21 Easy Passive Income Ideas to Boost Your Earnings in 2024

Passive income is the money that one gets with very little effort. It is the dream of financial freedom that we all have – more free time, less money stress, and the possibility to create lasting wealth. However, what is passive income in 2024 like?

In this all-inclusive article, I have put together all the best 21 different and effective passive income ideas to get you started on your way towards financial freedom. No matter if you are a tech-savvy entrepreneur, a creative person, or someone who is looking for easy ways to make your money work harder.

Thus, are you ready to open a new chapter of financial independence? Let’s get started with the 21 easy passive income ideas that could be your transformation in 2024.

21 Best Passive Income Ideas

1. Create and Sell Online Courses

Online learning is growing very fast, and if you are an expert in any subject, then this trend can be your money maker. No matter if you are a professional, an expert in the field, or just someone passionate about something. Creating and selling online courses can be a very good way to share your knowledge with others and at the same time get some passive income.

Sites such as Udemy, Teachable, and Skillshare are user-friendly to create, host, and market your courses. You can be on the global platform where people are willing to learn from you and when your course is created. Then, it will continue to generate revenue with less effort.

For instance, if you set the price of your course at $50 then If you enroll 200 students in a month on Udemy, then your income for that month will be $10,000. Teachable has a monthly earning potential of at least $2,500 when you sign up 50 students monthly even with the most basic assumption. With proper marketing and good content, it is possible to bring in even more students in the future and make it become a six-figure business.

2. Writing and Self-Publishing eBooks

If you have a talent for storytelling, lots of information, or an exceptional viewpoint to offer, self-publishing eBooks can be such rewarding and profitable work. Thanks to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and other similar platforms, now you can have a worldwide audience of millions of readers and at the same time get royalties on every sale.

eBooks can be of any subject or genre you like to read and so, you are free to choose the topics that interest you most. Your eBook will be able to generate passive income for years once it is published, especially if you have a dedicated readership and promote your work well.

If you decide to sell your eBook at $4.99 on Amazon KDP. Given that KDP offers royalties of up to 70%, you would earn about $3. 50 per sale. If you can sell 500 copies per month, then your earnings for that month will be $1,750.

At a sale rate of 100 copies per month, you would still make $350 per month. This way, with several eBooks and good marketing, you can easily generate a good amount of passive income over time.

3. Developing and Selling Software or Apps

In our current digital world, the need for software and mobile applications is very high. If you are good at coding or have a great app idea, the development and selling of software can be your game-changer for passive income.

The range of the applications is from those for productivity to entertainment. You can make a single app, launch a SaaS product with the subscriptions that repeat or you can also license your software to the companies for commercial use.

The probability of repeated revenue through subscriptions, in-app purchases, or licensing fees is very high. It can handle real-life issues and generate benefits for the users. After the software is created, it can generate income with low maintenance.

Consider a developer of a productivity app who decides to use the subscription model. Assuming the app is priced at $10 per month. If this app gets 1,000 subscribers, it can earn a monthly income of $10,000.

With only 200 subscribers, the monthly revenue would be $2,000. Or, perhaps think about licensing your software to a corporation on an annual basis. A licensing fee of $15,000 per year could be considered a good revenue stream.

4. Build Niche Websites or Blogs and Monetize Them

The internet is a huge world and finding your own place there can be very satisfying, both from the personal and financial sides. If you have a passion for a particular topic—be it cooking, travel, personal finance, or anything else, making a niche website or blog is the way to go because that allows you to share your expertise and skills, meet people who share the same interests as yours and create a community of like-minded individuals.

However, beyond one’s self-fulfillment, niche websites and blogs can also be a way of earning money passively. By attracting a targeted audience who share your passion, you open up a world of monetization opportunities:

• Display Advertising: Platforms such as Google AdSense enable you to put ads on your website or blog and get money for every click or impression.
• Affiliate Marketing: Market products or services that are in line with your niche and get a commission on every sale made through the links you have been given.
• Sponsored Content: Be in a partnership with brands or companies to make the content that will be sponsored by you and is of interest to your audience.
• Digital Products: Provide ebooks, courses, templates, or any other digital downloads that meet the needs and interests of your niche audience.

Let’s take a travel blog. The owner can earn through affiliate marketing by recommending travel gear on Amazon since the blog is based on travel tips and destination guides.

If the blog receives 50,000 monthly visitors and 1% of them click on affiliate links that lead to sales with an average commission of $5, then the monthly earnings from affiliate marketing can be $2,500. When you add up the earnings from display advertising, sponsored content, and digital product sales, a successful niche blog can easily generate $5,000 or more per month.

Although it takes time, energy, and determination to create a successful niche website or blog, the advantages are huge.

5. Create and Sell Digital Art or Designs

If you are a person who is good at arts and design, the online marketplace provides many opportunities for you to present and sell your works. Businesses such as Etsy and Creative Market are particular to digital artists and designers, they offer the global market for selling digital art, illustrations, fonts, graphics templates, and so on.

No matter what you are, a watercolor artist, minimalist designer, or quirky typographer there is an audience that would love to buy your stuff. The merit of digital products is that they can be sold an unlimited number of times without incurring additional production costs, which makes them a highly scalable and profitable form of passive income.

Suppose you are a graphic designer who designs a set of logo templates. You want to sell these templates on Creative Market for $25 each. If you sell just 50 templates per month, that is an extra $1,250 in your income. However, bear in mind the platform charges—Creative Market, for instance, takes a 30% commission on every sale. Therefore, your net income would be $875 after the fees.

6. Start a YouTube Channel

YouTube has changed the world completely and become a global platform through which people can share their creativity, knowledge, and passions with a huge audience. Building a successful YouTube channel is not easy, but it is worth your time and energy if you do it consistently.

YouTube is a place for you to demonstrate your skills and meet the people who are interested in what you do if you are a good musician, comedian, teacher, or just someone with a unique view on things.

Let’s say you start a YouTube channel focused on teaching guitar lessons. Through consistent uploads of high-quality instructional videos over 1 year, you build up a library of 100 videos and gain 50,000 subscribers.

Once your channel reaches this level of viewership, you can enable monetization options like:

• YouTube Partner Program Ad Revenue: If your videos average 100,000 views per month with typical $3 RPM rates, you could earn $300/month.
• Sponsored Video Deals: Brands may pay $500-$2,000 for you to integrate their products in a video.
• Affiliate Marketing: Promote guitar gear/accessories with affiliate links earning 5-10% commissions.
• Selling Info Products: You could sell downloadable ebooks, courses, etc. related to guitar playing.

So with 50,000 engaged subscribers, your gross monthly passive income could potentially be: $300 YouTube ads + $1,000 sponsor video + $200 affiliates + $500 info product sales = $2,000 per month

The initial effort of building the audience is high. But once you hit a critical mass, revenue streams can compound with new videos essentially earning passive income forever.

7. Create a Subscription Box Service

The concept of the subscription box has gained much prominence in the recent past, and this can be attributed to the fact that it has been divided into different categories such as beauty products, pet supplies, food, and fitness, among others. If you like to collect things or have specific themes that interest you, this business model can be a great way to earn passive income.

You source a variety of products that fit the theme of your subscription box and sell monthly or quarterly subscriptions. Once you’ve established relationships with suppliers, you can automate the process of assembling and shipping these boxes.

Consider running a subscription box service focused on gourmet coffee. You offer a subscription service at $30 per month, which consists of a set of specialty coffee beans, brewing tips, and small accessories. With 100 subscribers, your monthly revenue would be:

100 subscriptions x $30 = $3,000 per month

It is even possible to make a good profit after subtracting the cost of the products, the shipping charges, and other operational costs. When you gain more subscribers as you grow, you will earn more, thus having a source of passive income.

8. Dropshipping (Selling Products Without Holding Inventory)

Dropshipping has become a widely used e-commerce model, particularly for beginners in business who do not have much money. It is a way to get the products sold online without having to buy or keep inventory. On the contrary, you team up with a dropshipping supplier who is in charge of the inventory, packaging, and shipping of the products directly to your customers.

As a customer places an order on your online store, you just send the order details to your supplier who then fulfills the order for you. Now you do not have to pay for inventory in advance, warehouse space, or transportation problems.

Let’s say you open an online store dropshipping fitness products like resistance bands, jump ropes, and yoga mats. You partner with a supplier who handles inventory and shipping for a 20% cut of each sale.

After some marketing efforts, your store averages 50 orders per month at an average order value of $30.

Your monthly revenue would be: 50 orders x $30 average order = $1,500

Your supplier’s cut at 20% would be: $1,500 x 0.2 = $300

Your profit per month is: $1,500 – $300 = $1,200

All you had to do was set up the online store and marketing. The supplier handled all order fulfillment and shipping. This allows you to generate $14,400 in annual passive income without ever having to buy or store any inventory yourself.

9. Licensing Stock Photos or Videos

The need for good visual content is constantly growing hence, stock photography and videography are now a great field of business for creative people. Shutterstock, iStockphoto, and Getty Images are vast marketplaces where you can sell your photos or videos and make them available for licensing.

Every time a user downloads your content to use in websites, presentations, ads, or any other project you will get the royalty. Thus, your work can earn you money even when you are not working on it because the visuals will be there for people to admire and buy.

Let’s say you’re a talented photographer, and you’ve built up a portfolio of 500 high-quality stock images on a site like Shutterstock. On average, each of your images gets downloaded and licensed by users around 10 times per year. If the average royalty you receive per download is $0.25 (which is a conservative estimate), your annual passive income from those 500 images would be:

500 images x 10 downloads per year x $0.25 royalty = $1,250 per year

And that’s just from your existing portfolio. As you continue to upload new images, your passive income stream will grow. Successful stock photographers with thousands of images in their portfolios can easily earn $5,000 to $10,000 or more per year in royalties.

The great thing about this passive income source is that once you’ve put in the initial work to create and upload your images, they’ll continue earning you money year after year with little to no additional effort. And if you’re passionate about photography or videography, it’s a way to monetize your creative skills and get paid for doing something you love.

10. Dividend Stocks:

Dividend stocks are the company’s ownership that distributes a part of its profits to shareholders in the form of dividends. These payments are usually made on a quarterly basis and can be a dependable source of passive income.

Investment in dividend-paying stocks has not only the chance to get regular income but also it is a good opportunity for getting more money if their value increases. The mix of income and growth potential is what makes dividend stocks a great choice for many people.

Suppose you invest $10,000 into a diversified portfolio of dividend-paying stocks that have an average annual dividend yield of 4%. This would mean that the total annual dividend income would be $400, or $100 per quarter. As the companies in your portfolio grow and increase their dividends annually, your annual dividend income may also grow. Furthermore, if the value of your stocks rises by 5% every year, your portfolio will be worth $10,500 and you will have more income and capital gains.

Nevertheless, it is very important to bear in mind that not all stocks pay dividends and the amount of dividends paid can be quite different from one company to another. Besides, just as with any other investment in the stock market, dividend stocks are also affected by the changes in the market and bear some degree of risk.

11. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)

REITs, or Real Estate Investment Trusts are a special way of investing in real estate without any need to buy and manage properties yourself. These firms own and run the real estate assets that bring in money, for example, office buildings, shopping centers, apartments, and hotels.

REITs are legally obliged to distribute a large part of their taxable income to the shareholders in the form of dividends, thus they become very interesting for those who seek passive income. REITs are the means by which you can enter into the real estate market and have a chance for appreciation and income generation without having to bear with all property of its ownership.

However, it should be remembered that REITs are still at the mercy of market swings and can also be influenced by alterations in interest rates, economic conditions, and even the performance of real estate assets.

12. High-Yield Savings Accounts or Certificates of Deposit (CDs)

For those who are looking for a safe and low-risk way to get passive income, high-yield savings accounts and certificates of deposit (CDs) can be the best choice. Even though the returns may not be as high as those from stocks or real estate, they are a stable and predictable source of interest income with minimum effort.

High-yield savings accounts normally have a higher interest rate than the usual savings account hence your money will increase faster. CDs, on the contrary, have a fixed interest rate for a given period thus giving you an assurance that your money will increase but at the same time they do not allow access to it during that duration.

Both options are usually FDIC-insured up to $250,000 per depositor and per institution, so that gives an extra layer of security to your investment.

13. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Lending:

P2P lending platforms are how people can lend their money directly to other individuals or businesses, without going through traditional financial institutions. As an investor, you can finance loans and get the interest on the repayments which is a way of higher returns than savings accounts.

P2P lending platforms usually let you pick which loans to fund, thus, giving you some control over your risk. But, P2P lending has a higher risk of default than traditional bank loans because you are lending to individuals or businesses with different creditworthiness.

14. Cryptocurrency (with Cautionary Notes)

Bitcoin and Ethereum have become the story of our times with their exponential growth and great potential for high profit. Despite their distinctive investment possibility with the increasing popularity and a lot of different applications, they also have many risks and are very volatile.

Cryptocurrencies are not for the weak at heart when you decide to invest in them. The market is very unpredictable and the prices can change drastically in a short time. Besides, the cryptocurrency field is still young and undergoing development which makes it prone to scams, hacks, and law changes.

Several cryptocurrencies have a record of such great growth that they are now the possibility companies for huge returns on investment. These currencies are more and more being used as a means of payment for commodities and services, while their blockchain technology is finding applications in different industries.

15. Create and Sell Music or Sound Effects

Indeed, if you are a musician, composer, or sound designer your auditory creations will be in the digital media. AudioJungle and Pond5 are examples of platforms that have a specifically designed process for licensing music and sound effects to be used in videos, films, games, podcasts, or other multimedia projects.

Thus, you can upload your own compositions or sound effects to these platforms and reach the global audience of content creators who are always in search of high-quality audio elements that will add value to their projects. Each time your track is licensed, you get a royalty which becomes the source of your passive income as your music reaches new listeners and users.

Let’s say you create 200 music tracks and sound effects and upload them to AudioJungle. If each file gets licensed an average of 15 times per year at $1.50 per license, your annual passive income would be:

200 files x 15 licenses x $1.50 royalty = $4,500 per year

Successful audio creators with large libraries can easily earn over $10,000 per year in royalties from their existing catalog while continuing to add new files.

16. Designing and Selling Merchandise (Print-on-Demand)

In the era of individuality and self-revelation, custom clothes are becoming more and more in demand. Print-on-demand (POD) services like Printful, Printify, and Redbubble have changed the whole concept of earning money from designs. With POD, you can create special designs of artwork, logos, or slogans and then put them on a great number of products like t-shirts, mugs, tote bags, phone cases, and others.

The best thing about POD is that you don’t have to put the money in advance for the inventory or deal with printing and shipping problems. Once the customer orders a product, the POD service immediately prints and ships it to him or her so that you can concentrate on design and marketing. Hence, it becomes a way of producing money and turning creative people’s artistic ideas into tangible products.

17. Writing and Selling Scripts or Articles

If you are good at writing and telling stories, scriptwriting or article writing can be a great and well-paid job for you. The need for writing is colossal and it keeps on increasing with the opportunities in film, television, podcasting, advertising, corporate communications, and online publishing.

Scriptwriters can come up with unique ideas for videos, commercials, documentaries, and even business proposals. For instance, a seasoned scriptwriter could make $5000 to $20000 for a good script, and more if the script is used in a successful project. Likewise, article writers can submit their articles to blogs, websites, magazines, or newspapers. Article writers can earn $50 to $500 per article, based on the publication and their experience.

It is not a question of days or weeks, but you should put in the time and effort patiently to build a writing career that will make you known as a writer. You can get recurring clients, establish your name, and generate passive income through royalties, licensing fees, or ongoing contracts if you are dedicated to quality.

18. Airbnb – Letting Out a Room

Some platforms that are currently available include Airbnb, VRBO, and Homestay and these allow you to rent out your spare room for some income. This can be a very lucrative business if you are comfortable with people and have space for them to stay, particularly if you are based in a popular tourist area or in the city center. For instance, hosts in famous tourist areas can make between $500 to $1,500 a month depending on the season and market demand.

You can set your own prices, schedule, and house rules, this means that you are in control of your hosting experience. Some hosts even prefer to lease their rooms on a seasonal basis to ensure higher returns during the tourist seasons, which can amount to thousands of dollars in passive income every year. Offering a great guest experience can also result in positive reviews, high occupancy rates, and the option of charging higher rates in the future.

19. Renting Out Your Car (Turo)

If you have a car that spends more time on the road than parked, think of it as an opportunity to earn passive income through Turo or Getaround. These car-sharing platforms link car owners with people who need a vehicle for a short period, be it for a weekend trip, business travel or just going to the grocery store.

Through the platforms Turo and Getaround, you can get rental income while your car is not used. Besides this, they usually provide car insurance for your vehicle during the rental period which gives you peace of mind and at the same time protects against any possible damages.

Let’s say you own a 2019 Honda Civic that sits idle in your driveway or workplace parking lot for about 20 days per month. By listing it on Turo or Getaround, you could potentially rent it out for $30 per day.

If your car gets rented for just 10 of those available 20 days each month, your monthly passive income would be:

10 days x $30 per day = $300 per month

That’s $3,600 per year of extra income, just from putting your underutilized asset to work when you don’t need it.

The platforms handle the whole rental process, including insurance coverage. All you have to do is make your car available on the dates you specify. Money gets directly deposited into your account every time it’s rented.

With a popular make/model in a major city, many car owners can earn $500-$1000+ per month on Turo or Getaround with minimal effort. It’s a great way to offset car ownership costs or even profit from a depreciating asset.

20. Renting Out Storage Space (Neighbor)

Nowadays, with the trend of cutting down and minimalism, storage space has become a precious thing. The garage, attic, basement, or even a spare closet that you have and do not use can be turned into a source of passive income by renting it out for storage. Neighbors is a platform where people who need storage space and those with extra space to offer, can connect.

Renting a garage space can fetch between $100 and $300 per month based on your location and the size of the garage. This is because even a small space, for example, a closet or part of the basement, can generate a considerable amount of monthly income.

This model is so attractive because it needs very little time and effort to be set up and kept going. You just provide the space you have and put your rental price, then the platform will do all for you from connecting with potential renters to secure payments.

21. Renting Out Equipment (Cameras, Tools)

If you have equipment that is not used often but it is valuable, such as cameras, lenses, drones, musical instruments, or power tools; renting them out can be a savvy way to offset their cost and make additional income.

Applications like KitSplit, Fat Llama, and Ruckify enable the owners of equipment to get in touch with people or businesses who need these articles for certain projects or occasions. Thus, you can make money from your investments and at the same time provide others with top-notch equipment that they could not have had access to otherwise.

For instance, you used $2,000 to purchase a high-end DSLR camera and professional lenses for photography a few years ago. It is usually used for personal work and, when not in use, it just lies around idle.

You could list it on KitSplit or a similar rental site and earn $50-$100 per day renting it to videographers, students, or other people who need professional camera equipment.

If you only use it for six days in a month and charge $75 a day, you will be making $450 every month. Annually, you are going to make $5,400 from your idle assets by simply renting them out!

The platforms do all – matching you with renters, processing payments, and offering insurance protection. All you have to do is make your gear available when you want it to be.

My Final Words

So, we have seen that in 2024 the options for getting passive income are numerous and different. You may be interested in the digital world, investing, or want to make money using your creative abilities; there is a way for you.

Don’t forget, that passive income is not about becoming rich overnight. It is all about creating income sources that will last long and give you time for yourself while also ensuring your financial security. To begin the process, one needs to put in a lot of effort and commitment but at the end of it all, many wonderful things will make life better for anyone.

Which of the passive income ideas did you find most appealing? Have you already tried any of them? I would be glad to receive your feedback and also, help you out in case of any queries. Leave your comments in the box and keep this discussion on financial freedom going.