15 awesome passive income ideas to make extra money every month

There is never a better time to create passive income than now.

There is a high chance that if you are here, you’re probably seeking ways of paying off debt, increasing your wealth, or planning an additional revenue stream.

Regardless of the why, pursuing passive income is a smart career move.

There is more to it than just creating extra income though.

It may also provide you with an opportunity to make the most of your spare time by using it more productively.

Before we learn how to make passive income, let’s get to the basics to understand what kind of income we should categorize as passive.

What is passive income?

Usually, passive income is interpreted as money you earn while you sleep.

This ideal scenario is true for certain investments where you can enjoy income with minimal effort.

You will of course have to work hard initially, but once that work is done, you can sit back and relax while the money keeps rolling in.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provides a precise definition of passive income:
“Something you earn from real estate, a limited partnership business or any other venture where you remain a silent actor.”

For example, rental income from a property you own is passive income.

If you run a real estate business as a professional, any income you generate will not be passive.

A book you wrote a year ago may still generate income for you in the years to come. That can also be classed as passive income.

If you run a book publishing company and actively participate in day-to-day operations, it will not be passive income.

You see where we’re going here, right?

Clearing up the confusion about passive income

The term passive income can sometimes be taken quite loosely.

Writers and speakers often talk about sources of income from businesses where you have to actively invest time and money.

For instance, if you run a blog, you need to invest a considerable amount of time in building content and marketing it in order to turn it into a success.

You will also need to invest upfront in a few essentials such as hosting, themes, plugins and related services.

Would you call that passive income?

Whether or not you post every day, a blog can eventually become one of the ways to generate passive income.

More details on that in a minute!

Even though such business ventures don’t typically qualify as passive income, they can eventually.

This broadens the scope somewhat.

We can now safely include income that may initially require significant work, time and money.

As long as you are passionate about what you are doing, you can turn it into a source of income.

Prepare yourself for passive income

Before you decide to choose an activity to do after your 9 – 5 job, it’s best to prepare yourself for long lasting results.

Ask yourself a few essential questions

Whether you’re a college student or a professional looking for ways to generate extra income, there are a few questions you might want to ask yourself before you begin.

The answers to these questions will help you choose your venture wisely.

• What is your income goal?
• What skills do you have?
• How much money and time can you invest?
• Where do you want to see yourself in the next 5 years?

Once you are done answering, deciding on one or more of the passive income ideas we’ll share in a minute will become easier.

Getting started with your next venture

What do you need to start an online business? Do you need a website? What’s involved?

This section will briefly cover what you’ll need to begin earning extra income.

You’ll need to:

• Name your business to suit the niche
• Create a logo to communicate your message
• Buy decent web hosting
• Create a website for your business
• Install relevant plugins to support your business
• Customize the website to suit your needs

Is a website really necessary?

Yes! A website is necessary for your business.

It is your office on the internet where people get to know you before doing business with you.

Most passive income ideas are about selling products and services.

Though you can sell whatever you want through marketplaces or social media networks, we recommend using your website for all business activities.

It’s how you lay the foundation to create a strong brand that is more profitable and longer lasting.

Passive income and WordPress

Earlier, we recommended using WordPress to build your website. Here’s why.

WordPress enables you to create any type of website of whatever size you need.

If you haven’t heard of it, Leading organizations such as Microsoft News use WordPress for their website.

Similarly, TechCrunch, TED Blog, Angry Birds, Sony Music, Mozilla Blog and lots of other big websites run on WordPress.

All these websites use themes and plugins to provide the best user experience.

WordPress has a huge themes and plugin ecosystem – over 31, 000 themes and 55,000 plugins.

If you have decided to build your website using WordPress, the first thing you need to do is install a theme.

Astra is a multipurpose theme that provides tons of features and allows you to customize however you want.

It’s blazing fast, fully responsive and compatible with most WordPress plugins.

Astra comes with over 240 professionally designed Starter Templates so you can make any website in a few clicks.

Now that we are all set, let’s discuss those passive income ideas!

15 passive income ideas to generate extra income

The beauty of passive income is that most opportunities are interrelated. That means you can diversify your income streams by just strategizing things a bit.

Anyone with the right knowledge can work in multiple ways to generate more income.

Below are some of the most lucrative passive income ideas. Choose which suits you best.

1. Sell courses online

• Upfront investment required: 💰
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑🕑🕑🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️

When it comes to smart passive income ideas, our experience says that selling online courses tops the list.

It is among the most sustainable ways of generating extra income. There is a huge demand out there for quality courses.

Revenues from online learning are projected to reach $57 billion in 2023.

You can sell any type of course, be it a management training program or a health course.

Katie Kimball is a mother of four who creates cooking courses for kids so that they can learn how to cook food on their own.

She transformed her career from a Catholic school teacher to a successful online course creator.

Katie makes over $50,000 a week from her books and video courses.

Deanna Wolfe wasn’t happy with the start of her dietitian career. It was a routine clinical job for her with standard perks.

She decided to take charge of her life and started developing online courses.

In just a few years, she has managed to be included in the most influential people in the wellness industry. Her yearly income hovers around $2 million.

How to sell online courses

All you need is a deep knowledge of a specific subject, communication skills, a website, a reliable eCommerce plugin such as SureCart and a passion for teaching others.

To create and sell online courses:

• Figure out your area of expertise and choose a topic that utilizes your skills
• Perform market research to find out the demand for the course you want to create. It’s critical to know the size of the interested audience
• Plan your content and choose the medium you want – it could be video, text, audio or a combination of all of them
• Create the website, install the required plugins and build your first course

Creating courses isn’t passive to begin with but once the course is published, you can sit back and relax for a little while, until the next one!

2. Write an eBook

• Upfront investment required: 💰
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑🕑🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️

Worldwide eBook revenue is expected to reach $14.2 billion in 2023. In the US alone, it is estimated to touch the $5.25 billion mark – more than a quarter of global revenue.

As difficult as it looks, writing an eBook is much easier than you might think. You don’t need to write a 500 page masterpiece that may take months to create.

People like to read shorter books they can digest quickly. A 100 – 200 page ebook is good to go. It is easy to read and easy to create.

In case you are wondering if you need a degree in literature to write an eBook. No, you don’t!

If you’ve read Ray Bradbury, William Faulkner or Charles Dickens you’ll realize that having a formal education has nothing to do with the success of your writing career.

With the market for eBooks increasing, you can work on any topic that is close to your heart.

It could be gardening, pets, life management, drama, crime, politics, or anything. The sky’s the limit.

Authors have so many ways to create and sell eBooks.

How to start with eBooks

Platforms like Amazon KDP, Apple iBookStore and others are available and have a huge audience.

If you’re concerned about commissions cutting into profits, it’s better to sell it on your own website.

You don’t have to share revenue with anyone. No matter how many customers you have, it’s all yours.

If you want to start your passive income stream by writing an eBook, here is how you can start:

• Research what your audience needs and choose a topic
• Create the content or have it written. You can find several competent authors on freelancing platforms
• Organize the content and design your eBook
• Publish the eBook on your website and share it with your audience
• Promote it to reach your target audience

While definitely not passive to begin with, once the book is published, you can sit back and plan your next adventure!

3. Affiliate marketing

• Upfront investment required: 💰
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑🕑🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️

Affiliate marketing revenue has been on a steady rise in the US since 2010. It stood at $1.6 billion then and reached $8.2 billion by the end of 2022.

It’s a simple but very effective passive income model. Someone, talks about a product or service on their website or social media network.

Prospective customers will trust their recommendations and purchase the product. The seller will give the marketer a commission for their effort.

Through affiliate marketing you can sell any product or service. It’s such a vast segment.

You can contact the product manufacturer directly to sign up for their affiliate program. Astra’s affiliate program is a great example.

Or, you can join affiliate networks – the marketplaces for products/services – and choose the desired items to promote.

When entering the affiliate marketing world, you will come across big names such as Finch Sells or Missy Ward who make thousands every month.

They are the inspiration for beginners.

How to start affiliate marketing

You just need a computer, an internet connection and a website.

You will need time to put some serious effort into building your setup from scratch, but once done, the income should begin appearing.

If you are doing everything right, those rewards will keep coming for years down the line.

Follow these steps to get started:

• Choose a niche and understand what the audience is looking for. The better you understand their problems, the more likely you will recommend solutions
• Choose affiliate networks and product sellers to work with. They usually have an affiliate program running
• Build a website and create content around specific user problems. It’s a proven method that gives you more authority and better control over your business.
• Gather a loyal audience through your content and marketing
• The more audience you have willing to trust your recommendations, the more passive income will pour in

Again, there is effort required to begin with but once your affiliate networks are up and running, you can relax a little while generating income.

4- Sell photography online

• Upfront investment required: 💰💰
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️🛠️

You could be associated with photography in your day job, in a media house, travel agency or anywhere you have the chance to take photos.

Or you have had a passion for photography since childhood.

Whatever your reason for using the camera is, it provides a wonderful opportunity for you to build a second stream of income.

If you take a lot of photos and videos during your work or travel, there are a number of platforms such as Shutterstock, iStock Photo or Pond 5 you can use to sell them.

If your work is good enough, these platforms can pay you for every image they sell.

This is not limited to selling images. There are a number of ways to generate passive income:

• Create online photography courses and sell them online
• Rent out your gear on weekends to earn hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars in a week
• Be an affiliate marketer to promote products and services you love. Platforms like Adobe, B&H Photo, Capture One or Pic-Time can provide opportunities
• Sell digital products such as Lightroom presets
• Offer print-on-demand services. You can have images printed on clothing on demand. It’s a great segment to start on your website
• Set up a photography blog to educate your audience. If done well, you can convert your audience into paid members
• Earn royalties by giving rights to clients to use your images in their advertisements or any other commercial way

If you think setting up a high-quality website requires technical skill, don’t worry!

The Astra theme offers premade photography templates. Install Astra and import a template from its Starter Templates library and you are good to go.

5. License your music

• Upfront investment required: 💰💰
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑🕑🕑🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️🛠️🛠️

Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and most big musicians continue to make millions of dollars even after their deaths.

Their passive incomes include royalties on the music they created decades ago.

Don’t worry if you are not a big name. You can still get a share of the pie by creating a business-oriented strategy.

It is possible to create music once and continue to earn revenue even years down the road. The only condition is to give music lovers what they want.

You can create a track or beat every six months and multiply your passive income streams in the years to come.

Let’s discuss a few proven ways to achieve your goals as a musician.

Passive income from music

YouTube can be your best friend if you want to build a loyal audience. Once you put in the hard work and upload your music, you can monetize it in a variety of ways.

You can then sit back, relax, do a little marketing and see the revenue roll in.

The more your fans like your music, the more ad revenue you will generate.

The same is true for other streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music. You make money every time someone plays your music.

You can sign up with services like Ditto and have them distribute your music on their partner networks.

You can also sell your music to be used in different projects – movies, ads or wherever licensed music is a requirement.

Pond 5 is a great platform for selling your music to a huge audience.

Depending on the platform you choose for music distribution, you can get 30% – 40% royalty.

How can we forget to mention creating your own music website?

You can blog about the music industry, offer online music courses to up and coming musicians, run ads on your website or have paid music fans as members.

6- Earn through social media

• Upfront investment required:
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑🕑🕑🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️

More than 4.89 billion people use social media networks.

An average user spends around 151 minutes every day on these platforms.

Whichever social media network you are connected with, you have an opportunity to use your fans to generate passive income.

You don’t need to have millions of followers or be present on multiple social networks.

A few hundred or thousands of active followers can give you a good start.

It’s even better if you have more.

However, if you are just starting out and have no followers on any network. Worry not!

You can build a social media audience by following our seven tips:

1. Think about fans
2. Create content users will love
3. Keep your content within a specific niche
4. Use text, videos and images for your posts
5. Show your authority on whatever you share
6. Don’t think of charging for content, keep it free
7. Be consistent, even if you have to do it at least an hour a day

Your efforts will pay off and you will start getting followers and fans!

At this stage, be careful not to focus too much on revenue generation.

Remember, it’s not a quick money-making recipe. It may take months or even years to reach a point where your audience starts trusting you.

Once you realize your fans are listening to you, use some of these proven ways to make money passively from social media:

• Brand partnerships and sponsored posts
• Endorse products
• Join affiliate programs
• Platform specific monetization
• Sell products through native eCommerce stores
• Use your skills to offer social media management services to others

Social media has the advantage of requiring no upfront investment. Create accounts, create content and create a buzz. The rest will naturally follow!

7. Create a blog to earn passive income

• Upfront investment required: 💰
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑🕑🕑🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️🛠️

Blogging is huge and offers a lot of prospects for anyone looking to make serious money.

Though you get plenty of opportunities, it’s quite an effort to run a blog successfully.

Blogging is a mix of active and passive income. A combination of hard work and sitting back and waiting for a reaction.

But with the right strategy and an effective plan, it is possible to work a few hours a week and still make a passive income.

It is such a flexible business idea that you can take days and weeks off and have the income stream working for you.

The Blond Abroad, Dan Flying Solo, Y Travel Blog and The Planet D are some of the top travel blogs with inspiring stories.

Their authors travel the world and live a dream life. Still they manage to create content and earn a lot of money from their blogs as a mix of active and passive income.

If you want to know how you can do it, use this guide to learn how to make money while traveling.

To make things easier and closer to what we want from blogging, you can focus on these income strategies:

• Affiliate marketing
• Ad networks such as AdSense
• Paid content
• Publish eBooks
• Offer online courses
• Sell digital products

Blogging is huge and is another opportunity to get set up with very little investment.

8. Create a YouTube channel

• Upfront investment required:
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑🕑🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️🛠️

Nearly 2.6 billion users access YouTube every month. It is the second largest most visited website in the world after Google.

You can upload multiple videos every day to remain connected with your audience or post less often. It’s entirely up to you and what your audience looks for.

For passive income streams, you can select a specific niche, upload one video a week and you will still remain relevant and productive.

If your content is what the audience is looking for, you will keep getting lots of views long after your videos have been published.

YouTube allows you to create 100 channels with one account. This means you can perform experiments, serve different audiences and generate multiple revenue streams.

If you’ve got a skill or passion for anything to do after your regular job, YouTube likely has an audience for it.

You will need to build an audience first though. YouTube requires at least 1,000 subscribers or 4,000 hours of watch time on your channel to qualify for their partner program.

For generating income on YouTube, the following income streams best suit most creators:

• YouTube partner program
• Sell products and merchandise
• Crowdfunding your project
• Fan funding
• License content to media
• Affiliate marketing

Video is huge and likely to grow. It’s taking over from written content in a big way so it should provide huge earning potential.

9- Buy and sell domains

• Upfront investment required: 💰💰💰
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️🛠️

Domain names hold significant value for businesses as they are equivalent to your street address on the web.

Buying and selling domains is like getting a physical asset and selling it for profit to the right buyer.

A domain name suitable for a specific business is worth a thousand dollars and sometimes much more.

To give you an idea, marketing.com was sold for $2.5 million. In the same way, is.com generated $1.9 million in revenue for the seller.

Every month, a substantial number of domain names are registered and traded globally. In the US alone, around 124.9 million domains were registered in 2021.

You can generate some serious passive income by working in this field tactfully.

If you want to pick up this passive income stream after your day job, follow these best practices:

• Park your domain
• Access the value of the domain
• Set a price
• Choose the right marketplace to sell the domain
• Optimize the domain listing
• Protect the domain name through an escrow service
• Sell the domain

It sounds lucrative but this business requires you to develop an inventory of domains over time.

Selling them requires patience and marketing skills.

You should know that you may have to renew several of them before getting an acceptable offer. It’s an unavoidable cost that you will have to bear.

10. Sell spreadsheets

• Upfront investment required: 💰
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️

Spreadsheets are extremely powerful tools for solving a number of math problems.

Whether you want it for a personal home budget or need to record and analyze business sales, spreadsheets are the tools for the job.

Despite their benefits and ease of use, not everyone is an expert at getting the most out of them.

If you have data handling skills, you have a reason to generate a passive income out of selling spreadsheet templates.

Google spreadsheets and MS Excel are the two most popular spreadsheets out there with millions of users.

Nearly 2 billion people use spreadsheets every month. A number of jobs are available on popular freelance platforms for spreadsheet experts.

You can start by creating Excel templates, macros, and Google spreadsheets to address specific financial needs.

It is quick to sell them on marketplaces. You can also build your own website and sell them as a digital product without sharing revenue with another platform.

11. Design and sell icons

• Upfront investment required: 💰💰
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️🛠️

You will see icons everywhere, on buildings, at airports, in business presentations or on our phone screens.

If you are a designer or illustrator and have this fine sense of designing trendy icons, you have a huge market to tap into.

You can sell them through marketplaces or your own website.

It may take you a while before you start to earn any money from it, but it can be well worth it.

Though selling icons on your own website is more profitable, you will need to access a wider audience on marketplaces first.

Here are some popular marketplaces for you to consider selling icons:

• IconFinder
• Noun Project
• GraphicRiver
• Creative Market

With every updated version of phone operating systems, the demand for fresh and creative icon sets increases and becomes more profitable.

12. More passive income ideas for designers

• Upfront investment required: 💰
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️🛠️

It’s common for designers to create for fun in their spare time. They often design for their families and friends, but they do it mostly to show off their artistic abilities.

It’s better not to waste them and throw them in the recycle bin. You can list them on marketplaces, stock sites or eCommerce stores to sell them online.

As a designer, you can create and sell templates to be used by social media managers, content creators, business owners or anyone looking for customized designs.

The designs can be used in resumes, presentations, ads, backdrops, infographics, as well as a variety of other means.

You can design anything such as fonts, 3D animations, printable decorations, or Adobe plugins and presets.

You can take one step further to strengthen your passive income stream by teaching online courses on how to design perfectly.

13. Rent out your property or rooms

• Upfront investment required:
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️🛠️

In our opinion, this is one of the easiest passive income ideas if you’re one of the lucky few.

If you have a spare house that you do not use, you might want to think about renting it out so you can start making money right away.

The amount of money you can earn per month will vary depending on the condition, the city and area where it is located, and the size of the house.

Even if you have a spare room or space not in use, you can rent it out as well.

You can share your place with a friend or you can get a reasonable rental by listing your space on platforms like Neighbor or Peerspace.

It is also possible to turn your garage into a passive income generator by renting it out to businesses looking for office or storage space.

In most cases, dealing with businesses is easy since they usually provide safe payment options, and you can find out everything about the company.

StoreAtMyHouse is an excellent place to start getting offers.

14. Invest in businesses

• Upfront investment required: 💰💰💰
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑🕑🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️🛠️🛠️

If you have the money it’s easy to invest in businesses as a silent partner or angel investor.

As a serial investor, you will be able to enjoy a number of benefits.

If you have sufficient capital lying idle, you could invest in others to build a continued stream of passive income.

It’s certainly a risky approach, but it’s one that can be highly profitable as well.

The best way to reduce the risk is to invest small amounts in multiple businesses at the same time. If you do experience a loss somewhere, you will be able to make up for it with other investments.

Another easy and safe way is to invest through platforms like Mainvest that invest money on your behalf and transfer you the income.

You can start with as little as $100 and increase it up to anything you want.

Depending on the type of investment they give you 10 – 25% on your investment. That makes it a solid passive income idea if you have spare funds.

15- Lend money

• Upfront investment required: 💰💰💰
• Time required to start generating income: 🕑🕑
• Passive income potential: 💲💲
• Resources required: 🛠️

Peer to peer lending is another way to lend money to individuals and businesses.

With this model, borrowers can get money on easier terms than what traditional banks require for extending loans.

This type of lending is high-risk because you will provide funds to borrowers you don’t know.

The benefit here is that in the case of peer to peer lending, you get a chance to earn a higher interest rate which usually falls within 6% – 36%.

A safe way is to lend money through lending platforms such as LendingClub and Prosper if you want to deal with individuals.

There are lots of options for businesses too.

Which passive income idea is right for you?

If you are wondering which revenue stream best suits your needs and lifestyle. We can help!

Here are some use cases you may find useful

Passive income ideas for students

In your case as a student, you would like to pay off your tuition fees with your earnings.

Social Media

The easiest way to generate money is through social media promotion. Spending a little time each day can help you build an audience and promote different products.

Educational Resources

As a student, it’s very likely you’ll come across MS Excel or Google Spreadsheets. It is also possible to develop expertise and create spreadsheets online to make a little money.

Passive income ideas for graphic designers

Being a graphic designer, you have lots of opportunities for making passive income.

You can design and sell multipurpose templates or create customized designs for businesses. 3D animations, presets, Adobe plugins, and website design templates are a few of the areas you can explore to generate passive income.

If you are skilled at vectors and illustrations, there is more to do. You can take your career to new heights by designing a set of icons.

Your designs can be the talk of town for iPhone users looking to customize their homescreens.

Passive income ideas for teachers

If you are a teacher who is looking to make more money after your day job, we have some passive income ideas for you.

Online courses are a huge industry that is demanding more authentic courses to serve billions of students worldwide.

Depending on the subjects you like to teach, you can create an online course with more knowledge and a better teaching style than what’s already out there.

You can learn more in the segment above about how to sell online courses.

Passive income ideas for parents

Being a parent is not an easy job and you would likely embrace ways to generate more income to meet expenses.

If you plan to have more control over how you want to live, working on one or more passive income ideas can help.

Depending on your education, skills and passion, you can experiment with a lot of things on our list.

Writing an eBook, affiliate marketing, selling photography online or running a YouTube channel, the list goes on.

You could do any number of things to begin your journey!

Final thoughts

By building a passive income stream, you can earn extra cash you might struggle to generate otherwise.

Some passive income ideas require you to put serious effort into them at first. Others can generate results much sooner.

Whichever passive income idea you want to choose in your spare time, it will either need money, time or both before it starts to show results.

The good thing is, depending on your skills and passion, you can turn any of these ideas into a solid business model.

We have listed some proven passive income ways you can work on to get the life you dream about.

Many ideas are interrelated. You can start working on one and soon you will be able to add another to your to-do list when you have the time or energy.

Which of the passive income ideas are you most likely going to start with? Don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments.