51 Passive Income Ideas To Build Wealth (Best Selections)

Looking for Passive Income Ideas?

What are the best ideas to make passive income?

How can you build your wealth?

Keep reading as we have gathered exactly the information that you need!

Let’s dig into our top passive income ideas to develop wealth over time!

Are you ready?

Let’s get started!

What Is Passive Income

To start with, before we look at our unique passive income ideas, let’s first understand what is meant by passive income.

Passive income is a type of income that you earn “passively” or without much ongoing effort.

Now, this does not mean that you do not need to work hard in building one or many passive income streams (far from that).

You can say that you are earning passive income when the income is generated in steady and continuous manner without you having to put in a significant amount of effort every time.

Let’s look at an example.

If you work on a job and earn a salary or get a wage, you are earning your income actively. 

In other words, for every unit of time you work for your employer, you earn a certain amount of money.

On your job, if you work your hours, you get paid. 

On the other hand, if you do not work or put in your time, you will not earn as much of an income.

In contrast to that, passive income can be earned sort of independently from your active participation.

For instance, if you invest in a dividend-paying stock, you will receive regular dividends over time without you having to work for the company or actively participate in the company that is paying you dividends.

In this example, the investment of your money in buying a dividend stock in the stock market has allowed you to create a passive source of income.

The more you can create passive income sources for yourself, the more wealth you can create over time.

Now, let’s get into the passive income ideas that you’ve been impatiently waiting to see.

Let’s dive right in!

51 Passive Income Ideas 

In this section, I’d like to share with you actionable and real passive income ideas that you can immediately engage in.

A word of caution!

Although we are referring to these ideas as “passive income ideas”, it does not mean that you do not have to put in the time, energy, and perhaps money into the project.

As the saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

My blog here is purely dedicated to helping you succeed in life, earn the amount of money that you wish to earn, achieve financial freedom, and build wealth over time.

I do not have any get-rich-fast-schemes to offer you to become make you rich.

What I offer you is a list of various ideas, some riskier than others, some that will take more time to materialize than others, and some that may require more of your time than others, but all intended to help you generate revenues and income.

With my word of caution out of the way, let’s look at the list!

1- Advertise On Your Car

Selling ad spaces on your car can be an interesting way to make money relatively easily.

If you don’t mind putting ads on your car, you can surely earn extra cash every month by merely driving around in your car.

You can look into websites like Carvertise, Wrapify, and Vugo as possible options to advertise on your car.

2- Buy Annuities

Annuities are insurance products that you can purchase with the potential of generating passive income for you.

To make a proper investment decision in insurance products, it’s best that you speak with a financial advisor or insurance expert.

If you can find the right insurance product, you can earn an interesting stream of income passively.

3- Buy A Company

You’re an entrepreneur and you don’t mind taking risks.

You want to earn passive income but you also want to have the ability to be actively involved in a business venture.

In that case, you should be looking into buying a company or business.

By purchasing a business, you have the option to act as a silent owner and earn passive money from the company or you can choose to implicate yourself to help further grow the business operations.

Businesses are generally risky investment options, so you should evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of investing in a company, understand the company’s business, and hire the right professionals to guide you through the process.

4- Buy A Rental Property

One of my favorite passive income ideas is the purchase of rental properties and generate rental income.

Rental property is any type of real estate property that you can purchase, rent out, and collect rent over time.

Earning rental income is a tried and true method for building wealth over time.

For example, if you buy a residential home, condo, or house, you can monetize your investment by renting it to those who are willing to pay you to live in it.

Your tenant is effectively paying your mortgage! Amazing…

The drawback here is that you need to understand the real estate market to buy a good rental property, you need to be able to deal with tenants, and you need to have the capital to start this passive income stream.

5- Buy And Sell Domain Names

I bet you did not think of buying and selling domain names but that’s another interesting passive income idea to make money.

There are domain names that have been sold for millions of dollars.

Imagine you buy a domain name that someone is prepared to pay you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to purchase.

By investing in a domain, you effectively turn a small investment into potentially large profits.

The drawback is that you may buy domains names that nobody will ever want to buy, so purchase your domain names strategically. 

6- Cashback Reward Cards

By using cashback reward cards, you can effectively turn your spending into a source of income.

There are many credit cards that offer interesting rewards and cash back for using the card in your day-to-day life.

Do a little bit of research, identify a few different types of cashback reward cards, look at your spending patterns, and see how much money you can save.

If you travel a lot, look into cards giving you rewards when you spend on travel.

If you use your car a lot, look for cards that give you cash when you spend money on gas.

7- Cashback Sites

One way you can make money, not necessarily in a purely passive way (let’s call it a semi-passive income idea) is to earn cash back through cashback sites.

For example, you can sign up with sites like TopCashBack where you do your shopping and in return you’ll get rewards.

This is an idea where you are using your everyday shopping experience and generates a few bucks here and there.

8- Create A Podcast

Consider making money by starting a podcast.

If you are a good communicator, you can create an audience for yourself, and you love sharing your thoughts and ideas, you are made to start a podcast.

You can also monetize a podcast by charging membership fees, selling sponsorships, or creating premium episodes that your audience will need to pay to listen to.

The more creative you get, the more money you can make.

9- Create An App

For all the software developers and technical folks out there, you should consider using your expertise and creativity to creating an app that you can sell.

Transform your skills into passive income generated whenever someone purchases or downloads your app.

By creating an app that helps people with something, saves them time, entertains them, or provides them value in some ways, you have the potential of earning passive money.

10- Create An Online Course

Creating an online course is an excellent way to earn passive income.

Although it will take time for you to create your course material, make your video, and eventually publish it, the amount of passive income you can earn with online courses can go through the roof.

The beauty of online courses is that you will need to invest your time and money to create the course once.

However, once the course is available to the public, you can sell the same course digitally without many overhead costs and to a large number of people.

The scalability of this passive income model is truly amazing.

The downside is that you need to create a course that people are interested to pay for, you need to be a good instructor, have good content, and have the ability to market your course online either through your YouTube Channel or other online course platforms.

11- Design T-Shirts

Are you a designer or in fashion?

Turn your skills into money by working with websites that take your t-shirt designs and make great t-shirts with them.

You can check out Amazon Merch where you provide your design and Amazon takes care of everything else from making the product all the way to shipping it to the customer.

12- E-Bay Seller

Become an e-Bay seller and sell things to make money.

Buying and selling merchandise and products on e-Bay can be done actively for money but you can also have others do the work for you while you cash in the profits passively.

Being an e-Bay seller requires that you offer goods that people are willing to buy.

You can find the goods online at a cheap price and then sell them on e-Bay for a profit.

13- Flip Retail Products

Having you thought about flipping retail products?

If not, here is what you can do.

To flip retail products is to identify retail purchase opportunities online, buy the goods or merchandise, and sell the products somewhere else.

You are effectively cashing in the difference between the amount you sell your products and how much you had paid for it.

If you are doing this yourself, you’ll probably be actively involved.

However, if you want to turn this into a passive income source, you can hire individuals who spot great deals, quickly buy, and offload the goods for you.

14- Get Paid For Giving Your Opinion

An easy way you can make money if you have some spare time is to get paid for giving your opinion on surveys.

You can sit in your home, go online, complete surveys, and get paid for it.

You can sign up for different survey sites and even get paid for signing up.

15- Invest In A Bond Ladder

What does it mean to make passive money with bond ladders?

With this passive income investment strategy, you are effectively purchasing bonds having maturity dates staggered over time for a certain number of years.

In this manner, you are able to potentially earn passive interest income from the bonds that you hold and since the maturities are staggered, you minimize your reinvestment risk as you constantly have a bond investment maturing that you can reinvest based on the then-current market rate of interest.

16- Invest In A Company As A Silent Partner

If you are the type of person that likes to be involved in a business but you don’t want to actively participate in running or operating the business, you can consider investing in a company as a silent partner.

Clearly, this is on the riskier end of the spectrum as you can potentially invest your money in a company that goes out of business.

However, if you do your research, understand the company’s market, and have a good business flare, you may find investment opportunities that can be worth the investment.

By becoming a silent partner, you are effectively buying a percentage of ownership in the company.

As a result, if the company’s value goes up, the value of your shares goes up.

Similarly, if the company is able to generate profits, you may be entitled to receive a share of the profits.

17- Invest In a REITs

If you love real estate or you want to get into real estate investing without the hassles of managing real estate properties, you should consider investing in Real Estate Investment Trusts (or REITs).

A real estate investment trust is a company that buys, holds, and manages real estate properties.

The income generated by REITs is generally passed on to the REIT shareholders.

This is great to make money passively from real estate properties by indirectly owning them through a real estate investment trust.

18- Invest In Crowdfunding Real Estate

Crowdfunding in real estate has picked up popularity.

Crowdfunding in real estate is essentially the process of pooling in money from different investors and purchase real estate properties like hotels, commercial offices, medical facilities, apartment buildings, plants, storage spaces, and so on.

There are many crowdfunding platforms that connect investors allowing them to pool their money for the purpose of investing in different types of real estate investments. 

The investments can be risky but you can surely make an interesting and steady return if you invest properly.

19- Invest In Dividend Stocks

A great passive income idea is the investment in dividend stocks (one of my personal favorites).

I love dividend stocks as you can invest in the stocks of many publicly traded companies and earn an impressive amount of dividends.

Depending on the value of the shares you are buying and how much dividends the company pays its stockholders, your dividend yield may vary.

If you do your research, speak with investment professionals, and define your investment objectives, you can strategically invest in dividend stocks thereby earning a steady stream of income over time and also see your stock price appreciate over time.

20- Invest In Farmland

I bet you did not think of investing in farmland. 

Well, guess what, farmland is just like any other type of real estate investment (of course, it’s a specialized type of investment, but it’s still real estate).

People need to eat and farms are not going anywhere any time soon.

If you have a nice farmland that is able to sell what it produces, you can collect passive, steady, and long-term revenues.

21- Invest In High-Yield Savings Account

If you don’t want to take a lot of risk with your money and you want to keep your money uninvested, you should consider putting them in a high-yield savings account.

Clearly, this is not necessarily the best way to develop wealth over time but it’s a good way to park your money for a short period of time until you find an investment opportunity.

The advantage is that it’s nearly risk-free but the disadvantage is that you won’t earn much of an income (low risk provides low rewards).

22- Invest In High-Yield Certificate of Deposit

If you like to make passive cash by investing in instruments generating interest income, you should consider investing in certificates of deposit (or CDs).

Just like savings accounts, you can put your money in a CD giving you a certain amount of interest income.

Shopping for a high-yield CD will provide extra earnings.

Investing in CDs will not make you rich but it’s better to have your money in a CD than sitting in a bank account doing nothing.

23- Invest in Index Funds

If you have the money to invest in index funds, you can purchase an interesting passive source of income for yourself.

An index fund is a fund that mirrors various indices like the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average. 

With index funds, your investment returns are going to be consistent with the market.

Just like any other investment in the stock market, you should seek investment advice from a financial advisor to know what’s best for you.

24- Invest In Real Estate

Real estate investments have been recognized, and remain, a great way to build wealth over time.

Many individuals have made millions of dollars by investing in real estate.

You can purchase a residential property to rent out, a commercial building, an industrial plant, land, or any other form of real estate property.

Some investors flip real estate property to earn money more quickly, some purchase properties that give them a stream of income over time, and others look for long-term capital gains.

The downside to real estate investment is that you’ll need to have the capital to put the initial cash down payment and you need to have a proper credit history to get financing (if you need one).

25- Invest In Single-Family Homes

Investing in single-family homes is something that I personally do and I can attest is a great way to earn passive income.

Investing in single-family homes is a specific type of real estate investment strategy where you are focusing on the purchase of single-family homes to rent.

There are many families that need a home and either do not want to buy a property or do not have the means to do so.

You can cater to this market by renting out your single-family home to generate a constant and recurring passive income.

26- Invest In The Stock Market

Investing in the stock market can be an effective way to generate cash.

You can invest in different ways and adopt different strategies.

One way is to actively trade stocks for a profit (in this case you may be generating active income).

You can also invest in stocks and securities where you adopt a “buy-and-hold” strategy.

In this context, you can cash in dividend income as you hold your securities (if you have dividend stocks in your portfolio) but also you can generate capital gains when selling the stocks you bought a few years later.

27- Join An Affiliate Marketing Program

Getting into an affiliate marketing program is an amazing way to earn real cash.

Affiliate marketing is the process where you market and promote the products and services offered by another company.

You are acting as the company’s “affiliate” and whenever you send over leads that turn into active clients, you get a commission in return.

Different affiliate marketing programs will have different commission and payout structures, so you’ll need to search for the ones that make sense to you.

If you have a website or a blog that brings in a high amount of traffic, you can monetize your traffic by signing up with different affiliate marketing programs to generate additional income.

What’s key is that you offer your audience referrals that you truly believe in and that truly bring value to them.

The more you build trust with your audience, the more you are likely to succeed over time.

28- License Your Music

Are you able to make great music?

If so, think about writing and licensing your music for cash.

By selling your music or licensing it to get royalties, you can generate an interesting supplement to your income without having to spend your time in music full time.

29- License Your Photos

If you are able to take astonishing photos either as an amateur photographer or a professional one, you can turn your passion into real cash by selling your photos.

There are many online platforms where photographers can monetize their photos.

Millions of companies and businesses buy stock photos for their marketing needs, their websites, landing pages, digital advertisement campaigns, and so on.

Get a piece of the action by selling your stock photos.

30- Peer-To-Peer Lending

Peer-to-peer lending is the process of lending money to individuals and companies who may need money and who may not be eligible (or qualify) to receive traditional loans.

Essentially, you lend out your money and get interest income in return.

This type of passive income model is not necessarily for everyone.

You need to have the capital to invest and you are investing in high-risk borrowers (those with credit not good enough for the banks and traditional lenders to work with).

You should also be careful that you work with credible and trustworthy P2P lending websites.

31- Purchase A Billboard

A wacky type of investment that can generate money over time is the purchase of a billboard.

Billboards are the physical versions of display ads online.

With billboards, you sell your space to advertisers who pay you money for the right to present their products and services on your billboard.

If you have a good billboard location where there’s a lot of traffic, you can make good money with it.

This is a specialized type of investment so you should know what you are doing.

However, the business model of making passive money with advertisement revenues coming from billboards is quite interesting.

32- Purchase A Blog

Having a blog can be highly profitable as you have the potential of using the blog to generate passive income.

You can earn advertisement income by allowing advertisers to present ads on your blog posts, you can attract traffic to your website to sell digital products, get into affiliate marketing, and so much more.

If you don’t have the time to start a blog, another option is to buy a blog.

You can find online marketplaces where websites are posted for sale.

By going through the websites and blogs for sale, you can potentially find one in a niche that may interest you.

The advantage is that the blog is already started, has a domain name, and may even have some income.

The disadvantage is that you’ll need to have the money to purchase the blog.

33- Refinance Your Mortgage

Ok, this is not a real passive income idea but you can still save money with it.

If you have a mortgage that you can refinance, you can potentially save thousands of dollars in interest payments and save money on your monthly mortgage payments.

Although passive income is a means to generate cash, by refinancing your mortgage, you can generate cash by cutting your interest expenses on your mortgage and reducing your monthly mortgage payments.

In the end, it’s like you generated extra dollars at the end of the month.

34- Rent Out A Room on Airbnb

For those who own real estate properties and have an extra room, you can make money by renting it out on Airbnb.

Millions of people around the world have made piles of cash with Airbnb.

However, just like any business, you should consider the pros and cons of renting your room on Airbnb.

Are you allowed to rent your room based on your local laws, are you bound by contracts or regulations that prohibit you from renting, what happens when your room is damaged.

In many cases, renting out your room can be profitable.

35- Rent Out Your Car

You have a car that you do not use much and you don’t mind that others drive it?

In that case, you should consider renting out your car.

On sites like Turo, you can rent your car to those who need it for a certain period of time.

Think of it as Airbnb for car rentals.

Evidently, you need to make sure you know what you are doing, what laws apply, and the risks you are taking.

If your evaluation checks out and you are comfortable with car rentals, you stand to gain a good amount of money this way.

36- Rent Out Your House

If you have a house, cottage, or real estate property that you are not using or is vacant, consider making money with it by renting it out.

You can use platforms like Airbnb to list your house or property and generate some money.

For this to work, you should not mind having others rent your house in the short term.

Also, you should make sure that you will not violate the law, contract, or regulation when you rent out your house to others.

37- Rent Storage Space

More and more people are renting out space in their garage or extra rooms in their house to store other people’s stuff.

You can make passive income by going to sites like neighbor.com to generate money by letting others store their things in your house.

If you don’t mind storing stuff and having to keep other people’s stuff, you can turn your extra space into passive streams of income.

38- Rent Your Bike

One simple way to make a small passive income is to rent out your bike.

Many love to bike around the city and take advantage of the outdoors.

Cash in with those who are prepared to pay a small fee to rent out your bike.

You can find many platforms online that can connect you to potential bike renters.

39- Rent Your Parking Space

Renting parking space could help you drive interesting income passively.

You may own a parking spot in your apartment building or you have extra parking spaces in your house.

Why not rent out your parking space and make recurring income (if you rent it out on a monthly basis) or one-time fees for allowing someone to park their car for a day.

Make sure you are not violating any city, building, or local rules when you do that.

You should also make sure you have the proper permits. 

40- Rent Your Tools

If you own special equipment and tools, you can make good money renting them.

Not everyone will want to invest in expensive tools when they work on a one-time project.

You can bank on that by renting out your tools to those who need them for a short period of time and are prepared to pay you a fee.

List your tool online for rent and generate yourself a nice small pile of cash.

This method is not technically truly passive but the effort required to renting the tools may be worth it for you.

41- Run A Laundromat

There are many people today who still wash their clothes in laundromats.

That’s right, think about starting a laundromat business to make passive money.

What’s great about this business model is that you need to invest in a commercial space, in laundromats, and to maintain them.

Then, your clients will come on their own, put their money in your machines, and wash their closes without you having to participate in that process.

It’s like a semi passive way of earning an income as you are still running an active business but the business sort of runs by itself.

42- Self-Publish An E-Book

If you love writing and you’d like to turn your passion into a source of passive income, you really need to think about self-publishing an e-book.

By writing an e-book on a topic that people are interested in, providing your expert knowledge to them, entertaining them, or helping them find solutions to their problems, you can earn a good amount of money for a long time.

The long-term passive income potential of e-books is truly amazing.

Writing a book however is not easy and not everyone can write a great book.

However, if you dedicate yourself to the project, you can build an amazing source of cash for a long time.

43- Sell Digital Products

Another personal favorite method for generating passive income is to sell digital products.

By digital products, I mean e-books, courses, videos, downloadable products, software tools, or anything that can be digitally sold to your client.

One of the most notable forms of digital products is software tools and e-books.

If you have a great software product that people want or you write a great e-book, you can make money every time you sell the product digitally.

It may take time and money to initially develop the digital product, but when it’s ready for sale, you can sell the same product an infinite number of times and scale tremendously.

44- Sell Informational Products

Selling informational products can provide you with a great source of passive income.

Informational products can include:

• E-books 
• Audiobooks
• Video courses
• Guides

You can sell your informational products on your own website, through your blog, or on sides such as Udemy, SkillShare, and Coursera.

The more your informational products are easy to consume, are well prepared, and provides a solution to your audience, the more you can make money.

45- Sign Up For Dropshipping

Have you considered becoming a drop shipper?

Dropshipping is the process of building an online store where you market and sell physical products.

Once a sale is made, you then send the sale to your supplier who fulfills the order. 

In this process, you don’t have to build the product, carry inventory, store your merchandise, or be accountable to ship them to your clients.

You do the selling and your supplier provides the product and everything else.

46- Start A Blog

Another of my favorite methods in building passive income is to start a blog.

Starting a blog can lead to an amazing source of passive income over time.

The more time and effort you put into your blog, the more you have the potential of earning a truly amazing stream of income.

The downside of starting a blog to earn an income is that it will take a long time before you start seeing any money coming in.

Also, you must learn how to host your website, what tools to use, learn about search engine optimization, have the ability to write articles in a captivating way, and so on.

If you are prepared to put in the time and energy for at least six months to a year before you see any money coming in, starting a blog could be absolutely a wonderful option.

47- Start A Car Wash

Starting a car wash may not sound like something that can be profitable but if done right, you can make good money.

If you have the capital to invest in a car wash in a great location where the population has enough disposable income to pay to clean their vehicles, you can make good passive income with the profits generated by the car wash business.

If you prefer a more hands-on approach, you can start your own car wash by finding a great location and keeping your operating costs very lean.

48- Start A Retirement Account

Wouldn’t it be great to know that you will have a great retirement where you’ll be financially free?

Well, you can work towards that by immediately investing in a retirement account.

With a retirement account investment, you are able to invest your money today for your future retirement.

The advantage is that if you invest now, you can create an investment portfolio that will generate you passive income accumulating over the years (also giving you the compounding effect).

The drawback is that, generally, you won’t be able to tap into the money you are generating until retire.

49- Start A Vending Machine Business

Have you thought about buying a vending machine to make passive income?

Ok, it’s not truly passive as you need to ensure that your vending machine is fully stocked all the time and is properly maintained.

However, the idea here is that you get yourself a vending machine, put it in an area where there’s a lot of traffic, and have people pump in the cash in your machine to buy your goodies.

50- Start A YouTube Channel

One amazing way to make money online in a truly passive way is to start your own YouTube Channel.

If you are able to build yourself an audience, you can monetize your traffic in tremendous ways.

On average, you can expect to receive between $0.01 to $0.03 per ad view through your YouTube Channel.

If your videos are getting a lot of traffic and lots of ads are being delivered to your viewers, you are rolling in the dough.

The drawback to this wonderful passive income idea is that you need to put in a lot of work to make your video, you need to wait a long time before you can build a decent audience, and you need to offer video content that people are interested to see.

51- Start An ATM Business

In certain places, you are allowed to start an ATM business.

When someone needs cash and does not want to go to the bank to get it, they can use an ATM machine to withdraw cash from their bank account for a few dollars.

ATM stands for Automated Teller Machine.

If you buy a few ATM machines and strategically place them in places where people need cash, you can see yourself making a few hundred dollars a month, if not more.

This is a specialized type of investment so you should consult professionals to ensure what you are doing is compliant with the law.

Best Passive Income Ideas Takeaways 

Looking for passive income ideas that work!

In this article, we’ve looked at easy passive income ideas to inspire you!

From these great passive income ideas, look at the ones that make sense to, that inspire you, or that you may be passionate about.

If you want to earn more money passively and develop wealth over time, choose the most suitable passive income idea and go at it hard.

Devote yourself to your project, put in the time, energy, and sweat to build a passive income structure that will start generating you a steady stream of cash flow for years to come.

If you put your mind and heart into it, you will succeed.

I’m the living proof.

In the past few years, I’ve developed awesome passive income sources for myself allowing me to earn real cash day and night.

I did (and continue) to work hard on my projects but I don’t mind it as I’m highly passionate about it.

With that said, let’s look at a summary of our findings.

Top Passive Income Ideas

You May Also Like Related to Easy Passive Income Ideas