Introduction
Passive income is a powerful financial concept that allows you to make money without constantly trading your time for it. In this blog post, we will explore passive income side hustle ideas that can help you design your path to financial freedom and a more fulfilling life.
We’ll cover a range of opportunities, from selling low content books on Amazon to renting out your spaces on Neighbor. Let’s dive into the world of passive income and discover how you can start building your wealth.
1. Selling Low Content Books on Amazon KDP
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) provides an excellent platform for aspiring authors and creative individuals to publish and sell books. While writing a full-length novel may seem daunting, the low content book market offers a unique opportunity. These books, such as planners, journals, notebooks, and coloring books, require minimal content creation.
You can leverage KDP’s capabilities to publish your low content books and have Amazon handle printing, packing, and shipping. The beauty of this side hustle is that once your products are out there, they continue to generate income with each sale, requiring minimal ongoing effort.
To get started, create and format your book according to KDP guidelines, and then set your pricing and publish your book. Building a strong online presence and accumulating positive reviews are key to success. This business model allows you to transition from an active role to a passive income generator.
2. Creating Your Own YouTube Channel
YouTube is a rewarding platform for content creators who are willing to put in the initial effort. Although building a successful channel requires dedication, the potential for passive income is substantial. You can monetize your YouTube channel through ad revenue, affiliate marketing, sponsorships, and more.
To start earning from YouTube ads, you’ll need to reach milestones like 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours.
Consider outsourcing tasks like research, video editing, and scriptwriting to reduce your workload and make the channel more passive. The key to long-term success is creating evergreen content that remains relevant and continues to attract viewers. Once your videos are live, they can generate passive income over time, making YouTube a lucrative side hustle.
3. Selling Stock Photography
If you have a passion for photography, selling stock photos can be a profitable passive income source. Many websites, such as Shutterstock, iStock, and Adobe Stock, allow you to sell your photos for use in various media. Your income depends on the quality of your images, the number of downloads, and the rates of the platform you use.
To be successful in stock photography, focus on capturing high-quality, commercial-worthy images, and stay up-to-date with market trends. Selling stock photos can be a great way to turn your hobby into a passive income stream.
4. Selling Digital Products on Etsy
Etsy isn’t just for handmade goods; it’s also a platform for selling digital products. Digital products, such as PDF templates, editable Photoshop files, and more, can generate passive income. When you receive an order, Etsy automatically fulfills it by delivering the digital file to the customer.
Research popular niches and create high-quality digital products that cater to those markets. Pay attention to factors like layout, typography, and visual appeal. Once your products are listed on Etsy, you can start generating passive income without the need to maintain physical inventory or handle shipping. Etsy offers a cost-effective way to start a side hustle that can grow into a substantial source of income.
5. Starting a Laundromat Business
A laundromat business can be a lucrative venture, but it does require an initial investment in terms of capital and machines. The cost to open an average-sized laundromat can range from $200,000 to $500,000. However, you can reduce these costs by purchasing an existing laundromat with quality machines.
Laundromats can generate monthly incomes ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 or more, depending on factors like location, machine quality, and additional services offered. To make the business more passive, consider hiring a manager to handle day-to-day operations. Laundromats are valued based on a multiple of their net income, typically falling within the range of 3.5 to 5 times the net income. This side hustle has the potential to transition from self-employed to a business owner role, where you focus on building systems and delegating tasks.
6. Selling Shirts on Merch on Demand
Merch on Demand, a print-on-demand service, allows designers to upload their artwork on various products like t-shirts and mugs. The platform doesn’t require an upfront investment in inventory, as it handles the printing, packing, and shipping of orders.
You can make substantial passive income on Merch on Demand by creating original designs that cater to specific niches and target audiences. Pricing and promotion are key factors in this business model, and you can use tools like Canva or Photoshop to create eye-catching designs. Achieving success in this side hustle may require some initial effort, but once your shirts start selling, they can provide ongoing passive income.
7. Renting Out Your Car on Turo
Turo is a peer-to-peer car rental marketplace that allows car owners to earn money by renting out their vehicles to individuals in need of temporary transportation. While this side hustle isn’t entirely passive, it can be made more hands-off by hiring an operator or manager to handle bookings and vehicle maintenance.
The income you can generate from renting out your car on Turo varies depending on factors like your car’s model, year, and location. Earnings can range from $30 to over $100 per day. To make the most of this opportunity, ensure that your car is in good condition and keep it clean and well-maintained. Renting out your car can be a profitable way to earn passive income, especially if you have multiple vehicles.
8. Renting Out Your Spaces on Neighbor
Neighbor is a platform that allows you to rent out various types of spaces, such as garages, driveways, sheds, and parking spaces. People often need these spaces for storage when renovating, moving, or traveling. The income potential for these spaces varies based on the size and location of your property.
Garages can earn between $100 to $600 per month, driveways can generate $50 to $150 per month, sheds can earn $50 to $200 per month, and parking spaces can make $50 to $300 per month. Neighbor offers a free listing service, and you can opt for a protection plan to secure your spaces.
Conclusion
These ten passive income side hustle ideas offer a range of opportunities to help you build wealth, achieve financial freedom, and design a more fulfilling life. While each idea may require initial dedication and effort, they have the potential to generate ongoing income with less active involvement over time. As you explore these opportunities, consider your interests, skills, and resources to choose the one that aligns best with your goals and lifestyle. Passive income is a path to financial independence, and with determination, you can make it a reality.
Below is a transcription of the podcast. This transcription was taken from Otter.ai so it might not be completely accurate:
Sharon Tseung 0:02
This is the digital nomad quest podcast with Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design their best lives. Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad came up with the Cashflow Quadrant it’s a simple diagram that shows that the four ways we can make money are as an employee, self employed business owner or investor. Now building true wealth really happens when we move from being an employee or self employed to becoming a business owner or investor self employed is better than being an employee in that you can work for yourself but you’re still trading time for money and paying high taxes. When you become a business owner. You create systems and delegate work so that you don’t have to actively work as much as Kiyosaki says business owners can leave their business for a year or more in return to find their business more profitable and running better than when they left it. And then investors purchase assets like real estate and company shares to make money work for them. Again, it’s all about making your money work for you. Instead of working for money. I started my employee journey when I graduated from college back when I was 21 years old, but then I realized that I didn’t want to be stuck in the nine to five cycle forever. So I started trying out side hustles and I also invested in real estate. That’s how I’ve been able to retire from the nine to five with 34 rental units and multiple income streams. So today, we’re gonna go over eight side hustle ideas that can help you build your passive income. So let’s get started. The first side hustle is selling low content books on Amazon KDP. So Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is a platform that allows you to self publish and sell your own books, both in digital and print formats on Amazon. Now, instead of writing a whole book, which is a lot of work, people are selling low content books, and these books have minimal or no content inside and I’m talking planners, journals, notebooks, coloring books, and more. That means you don’t have to be an expert in writing because you’re selling materials that your customers will fill out and you don’t need to worry about physical copies, either Amazon’s going to fulfill all your orders for you. That means they’ll print pack and ship the orders for you when you get sales. So if you want to get started First, you’ll need to create and format your book according to KTP guidelines you can even hire on Fiverr to get it all formatted nicely. Once it’s ready, you can create an account on KTP upload your book, set the pricing and publish it paperback if it’s something people write in like a notebook Signing up is completely free and anyone anywhere in the world can get started. As we’re pricing low content books typically sell between $4 and $12. And paperback royalties are typically around 60% of the list price. I would say Amazon KDP has a lot of passive income potential because once your products are out there, it stays out there forever, and you generate income every time people buy your products even without your involvement. So make sure you rack up reviews, which will be one of the biggest things so try to get as many reviews during launch and utilize social media platforms author websites, book promotions and book bloggers to spread the word number two, you can create your own YouTube channel. Now YouTube does require effort, but it’s been one of the most rewarding side hustles I’ve pursued you can make money through ad revenue, affiliate marketing, sponsorships, products and more in terms of monetization, to start earning from YouTube ads, you’re going to need to hit 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours for ads creators earn about 55% of the revenue on their channel. So for every $100 An advertiser pays Google pays $55 to the Creator, while YouTube takes 45%. But again, there are other ways to monetize aside from ad revenue as well. You’ll be creating content for your audience, researching your topics, crafting your scripts, editing your videos, designing those eye catching thumbnails, and I know this is a lot but if you delegate a lot of this out, it can be a lot less work than you think. For example, you can hire people to do research to write thumbnails to edit videos and more people even create faceless YouTube channels where they still make money without them being the ones making the videos, you could hire out everything and start making money that way. And here’s the cool part. Once your content is out there, it stays out there forever. That’s why it’s so important to create evergreen content that stays relevant that people continuously want to watch. If the YouTube algorithm keeps pushing your content to viewers, you’re going to earn passive income in no time. The next side hustle is for people who love taking photos and it’s to sell stock photography. So selling stock photography is all about providing high quality images for people to buy and use in their own content like blog posts, websites, flyers and more. And the key to success is to take pictures that have commercial value. So that could be people doing everyday things travel destinations, food, nature, business ideas, and more. There are platforms out there that allow you to sell your photography online and every time someone uses your images, you can get royalties. The sales will vary depending on the rates of different websites, the number of downloads and more but By using existing platforms, it’ll be much easier to get sales without much promotion and you’ll be able to make money passively. As an example JMO of JMO images makes $550 per month just selling his photos and the main places he lists them include Shutterstock, Dobby stock, iStockphoto dreams time, most photos, deposit photos is all based on the article he had put up. And also I noticed Canva is now allowing people to sell their stock photography online. So there’s a lot of places that you can list your photos. It’s good to have photography, knowledge and decent equipment, but there are also sites like stock ammo or folk that specifically target iPhone stock photography, so you can use your mobile phone and then do basic photo editing for touch ups. As a tip to boost your chances of success. You want to check out popular trends, look for gaps in the market and figure out what buyers want and this can help you take photos that are more in demand and bring in more cash. So if you’re a professional photographer, or you have the knack for taking photos, it can be a worthwhile thing to try selling stock photography. The next side hustle idea is to sell digital products on Etsy. A lot of people sell handmade goods on Etsy, but they don’t know that you can sell digital products, which is even better selling digital products on platforms like Etsy can be a great way to generate passive income. Now when I say digital products, I mean printable items like PDF or editable Photoshop templates, and more when you receive orders, Etsy will automatically fulfill them for you and they send the digital file you listed right away to the customer. And the great thing is you can do this with low capital I made over $3,000 doing this and most of this is profit. And that’s because I didn’t have to buy product or ship anything. Instead, I made Photoshop templates and Microsoft Word templates for things like Photoshop mini session templates, wedding card templates, resume templates, and more. So if you’re interested, what you need to do is research popular niches and digital products on Etsy. This is gonna help you find potential gaps in the market and understand what customers are looking for. So for example, if you love cooking and you want to make money out of it, you can potentially sell cookbooks and recipes on Etsy or you can even have a meal plan calendar or something like that, that you can give people to fill out then you want to make a digital product which you can do on Photoshop or Canva. I have a tutorial on making Canva printables on my YouTube channel. So go ahead and check that out. And then consider the layout typography and any visual elements that can enhance the overall appeal of your product. And then you’ll want to open an Etsy shop and to the shop name. And once you’re done with all that you’re going to put up a listing listings cost 20 cents for four months and there are other small fees if you get sales other than that setting up a shop is free so it’s low cost to start. It’s way better than starting a brick and mortar shop where you have to run a physical location, buy inventory and hope that you’ll market enough for sales. Now in your listing. You also want to make sure to include photos and apply best SEO practices to optimize your title description tags and create quality digital products to set pricing research the pricing of similar digital products on Etsy to determine a competitive yet profitable price for your products. Keep in mind the amount of effort you put into each product, the quality of your content and the perceived value for your customers. When you’re pricing your products. Just like any other business, you want to make sure you’re producing high quality stuff that people will keep buying from you again I have several videos on this channel talking about how to make passive income with Etsy and if you want more information on how to rank your listings and get sales I also have a course called the Etsy entrepreneur that helps you make passive income through selling digital products. I’ll leave the links in the description below so you can check them out side hustle number five is to start a laundromat business laundromats are great businesses to start, but they do require capital to begin with. According to NerdWallet, you can expect to spend anywhere from $200,000 to $500,000 to open an average size laundromat. But if you buy an existing one and improve upon it, which I recommend, it’ll cost less because I’ve seen plenty of laundromats listed for under $200,000. And many owners do actually offer seller financing. So make sure to look into that. I know this because I’ve done my own research on this business as it’s still one of my goals to purchase one for the laundromat machines commercial grade top loading washing machines could cost up to $1,000 while the front loading models might be from 700 to 2000. And then dryers can cost several 1000. So again, try to find a laundromat that already has existing quality machines. So how much can you potentially earn from a laundromat
you’re looking at about 5000 to $25,000 per month in income. I know that’s a huge range because it really depends on location. If you have a place with good foot traffic and then how big your laundromat is and how high quality the machines are. And then you can increase the income by adding extra things like ATMs, snack machines and stuff like that buying boring businesses is very lucrative because there will generally be a need for this type of service laundromats are valued based on a multiple of their net income with a typical multiple in the 3.5 to five range. The great thing about laundromats Is it self service but there’s still going to be active work because you need to collect the coins clean the place make any necessary repairs with the machines now that’s why you’ll eventually want to pay for manager if you can handle it to make things passive which will shift you from self employed to business owner as you’ll be building the systems to make a hands off side hustle number six, you can sell shirts on merch on demand. So merch on demand is a print on demand service where designers upload their original artwork and designs onto various products like T shirts, hoodies, mugs and more doesn’t have upfront cost to get started. So I don’t have to buy a track and prepare any inventory. And most importantly, when I get an order, Amazon will print fulfill and ship the orders for me. So Amazon will take their cut and you’ll get paid in royalties, it’s a great way to make passive income. I’ve actually made over $50,000 profit doing this and I haven’t touched the platform in about five years. It did take a lot of work initially to build up to that point, but it pays off in the passive income it grants you if you get shirts that rank and sell so for you to start, you want to create your merch on demand account niche down and identify your target audience. You could think of current trends your hobbies or specific themes like birthdays and occupations. Next, you want to create eye catching and original designs that resonate with your chosen niche. You can use graphic design software like Canva or Photoshop or you can hire freelance designers. If you’re not comfortable with the design work, you just want to make sure that they create original designs because you do run into the chance of them taking something off of Google and just slapping it on a shirt so make sure it is original. If you hire out you’ll also want to write up the title and descriptions for the listings and then you want to try to get it ranking on Amazon to get sales now if you’re curious about it. I do have a 20 minute free tutorial on how to start on my YouTube channel. So go ahead and check that out on my channel. I share my best practices in creating designs, checking for trademarks, setting up listings, pricing tips and more. Number seven you can rent out your car on Turo so Turo is a peer to peer car rental marketplace that lets car owners earn money by renting out their vehicles to individuals who need temporary transportation. I’ve actually rented cars on Turo before, it’s been extremely convenient during travels. There are people who make Turo their full time business by buying a fleet of cars ran out Now is this a passive business I would say that the handing off of the keys and the cleaning of cards does make the business less passive. But if you have an operator or manager for your business, you can make it more hands off. And that’s again the shift of being self employed to being a business owner you can make between $30 a day to even over $100 a day with your car depending on the model and year of your car and where you’re located. So to get an estimate you can check out turbos car calculator tool that gives you an estimate. Last but not least side hustle number eight is renting out your spaces on neighbor so neighbor is like Airbnb before storage where you can list different types of spaces, you can list your closet or your shed or even garage parking for cars, boats and RVs. People need these spaces to store their stuff, especially when they’re renovating or moving and traveling as an example, we’re leaving to Asia for three to four months and we’re going to need a place to store our car so we might even look into neighbor to do so. And the reason why I say that is we do plan on renting out our primary home on Airbnb potentially. So if we’re going to do that, we also need to move our car to a different space because this one doesn’t have a garage. Now according to this article, here are some potential earnings for every space you may have. So garages can earn between 100 to a whopping 600 per month driveways can earn 50 to 150 per month sheds can earn 50 to 200 per month and parking spaces can earn 50 to 300 per month it all might vary depending on the size and location of your place neighbors free for people who want to list their spaces and you can also pay for a protection plan if you are worried about your spaces and properties now I hope you guys enjoy this list of side hustle ideas that can make you passive income when you’re choosing one of these side hustles you want to make sure you’re going to enjoy your time with it because you might get burnt out if you want that passive income it does require the upfront dedication like people always think oh passive income I’m just gonna make money automatically but it’s really not like that passive income in my opinion is upfront work then reap the benefits but you might still need to do a little bit of maintenance from time to time here and there. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Please make sure to rate review and subscribe. It really helps our podcast grow. And thanks again. I’ll see you guys in the next one.
