Passive without the Aggressive: Low-effort Side Income Ideas

Earning passive income is the dream for many people. Chances are, it’s not going to make you rich, but it can get you a nice little side income. A passive income is one you can set up and, once you’ve got the ball rolling, it will require little or no work to keep it going. You might have to keep an eye on it to meet changing demands, or it could eventually peter out, but experimenting with passive income can be a lot of fun. Some things can work long-term and others will only be short-term. Either way, it can be great to have money coming in without having to do a lot of work. There are lots of ideas you can try out to get a passive income stream going, such as the ones below.

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Create Digital Products to Sell

The best kind of passive income is one that has low overheads. If you can set it up and let it gather steam, you won’t have to put in much work. Digital products are ideal for this because you only have to create one of them to sell hundreds or even thousands. You don’t have to reproduce an ebook or podcast over and over again like you do with a physical product. So creating something digital is the ideal way of starting a passive income stream, although you do have to market your product too.

You could write a book to sell and put it on Amazon and other prominent sites. It’s usually better to write something instructional or non-fiction, rather than a novel. Another idea is an online course, which could consist of articles, infographics, videos, workbooks, and other materials. Once you’ve put the course together, you can allow people to download it as one product, email it in installments, or perhaps have an online portal or members’ area to access.

Set Up a Blog

A lot of people contemplate setting up a blog to create some passive income. Of course, it’s not a passive income if you have to keep updating it with posts. But if you hire someone else to write your blog posts for you, you hardly have to do anything. Despite what some people think, you’re unlikely to get super rich just from owning a blog. People who do make a lot of money from a blog often get work related to it, such as speaking gigs. However, you can still earn some extra cash if you use the right methods. Working with different brands, securing advertising, and using affiliate links are all methods that could work.

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Create a Comparison or Review Site

There are other types of website you can consider making that will help you earn money from affiliate links. One of them is a comparison website, which you can use to allow people to compare products or services. For example, they exist to help people compare insurance providers and plans, energy companies, and even college courses. You can review products, create tables of factors to compare, and perhaps have a search function to make it easier to find the right product. Use affiliate links for each product so that when people find one they want to buy, you earn money from it. You can also just do a straightforward review site.

Make Investments

There are so many different ways you can invest your money. Some of them can help to provide a stream of income now, while others will come good when you sell them in the future. If you look at sites like The Fortunate Investor, you can find plenty of ideas for investing in different ways. One form of investment that can turn into a passive income is property. Renting out property can be a lot of work, unless you get someone else to manage it for you. Using a property management firm might mean you earn less money, but you have to do less work too. Another way to invest is to buy stocks that will pay you dividends.

Set Up a Hands-off Ecommerce Store

You might think that selling things takes a lot of work, but it’s possible to take a fairly hands-off approach to it. If you use dropshipping for your ecommerce business, you might not have to do much of anything at all to earn some money. You can even get someone else to handle all the customer service for you. Most of the work you need to do will go into creating the site and finding the products and dropshipping service that suit you. You might end up using a few different suppliers to ensure that you can provide the quality products that you want.

Be a Reseller

Reselling products or services is a good way to make money without having to do a lot of work. You just have to sell it, and someone else will fulfill the order. There are a few things you can do this with, from web hosting and SEO services to copywriting. Before you start selling, you obviously want to find a quality product to sell. So it’s important to do your research and look at the quality of the work that a service produces before you decide you want to be a reseller. Then you need to put your own branding on the product.

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Consider Peer-to-peer Lending

Peer-to-peer lending is a way that anyone can borrow or lend money. It gives people who want to borrow easy access to the funds they need, and lenders can make money from the interest they charge. If you divide your money between a few different people looking for cash, you can reduce the risks you’re taking. However, one thing to consider is that there can be work involved if you want to be careful. You need to take a careful look at each borrower to assess the risk of lending to them, and whether you’re going to get your money back.

Create a Physical Product

A digital product might be much more risk-free, but if you can create the right physical product, you could do well from it. You can still make your income mostly passive too if you set everything up correctly. If you want to create a successful product, you need to think about a problem you can solve. That’s the way that many people come up with a product that has plenty of demand. If there’s a problem you need a solution for, there are sure to be other people who have the same problem. Creating a product does require time, money and lots of testing. But if you can get it off the ground, you can make a success of it.

Franchise a Business

Creating a franchise sounds like a lot of work, and it can be if you’re thinking of fast food franchises and the like. However, there are easier ways to franchise a business without it being too complicated. Starting an online business you can franchise is a good way to do it. If you can create some kind of business “system,” like an online learning portal, you can franchise it to other people. For example, you can create a site that teaches people how to pass their driving theory test. You can use the same system for other useful topics people need to study that others with different areas of expertise can help you create.

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Design Graphics for Products

This is a kind of dropshipping you can do through sites like Cafepress. It can work out well if you know what you’re doing and you create designs that appeal to people. Sometimes that means just having some great design skills, and other times it can mean appealing to pop culture without breaking any copyright rules. You can put your designs on t-shirts, mugs, keyrings, bags, glasses, and much more. Once you’ve created your products and set the prices, you don’t have to do much else. The company will print your products and send them out. But you could be facing a lot of competition, so you do need to make an effort to get your things to stand out.

Create a Jobs Board

If you have some coding skills, creating a jobs board can be an interesting thing to do. Obviously, there are already many huge jobs search engines and ad boards out there. So it’s important to think about niches you can target to create a highly specialist board instead of a more general one. Even just targeting one industry could be too broad, so think of a narrow skillset – but not too narrow. The hard part is getting people to start visiting, since you need jobs to attract job seekers, and you need visitors to attract employers. That’s why it’s a good idea to attach your jobs board to a site that’s already useful for job seekers. It could be one about looking for work, or it could have content relating to the niche you want to target.

There are so many ways you can try to make a passive income, but not all will work for you. It’s important to consider them carefully to decide which ones are worth trying.