20 Passive Income Ideas With or Without Investment In (2023)

20 Smart Passive Income Ideas For Beginners in 2023.

The majority of the people who do a 9-5 job want an additional income source to support their financial needs. With all the hardships the world is going through people finally realize the importance of work-from-home jobs. It’s a real danger just to rely on a single source of income. You are heading towards disaster if you just have a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle.

The idea of a passive or residual income is so powerful and especially if this can be done online. It may not be easy to make a recurring income that lasts for years to come, but it’s really worth working hard to achieve it. If you have a real income that comes passively you can live anywhere in the world or do anything you want with your time.

“If you don’t work hard to make an income while you sleep, chances are you will work 9-5 until you are buried” – Warren Buffett. Before we dig into the 20 easy ways to earn passive income, let's see what is residual income.

What is Passive Income?

Passive Income is the most powerful income that keeps coming to you month after month even if you don’t work for it every single day. You work once and you get paid for months or years to come.

This is also known as the residual income and is what can make you financially free for a lifetime. Many platforms that can give you Income passively takes real hard work and a lot of patience, but the reward you get is so great.

Residual income makes you money while you sleep and is the best choice you can ever make for your retirement. Imagine yourself, never worry about money anymore whether you take a vacation in Hawaii or wake up every day at 12 noon.

Why do you Need Passive Income Sources?

Let’s be honest whatever income you are earning right now, you would love to have an extra income to support your needs. The reason why we need to have a passive or residual income is that; it’s an income that pays you without your physical involvement to work daily like a 9-5 job.

Even the most successful people and the richest people in the world, always prefer to have a recurring income source. We as human beings, never know what will happen tomorrow and if you have a family that depends on your effort to support them, you need this income.

Passive income ideas are the smartest choice you can make in terms of making money trading your time.

How to Generate Passive Income?

This income can be created in many ways but you need to be building multiple streams of income, not just A PASSIVE INCOME, from one source. To make the income you can either make it online using the internet or offline without it.

But these days everything is done online, it’s a smarter choice to use the power of the internet. 1000s of online entrepreneurs who have successfully created a residual income, always build multiple streams of income. Your income has to be from multiple sources in order for you to become financially secure.

Below we have listed some of the most reliable passive income tips. There are also several other ways you can make it, but we have selected a few of these since they are really easy and effective. So here is the list of 20 Legit Passive Income Ideas For Beginners in 2022 & beyond:

1. Passive Income with Real Estate:

Real estate Investment might sound like a huge investment for many people to make a long-lasting income. However, this is absolutely one of the best investments you can do in terms of an assured profitable return.

If you have enough money to buy a house or a condo, go for it. But you need to choose the property very carefully considering the demand of that location. With real estate, the best way you can create a residual income is by leasing or renting that property.

You can also sell it after a few years looking at the increase and demand of the location. This is still our number 1 choice to make a residual income, considering the consistency and the security of the money you invested.

The best thing about real estate is that the economy and the market can crash, but your property or the house is not going anywhere. You just own it, no matter what happens to the world. It is one of the best passive income ideas to make you rich.

2. Passive Income with ATM or Vending Machine:

An Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) or a vending machine is a great option to earn income passively with your existing business. Many established local businesses like Restaurants, Salons, or gas stations can make an additional extra income consistently from the customers.

Having an ATM machine next to a business gives the advantage of more customers coming to your business premises. When customers use an ATM Machine there are some fees or surcharges for every transaction. This fee is received by those who are servicing the ATM machine and the one who owns that machine.

This fee typically ranges from $2-$4 and you also can display advertisements in the location to increase revenue for your business. The ATM or a vending machine is one of the best Residual income ideas that can make you money very consistently.

There are several ATM machines that are suitable for small businesses: Genmega G2000, Hyosung Monimax 5000, and Genmega GT 3000 are some of the best options. The cost of owning an Automatic Teller Machine is anywhere from $2000 - $10,000, depending on the type of the machine.

3. Passive Income with Dividend Stocks:

Stock investment may not be the wisest passive income idea, since it involves some risk and a lot of knowledge about the market. Many big companies require a large amount of investment to start a new project or to start their company.

So they look for many investors to buy their shares and make them available in the form of IPO to the general public. This IPO (Initial Public Offering) is the process of offering shares to anyone who is willing to invest.

You can buy the number of shares you like and once the business is established and starts making profits, you will get a return in the form of dividends. It is very important to do research about the company you are going to buy shares from and the right timing to buy those shares.

It is best to buy stocks or shares when the market is down. Many investors are making a fortune from companies like Coca-Cola, Netflix, Fiverr and Net Ease Inc, etc. If you invest in the right company chances are you will get your passive money for life and the profit is huge.

4. Passive Income with Blogging:

Blogging is the ultimate Holy Grail of all online marketers to generate a residual income for life. Starting a blog and making a passive income is about doing what you love and being consistent about it.

This is because people who are successful with blogging are those who really love what they do. They put out high-value content that people love to see and meanwhile they do what they are really passionate about.

You can see a lot of entrepreneurs who start a blog about travel, cooking, Technology, Health, and beauty. They just do what they really love to do and that makes them keep going with blogging.

This is not going to be an overnight success and for a good blog, it almost takes a year or two to start getting results. You can make passive cash or income by blogging either through Google ad sense or through affiliate marketing promotions.

The website traffic you get with a successful blog is organic and keeps coming in for years to come. If you learn about SEO and how to make content that ranks in Google, you can make a lot of money through blogging.

5. Passive Income Selling Online Courses:

Selling online courses is another idea for passive income by serving a specific niche audience. If you are an expert in a particular domain you just have to create high values courses online just once and the income is residual.

You can find some of the most popular online courses in video format and also a series of audio. This is something that can be automated using the power of the internet.

You just need to know how to promote your online courses and once you start getting more enrollments; you can get momentum in your business. Some of the best platforms that offer online courses are Udemy, Coursera, Lifehack, and Academic Earth.

6. Passive Income with Amazon FBA Business:

Amazon FBA also known as Fulfilled by Amazon is a great option to earn money with little risk. When it comes to selling products online, Amazon.com is a monster and you can make a passive income with it. The Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) is a great concept of selling products online globally.

Anyone who visits the website is likely to buy because the platform is set up in such a way that, most Amazon.com website becomes a buyer. If you have a traditional business everything is handled by you, from selling to shipping the products.

However, with Amazon's FBA business everything from transactions to shipping and handling is done by Amazon. If you want to set up a profitable Amazon FBA you need to follow some basic steps to get started.

Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)

First, find an extremely profitable product in a niche and find the best supplier or manufacturer for that product. Next, you need to create a logo and designs for that product to promote it. After these steps come the part of SEO and keyword research.

The Amazon FBA can be a business with less commission however considering the fact that Amazon is the biggest eCommerce website, it’s an advantage. If done properly you can generate a huge volume of sales through Amazon.com.

7. Passive Income writing eBooks:

Gone are the days when people use to buy books with physical pages and read those novels that people love. With the launch of digital products like eBooks, the Amazon Kindle Business is booming.

EBooks are one of the easiest passive income ideas if you are good with online research and have great knowledge. Maybe you will ask what topic I should write about and what niche should the EBooks be.

Well, that depends on what you are passionate about and what niche EBooks are in higher demand. So, you need to do a little bit of research on what might give you better results.

Then you need to dedicate your time to writing for at least a month or so. Because writing an EBook is not that easy and it’s almost similar to publishing a mini-book, you being an author.

Once you published those amazing content, the next step is how to get it sold. The Amazon Kindle is a great place for publishing EBooks. You can sell the EBooks at a cheaper price and it will keep making money if the quality of content is great.

8. Passive Income with a YouTube Channel:

Start a YouTube Channel and monetize it to create a passive income for years to come. YouTube is the hottest topic right now for every single website owner, business, and internet marketer.

Every single human being with a cell phone is addicted to videos and watches at least one video, every single day. Most of those videos are hosted on YouTube.com. YouTube is owned by Google and every video that you upload on YouTube with quality content has a very good chance to get ranked pretty fast.

People are making YouTube channels from every corner of the globe with pretty much every topic you can ever imagine. If you are consistent and put out content that people love, you can become successful with a YouTube Channel.

Once you monetize your channel, you will get paid for every ad shown to people who watch your videos. This can happen every single day for years to come and as long as your videos are there in cyberspace.

9. High-Interest Savings Account:

Investing in a savings account or a high-yield certificate of deposit (also known as CD) at an online bank can make you generate a residual income. You might also get one of the highest interest rates and the best part is that you don’t even need to leave your house to make money while you sleep.

To make the maximum benefits of your CD, you must do a quick search of the nation’s top savings accounts or CD rates. It is much easier to go with an online bank rather than going to your local bank because you’ll be able to choose the top rates available in the country.

And also you’ll still get a guaranteed return of a principal amount of up to $250,000 if the financial institution you choose is backed by the FDIC. Your limits should be within the said amount. And if your bank is approved by FDIC, your investment in a CD is safe.

So investing in a high-yield certificate of deposit can be a good passive income idea if you do it right. However these returns on investments are safe, people are seeing lesser ROI these days with a CD.

You might lose some of the interest since the Federal Reserve is targeting 2% inflation. Nevertheless, this is a much greater option to invest and get a return rather than having a checking account where you get no return at all.

10. Build a Micro Niche Website:

Creating a Micro Niche website can be a great option for you if you don’t want to build a long-term blog or a bigger website. You can earn a few 100’s a month from a single niche website as a passive income.

Either you can monetize it with ad sense or you can promote affiliate products on the site. Before you create a micro-niche site you need to choose a niche that you like and is profitable.

Then keyword research is one of the most important parts of the process here. Some of the most profitable niche topics are Health and fitness, Dating Related, Pets, Self Improvement & Motivation, Make Money, and Beauty.

11. Passive Income with P2P Lending:

P2P (Peer-to-Peer) lending business is becoming quite popular these days because it gives borrowers some unfair advantage in getting financial help. Person-to-person lending takes out middle man like banks and gets the process done quicker and easier.

Most people who borrow money through a P2P platform are those who are not qualified for a traditional loan from the banks. So as an investor, you need to be careful about the risk and return ratio.

If you are someone who is considering joining P2P lending sites as an investor for making a passive income, you must worry about the default rates 9just like the conventional banks). In 2018-2019 Zopa had a 4.5% default rate for all the loans granted and other sites also have similar rates.

Below are some of the best platforms that offer P2P lending for Investors who are looking to generate a passive source of income with it:

• LendingClub.

• Prosper.

• Payoff.

• Upstart.

• Peerform.

• FundingCircle (For small businesses).

• StreetShares (For small businesses).

• Kiva (A non-profit).

12. Passive Income with Affiliate Marketing:

Affiliate marketing is definitely one of the best ideas for a consistent income and also the easiest way to make money online. In this process, you just need to promote the product and services that someone has already created and make money from all the sales made through your links.

Many entrepreneurs are making a huge monthly income through this business model. As far as the commissions are concerned affiliate marketing can be one-time or recurring.

The recurring income model is the one that people prefer the most. However, you need to care about the product or the service you chose to promote. It has to be of high quality and what people are looking for.

Some of the best affiliate programs that offer a passive income or recurring commission are:

• SEMRush Affiliate Program.

• GetResponse.

• ConvertKit Affiliate Program.

• AWeber.

• NinjaOutreach.

• Stencil.

• SocialPilot.

• InstaPage Affiliate Program.

• Shopify

• Teachable

• Kinsta Affiliates

• LiveChat Affiliate Program

13. Become a Social Media Influencer:

Social Media influencer is the 21^st-century new technology celebrities who have massive followers and fans on their social profiles. They may not be real celebrities however most of them have more fans than many traditional celebrities. You can become a social media influencer without much investment and earn a solid income month after month.

Nowadays many brands and big businesses choose social media platforms to promote their brands. Because through social media the interaction with people happens in real-time and chances of going viral for any good promo are very high.

If you have huge followers and have a good relationship with your fans, you can make very good money with it. This may be one of the easiest ideas for creating a recurring income without you investing any money.

All you have to do is to build trust with your followers and let them know that you provide high-value information. Most people buy products or services online after being recommended by someone they trust or know.

The ways you can make passive income through social media are Sponsorships or Sponsored Content, Affiliate Marketing, Gifts, Tipping, Ad Revenue Share, and Individual Influencers.

Some of the best platforms you can use for becoming a social media influencer are:

• Instagram

• YouTube

• Facebook

• Snapchat

• Musical.ly

• Twitch

• Blogs

• Live dot me

14. Passive Income Selling Stock Photos:

Selling stock photos is also the best passive income idea, where you convert your passions into money. You don’t need an expensive camera or gear to take high-quality photos. People are making a good income by selling stock photos just by using their iPhones or a tablet.

Every website owner or business needs high-quality photos to represent their products and brands online. So you being an artist need to do a little research on what type of photos people are looking to buy.

The great thing about this idea of selling stock photos is that you just upload the photos once and you create a recurring income every time people use them. This is the power of digital products and you can sell these items online to a global audience.

Stock photos with real-life events are in higher demand than just normal photos. If you have great creativity and are extremely good at making high-quality photography you can also try the media channels. These are a few most downloaded stock photos:

• Beautiful Landscape Images.

• Office Spaces or work environment.

• Family Photos.

• Food Images and Videos.

• Travel Related Images.

• Aerial Photography Images.

• Pets Images.

• Cute Kids.

Some of the best platforms to sell stock Images:

• Getty Images.

• Adobe Stock.

• Shutterstock.

• Alamy

• Stocksy.

• Etsy

• iStock.

• 500px.

• Crestock

• Can Stock Photo.

• Stocksy.

15. Create an App:

Creating an App to make money online might sound like a difficult thing, but it’s not. There are around 3-4 million mobile apps available on android and 2-3 million apps for apple iPhone users. These numbers are increasing day by day since the majority of businesses realized the importance of an app these days.

Make Money Online by freelancing

Once an App is installed on a particular cell phone or tablet, you give permission to the app owner in some areas. Like permission to communicate with you through push notifications, mobile SMS, or screen ads, not just using their platforms.

This gives an advantage to many businesses to create a platform to give easy one-click access to their platform and also follow up with their customers. If you want to make money and earn a passive income through apps it’s not that difficult. Check out how to create a mobile app here.

Some of the best mobile app development companies are:

• Utility.

• OpenXcell.

• Ads N Url.

• Cubix.

• MobiDev.

• Swenson He.

• SoluLab.

• Zco Corporation.

16. Sell your Videos Online:

Selling your videos and making money sounds somewhat unrealistic. This is because you might think you can find pretty much everything on YouTube for free. The fact is that you still can make money selling your videos online and earn a passive income with it.

You might be surprised that there is a something called VOD (Video on demand) business model where you can earn an income. With millions of people staying home after the pandemic started, videos are becoming a part of our daily lives.

Many Independent video creators and businesses are learning how to make a profit by streaming videos online. This is mainly done through a subscription platform called OTT (over-the-top) platform. Check out more on how to sell streaming videos online.

Best places to sell your videos & Earn Passive Income Online:

• Unscreen.

• Vimeo on Demand.

• Udemy.

• Amazon Video Direct.

• Videohive.

17. Earn Passive Income with Network Marketing:

Network marketing also known as Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) has been around for many decades and has made more millionaires than any other industry. Joining legit network marketing can be the best passive income idea you can ever find.

This is also a place where you need a lot of hard work and takes at least 2-5 years to earn that residual income. Joining network marketing or an MLM company costs you little or nothing. The problem with a Network Marketing Business is that many people consider it a pyramid scheme or a scam.

But, in reality, if a company follows the terms of the FTC or the Government, it is completely legal. So, since there are 1000s of Network Marketing companies in the world, do your homework before you invest your time & money.

It’s an easy process to get started with network marketing since you just have to make a small purchase occasionally. Once you join you will get free training from many of your uplines or group members and this is where it gets better.

Making Money with Dropshipping

Working in network marketing to earn that recurring income is great fun sometimes because you will find many mentors and friends. Most of the time you will not be alone like other businesses.

Network marketing is a real and legit passive income source which is much better than any other residual income opportunity.

Some of the best network marketing companies in the world are:

• Amway (Started in 1959).

• Avon (Founded in 1886).

• Herbalife (1980).

• Natura (Started in 1969).

• Mary Kay (1963).

• Forever Living Products, FLP (1978).

• Infinitus (1992).

• Vorwerk (Started in 1883).

18. Become an Audiobook Narrator:

Become an AudioBook narrator and you can earn an upfront one-time payment or you can choose to get a royalty share. AudioBook narration is also one of the easiest passive income ideas to earn a royalty income for life.

Most companies prefer narrators from native English-speaking countries like the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. The AudioBook market is booming and if you have a good voice with an attractive accent, you can offer your service to platforms like Fiverr.

Audiobook narrators can earn anywhere from $100 - $500 per hour of successful narration. There are millions of EBooks online and nowadays majority of the people prefer an audio version of the Books available online.

So this can be a huge market for you if you want to earn an active-passive income through Audiobook Narration. Some of the best websites to get AudioBook narration projects are:

• Voices.com.

• Upwork.

• Fiverr.

• PeoplePerHour.

• Bodalgo.com

• Voices123.

• VoicesUk & Voices US.

19. Print on Demand Online Store:

Print-on-demand is a great option for those who have great creative skills and designs that can attract people. You can make a living with this and earn a passive income too with your prints.

Many ‘print on demand’ websites allows you to create your designs online and share those links on social media to make money online. This is perfect for many busy moms and once you set up your designs it can make you money while you sleep.

Mystery shopping

With the print-on-demand business, you can design T-Shirts, bags, mugs, and many more without you carrying the inventory. After you create a product or design, you can outsource it to an e-commerce manufacturer.

Then the company does the printing, and packaging and then ships it to the buyer on your behalf of you. Some of the best Print on Demand websites to sell your designs are:

• Shopify.

• Printful.

• Spreadshirt.

• Redbubble.

• Zazzle.

• Teepublic.

• Society6.

• Cafepress.

20. Passive Income with Airbnb Business Model:

Airbnb is a huge online marketplace where you can list your property for short-term vacation rentals. They have over 1.6 Million listings in over 190 countries worldwide and offer property owners to earn a lucrative passive income.

In order for you to start listing on Airbnb, it’s an easy process. You need some great pictures that show the actual property you are giving for rentals to travelers. Learn to research the prices and the competitive rates you can offer for your place.

Best stay-at-home Mom jobs

The income you earn through the Airbnb Business may not be always passive but it will be quite lucrative and long-term if you manage properly. Guest reviews are the most important aspect of succeeding in this business. Check out the tips on how to start an Airbnb Business successfully here.

Other than AirBnB below are some of the best websites to list your property for vacation rentals:

• Booking.com.

• HomeAway.

• Expedia.

• Hotels.com.

• HometoGo.

• Tripping.

• Tripadvisor.

Pros & Cons of Passive Income Streams: