If you are looking for passive income strategies that can generate serious income (like $3,000 or more), you are in the right place.
In this article, I am going to cover 9 legit strategies that you can use to make over $3,000 a month in passive income. Sounds too good to be true? It’s not – I actually use three of these strategies currently to make thousands in passive income each month (and am looking to expand into more)!
Now, before we dive in, I want to emphasize that some of these strategies will require some work upfront, but once you have set it up, you have the potential to enjoy amazing passive income that will hit your account every month.
Ok, let’s get into it!
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The information contained in this post is for informational purposes only. It is not a recommendation to buy or invest, and it is not financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. You should seek the advice of a qualified professional before making any investment or other decisions relating to the topics covered by this article.
Online Passive Income Ideas:
To help you navigate the ideas a bit better, I have divided the strategies into two categories: online strategies and offline strategies. Let’s start with ideas that you can implement online. These are great because they can be done from the comfort of your home and in your spare time.
Number 1. Blogger
Imagine a business where you can make thousands of dollars a month but you don’t ever have to worry about employees, customers, inventory, a physical location, or any significant ongoing costs.
A blog can offer all of that and the best past is that you can have amazing flexibility to work on it. It’s a simple thing to do this while in your spare time and you can do it anywhere you want, whether it’s at home, in a coffee shop, or even traveling abroad.
You don’t need any education, licenses or experience to succeed. Literally anyone has the potential to make money blogging by just sitting down and writing an article about a topic that they are knowledgeable and passionate about.
Now, I want to be clear that starting a blog is hard work. That part is not passive. But once you have articles written that are generating traffic, you can sit back and enjoy the passive income that comes from all of the work that you put in.
I can speak from personal experience that this can work. I started this personal finance blog a little over a year ago and it is making me thousands of dollars every month from articles I wrote a while back. I can step away from it for months and when I check back in, I know it will still be making money for me every day.
Plus, it’s easy and cheap to get started. All you really need is a computer and an internet connection.
You can build your blog website for free using platforms like Wix.com or wordpress.com. But if you want maximum flexibility and money-making potential, you will want to spend a little upfront to get your own domain name and find a hosting provider that can offer reliable and fast hosting services.
I use namecheap.com to get my custom domain names and cloudways.com for my hosting. All in, I spend less than $150 per year for everything.
Cloudways is a bit more of a premier service and it allows you to run bigger blogs at a great price, but if you want a slightly more affordable option (at least in the beginning), check out Siteground. I used them when I first started blogging and they are a great hosting provider for new bloggers.
Now there are some things you need to get right to become a successful blogger.
The most important is performing solid keyword research. This is basically finding topics that have a good chance of ranking highly on Google search, so that your article on that topic will get tons of traffic. When it comes to blogging, the more traffic you get, the more money you make. That’s because advertisers will pay you based on how many people see their ads.
You’ll also want to write engaging content so that you can beat out the competition and take that coveted number 1 ranking on google search results.
If you want to learn more about how to do all of this, I have written a detailed step by step guide on how to start a blog from scratch, which you can check out here.
If you don’t have the time or inclination to do this on your own, you can hire a service to create a website for you. Make Lemonade is a UK based firm that specializes in this.
I have used their content writing service to help me expand my blogs when I was running short on time, but they do offer a full service model, where they will create your website for you from start to finish and include content that has gone through their rigorous keyword research process.
Check them out here if you want to learn more.
Alternatively, if you want o buy a blog that is already making money, check out Empire Flippers. They are a premier marketplace for buying and selling online businesses. Not only can you see blogs on there making serious money (if you need to see proof that this can actually be done), but they are really rigorous and very picky about the businesses that are on their platform.
Each business needs to provide a lot of evidence that they are legit, so you won’t find tons of scammy sites.
Number 2. YouTuber
If you prefer expressing yourself through video rather than writing, then you can become a YouTuber.
Like blogging, this is a side hustle that can be started in your spare time and does not cost much money at all to begin. If you’re on a budget, all you really need is a decent phone to record videos because actually posting your videos on YouTube is free.
As for how much you can make, that will depend on a lot of factors, including how many views you get, and how much advertisers are willing to pay to get slots on your videos.
But even before you get there, you will need to get at least 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers before YouTube will allow you to start making ad revenue. If that seems hard, it is. You will need to be laser focused on creating great content. You will also need to master the art of creating clickable thumbnails and compelling titles.
It’s a lot to figure out, but if you do, the rewards can be amazing.
Now, making money on YouTube does not typically take as long as it does for blogging.
For example, I started making around $4,000 within a couple of months of starting my YouTube channel. So it can happen really fast, especially if you get lucky like I did (one of my videos went viral). But I am not going to pretend that everyone is going to get that lucky. Many people make no money at all on YouTube.
Just as with blogging, once your videos are up and running, you can make money from those videos without doing much. YouTube will show ads (once you are approved for monetization) and you will make money from those ads.
But there is a bit more work involved with YouTube because they seem to want their channel creators to upload regularly. One video a week is a good cadence, I think, although if your schedule does not permit that, one video every two weeks if fine as well.
Number 3. Amazon FBA Owner
No list of passive income ideas would be complete without Amazon FBA.
What is Amazon FBA?
It’s a program that allows regular people to start selling items on Amazon, with Amazon handling the fulfillment of orders. Hence the name FBA, which stands for fulfillment by Amazon. This means that once you have the product in their warehouse, when a customer makes a purchase, they handle the receiving, packing, shipping, customer service, and returns for those orders.
In fact, that work on the back end by Amazon is where the passive income piece comes in.
Your job is on the front end. You need to figure out the right product, find a reliable supplier who will provide you the product at a price that will generate a profit for you, set up your amazon storefront, and then optimize your listing to make it stand out.
For that last bit, I think Helium 10 is a great option. They offer a suite of tools that enable you to optimize your listing, do proper keyword research, and monitor crucial analytics.
Now I admit, setting up your Amazon FBA business is going to be a lot of work, but once you’ve done it and made arrangements to get your products delivered to the Amazon warehouse, you can enjoy fairly passive income because the day to day operational burdens are generally handled by Amazon after that.
Plus, the money can be great. If you explore Empire Flippers and search for Amazon FBA businesses, they are among the highest earning businesses out there. Some make well over ten thousand dollars per month!
Number 4. Online Course Creator
Another way to generate passive income online is to sell online courses.
If you have expertise in an area and have a gift for teaching, you can record a simple online course that you can sell on platforms like udemy.com, skillshare.com, kajabi.com, teachable.com and many others.
Again, it will take some time and effort to create the course, but they don’t necessarily have to be hours long. I have seen simple little courses that only last thirty minutes or so on skillshare that are hugely popular and have tens of thousands of customers. That being said, most courses do last significantly longer than that.
Regardless of length, you need to provide real value in your courses, so make sure they are packed with useful information and insider tips and are presented in a clear and professional way. There are tons of tutorials on how to do this on YouTube and Google, so soak up the knowledge that’s out there and start generating some extra income.
Here’s an insider tip. If you already have a blog or YouTube channel, you have a ton of content around your niche that can easily be converted into an online course. If you don’t want to do this yourself, you can hire a professional editor or course creator to help you with this.
It may be worth the investment to create a whole new revenue stream from your content.
Number 5. Ebook Author
If you have always wanted to be a writer and share your creativity with the world, but never got started because you were worried that no one would be willing to publish your work, you don’t need to worry about that anymore.
The publishing world has radically changed and now there are some really amazing and accessible platforms where authors can self-publish their books.
Gone are the days when you needed to submit your manuscript to a bunch of huge publishing houses and wait for the wave of rejections. You can bypass all of that and just publish your book on places like Amazon KDP and Apple Books for Authors.
There are three things I really like about this strategy.
First, it literally costs you nothing to start. Of course, these platforms will take a cut of your sales, but that’s to be expected.
Second, once the books are written, you get to enjoy passive income from the sale of your books. Getting paid on books you wrote months or even years ago is amazing.
Third, the more books you write, the more opportunity you have to generate additional income.
Just awesome. And if you want to make some extra money using your writing skills, you can always become a freelance writer (which we discussed earlier). In fact, there is plenty of demand for ghostwriters of Amazon KDP books on the platforms I discussed above.
If you want to learn more about how to make money being a ebook writer, check out my article on the topic here.
This is another type of business that you will find for sale on Empire Flippers fairly regularly and some of the larger ones make well in excess of $3,000 per month.
Number 6. Print on Demand Designer
If you’ve got a creative streak or an artistic bent, you can make designs on your computer and sell them online through Merch By Amazon.
Now to be clear, you are not actually selling the designs themselves. You are using the designs in t-shirts, mugs or other merchandise and selling the merchandise. You get paid a cut of each item that gets sold using your design.
The reason why this designing job is passive is because once you provide the design, Amazon takes care of the rest. They will put the design on the merchandise and ship it out to the customers.
In other words, once you provide the artwork, they handle the production, shipping and customer service all at no cost to you. Super low risk to you and you can make money in your sleep. Doesn’t get better than that!
For more information on how you can start a print on demand business, check out my full guide to doing this here.
Offline Passive Income Ideas
Ok, we’ve covered a ton of online passive income ideas where you can generate serious money. But if you prefer making money without the technological trappings of an online business, let’s turn to ideas that are a bit more “brick and mortar” in nature.
Number 7: Rental Property Investing
Buying and renting out real estate is one of my favorite ways to generate passive income. Of course, there is some level of maintenance that is required to take care of your properties and handle tenants. But if you assemble a trustworthy team of techs who can handle maintenance and repairs for you, rental property investing becomes fairly hands off.
I own and manage 9 rental properties myself and it takes around 5 hours per month. Not completely passive, but not too bad. If something comes up, I simply give one of my techs a call and they take care of it quickly and at a fair price. Most of my work comes when a vacancy occurs because I like to handle those myself.
But if you want to completely outsource all of this, you can. Just hire a property manager. You will need to vet them and make sure they are professional and will take good care of your property, but they can be a great resource if you want to truly have this operate on auto-pilot.
If you want to learn more about how to get started, check out my article on how to start investing in rental properties.
Number 8: Rent Out Stuff You Already Have
Now if rental property investing is not really feasible because you don’t have the money or credit to do it properly, you can choose to rent out stuff you already own.
I am talking about things like your car, your spare bedroom, and even extra closet space.
For cars, I think one Turo.com is a great platform to use. If you have a spare car that isn’t seeing much use or if you don’t really use your primary car on certain days, then renting it out can be a great way to earn some pretty easy cash on the side.
To learn more about how to do this, check out my article here.
If you want to rent out a spare bedroom or other livable space, you can do so on Airbnb. To rent out extra storage space, like a closet, basement or attic, check out Neighbor.
To find even more creative ways to rent out stuff you already own, check out my article on 15 ways to make truly passive income with no money.
Number 9: Invest in Royalty Producing Assets
If you love music, movies and other forms of artistic intellectual property, you can now own them and enjoy the royalty payments from such assets.
I think it’s an interesting and offbeat way to make passive income.
If want to learn more, check out Royalty Exchange. You can go on their site and purchase these assets. Once you have secured the IP, you can start earning passive income with it.
Their website claims a 10% ROI and $90 Million in transaction volume. Based on that ROI, you would need to buy licenses valued at $360,000 to make $3,000 a month in passive income. That seems like a lot, I know. But if you compare that to how much you would need if you invested in a dividend paying stock paying 5% per year, it’s half.
Of course, nothing is guaranteed (for this strategy or any of the others), so you would need to do your due diligence.
Conclusion
So there you have it – 9 great strategies that can provide $3,000 a month in passive income. If you want to learn more about passive income strategies, check out my complete guide to passive income, which you can find here. It covers more than 20 legit passive income strategies that you can explore.
