Almost everyone is silently dreaming of being able to generate extra income that’s completely ‘passive’ without doing additional work or venturing into investment as an accredited investor. Whether it’s an income from your side-hustle or freelance, earning extra income without directly working for it can significantly help improve your financial health. Furthermore, if you suddenly lose your job or take a break from work, your passive income can still help you earn enough money to cover your needs. But before you continue dreaming about earning passive income, it’s essential to understand what passive income is and how you can access it.
What Is Passive Income?
Passive income is the money you earn while doing little to no work. Unlike active income, wherein you need to work for a few hours to earn it, you can earn passive income even while asleep. However, just because passive income is earned without doing any work doesn’t mean it’s also easy to achieve. Of course, like other things, there are still a few things you need to work on before you can start generating passive income. It’s not a ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme as there’s still work involved, only it’s done upfront.
Being able to earn passive income helps you become more financially stable and have more financial freedom. Instead of solely relying on your first or second job, which you could lose at any moment, continuous passive income earnings will give you extra financial security. Earning passive income also allows you to build wealth, especially if you want to achieve your retirement goals.
Can Everyone Earn Passive Income?
Although passive income sounds promising, you need to be committed enough to do all the work and labor first before you start earning. For example, if you like to make money renting out your space, you’ll need to prepare the room first that you intend to put out for rent (e.g., attic, garage, unused bedroom, extra apartment, etc.). Then, once you’ve met the requirements set by your state about rental properties, you can start promoting your available rental space. When you find a tenant, that’s when you can finally start earning passive income.
In reality, passive income is a progressive endeavor, which means you’ll need to undergo proper planning, saving, investing, and sometimes, acquiring additional skills before starting a passive income stream.
What Are Some Passive Ideas You Can Try In 2022?
If you’re ready to begin earning passive income, here are eleven passive income ideas you must try to boost your financial health in 2022.
- Invest In A REIT
A Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) is the term used to describe companies that manage, own, or operate real estate for income. It allows individuals to own or invest in real estate without buying physical properties. This type of investment is growing more popular, especially for small-scale investors who aren’t capable of buying a piece of commercial real estate.
Thus, to earn passive income, you can invest in real estate with little money without risking too much capital. Once you’ve invested, you’re buying a fraction of the trust’s assets, and you can earn passive income from the interest of mortgage payments or the rent payments from the commercial real estate.
- Write A Book
If you’re fond of creating, writing, and telling stories, perhaps you can use that skill to write your book and earn passive income. You’ll need to do a lot of work upfront before earning money. So, be prepared to think of original ideas or stories and take your time to complete your book. Next, you’ll need to find a publisher to help print and publish your book. If not, you can also self-publish it and make your written book available on online self-publishing platforms.
Remember, you won’t be able to earn anything if no one buys or reads your book. Thus, you’ll also need to invest some time, money, and effort in promoting your book to reach your target readers. Once you’ve finally got a consistent number of readers, you’ll start earning cash or getting a paycheck from self-publishing platforms every month while doing nothing. If you’re still up for it, you can write additional books and make an even larger passive income, especially if you’re gaining fans and loyal readers.
- Start A Blog And Monetize It
Meanwhile, if you’re still into writing but not so much into stories or books, you may consider starting your blog. Nowadays, more people are creating blogs as it’s the best place to write and talk about their niche. For instance, if you’re a frequent traveler, you can earn passive income from starting a travel blog and writing all about your traveling experiences and tips to aspiring and active travelers like you. Meanwhile, if you’re comfortable talking about dating and relationships, people with relationship questions and concerns can quickly check your blog for some tips and advice.
Once you’ve started a blog, make sure to have it monetized to start earning money. You can register for ad programs or affiliate programs so you can promote websites or products inside your blog and earn a commission percentage. The more people check, read, and subscribe to your blog, the more passive income you can make. Of course, to keep the readers coming, you’ll need to publish new content every once in a while.
- Sell Photos Online
Another excellent way to earn passive income is by selling your photos online. It could be a great option specifically for people skillful at taking professional photographs. In contrast to the photography business, wherein you need to regularly take pictures for different clients, selling your photos online won’t require you to take pictures always.
All you need to do is take a collection of photos that could be used by users worldwide. You can take pictures of any niche such as sports, landscape, food, nature, and anything you like to cover. Then, you can post those images for sale on various photography websites and get paid every time people buy the photos from your portfolio. Taking high-quality and visually appealing pictures may require some time and effort, but you probably wouldn’t mind the work needed as it pays you to do your hobby anyway.
- Lend Money To Peers
Do you have a substantial amount of cash lying with you, and you don’t have any plans for it soon? You can put it to good use by lending it to your peers or close associates, also known as peer-to-peer lending. As with other types of loans, your passive income comes from the interest you get each time your peers pay. So, while you’re growing your money from the interest rates, you can also focus on doing other jobs.
To simplify the whole lending process, you can sign up on any lending sites that will help connect you to your active borrowers. From there, you can find all the transaction history of every payor. The only downside with this option is that peer-to-peer lending is unsecured, which means there’s a risk that one of your peers or lenders may fail to repay the loan. To mitigate the risk of unpaid loans, make sure you take time to do background checks and study the historical data of every lender before you let them borrow your money.
- Rent Out Properties
If you have some properties or household items you’re not using, why not consider renting them out to earn passive income? Perhaps you have another residential property located in a different state, a vacant room in your house, or an unused parking space. You can rent them out and earn rental income without doing plenty of work. Still, you may be required to spend time and effort in maintaining the rental properties.
You can also do the same for your household items. You can invest in any high-value items that many people would need for a short time but wouldn’t bother buying for themselves. A good example is camping gear. Some people don’t think buying a brand-new tent would be economical, especially if they rarely camp outside.
Thus, they would prefer renting tents to save themselves from buying costly tents that they won’t eventually use in the future. At the same time, every time campers rent your tents, you also get to earn passive income. Overall, before you start investing and renting out your items, ensure you research and find which items are always in demand in your area.
- Flipping Domain Names
Have you ever experienced creating a domain name for your website, only to find out that someone already owns it and now they’re asking you to pay thousands of dollars to own it? It is called flipping domain names, and many people also use this to earn passive income. So, if you have lots of great and unique domain names in your mind, you can create or buy them up. Then, put them on sale on a domain marketplace until some people are interested in buying them from you.
However, be wary of the risk that not all of your domain names will sell, and you might get stuck paying domain name renewal fees every year. To prevent such a risk, make sure you flip domain names with a higher chance of getting sold.
- Advertise On Your Car
If you have a car and always drive around with it, consider using your vehicle for advertising. Car advertising agencies are usually interested in hiring vehicles that drive on streets or roads that match their clients. So, find yourself an advertising agency and expect them to ask you about your driving habits, frequent routes, and the number of miles you often travel. Once they see that your routes and driving habits match their needs, they’ll allow you to use your vehicle for their advertising campaign. Ultimately, you get paid for participating in their advertising campaign while driving, as you usually do.
- Invest In A Vending Machine or ATM
Haven’t you ever wondered who owns the ATMs and vending machines you see everywhere? Most of those machines are owned by people who are currently earning passive income, and you could be one too. To do this, you’ll need to purchase or rent an ATM and place it in a location you own. It could be effective, especially if you have a commercial space with a lot of traffic. The more individuals use your ATM, the higher profit or passive income you also get from the fees charged for every user.
The same thing goes for vending machines. You can place your vending machine in a high-traffic location. Then, stock it with food and snacks that most people in that area might need. Just ensure you buy your food and goodies in bulk to lower the purchase costs.
- Create A YouTube Channel
Starting a YouTube channel is similar to creating a blog. The more the audience watches your videos and subscribes to your account, the higher passive income you can earn. But just like blogging, you’ll also need to do some work upfront to build up your audience, promote your videos, and create content videos that can entice and retain the audience’s attention. Remember that for your account to be qualified for monetization, you need to have at least 1000 subscribers and gain 4,000 hours of watch time.
Growing your channel may also take some time and effort. To help you, you can use some tools such as keyword research tools and optimization tools, so you’ll know which content the watchers are looking forward to finding and watching. You also need to take some time taking videos and editing them before uploading and promoting them. But once the videos are out and you can reach a large audience, the income will continuously be passive for many years.
- Sell Your Designs Online
If you’re talented in creating printed designs, put them to good use by selling them online. Whether it’s logo designs, templates, or illustrations, you can put them on sale on an online marketplace until you find buyers willing to pay for your works. You can also come up with designs that are highly relevant to this year’s events to boost the chances of them getting sold. But like the other ideas, you’ll also need to invest some time, money, and effort to develop original ideas to avoid copyright infringement.
Key Takeaway
Starting a passive income strategy can be an excellent idea for everyone, as long as you’re willing to invest, plan, and do all the intensive work upfront. Once you’ve had everything set up, you can start earning passive income, have extra cash, and enjoy a healthier financial status. So, grab the opportunity to earn passive income by using these ideas above.
