Looking for passive income sources online? Passive income is definitely the best kind of income and however well a job might pay, there’s always a limit on what you can earn because there’s only a certain amount of hours in the day. But through selling products and services online you can use automation and the ability to sell globally to build a passive and a scalable income which isn’t related to trading your time for money.
So in this post I’m going to share some of the best ideas I’ve found for creating a passive income online.
Passive Income Sources Online #1: Affiliate Marketing
Even without any experience or products of your own to sell, anyone can use a clever online business model known as affiliate marketing to create a passive income through selling other people’s products. With a normal job your sell time for money. Although you get paid regularly, you also need to show up regularly. When you stop showing up you stop getting paid.
Affiliate marketing is different.
Although initially there’s a lot of work to be done, if you stick with it for long enough, your systems and automation will allow you to make sales in your sleep, even after you stop working. Even a small passive income is worth working really hard for because when you can generate a passive income from selling a product/service online you can repeat it, automate it and scale it!
Passive Income Sources Online #2: Google Adsense
Google Adsense is another way you can generate a passive income source online. With Google Adsense you can place adverts on your content and get paid when visitors click on your ads. Content creators include bloggers, website owners, YouTuber’s and other social media influencers.
With enough traffic to your website or video channel, you can monetise clicks through advertising. Earn per click and build up your content over time.
Blogging is one of the simplest ways to generate content online and earn passively through advertising. See also Google Adsense alternatives.
#3: Subscription Products
Even without a subscription product of your own, you can choose to promote affiliate subscription products with a variety of online marketing methods. Subscriptions are a great way to earn a passive income because a single sale gives you a monthly recurring passive income. With multiple sales you can build up a nice recurring income which compounds over time.
Subscription products which are good are business tools and software products. Business tools are particularly good because online business owners need those kinds of products in order to build their businesses.
Once you’ve sold a subscription product to someone who is building a lucrative business with it, they are pretty much assured to keep using that product – potentially for life! If you’ve sold it to them this means you can earn lifetime commissions from the referral!
Passive Income Sources Online #4: Blogging
Yes blogging is a good passive income source for many who have created lots of online content. This blog post is an example of a piece of content I use to drive traffic to this website. Bloggers write content about a particular topic on a website. Over time if they are successful, they will start to get natural (organic) traffic coming to their content.
This happens through blog post promotion, SEO (search engine optimisation) and link building. Typically blogging will take a few months at least before you will see traction in terms of traffic (visitors). Once you start seeing regular visitors to a blog you can monetise it using either affiliate products, advertising or a combination of the two.
Passive Income Sources Online #5 YouTube
YouTuber’s can use a couple of methods of building a passive income online. They can either use paid marketing to place their marketing messages in front of potential customers and sell affiliate products, or they can build up a library of videos and draw in traffic organically through the YouTube search engine. YouTuber’s can also attract free traffic from Google too, who now owns YouTube.
YouTube also has a partner program whereby you can earn directly from the platform from advertising clicks, placed on your videos. With enough videos and followers you can turn your YouTube channel into a profitable online business.
Passive Income Sources Online #7: Redbubble
Redbubble is an online clothing and creatives store which allows people to upload their individual designs and benefit from sales made using their logos or images. Making things like shirts, stickers, phone cases, and pillows, Redbubble is hugely popular.
To make Redbubble profitable you need to upload new logos and images which you have ownership rights to on a regular basis. I uploaded a couple of images to the site and occasionally make a sale out of the blue. It’s usually only a couple of dollars but if design is your thing there’s no reason you couldn’t turn this into a very lucrative business.
You can also start your own shop on Redbubble too.
Sales are generated by the website on your behalf, so there’s no customer service or fulfilment needed from you; much like with affiliate marketing.
#8: Photographs
There’s a variety of photography websites which allow you to upload your images and benefit from any purchases made. So if you’re a keen photographer, or would like to be, this is a way to make it profitable and make a passive income from your work.
Here’s a few of the sites which offer the ability to make royalty income from photographic images and/or videos:
- Getty Images
- Vecteezy
- Depositphotos
- Dreamstime
- iStock
- Westend61
- Stocksy
- Shutterstock
