10 Passive Income Streams you should try!

 Passive Income

Most passive income ideas will either generate poor returns or consume lots of your time (not very passive!).  So the question is…what really works?  I’ve spent 100's of hours thinking about all sorts of crazy ideas for making passive income.  From smart ideas, like an online course, to free and fast ideas, like writing articles for AdSense, I’ve thought about pretty much every passive income stream there is.  Now I want to share some of my favorite passive income ideas with all of you.

What Is Passive Income?

First off the word passive can be misleading. It often brings up ideas of making money without having to do any work. That is just not true. In truth you will spend lot of time and hard work at the start. Then over time money will start coming in and you will no longer have to work hard at it, or spend a lot of time doing it.

So let’s get right in to it.

1. Create A Blog

I wanted to start with this one because in my mind it is the best.  It cost you nothing to start! There are many ways to make money at it. Start just by adding AdSence this will start you bringing in cash right off the bat. While it will not be a lot. It will start the ball rolling. Next  look in to affiliated marketing , all you need to concentrate on is pumping out the content for your own site and getting the traffic in – most people can get an affiliate sale within 30 days of starting a blog.

2. . Sell An eBook

The much loved model for bloggers and content creators everywhere and for a good reason…it’s pretty easy to write a 25-80 page eBook. It's not hard to sell say $500 worth a month through online networking, guest posting, and your own SEO optimized blog, after paying affiliates.  Hell yeah!  Look at it this way, if the average eBook is 25 pages, and you have made 25 blog post on the same topic, you just made a Ebook.

3. Trees, Yes trees! 

It is so easy to graft (clone) trees that my 6 year old is taking over my tree grafting business this year for me. And cloning trees is one of the only businesses out there that your unsold product goes up in value the next year. I know what you’re thinking, “Oh, but Carl, I don’t have any trees” or “but Carl, I have a black thumb and cannot grow anything.”  Let me address both of these one at a time. I sell only fruit trees. You can make a lot more money off of ornamental crap, but I believe we are in a WAR ON HUNGER and the only way to win is to grow more food,  so I refuse to grow or sell non edible plants. Now if you follow me on any of Manabu Farms social media platforms, you will know that I just started a new farm in Flint MI.  Right now I do not have one fruit tree on the property and as I already said my kid is taking over, so how is she

doing this with no trees? Easy, we walked around our neighborhood till we saw someone with a overgrown apple tree. Then being a little shy and not wanting to go up and knock on the door we just keep walking by every other day or so till we saw someone outside.  We walked up and commented on the tree and of course it had a story, one I will save for another post. After talking with the owner of the tree for a while I offered to come by and trim it back for him, and explained how he would get a better harvest if it was trimmed up. The owner was a little hesitant but after I told him that I would also cut him a clone so he could plant a second tree he was more than happy to have us come back.  A bag of peat moss some empty water bottles (something Flint has a lot of) and a jar of honey and she was up and running. If anyone wants more information on how to do this, message me! I will personally walk you through the whole process. Why would I do this? As I said we are at war and I need more fighters to join me on the battle field!

4.  Sell An Online Course

This is one I cannot tell you a lot about. I am planning on doing this sometime this year. If you blog or YouTube about a subject a lot, you should look into offering classes online. it can be a great source of passive income because once you're done making the course. you're done. You just sit back and watch the cash roll in.

5.  Create a Comparison or Review Site

I really like this idea, but I must confess, I’ve never earned passive income from a setup like this before. I’ll be putting something together soon though and really wanted to share this idea with you.

So here’s the way it works; find a niche where there are a ton of products, all with semi-complex feature mixes – or basically any type of niche where customers are going “I don’t have a clue what to buy”. For me that is going to be solar equipment.  Now create a site that first, shares a bunch of useful content (think tutorials, how-to's etc) on the niche. Secondly review every product/service in that niche (the pros, cons, verdict etc.). You get bonus points if you communicate this info through a mix of text, photos, and video.

Plus create a comparison table page where you have every product listed and rated on a number of features, all side by side.  Customers can finally decide what product is right for them via this bird's-eye view table. Plus the in-depth individual review articles/videos you will provide.  Next to every product, there is a link to the purchase page of the seller (eg Amazon), and well you guessed it, those links are affiliate links.

6.  Take Photos and Sell Stock Images 

 This one is not going to make you rich, but it does become a great hobby to make a profit from. Any time you’re doing anything, you can have those actions making you money. One of the easiest ways to make this happen is with a camera. If I am out digging in my garden, I have my camera with me and take shots of everything from a dirt covered shovel, to a rock I found, to clouds passing by. Then put those pictures and or video clips up on places like shutter stock. You'd be surprised at what pictures you sell.   

7.  Build an App 

Apps aren’t that expensive to get made anymore.   If you want to create a mainly info-based app, there are plenty of easy to use programs online for making your own app for a couple hundred bucks. For less than $1000 you can just give the idea to someone at one of the hundreds of app building companies.

 

8.  Get A Rental Property

So this is a great way to make money, but you need to be smart about it and willing to take some risk. Also, if you cannot afford to outsource the work that is needed to run this daily, then wait until you have earned a larger passive income from other ideas before starting this one.  The best way to make this work for me at least was buy up land in the poorest cities. Here in Flint, MI I have found houses you can buy and own outright for $500. No joke. These houses are trashed, and unless you live in the area you’re going to have to hire a repair crew to come fix up the place. This can cast you anywhere from $500 more to $10,000 more so be ready to spend before you make. Then again if you do not live in the area you’re going to have to hire a property management company to handle the day to day business.  Even if you do live in the area, you should hire a company anyways. It’s the only way to make this a passive income, otherwise you will have to find the renters, deal with dally complaints, and more.

9.  Unleash Your Inner Loan Shark On Peer-To-Peer Lending

                                                                                

What am I talking about?

Peer to peer lending is basically what the name says. You put a bunch of cash into an online account and then divvy it up among dozens of people looking for loans around the country.  You lend, say $25, to each person (you and a couple 1000 other people together give that person enough money for their loan).  This takes at least $1000 to really do right, so it is not a starter idea. Here is a video on how it all works. I really love this idea as it lets me help out those in need and make money at the same time. 

10.  Setup Your Own YouTube Channel

If this is free and easy to do, why did I save it for last?  Because while I love it and I suggest you all do it, it also sucks! Unless you’re lucky or really talented, you’re going to make very little at it. Here is my personal experience  with it. I started my YouTube account in 2010, in 2014 I made my first $100. In 2015 I made $200, then I quit making new videos (I moved off grid) until 2017. In that time, though without doing any work at all, I made $167.  So that was the first passive income I made from YouTube. To this day I make around 10-40 cents a day off YouTube.  I have started putting out more videos now and I have even started 3 other YouTube channels to try and do different ideas on how to make money on YouTube. Only time will tell if any of these pan out better than my true channel. In closing YouTube is great if you're doing it to spread a message or just for fun. You will make money at it but it will not be much unless your good at it.  

Bonus 

Start an eBay Store

I have never even got something from eBay, let alone sold something on eBay. Out of the 19 families that I have taught to live without monthly bills, two of them make an income off of eBay. I would not call it passive, but it is a home-based income. One way I have seen this work is going to yard sales and flee markets, The person I know that is doing this buys up baby clothes and woman's clothing, washes it, and resells it on eBay. Another way that I have seen this work, is that a young man I know is now living free of all monthly bills. He buys bulk electronics from overseas and then marks them up and sells them on eBay. Both are making more money doing this, then any passive income I am using at this time.