I’ve been doing some thinking about money lately (who doesn’t?). Specifically about my own financial plan. I have a steady job that gives me a reliable source of income (so far, assuming I don’t get laid off soon because of coronavirus). I live very frugally in a room I found on Craigslist meant for a broke college student. My meals only cost $1 each and I rarely buy random stuff on amazon.
What more can I do to strengthen my financial plan? You can only cut your spending up to a certain point. What if you literally can’t spend any less money than you’re spending now?
The answer: increase your income. There’s always the option of directly exchanging time for money with a side hustle, but what if you don’t want to spend the only resource you’ll never get back?
Passive Income Explained
The real answer: passive income. This is a source of income that costs you little to no time and effort to maintain. This is the best source of income because it does not require you to sacrifice your most important resource: time. You could even be making money while you sleep (turning your Z’s into dollar signs). Ultimately, what’s the point of making a lot of money if it means you won’t even have time to enjoy the money you’re making?
You can only trade so much of your time for money before you hit a limit. With passive income, the sky’s the limit. Since it doesn’t cost time, you can scale your passive income to pretty sizable proportions. It might even be enough to replace your full time job, leaving you with nothing but time and money. Wouldn’t that be nice?
There are many types of passive income. There’s money from rentals, owning dividend paying stocks, and peer to peer lending. Some of them are pretty easy to get started, such as buying high dividend stocks.
Others like creating and selling a digital product require a big upfront time and energy investment, but after that will earn sales with minimal effort on your part. If I had to guess, the passive income strategies that require the most upfront work probably have the biggest payout.
The Google Search
Alright, so passive income. How do I get it? Off I went to Google. I typed in “passive income ideas” and out popped 94,300,000 results. Then came the idea for this post. I’m doing the research anyways, might as well document it for other people to benefit (I’m looking at you, reader at home).
The top results are probably the most helpful, but what about on the 10th page of Google? Is this keyword so competitive that all 10 pages of Google will give me great content? I wanted to find out. I was also curious how long my list would get if I included every single “idea” I found.
So here is the ultimate list of 200+ passive income ideas from the top 10 pages of Google. I included all of them. Every single one. I did this search in May 2020, but the exact links will obviously change over time. Google’s algorithm changes all the time and more recent, relevant content usually gets bumped higher on the list.
Passive Income Ideas
- Robo-Investing
- Certificates of Deposit (CDs)
- Bonds (Worthy Bonds, M1 Finance)
- Start a Blog
- Buy an Already-Profitable Website (Flippa)
- Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) (DiversyFund, Roofstock, RealtyMogul, Fundrise)
- Rent out Your Room (Airbnb, Craigslist, VRBO)
- Store People’s Stuff
- High-Yield Dividend Stocks & Funds
- Peer to Peer (P2P) Lending (PeerStreet, Prosper, Lending Club, SoFi, Worthy)
- Private Equity Funds
- Sublease to Housemates
- Put Ads on Your Car (Wrapify, Carvertise)
- Rent Out Your Car (Turo, Getaround, HyreCar)
- Rent Out Your Parking Space(Stow It, JustPark)
- Rent Out Your RV (RVShare, Outdoorsy)
- Rent Out Your Boat (Boatsetter, GetMyBoat)
- Rent Out Your Bicycle (Splinster)
- Rent Out Your Backyard (Campspace, Gamping, Hipcamp)
- Rent Out Your Garage or Attic (Neighbor)
- Rent Out Your Lock Screen (Slidejoy)
- Rent Out Storage Space
- Rent Out Personal Items (Peer Renters)
- Rent Out Old Baby Gear (Babyquip)
- Private Notes
- Create an Alexa Skill
- Transcription
- Start a Podcast
- Create an Online Course (Skillshare, Teachable, Udemy, Coursera, BitDegree, edX, CreativeLive, CreativeBug)
- Create Software
- Start an E-commerce Business
- Buy an Existing Business
- Own a Laundromat
- Own Vending Machines
- Start a YouTube Channel
- Stock Photos (Shutterstock, Fotolia, iStock, PhotoDune)
- Buy and Sell Domain Names for Websites
- Flip Websites (Flippa)
- Manage Social Media Accounts
- Refinance Your Mortgage
- Financial Reward Programs
- Become an Angel Investor
- Inventory Investment for Small Businesses (Kickfurther)
- Invest in a Food Truck
- Lease Equipment
- Sell Retargeting Advertisements
- Sell Your Designs (Redbubble, Teepublic, Zazzle, FineArtAmerica, Spoonflower, PatternBank)
- Sell Handcrafted Goods (Etsy)
- Participate in a Sleep Study
- Become a Notary
- Customer Interviews
- Raw Land Flipping
- Become a Brand Ambassador
- House Sitting
- Lose Weight (yes, that’s a thing)
- Participate in Scientific Studies
- Be an Extra in Movies
- Email Marketing
- Create an Audiobook
- Make Money Watching TV
- Rental Properties
- Commercial Real Estate Leasing
- High Yield Savings Accounts And Money Market Funds (CIT Bank)
- Bond/CD Ladders
- Annuities
- Invest In A Business (Worthy Bonds, StreetShares, Worthy, Funding Circle, P2BInvestor, Wunder Capital)
- Sell an eBook Online
- Licensing Music (Audio Network)
- Create an App
- Affiliate Marketing
- Network Marketing
- Design T-Shirts (Merch by Amazon, Redbubble)
- Car Wash
- Display Ads
- CPC (Cost Per Click) Ads
- Sell Leads
- Create a Digital Product (Fiverr, Amazon, Gumroad, GraphicRiver, Design Cuts)
- Create an Information Product (Canva)
- Youtube Ads
- Sell Your Business
- Build a Sales Funnel
- Become an ATM vendor
- Create Alexa Skills
- Online Arbitrage
- Buy Royalties (Royalty Exchange)
- Video Arcades
- Index Funds
- Mutual Funds (YieldStreet, M1 Finance)
- ETFs (YieldStreet, M1 Finance)
- Write a book and collect royalties
- Become a business silent partner
- Participate in a Sleep Study
- Sell a Featured Listing on your site’s directory
- “Non-Display” Ads
- Create an Email Course (Highbrow)
- Amazon FBA
- Product Licensing (CafePress, Redbubble)
- Create a Print on Demand Online Store (Zazzle, Redbubble, Teespring, CafePress, Society6, Saatchi Art, Fine Art America)
- Share Your Data (Mobileexpression, SavvyConnect)
- Become a Social Media Influencer
- Start an Advertising Agency
- Buy Property that Appreciates
- Sell your Videos to a News Site (Newsflare, Rumble)
- Time Deposit
- Drop Shipping (Shopify, Amazon)
- Buying Mortgage Notes
- Invest in Coins and Collectibles
- Create a Membership Website
- Create a Price Comparison Website
- Create a Deals Website
- Create a Calculator Website (with Affiliate links)
- Internet Browsing (Bing, Swagbucks)
- Crowdfunding (Patreon)
- Invest in Artwork (Masterworks)
- Sell Your Own Products on Amazon
- Open a Batting Cage
- Residual Sales Income (life insurance, financial products, credit card processing, service contracts)
- Invent Something
- Printable Art Sales
- Self-Service Kiosks
- Credit Card Referral Bonuses
- Grow and Sell Trees
- Rent an Antique/Craft Booth
- Invest in Farmland and Agriculture (AcreTrader)
- Litigation Finance
- Create a plugin
- Create a logo template
- Create a lightroom preset
- Create a website design template (wordpress themes)
- Create pdf Templates
- Create Business Document Templates
- Instagram Highlight Story Icons
- Create Video LUTs
- Create checklists and workbooks
- Create Static Guide Websites to Directly Sell Advertising
- Build an Online Store for a Real World Service and Outsource the Work
- Create Software or Other Online App
- Write Book Reviews and Use Amazon Affiliate Links
- Create an Online Store that links to Amazon Affiliate Links
- Buy and Rent Out Expensive Equipment and Tools (Zilock, Fatlama, Sharegrid)
- Become a Digital Publisher
- Create a Business Franchise
- Build a Job Board
- Apartment Syndication
- Turn your Home into a Movie Set (Giggster)
- Create a Chatbot
- Own an Ice Cream Truck
- Retirement Accounts
- Run a webinar that refers to your products or affiliate links and replay it on demand
- Get Paid to Walk (Sweatcoin)
- Get Paid to Watch TV (Swagbucks)
- Get Paid to go to Stores (ShopKick)
- Create a Font (FontSpring, FontShop, Monotype)
- Create 3D Printing Models (TurboSquid, HighEnd3D, DAZ 3D marketplace)
- Create coloring pages and books
- Create Building Plans
- Create Boardgame Printouts
- Create Knitting, Sewing, or Crochet Patterns
- Create Nutrition or Meal-Prep Plans
- Create a Workout Plan
- Create Vacation/Travel Plans and include Affiliate Links
- Join a Tiny House Rental Program
- Upsell Pre-Existing Clients
- Party Tent Rental and Favors
- Hall Rental
- Create Phone Cases, Watch Bands, and Laptop Covers (Casetify)
- Automated Forex and Crypto Traders (Cryptohopper)
- Invest in Online Discount Brokers
- Sponsorship
- Invest in Precious Metals
- Invest in Foreign Real Estate Markets
- Micro-investing (Acorns, Bumped)
I wouldn’t exactly call these following ideas passive income, but they do offer the potential to build your net worth over time without a direct exchange of time and money.
- Cashback Rewards Cards
- Cashback Sites (Rakuten, Drop Rewards, ibotta, Dosh, RebateKey, Paribus, MyPoints, Swagbucks, GetUpside)
- Payoff Debt
- Refinance Debts (Credible)
- Start a Business then Outsource your Business Needs
- Car Detailing Service
- Flip Goods on eBay/Craigslist
- Save on Bills Automatically (Trim, Paribus)
- Credit Card Sign Up Bonuses
- Invest in Local Creative Businesses
- Buy Bulk Overseas and Sell It on Ebay
- Custom Beauty/style/skincare
- Reselling Web Hosting
- Repurpose Old Projects for Extra Cash
- Open up a Gym
- Sell Your Art in Galleries
- Get Paid to Install Apps on Your Phone
- Start a Financial Planning Practice
- Multi Level Marketing (Warning: very high risk of running into a scam)
- Pet or House sitting (DogVacay, Rover)
- Sell Your Clothes
- Donate/sell Your Plasma
These next ideas were listed as “passive income” on some articles, but I would probably categorize them under side hustles. You are directly exchanging time for money here and I find it hard to imagine backing off your time involvement without losing out on most or all of the income. Just to be completely thorough with the list, I’ll include them here.
- Drive Uber/Lyft
- Survey sites
- Copywriting
- Data Entry
- Turn Your Gaming Skills into a Business (Twitch)
- Rent a Friend
- Charge Scooters
- Deliver Food
- Teach Languages
- Video Editing
- Become a Virtual Assistant
- Become a Freelancer
- Provide Consulting Services
- Do random gigs for people (TaskRabbit, Zaarly, NextDoor)
- Become a Tutor (Wyzant)
- Become a Headhunter
- Start a Coaching Business
- Standard Rate and Data Service
- Become a Video Game Tester
- Provide Website Services
- Run a Temp Employee Agency
- Become a Keynote Speaker
- Become a Yoga Instructor or Personal Coach
- Become a Notary
“Passive Income Ideas” that I Excluded from the List
Obviously, I’m not literally including everything as not everything I found was relevant to passive income ideas. Here are some things I skipped:
- Links to Youtube videos for passive income because I only wanted to include text based articles.
- Google ads because I feel like that’s kind of skipping around Google’s ranking algorithm.
- A few results for “passive income ideas” books (one with poor reviews, one with no reviews, one with a few decent reviews)
- 1 link to pinterest for “Passive Income”
- The wikipedia page for “passive income”
- Several repeats of pages that already appeared on earlier pages for some reason.
- A link that redirected to “Congratulations! You won a million dollars! Click Now!” (while assaulting my ears with the sound fire alarms make on low batteries) and probably gave my computer a corona-virus. Honestly, I’m not sure how that got ranked on Google above the other thousands/millions of “passive income idea” posts (including a reputable blogger’s site making a 6 figure income). Probably shady, black-hat SEO black magic.
There were also a few pretty amusing ideas that I decided not to include:
- Ask a developer friend to teach you how to create a digital download and sell it
- Find an engineer who has experiments sitting around and sell them to people (I know lots of engineers, none of them have “experiments” just sitting around)
- Interview someone then turn that interview into an ebook and sell it
- Get paid to do things you’re already doing (with no further explanation offered)
Thoughts on Post Qualities
The quality was pretty random, but on average decent. The quality had little to no inverse correlation with page number after the first page. There were some not so great articles that showed up on page 2 while some nice, good quality content showed up on page 10. I’m genuinely confused how some of those did not make it to the first or second page of Google. Maybe there was something wrong with their site’s SEO that wasn’t apparent by reading it.
I was pretty surprised by the amount of not so great content that ranks highly on the second and third page of Google while the occasional gem gets buried in the deeper pages. I guess Google’s algorithm doesn’t care too much about sorting/ranking things past the 2nd or 3rd page. I’m no search engine expert, but I’m assuming it doesn’t make much sense to spend computing resources on sorting the remaining 93 million links when no one will ever look at those.
Past the first page, most of the content in the posts were repeats of what showed up in the first page. Most of the results were short, generic content that didn’t tell me anything new and had no personality. I’m guessing a lot of these were outsourced to a ghostwriter who was just trying to hit the 1500 word mark.
Conclusion
So that’s my list. I hope at least a few of those caught your attention. Let me know if you found an engineer who has an experiment sitting around and want to sell it to people.
Me personally, I found robo-investing, REITs, and peer to peer lending pretty interesting. I’ll probably take a look into those a little more closely (and maybe write another post about that).
If you liked this post, check out my other post on personal finance tips or some of my other personal finance posts.
Fun facts: used to lion dance in college, can speak 3 languages (sort of), can lift 400 lbs, once ate a chicken head.
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