4 Beginner-Friendly Ways To Create Passive Income Streams Online

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Passive income is such an attractive way to make money. When you add it to your 9-5 salary and it is also a great way to boost your net worth. With little maintenance to keep your chosen income stream afloat, many people wish to have one at some point.

But how can you start something if you have no money? Many of the bigger passive income ideas, such as real estate crowdfunding (CrowdStreet, Fundrise and Realty Mogul), investing in dividend ETFs and app development, for example, require an initial investment. However, many other ideas don’t.

In this article, we will share how to develop passive income without having to invest a large sum of money to get started. But, to be clear, you will have to invest some sweat into making these work. Unlike some forms of investing, these are not completely passive. At least not at the beginning. But all of them can be. You just have to be willing to put in the work.

Pick an Interesting Niche

Our first tip is to find your niche. Start by thinking of something that really interests you as this will make the process of creating a passive income a whole lot easier.

When you have your chosen niche, write it down and think of as many ways as possible you can make money from it passively. For example, if you picked traveling, you could choose things like blog travel writing, or teaching how to travel cheaply, to writing an eBook on traveling in a particular country. The possibilities are endless.

Create a Plan of Action

Keep in mind that everyone is a beginner at some point in time whenever starting a new venture, and so with a little patience and some hard work, you too will get there in the end. Before starting a new passive income venture, it would be wise to make a plan of action. This will help you understand exactly the steps you need to go through to succeed.

Doing your research on passive income ideas is an excellent way to begin, as you might come across something that you like even better than the idea you had at first, and so rushing into it is not recommended. Take time to create a plan of action including timelines and when you expect to start earning.

Learn From Others

Another helpful tip, when you are getting started, is to find other likeminded people who are also doing the same thing. This will help you to get advice and help from real people who have already achieved your goal, and they might be able to give you some helpful information to point you in the right direction – for example where to market your eBook best, or how to find new customers.

Beginner-Friendly Methods of Passive Income

We will now take a look at some beginner-friendly ways of making passive income online.

Sell stock photos

Are you good with a camera? Well, if you haven’t noticed, stock photos are everywhere. Businesses and magazines need a constant supply of high-quality images to place in their ads, blog articles and websites. Therefore, you can make a passive income by selling your photos online to stock photo marketplaces.

The good thing about this is you don’t actually need to be a professional photographer to sell your photos; you can even upload images straight from your phone’s gallery. One great picture, if popular has the possibility to be sold over and over again, creating an income with each purchase.

Referral programs

Another great and fun way to earn a passive income which you may not even know about is through referral programs.

These are programs designed to provide an incentive for every new person you bring to the company and is an extremely easy way to make passive income online. Your phone provider, online retailers and companies you have worked for might all have referral programs. And what do most of these referral programs offer when you refer a friend or get a new user to sign up? That’s right – money.

Some will require you to share a link on social media, to promote the company, and every time someone clicks your link and signs up, you will get a bonus. If you manage to share your link in a few places around the net, you can bet you will have a good amount of money coming in at the end of the month.

Open a Shopify shop

Have you ever wanted your own online shop? With Shopify, it’s a possibility, and what’s best, you don’t even need to have any inventory. How does that work exactly? With Shopify, you can sell other people’s products through your site where you advertise them only and make money via commission on each product you sell. You can do this through drop-shipping through Oberlo and print on demand with a platform like Printful. The model is that simple

Since packaging and shipping are all outsourced, all you have to do is make the products look nice in your Shopify store and market them. If you need help in either of these areas, you can look to Fiverr or Upwork to find experts in each niche.

All you need to get started is to register with Shopify, choose you free account, and see how you do with marketing and SEO. If you do enjoy this method and it works out well for you, you can always upgrade to the premium or business accounts in order to be able to sell a more extensive variety of products.

Sell digital downloads

Some online stores only sell digital products. This means no packing, shipping or returns involved, and instead merely selling, advertising and making money. This is an e-commerce passive income method which is similar to the Shopify method.

Selling digital downloads allows you to sell almost anything. A few examples could be things like craft patterns, templates, greetings cards, printables, how-to guides and anything else you can think of. This allows you to be creative in thinking of different options to sell, and sell many times over.

Final Thoughts…

Creating a passive income is not the most challenging thing in the world, but it does take some time and effort to get there. If you follow some of our ideas and advice in this article, you will be well on your way from transitioning from a beginning passive income earner to an expert passive income entrepreneur, perhaps with more than one venture making you money. 

Author
C. James

C. James is the managing editor at Wealth Gang. He has a degree in finance and a passion for creating passive income streams and wealth management.