mentioned renting out your car, but there are lots of things you can rent out for cash, including your garage, backyard or tools.

9. Sell digital files on Etsy

Digital files on Etsy can be anything from cards, such as birthday or anniversary cards, to prints for people's walls, inspirational text, or digital copies of your paintings. You could also provide something educational, such as calligraphy practice sheets.

The most obvious advantage of this is once you’ve made the digital file, you can sell it over and over again.

10. Sell stock photos

If you're good at photography, stock image sites might be interested in buying your images. They'll need to be good quality photos, in focus and high resolution files.

Compare different stock photo sites for their terms of payment before you sign up. Some sites offer a small commission on each photo sold, while others pay a higher, flat fee.

11. Make a niche or guide website and become an affiliate marketer

Writing a blog or making a website about a topic you are passionate about is a great way to generate additional income. This isn’t entirely passive as you need to create your blog posts, but if you enjoy writing it won't feel like a chore at all.

Once you’ve got some good content and engaged audience, you can become and affiliate marketer and promote products to your followers. With affliate marketing, you earn a commission for each sale made by one of your followers.

12. Create an online course

If you have skills or knowledge in a particular area, you could create an online course and charge others to take it. This takes a large time investment upfront, but once it's established there's little more for you to do. Sites like Udemy or Skillshare allow you to create and sell online courses on nearly any topic under the sun.

Pretty valuable stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree! Why not check out the whole article here and share your thoughts with me afterwards: call 0413313100 or email me at [email protected].