5 Beginner Passive Income Ideas Sure To Replace Your 9–5
Want to build passive income but don't have the skills? Think again.
Passive income. The art of making money while you sleep. Many of us have realized that it is no longer possible to rely on one source of income to get by in life, others are looking to earn a bit of extra cash, and the rest of us? Well, we just never want to work again.
Fear not. Whether you’re looking to quit your job for good, or just to make extra cash to spend some more time with your family, here are 5 ways you can start making passive income as a beginner.
1. Amazon KDP
Amazon KDP stands for ‘Kindle Direct Publishing’ and it refers to books created by independent publishers who publish their books directly and exclusively with Amazon. This is a great idea for beginners who want to earn passive income as there are different ways you can do this to fit your ideas, skill level, and hobbies.
With KDP, you can create hardcover, paperback, and e-books about pretty much anything — and you don’t need to be JK Rowling for them to sell either. For ebooks you can write anything from an extensive How-To guide on a subject you love, to a collection of high-quality documents. It is, however, important to do your research before investing time and money into something that might not even sell.
Research topics that are popular, but do not write on topics with too many established writers writing about it or you may not be able to compete in that niche. To save money, you can write the book yourself if you enjoy writing, or pay someone to write it for you. You can find freelance writers on Upwork or Fiverr.
Alternatively, creating a low content book might just be the beginner passive income idea you need to get off the ground running. Low content books include journals, notebooks, diaries, planners, music sheet books, and colouring books. These can all be designed at a low cost and they take such little time to create. I created my book ‘Wealth Building 101 For Women’ in less than a week and it was really enjoyable to make.
You can check it out here:
Once you design your front cover, which should be eye-opening and attractive, think about the content that will be in the book and plan its contents based on the target audience it is for. You don’t have to stop at one either — you can create as many as you want. This is definitely a fun and easy way to start making passive income.
2. Start A Blog
The second beginner passive income idea to start making money while you sleep is starting a blog. There are over 600 million blogs on the internet at the moment, and while that might put you off from starting one yourself, there is always room on the market for fresh, creative, and innovative ideas.
To start a blog, you don’t need to be an excellent writer, or have loads of money. You can start a blog for free on Medium.
Medium pays writers for their work depending on how much readers engage with their content. The minimum requirements for joining Medium’s Partner Program are to be at least 18 years old with at least 100 followers on the platform.
This might prove difficult to some but there are some tips you can try to get followers faster on Medium. Firstly, publishing in publications that are in the niche you are writing in will help to promote and expose your writing to a bigger audience. Also, following writers and asking them to follow you back, and engaging with their writing may help you to gain more followers. The most important thing to gain followers on Medium, though, is to stay consistent and write content often, preferably once a day. Not only that, but enjoy the process of writing and don’t get too caught up in stats and followers. Write about what you enjoy and have fun doing it.
Medium isn’t the only platform you can write on though. You could also start a blog through Wordpress or even blogger.com. The latter is also a very good platform to use to earn money. You could even start earning in as little as 2 days. This is because blogger.com was actually acquired by Google in 2003. You can sign up to monetize your blogger.com site with Google Ads, but first it’ll have to be approved. This means making your blog presentable with at least 5–10 articles published on it.
3. Dividends
The third relatively easy way to start making passive income is through dividends. A dividend is a distribution of cash to stock and shareholders of a company. If you have money sitting around in a savings account collecting only 0.01 pence every month, you may be having second thoughts about that after you read this.
By transferring your savings into a stock such as Apple, for example, you could be receiving payments weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. Apple pays dividends quarterly at around 0.22 USD. One stock costs around 150 USD which means for investing 150 USD into Apple, you can earn 88 cents a year. While that may not seem like much, buying multiple shares in one stock, or buying multiple stocks could rack up that number fast. There are also stocks that have cheaper shares with higher dividend yield rates.
You can start investing with eToro, Robinhood, or impact investing app Circa5000 — there are dozens to choose from. Once your portfolio has been built up over the years, you could easily live off money earned from dividends, just for keeping your money in stock instead of a bank, which is subject to inflation.
Make sure to do your own independent research beforehand as this content is for informational purposes only. All investments involve risk including the loss of capital.
4. Affiliate Marketing
A fourth way to start making passive income as a beginner is through affiliate marketing. These days, pretty much every company has an affiliate program. This is basically a way to promote companies and generate leads for them. If you’ve set up your blog and it is successful, you can write an article about a company you’re an affiliate for and provide the link in your blog. Whenever someone clicks on your link and purchases, you’ll earn money from it. Sounds easy right?
If you don’t have a lot of visits to your blog, an alternative is to respond to questions on Quora or Reddit, or post on your social media accounts. For example, if someone submits a post on Quora asking how they can create their own logo, and you’re an affiliate for a design brand, you can easily respond to them saying, “Hey, you can use my link for 10% off so and so and create a logo on their”. Obviously, you should elaborate more than that to let people know that you’re really interested in helping them and not just looking at them as a huge $ sign. But this is a really easy way to make passive income, as people can see that link anytime someone clicks that Quora questions, they’ll see your link.
Lots of people make a living out of affiliate marketing. It can take some effort at first, but once you’ve built up a following, it is sure to bring you success.
5. Print-On-Demand
This is the last, and probably my favorite beginner passive income stream for beginners. Print on-demand refers to products, clothing and accessories that do not have to be personally stored and sold. Instead they are created online and listed, and when somebody buys the product, the manufacturer will develop the product and deliver it straight to the customer. This means you don’t even need to see the product. Cool, right?
Print-on-demand is becoming increasingly popular because of its’ ease to set up and do. You can start a Shopify store right now and get 14 days free. This gives you time to design your product, promote your store, and get customers buying before you have to pay a penny. You can promote your store on social media through adverts, or write SEO optimized blogs to build up an online presence.
You can create clothing such as T-Shirts, Hats, Socks, Hoodies, Crop Tops etc using Printful. Printful is free to use and gives you a variety of tools to use to design, connect, and sell products to your audience. You can link your Printful designs to selling platforms like Shopify or Etsy.
I hope you guys enjoyed this list. Try out a few of these ideas and see what happens. They are definitely all quite fun, and when done correctly, are guaranteed to make you good money.