If you are looking to work from home, but also love the idea of generating passive income while you’re at it, you are in the right place.
In this article, I am going to cover 7 legit online jobs that can eventually generate serious passive income for you. 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)!
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.
Number 1. Blogger (Or Freelance Writer if You Need Immediate Income)
Imagine a job where you can make hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month, but you can work in your spare time and you don’t have any bosses or clients breathing down your neck.
You also won’t have to deal with hyper-critical customers, manage any inventory, and can even work while you are traveling the world and living your best life.
You don’t need any education, licenses or experience to succeed. Literally anyone has the potential to make money blogging by just sitting down with a cup of coffee and writing an article about a topic that they are knowledgeable and passionate about.
And the absolute best part of this business is that 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 every single thing I just mentioned is true. 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 months ago. 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.
Another Option
Now, one drawback to being a blogger is that you won’t make money right away. It often takes months for a blog post to start ranking on Google and generating any significant traffic, so you will need to be patient.
If you need to start making money right away, you can become a freelance writer. You can offer to write blog posts for other bloggers on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork and make decent money doing it. You can also work the many content mills like textbroker, iwriter and writer access.
You can also market your services specifically to bloggers on sites like Problogger.com.
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.
If you don’t want to wait around for your YouTube channel to hit it big, you can become a freelance editor in the meantime and start making money right away. When you start making YouTube videos, you are going to learn all about editing videos. You can parlay that knowledge into a part time job where you edit other people’s videos, ads, etc.
Like with blogging, there is a robust demand for these types of services on places like Fiverr and Upwork.
Number 3. Amazon FBA Owner
No list of online ideas that eventually lead to passive income 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.
Number 4. Affiliate Marketer
Affiliate marketing is another popular option that can generate passive income for you.
The concept is simple.
Your “job” is basically that of a salesperson for a particular service or product, but instead of knocking on doors or calling people up, you sell the product online.
How do you do this? You find a product that you want to promote and contact the company that sells the product. If they have an affiliate program, you apply for it and get a special affiliate link for that product that tells the company that the customer came from you.
When someone comes to a page that has your customized affiliate link and they click on it, you will earn a commission if the person buys the product.
A common method of affiliate marketing is putting affiliate links on your blog or YouTube channel. But you are not limited to just these options. You can even use your social media accounts, like Facebook, Instagram, and so on.
So where can you get affiliate links?
Amazon Associates is one of the most popular affiliate programs out there. Many people use amazon affiliate links because they can basically promote any product.
On top of that, Amazon Associates is great for beginners because they have easy qualification requirements and are a highly trusted platform for customers who buy online (which matters because some people won’t trust affiliate links that take them to unknown sellers).
Of course, Amazon isn’t the only game in town.
There are many other affiliate programs out there. Just Google any product or company you want to promote and add the words “affiliate program” to the end. You’ll find that many already have an affiliate program in place. All you have to do is apply.
You can also find tons of affiliate programs for your affiliate marketing business through platforms like awin.com. flexoffers.com. cj.com. clickbank.com. and Rakuten.com.
Number 5. 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 6. 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.
Number 7. 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.
Conclusion
So there you have it – 7 great online jobs that can provide you passive income over the long term. 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.
