In this post we discuss 8 passive income ideas to increase your net worth in your sleep.
Let’s face it, we’d all love to be able to make money in our sleep. It might seem like a dream, excuse the pun, but setting up multiple streams of passive income is a sure-fire way to boost your earnings. Ok, I know what you’re thinking, it’s not as simple as going to sleep and waking up with an overflowing swag bag at your feet – the initial steps to gaining a passive income, or multiple passive income streams can take time and research but once they start paying out, you’ll be free to relax a little and glad of the time and energy that you put in at the beginning. This article will not only give you many passive income ideas and help you to understand the methodology, but also walk you through the finest ways of generating a passive income and aid your decision when thinking about which ones are most suitable for you.
What is Passive Income?
Simply put, passive income is earnings that continue to be attained after the initial creation of a revenue stream. Think of musicians – they only record an album once but they get paid royalties for every sale or stream afterwards. Once the work is done and the product or service is available, you don’t have to be physically working to gain an income from it. Passive income is a means of becoming totally self sufficient – imagine if something occurred that stopped you from working like an unexpected illness or accident. Albeit unlikely, such an event has the potential to create a firewall between you and your primary source of income. Therefore, having a passive income could be seen as a kind of financial ‘get out of jail free card’ as well as a side hustle. With that in mind, here’s a rundown of the best passive income ideas to start earning autonomously.
8 Passive Income Ideas to Increase Your Net Worth in Your Sleep
1. Open a High Interest Savings Account.
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book and perhaps the most classic means of making an easy mark-up on your existing savings. It goes without saying that you need a nest egg to get started with a decent savings account (most banks require a minimum of $100) but once it’s set up you can sit back, relax and watch your deposit grow. It takes time and patience but it’s a low risk and stress free money spinner. It’s also a nice insurance policy for those unexpected financial emergencies that crop up from time to time. If you have some long-term financial targets, gaining interest from the bank can put you on the right trajectory to hitting them. Check out this list of the highest yielding online savings accounts from Bankrate and begin the process of monetizing your existing savings today.
Acorns
Founded in 2014, Acorns is a micro-investing outfit that helps would-be investors grow their wealth from spare change proving that you don’t have to be wealthy to capitalise on your savings. It’s been described as ‘the new millennial investing strategy’ thanks to it’s user-friendly interface. Their automatic round-ups on left over change from everyday purchases means that you can save money with complete autonomy – in many ways it acts like a digital piggy bank. They have a number of subscription plans so you’re free to choose how much, or little you want to put on the table. They also provide great blogs with financial advice to assist in growing your knowledge and their ‘Later’ feature allows you to seamlessly save money for retirement. Find out more about their services here.
2. Invest in an Index Fund
Unless you’ve studied or worked in the financial sector, it’s safe to say that stock markets are complex. For a novice investor with no guidance, it’s incredibly difficult to know what shares to buy. However, Index funds are a great passive investment strategy. As with opening an online savings account, you’ll need a sum of money to invest in an index fund although the costs are generally lower than if you wanted to build a portfolio of individual stocks.
With an index fund you gain exposure to a variety of markets providing the investor with a degree of stability. Essentially an index fund is an assortment of investments in one bundle that provides beginners with a relatively simple and convenient way to enter the world of stock exchange through a single investment.
3. Affiliate Links
If you’ve got a business with a website that attracts a lot of users, a well-subscribed blog, a YouTube channel or social media accounts with a decent following you can start earning passively through affiliate links. The idea is a simple one; you use your online presence as a platform for plugging third party products or services. By offering your subscribers and followers the chance to buy goods through your, specially written affiliate link, you can turnover a commission each time somebody makes a purchase under your recommendation. Not a bad way to make an easy buck, right?
If you’re thinking about going down this avenue of passive income and want to reach out to potential affiliates, make sure you’re targeting businesses in an appropriate sector, for example if you’ve got a blog about cooking, it makes more sense to promote kitchen appliances or food products than say, golf clubs. It may sound like a no brainer but it’s important to consider the audience you’re trying to influence to maximise your earning potential.
4. Online Adverts
Adverts are everywhere – at times their ubiquity can become such a nuisance. The videos you watch, the music and podcasts you listen to and the websites you visit are all loaded with pop-up banners and jingles advertising something or another. It’s no wonder there are so many ads out there when you consider how profitable it can be to join the game and start selling ad space.
Just like with affiliate links, getting paid to feature a product online requires a strong online presence for it to generate large sums of money, so if you’ve got a decent following this is a perfectly effortless money spinner. If you’re not equipped to make a passive income from online ads, maybe now’s the time to build a website or start a blog about the things you love and start generating a modest, but growing flow of cash on the side literally while you sleep.
5. Buy a Blog or Website
Maybe you like the sound of earning from affiliate links or online ads but you don’t have the resources or the time to build a platform from which to advertise because, let’s be honest, it’s not going to happen over night. If that’s the case and you’re in a position to speculate financially, why not buy a blog or a website and turn a profit on your investment through ads?
There’s thousands of online businesses waiting to be bought. Founded in 2009, Flippa has overseen the sale of over two hundred and fifty businesses world-wide and is the best place to start your search for a new enterprise. Flippa makes a valuation of a website or blog and also outlines the monthly earnings which have potential to grow with some work and TLC – this can of course be outsourced to freelancers through online job boards to keep this type of venture as passive as possible. As far as passive earning opportunities go, this one has limitless potential if you do your homework and buy wisely.
If you’d like to build your own website, we do recommend Hostgator and Namecheap for hosting and domains!
6. Sell your Photography or Artwork Online
If you can draw, design, paint or take beautiful photographs, it’s possible to turn your talent into a profitable side line. Once you’ve created a a piece of art or taken that perfect photograph you can upload it to the internet and instantly convert it into an individual source of personal revenue. Once it’s online, you won’t need to lift a finger to access your profit.
Check out Creative Market for selling digital artwork and Shutterstock for your photos. They’ll list and sell your work for you in exchange for a small service fee. Shutterstock contributors earn just under two dollars for each of their images that gets downloaded by a user. Once you’ve sold five-hundred dollars worth of photos, this amount increases, so what are you waiting for? Sign up, get out there start snapping of the world, upload them and wait for the money to roll in while you’re sleeping!
7. Rent Out a Room in Your House
If you are the kind of person who needs their own space, then maybe this isn’t the best strategy for you. On the other hand, if you’re happy to share your place with somebody else, renting out a room in your house or apartment is a superb means of making a steady, monthly salary on top of your standard earnings from doing practically nothing. You’ll have to advertise the space and interview potential tenants (unless you can find a friend in need of a place to live) before setting up some terms and conditions, but once that’s done the rest takes care of itself. You may even have a space outside of the house or apartment like a garage or shed that you could clear out and rent as a studio or workplace for a creative individual or a local band providing your neighbours don’t mind the noise! If the space is there to be used, the possibilities for passive income are endless.
8. Buy a Property to Rent
Buying a house isn’t cheap, but as the old saying goes, it takes money to make money. Investing in property is an age-old and solid strategy to construct a secondary source of income. Pragmatism is key when thinking about the area you buy in and the demographic of tenant you want to target. For example, it’s tactical to buy a house around a college or university district with a high volume of students willing to rent year in year out. Through utilizing the services of a local letting agent you’ll be free to keep rental revenue completely passive in exchange for a commission.
If buying a house seems like a financially unrealistic prospect for you right now, there’s always the option of involving a business partner or group of investors or friends and share the yield between you. This strategy could even lead to re-investing and building a property portfolio with healthy returns.
Finding the Right Source of Passive Income for You
We hope you enjoyed this post on 8 passive income ideas to increase your nest egg in your sleep! It’s not easy to make money in your sleep, if it were then everyone would be doing it surely. Some strategies are relatively hassle free and reasonably cost effective whilst others are going to require you to either have a sufficient amount of capital to turn into an autonomous profit machine. This isn’t a definitive guide of passive income ideas to making money inactively, and there’s plenty of other options out there but hopefully by using this advice as well as putting in your own research and time, you can find the ideal source(s) of passive income to suit you.
