How to Make Passive Income Online

Being able to earn money even while you aren’t physically working is the key to financial freedom. While many of us think that the idea of earning money while we sleep seems too good to be true, millions of people are doing it every single day. Passive income is very real, and many experts agree that it is vital in building stable, long-term wealth.

The best part?

There are all sorts of ways to make passive income online, and you don’t necessarily need a lot of money to get started. In fact, there are some streams of passive income that require absolutely no upfront financial investment. There are also, of course, plenty of great passive income investment ideas that allow you to take the money you have today and turn it into a whole lot more money in the future. Here are a few of our favorite ways to make passive income online.

1. Invest Your Money

If you have a bit of money to start with, investing it is an excellent way to start earning passive income. While there is always a bit of risk involved, investing allows you to trade a little bit of money now for, potentially, a lot of money in the future.

When you are searching for passive income investment ideas, there are plenty of options to choose from. Buying stocks is one of the best methods of generating income, and it doesn’t have to be incredibly difficult or expensive to get started. If you have little to no investing experience, robo-advisors are a great place to start. They can help you make smart investment decisions and start growing your money quickly. If you’d prefer a more do-it-yourself approach, you can also open an online brokerage account to buy and sell stocks as you please.

You can even invest your spare change by using an app like Acorns. This option is great for those who want to break into the stock market but have little money to invest. For just a few dollars per month, you can start earning money on the stock market and learn more about investing.

2. Share Your Expertise

Whether you are an expert web designer, or a writer, or have knowledge in just about anything else, you can earn passive income by creating an online course. Countless solopreneurs have embraced this passive income stream, and many of them are making great money!

The thought of developing your own online course can seem daunting, but it’s easier than you may think. With platforms like Teachable, you can create a course about just about anything. Teachable has a wide variety of free and paid options that will enable to create and distribute your course and start earning money. There are also plenty of helpful guides and tutorials to help you get started. Even if you have never taught anyone anything before, creating an online course with Teachable is easy.

Once your course is ready to go, you can sell it over and over again, earning money every time. It takes a bit of time and effort to get started, but the rewards are well worth it!

If developing a course doesn’t sound like the right option for you but you still want to share your expertise with the world, consider writing an Ebook. Write a book about anything that interests you. You could even write a work of fiction as opposed to writing about your area of expertise.

Once you’ve written your book, you can publish it using Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing or another platform. Many authors choose Amazon KDP because it’s easy to use and enables you to earn healthy royalties.

3. Sell Your Photos

If you are more into pictures than words, selling your photos is another good way to earn passive income online. You don’t even need to have a fancy camera to get started! Thanks to today’s amazing smartphone technology, there are plenty of photographers who are earning royalties on shots taken using their mobile devices.

When you upload your images to sites like Shutterstock or iStock, you can earn a royalty every time someone downloads one. The exact terms vary from one site to another, but with a large portfolio, you can make significant money selling stock photos. A great image can be downloaded thousands of times, and you’ll make money every single time.

You can even use mobile apps to sell pictures directly from your device. Foap is a great option!

4. Become an Affiliate Marketer

When you are an affiliate marketer, you earn money every time someone makes a purchase using your affiliate link. There is no additional cost to the buyer, and you instantly earn a percentage of the total sale amount. All you need to get started is a website, and you never need to worry about inventory or shipping products to buyers.

Launching a blog is a simple way to get started in affiliate marketing. You can write about a specific topic and direct readers to buy relevant products via your affiliate link. You can also sample and review products and encourage readers to buy via your link.

5. Create Digital Downloads

When you create a product that can be downloaded digitally, you can sell the same item thousands of times without ever having to worry about making or sourcing more, storing physical inventory, dealing with shipping, etc. It takes some time up front, but once you’ve created your downloads, all you have to do is sit back and wait for people to start making purchases.

There are all sorts of items that work perfectly as digital downloads. You can create your own knitting, cross-stitch, or crochet patterns, design downloadable greeting cards and printable decorations, and much, much more. When it comes to creating digital downloads, the only limit is your own imagination.

There are all sorts of ways to make passive income online. Consider your own interests and the amount of time and money you have to invest upfront to choose the passive income stream that’s right for you.