18 Seriously Good Passive Income Tips For Financial Freedom

Quitting the 9-5 is a massive driver for people to find passive income ideas to help them make money and finally be able to wave goodbye to the 9-5 grind.

Finding ways to make money while you sleep means that you’ll not only set yourself up for financial freedom but you’ll also create time and space for yourself to be able to live life on your own terms and spend your days, weeks and years how you want.

Different things are important to different people, but theres one thing that’s common amongst us and that’s the inability to make more time.

Time is the most valuable commodity that any of us have and finding ways to both secure our financial futures and create time for us to live a life of freedom is by far one of the best ways to ensure you live the life you deserve.

Passive income can be your side hustle, or it can evolve into your full time money maker. Depending on what you focus on and how much time you invest in setting yourself up.

Passive income can also provide you with a backup plan in case something goes wrong and you lose your main source of income. It needed be an all or nothing approach.

While passive income is, well, passive… it certainly doesn’t come easily. There’s varying degrees of set up, management and investment needed in order to gain the benefits. However, what you’re trying to achieve here is for your income streams to require less and less of your time, while they scale larger and bring in more revenue for you.

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Passive Income vs. Active Income

Generally speaking there are two types of income… the first and most widely recognised is active income.

Active income is the income you earn form your job! It’s the salary or wages or even commissions that you get in return for hours worked for an employer. Active income can also include things like tips, fees or allowances.

Active income requires you to exchange your time and energy in return for money. Active income is almost always finite. You get X for doing Y… and it requires being present to do the thing to make the money.

Passive income, in comparison is money earned from a an activity, that once set up, requires little or no necessity to be present. Passive income often requires an initial set up period (like creating a blog) and sometimes an initial capital investment (like buying an investment property).

However, once the initial set up phrase is complete the asset tends to generate income in a way that does not require you to swap time for money.

The key to financial freedom and great wealth is a person’s ability or skill to convert earned income into passive income and/or portfolio income.

Robert Kiyosaki – Author, Rich Dad Poor Dad

So, how can you make money while you sleep?

1. Create and sell an ebook online

Everyone has something to share! And, your knowledge is so powerful and incredibly valuable.

Choose a topic that you are passionate about AND a topic that people are searching for!

There’s lots of various platforms around that can help you effortlessly turn your passions or knowledge into something sharable. It’s easy to create and sell an ebook on a platform like Podia (you can even sell your ebook for free on Podia) or you can sell your ebook through Amazon Direct Publishing.

I tend to create my ebooks on Canva- then, use Podia as a sales platform.

2. Start a Podcast on a topic you love

Like with an ebook, everyone has valuable knowledge to share and there is always an audience for what you have to say, no matter how obscure you think it might be.

Podcasts can be monetised through ad partners or ad networks, or you can use your podcast to drive community building for your ebook or other product or service offering.

Sponsorships are the most common way for Podcasters to make money.

3. Create a Webinar Series

Slightly different to a podcast, creating webinars requires a wee bit more thinking. Webinars are also visual and as such you want to perhaps bring in other visual content to support your topic. Webinars generally are real time, or live.

While they are recorded and can be added to your YouTube channel or website to be viewed at a later date, Webinars are also interactive, so you can have people asking questions in real time as well. You can earn money from Webinars by charging for them, promoting your course, product or service on them or having a sponsor.

They’re also a great way to help back up any other content strategy you have, like blogging or your YouTube channel.

I use Demio as my Webinar platform of choice.. so easy to set up and use. Plus, it gives you access to lots of useful stats and analytics on your audience.

4. Invest in Startups as an Angel Investor

As with any investment, becoming an angel investor is risky. Generally speaking you need to invest in 10 or more opportunities in order to reap any sort of return. The odds are that a startup will fail. But by spreading the risk across multiple investments you’re hedging your bets.

However, get the right mix and you can make a good penny. Startups pay out on exit. That means your money is tied up in the company until an exit event happens like a sale, acquisition or IPO on the stock market.

5. Invest in the Real Estate Market

Becoming a landlord isn’t for everyone, but investing in real estate can be lucrative if you’re happy to wait it out. Typically, house prices tend to trend upwards on a ten year cycle. That means that even given market fluctuations over time. Over a ten year period, you should see capital gains.

I’ve been a landlord for a few years now and it’s now pretty easy. I’ve always had absolutely brilliant tenants. The home is low maintenance and is located in a really great part of town that provides easy access to transport, parks and shops.

You can also choose to not self manage and bring in a property manager to do all the hard stuff. Repairs, inspections, finding good tenants and collecting rent. Or, there’s plenty of great self managing platforms that will help you set up rent payments, help you with digital inspections, assist in sourcing great tenants and send you reminders for things like inspections.

6. Invest in Shares

Investing in stocks is a great way to secure your financial future. Risky? Yes, like any investment stocks are risky. You definitely need to invest time and energy up front to do your research.

But, know your stuff, and put in the upfront time and effort and the stock market can be a one way to make passive income.

Want to start small but keep a regular pattern of investing? Check out the many share trading platforms available that walk you through how to get started, and allow you to invest a small amount regularly to build your portfolio.

You can literally set up an account to smartly invest $20 per week for you.

7. Start a blog online

Blogging is one of those things you either love or hate. If you’re incredibly passionate about a thing, or if you’re an amazing writer, you can definitely both make a good amount of money as a side hustle, and enjoy the process. Blogging is incredibly satisfying and a great outlet for your creativity! Plus, you can definitely make money blogging!

Plus, blogging is cumulative. Adding new posts or even improving old blog posts means you’ll start ranking for keywords and that means traffic! Traffic then means you can monetise your blogs with either ads, sponsorship or affiliate links.

Download our free online course here – How to start a money making blog

8. Rent out your car or other vehicle

If you’re not using your car that much, or you have long periods where it’s sitting idle, renting it out makes complete sense.

There are a few good companies around that can help with this, most of which require your car to be of a certain age and with a limit on the number of miles you have on it. Sorry, you can’t rent your old bomb!

Getaround, HyreCar or Turo are all good options for car renting services. Basically, they’re the Airbnb of car rental. Most cities have their own version of this. It’s becoming especially popular as people move into smaller dwelling, or apartment style living.

9. Create a digital course online

Everyone has a plethora of knowledge about something that is potentially highly valuable to others. You might be a vessel of knowledge about social media, or maybe building websites…or maybe you’re a master at LinkedIn like Becky.

Whatever your poison, theres definitely an audience out there for your thing! I wrote an entire post over here about building and launching your own course.

It’s super easy to set up your course on a platform like Podia. Create a community around your brand, then launch!

10. Sell your photos or digital art (NFTs) online

Whether you’re leaping into the world of NFT’s, or selling your basic home grown variety of digital imagery, selling your art online can be a highly lucrative way to make passive income. Especially if you’re monetising your art through a platform that enables repeat downloads, like Shutterstock or iStock where you get a cut of each transaction, repeatedly.

11. Start a membership website

You can either start a blog – which is in essence a website full of valuable content- and give away your content for free, or you can create a platform where your audience pays a small fee to access your content. This can be the whole site, or even just specific content on that site.

This is a great way to build up passive income, as once set up, the content continues to bring in revenue over time.

The best thing about this? Recurring revenue! Recurring revenue is when the user or customer pays a set amount each week, month or year, and the payment is set up to recur automatically. Think of platforms like Netflix for example. You pay a monthly fee to access video content. This is similar. And can be lucrative if you’ve built up an engaged community.

12. Rent out your home, room, or other space short term

Using sites like Airbnb to rent out your home or a spare room, or a section of your home is a great way to make additional cash. The amount you make will depend on the size, location and condition of the space you’re renting out. And, the time of year you rent it.

Got a place in a popular tourist or holiday hotspot? Take your leave during peak times to somewhere quieter and rent out your home to holiday makers.

13. House sit or dog sit

Ohh …I love this one.. house sitting or even pet sitting is a great way to make passive income. You get to stay in a gorgeous home rent free and do your own stuff day to day. It’s a massively passive way to earn extra cash.

14. Trade domain URLs

Trading or flipping domains for profit is a great idea if you have three things. The first is the ability to recognise trends early, the second is having fabulous timing and the third is, well, having a tonne of luck!

Snapping up popular domain names for cheap- before they are trendy or become popular, means that when demand starts to ramp up for specific topics or keywords you can then on-sell these to companies who covet what you have for good money.

The key to domain flipping is to buy low and sell high. You want to make sure you invest a small amount up front, then wait. Time, patience and luck.

15. Set up a YouTube content channel

This ones a goodie. If you’re social media inclined and have a great spin on a popular topic starting a YouTube channel can be very lucrative. In the early 2000’s people were jumping on this bandwagon trying to get rich quick with viral videos, but that’s not what this method is all about.

Its’ a lot of up front work and effort. But if you’re willing to put in the work, starting a YouTube channel can bring in good money through sponsorships, ads and affiliate income.

You too could be like Jimmy Donaldson (AKA, MrBeast) and make a whopping $54M a year 😳.

In addition, content creation is a saturated market. Blogging especially. There are billions, literally billions of blogs! But, there are far fewer YouTube channels and far fewer new YouTube channels springing up daily.

16. Create and sell printables on a site like Etsy

I absolutely love this one. It allows you to utilise your creativity AND make money out of your awesomeness. Win, win, win!

Creating printables as PDF files that people can download and use is a great way to make extra cash. And, done right you can create only a handful of on trend designs, then sell them over and over again on a platform like Etsy.

Holiday or special occasion cards, planners, calendars, colouring pages, recipe cards the list goes on! You can easily research online what sells via Pinterest or Etsy, then get to work creating on a platform like Canva. I make all my cheatsheets and checklists that I promote on Canva- plenty of design templates and super easy to use.

17. Join an affiliate program you love

Brands make it super easy to partner up and recommend their products or services. By promoting another companies products or services to your audience you can earn a commission on each sale. Amazon Associates and ShareASale are easily recognisable affiliate networks.

Typically, when you sign up to an affiliate program you are able to generate links to products or services that are unique only to you. When someone clicks on that link – that sale is tracked back to you and you clip the ticket on any purchase within a pre determined period of time.

Pro tip: Make sure you align your affiliate programs with your brand ethos, your values and your direction. There’s no point in signing up to promote a brand that doesn’t sit well with your conscience, or your audience.

18. Build a community around your brand

This ones a biggy, and if I can give you one piece of advice when it comes to creating passive income for your future it’s this.

Build your community first.

No matter what you do to earn extra cash. Whether it be making money as a side hustle, or creating an empire that will hopefully turn into your full time income over time. First and foremost, create a community around yourself and your brand. This is my number one tip for anyone wishing to start any sort of business!

Share your creative process online on platforms like Instagram, create groups on Facebook to share your knowledge, or start an email newsletter.

Something as simple as capturing people emails via a freebie on your blog, then creating a weekly email newsletter for free and sending it out to your audience will start to build trust and presence for your brand. Then, you can think of ways to monetise this highly engaged and loyal audience!

I love ConvertKit for designing and placing forms on my website for email capture and nurture workflows. ConvertKit has a free plan too which enables you to get started and well underway until you’re earning before you have to upgrade.

Wrap Up

There’s so many was to start making money with a passive income strategy. Good passive income ideas are hard to find! But no matter which you chose, they all have pros and cons, and almost always require time or money in the initial set up period.

Having said that, if you do this well, you can be on your way to watching your money grow while you hike, travel, ski, surf or sleep!

** Obvious disclaimer to any of the above is that I’m no financial expert, this is my opinion only – and you should always talk to your financial advisor, or other financial professional for money advice.