What if you could earn money without really working? Sounds like a dream, right? Setting up a passive income venture is a great way to do just that.
If you’re not sure where to start, there are quite a few online tools that can help. Here are some easy-to-use sites to help you start earning money right away.
Earning passive income doesn’t need to be difficult. You can start this week.
Online Course Creation Tools
Online courses are a great way to make passive income. The concept is to create a course about something you’re good at — maybe it’s baking, skateboarding or doing income taxes — and then sell it to as many people as are willing to pay for it.
If you’re not sure where to start, the site Teachable can help you create online courses, digital downloads and other items that will teach others what you know.
There’s also a coaching platform where you can create as many products as you want for a monthly fee. Depending on the package you choose, you may be limited as to the number of products you can publish. Teachable also helps you promote your courses.
Coursify.me is another tool for online course creation. Like Teachable, Coursify offers a variety of subscriptions from a free version up to a business plan for $47 a month. Each package includes an unlimited number of courses.
Merchandise on Demand
Artists and other creative types can make passive income from their designs with Merch on Demand from Amazon. Upload your designs, choose your product type(s), provide a description and name your price. Amazon will create your product page, and when you get an order, they print and ship it. You earn royalties based on what you sell.
Investing
Investing may be the original passive income stream. When you buy stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, bonds and other investments, your money earns money. When you buy more investments with that money, it earns even more — the magic of compound interest. To make choosing and buying investments easier, look for an app like Robinhood that doesn’t charge commissions on trades.
If you’re having trouble scraping the money together to invest, there’s an app for that, too. Acorns helps you invest your spare change by rounding up your debit card transactions to the next whole dollar and investing that amount. Once you have a little more money to spare, you can add in a certain amount every month.
Rental Income
Buying rental income properties has long been a popular way to generate passive income but it requires a significant investment up front.
Instead of buying a house or apartment building to have rental income, rent a room in your home on sites like Airbnb or Furnished Finder, which specialize in short-term rentals of furnished rooms.
If you have a garage you’re not using or space in your basement, you can earn passive income by renting that out. Neighbor is a peer-to-peer rental app on which you can list your rental to bring in some cash from that empty space. You can also rent out your car on a peer-to-peer carsharing app like Turo or Getaround.
The options for building passive income are almost limitless. Think about what you have or what you know that other people might pay for. Then find a tool that will help you get the message out. Soon, you’ll be on your way to making money with little or no effort.
