17 Ideas For Passive Income That Actually Work! (2024)

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Are you looking for ideas for passive income so your money can work for you?

If that’s a yes, then I’ve got some great ideas coming your way!

There are many different ways you can create multiple streams of income without having to lift a finger.

This type of income is often called residual income because it continues even after you stop working.

I started looking at ways to make money online and create multiple streams of income to ultimately escape my job.

Deep down I always knew I didn’t want to spend my life working for someone else. And it was up to me to change that.

So I spent hours online looking for ways to make money that would allow me to quit my job for good.

And it’s the best thing I ever did!

I first started taking online surveys in my spare time and joined research groups to get paid a few hundred dollars here and there.

While this was an awesome way to earn some side cash to go towards groceries, bills, gifts and the like. Well, it wasn’t going to replace my full time income.

I started this blog so that I could grow it into my online business, save money and work for myself.

And in doing so I’m helping my readers achieve their dreams and goals along the way. Nothing makes me happier being able to do this!

Now, I’m going to show you the best ways to create passive income while you sleep and never have to sign in and out of work again. See ya boss!

What is Passive Income?

Passive income refers to revenue earned from assets that generate cash flow without requiring active management and maintenance.

For example, an investment property might pay dividends or rent. A business might pay royalties for the use of intellectual property it owns.

Or, if you have a website, you could potentially earn from advertising or affiliate marketing.

The beauty of passive income is that it doesn’t require you to spend hours every day working. But it does require patience and persistence!

Nothing in life comes for free, but once you’ve set yourself up and put the work in to begin with, passive income can be life changing!

Why Passive Income is Important in 2024 and Beyond

We all want to feel financially secure. And the best way to do that is to make our money work for us.

Setting up a few different income streams will help you to have enough money for retirement and spend more time with family and friends.

Life is too short to waste it working for someone else, especially with the cost of living going through the roof! And unfortunately, most wages aren’t keeping up with the inflation.

I worked at corporate law firms for 10+ years thinking there was no way out. Being miserable and hating my job, I knew there had to be a better way to live, while doing what I love.

That is the very reason I started this blog!

Now I want to help you by giving you options and showing you opportunities if you too want to escape a job that feels like a prison.

What are Examples of Passive Income?

Let’s get down to some of the most exciting ways to make passive income.

After researching high and low combined with everything I’ve learnt over the years to find 17 of the very BEST ideas for passive income, now I can’t wait to share them with you!

Keep on reading to find out why #3 is my personal favorite that almost anyone can do!

“The greater the passive income you can build, the more free you will become”

— Todd M. Fleming

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1. Sell Digital Products on Etsy

Selling Digital Products on Etsy is one of the best ideas for passive income, as you put the work in once and reap the rewards over and over.

Imagine being on holiday and people are purchasing your products without you having to do anything!

People love all kinds of printables, and you can easily create digital documents on Canva to sell on Etsy.

Some ideas could be digital graphics, templates, organizers, diaries, planners, just to name a few!

Selling digital products on Etsy is especially handy for anyone not wanting to deal with shipping. You just create your documents and your customers can download files from you once they’ve made an order.

When selling on Etsy, you will need to make sure you are listing your products with their specific relevant keywords (Etsy SEO). This will help your products to rank in Etsy so your customers can find them.

Related reading: 35 Best Things To Sell on Etsy To Make Money

2. Earn With Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is where you promote other people’s products or services, and earn a commission when you make a sale.

Earning affiliate commissions does not cost your readers/audience anything extra. You are simply promoting products and services you believe in and that you think can benefit your readers.

It’s become one of the most popular ways to make money online and one of the top ideas for passive income.

There are many affiliate programs that you can join, and some are easier to get into than others. I personally started with ShareASale and made my very first affiliate sale with them!

One of the best ways to recommend products and services to your audience is through starting a blog. Then, depending on your blog’s topic, you can start finding products and services that relate to your content and provide value to your readers.

Which leads me to…

3. Start a Profitable Blog!

When you combine affiliate marketing and a blog, that’s where the magic happens.

You can start a blog for a few dollars a month and create your very own passive income through promoting affiliate products on your website.

I started looking into affiliate marketing more seriously recently, and I am very pleased with the results so far!

While it can be a bit slow in the beginning, the more your blog and audience grows, the more commissions you will start to make.

If you’re interested in learning how to set up your own blog, step by step, you can check out our post with all the details here.

4. Reduce Your Bills

If you want to make money passively, lowering your expenses and getting better deals will put more money back in your pocket.

Perhaps not the most exciting way to earn money but it is the easiest and fastest!

Think about this.

Do you have interest you pay on credit cards each month? Or subscriptions you’re paying for but don’t use?

Then it’s time to start sorting out areas you can cut expenses so you can put that money aside every month.

You can use a handy tool like Rocket Money (previously Truebill) that will negotiate better deals for your bills on your behalf. They will find and cancel unused subscriptions and help you manage your money better.

If you’re interested and want to try Rocket Money, you can sign up with Rocket Money for FREE and start putting money back into your wallet!

**Please note that this app is intended for people who reside in the United States only**

5. Print on Demand

Ever thought about starting a print on demand (POD) store? If so, then you will love this for a passive income idea.

If you haven’t heard of POD stores, they are essentially where you create designs and have them printed onto products and sell them to customers.

Here are a few Print on Demand platforms that you can look into if you like this idea of passive income:

POD stores offer great flexibility and convenience, but they also require some time and effort to get started. Like anything worth doing in life!

Once you find a POD platform you like, you can start uploading your designs to sell on different merchandise.

And if you aren’t a designer, that’s okay! You can easily outsource the design work to someone on Fiverr.

Bottom line is, Print on Demand businesses make good money and are here to stay.

6. Rent Out Your Car

Renting out your car can be a nice way to earn some passive income without much effort.

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This involves listing your car for availability on a car rental website when you’re not using it. A customer finds your car and wants to hire it and you get paid.

So if you have a registered car that’s available to rent out to people, you can list your car on a website like Turo and start earning money.

Make sure you read all the fine print, terms and conditions etc. on any car rental site you use so you can meet their requirements.

7. Use Cashback Apps

What better way to earn money passively than by getting paid to do what you do anyway?

And that’s shop!

You simply download cash back apps, shop at your favorite stores and earn cash back on purchased items.

This is basically free money!

Once you have downloaded and signed up with cash back apps, they will track your purchases and pay you a percentage of the purchase price back.

These can be handy for things like grocery and clothes shopping and many of these apps have great deals that pop up every week.

Related post: 9 BEST Apps That Pay You Cash in 2024!

8. Create an App

Now I know what you’re thinking.

This is far too technical for me!!

But actually, creating an app is a lot easier with drag and drop software out there now.

You can even purchase app code “templates” that you can modify to create your app.

When thinking about creating an app, think of a tool that can solve people’s problems.

An example could be something like a meal plan organizer integrated with a grocery shopping list.

Once you’ve created your app, you can market and sell it either by a one-time payment or monthly subscription fee.

If you want to make your own app then have a look at a software service like FlutterFlow to help you on your app making journey!

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9. Rent Your Car Parking Space

Renting out your unused car space is an awesome and easy way to earn cash from home.

I’ve known people to do this who live close to public transport where there is high demand to snag a car space for the working day.

Especially where people need to commute to and from CBDs for work and it’s tight for parking.

According to Spacer, you can earn up to $450 per month renting out your car parking space.

So if you have an empty driveway or garage you don’t use, you should seriously consider charging for your space.

One option for US residents is Spacer. Another option for UK residents is JustPark.

10. Get Rid of Your Debt

Getting rid of your debt may not be the first thing that comes to mind when looking for passive income ideas.

However!

If you pay off your debt hard and fast, you are saving a lot on interest, putting money back into your pocket.

So if you find yourself in a mountain of debt, consider the snowball effect and start paying off your debt as soon as possible!!

Related post: How To Stop Living Paycheck To Paycheck in 2024

11. Sell Your Photos Online

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If you fancy yourself a photographer and enjoy taking photos, why not try and sell them?

This would involve taking photos with your camera or smartphone and selling them to stock photo websites or businesses.

Places like Shutterstock, iStock, Pixabay are all places you can try and sell your photos to.

You could also get in touch with small businesses online and offer to take photos for their business.

One way to do this is by sending some samples of your photos to the business’ contact page and offering them your services.

12. P2P Lending

P2P Lending or, Peer To Peer Lending, is a popular passive income idea that a lot of people are doing.

The way it works is individuals can obtain loans directly from other individuals or businesses through online platforms. Borrowers are anonymously matched with lenders.

If you want to become a lender, then you need to research to find good borrowers on a P2P Lending platform. You then lend an amount to the borrower and receive interest on the loans.

This can be a great form of passive income, but you will need to consider the risks before investing any of your money.

If you want to look into this type of income, you can take a look at Lending Club. This is just one of many P2P Platforms, so you can search around and see which one you’d like to go with.

13. Invest in Index Funds

Investing in an index fund doesn’t require a huge amount of money and is one of the easiest ways to make money passively.

So long as you have a steady income and are aware of the risks involved when investing any amount of money, this can be one of the best ways to make money while you snooze.

You might be wondering what an index fund is exactly?

Here is the definition of an index fund from Vanguard:

An index mutual fund or ETF (exchange-traded fund) tracks the performance of a specific market benchmark or “index”, like the popular S&P 500 index, as closely as possible. That’s why you may hear people refer to indexing as a “passive” investment strategy.
Instead of hand-selecting which stocks or bonds the fund will hold, the fund’s manager buys all (or a representative sample) of the stocks or bonds in the index it tracks.

One of the best things about index funds is that you don’t need to pick individual stocks to invest in.

Rather, you can invest in the overall market which keeps fees lower.

If you want to learn more about investing in index funds, one platform you can check out is Interactive Brokers.

14. Open a High Yield Savings Account

Opening and storing your money in a high yield savings account will help you to earn interest quietly and passively in the background.

Everyone should have an emergency fund or savings of some sort, and it’s a no brainer to store your savings in an account that’s accruing interest.

You want to find a bank that offers high interest rates on your savings account. Banks like Bank of America (at the time of writing this), offer a very low interest rate of 0.01%, which is next to nothing really!

But if you search around online you can find some great options for opening your high interest account.

15. Offer Specialized Advice on Fiverr

Recently, Fiverr has added some new services where you can provide advice to people seeking it in a few different categories.

This could be writing advice, marketing advice, design advice or video advice.

So if you have the knowledge and skills to be able to offer advice in any of these areas, you can sign up with Fiverr and start getting paid!

Head on over to Fiverr and see if there are any areas you can offer your expertise. Even if it’s not in the advice area, there are a lot of other categories that you may be able to offer your services in.

16. Get Paid While You Shop

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Can you make money while you spend money? Yes you can!

Here is a program I love and recommend using as they have some of the highest cashback rates out there.

It’s FREE to sign up and you can start your shopping and earning straight away!

Be Frugal This site has an incredible selection of your favorite stores like Target, Sears, Walmart, Amazon, ebay, Macy’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy and that’s just naming some of 5000+ stores! Seriously, it’s every shopper’s dream 😍 Especially when you can earn up to 40% cash back on items. Pretty darn amazing if you ask me!


Sign up here to receive a $10 welcome bonus and start earning cashback with FAST payouts!

Related reading: 10 Best Money Making Apps For Fast Cash in 2024

17. Create & Sell eCommerce Stores

I know a lot of people who have had great success creating and selling eCommerce stores.

There are many individuals wanting to create their own stores on a platform like Shopify, but lack the skills and technical know-how to do it themselves.

Similarly, there are businesses wanting to close up their Brick & Mortar stores to go fully online, but aren’t sure how to set it all up.

That’s where you come in!

Once you learn how to set up a website the right way, you can start offering your services to individuals and businesses needing to set up their online store.

And if you haven’t got a clue how to set one up yourself, don’t stress!

There are many tutorials you can watch on YouTube to learn the ropes, as well as online courses you can take. Thankfully there is a mountain of information out there that you can take advantage of and learn how to set up websites to sell.

If you’re interested in learning how to set up a store but feel a little lost, you can check out Udemy and search for a suitable course to get you started.

Now I’d love to hear from YOU. What passive income ideas have you tried or want to try? Want to find out the best ways to boost your income? Check out a couple of my favorite ways to get FREE cash below 💵

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If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile now you’ll know that I’m passionate about making and saving money. Below I’ve listed some of my favorite sites that have boosted my income and you might like to do the same! They are all FREE to use and join.

Survey Junkie in my opinion (pardon the pun haha) is one of THE best survey sites out there. And I’ve used a lot of survey sites! You earn FREE gift cards or PayPal money (my personal favorites are Amazon and Target) just by offering your opinion and influencing brands. That’s it! I’ve redeemed many gift cards from Survey Junkie which in turn has helped me save money on groceries, gifts and small online purchases. With Survey Junkie you can earn up to $32 per survey. They have over 10 million members with a tonne of raving reviews.


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Be Frugal: Get FREE cash back just by shopping at your favorite stores! Some of these include Target, Sears, Walmart, Amazon, ebay, Macy’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy and SO MANY MORE! Save a few hundred dollars just by shopping for the things you would normally buy.


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Enjoyed this post? Be sure to follow me on Pinterest for more money making ideas!

17 Ideas For Passive Income That Actually Work! (2024)
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