Making money while you sleep. Sounds nice, isn’t it? For that, you may need some passive income ideas — ways to make money with little investment of time and effort on your part.

What is passive income?

Passive income includes regular earnings from a source other than an employer or contractor. The IRS says passive income can come from just 2 sources: rental income or a business in which an individual does not actively participate. Examples include book royalties and dividend-paying stocks.

 It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking to add $100 or $100,000 to your monthly income or have one to 40 hours a week to dedicate:  You just have to try out a few of these ideas and see what will work for you.

Try index funds

  For example, if you invest money in an index fund that is based on the S&P 500 Index, you will be invested in the general market, without having to concern yourself with choosing investments, re-balancing your portfolio, or knowing when to sell or buy individual companies. At the same time you have a chance to choose a fund that is based on any index that you want, like such market sectors as precious metals, energy and banking.

Make YouTube videos

 This activity is developing pretty fast and the great benefit is that you can create videos basically about any area you wish: whether it is tutorial, music or movie reviews. Later on you add Google AdSense which automatically add some ads to your videos. The more clicks on the ad you have the more money you get.

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Affiliate marketing

It is a great deal for those who have active blogs and websites. You simply promote products or services on your site and you get flat fee or a percentage of the completed sales.

Put your photography on the web

If photography is your hobby, you can turn it into passive income. Such sites as Shutterstock and iStockphoto have excellent platforms for selling your photos. One single photo can be resold again and again, creating a cash flow. All you need to do is to create a photo portfolio.

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Buy high dividend stocks

If you build a portfolio of high dividend stocks, you can actually create a passive income at an annual rate, which is usually way higher than banks. Don’t forget you have a chance to get income from two sources – dividends and capital gains, as dividend stocks anyway remain stocks and have a potential for capital appreciation.

Write an ebook

It definitely demands a lots of work, but once you create it and put on market, it can bring you passive income for years.

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Get cash back rewards on credit cards

There are credit cards that provide cash-back rewards ranging anywhere from 1% to 5% of the amount purchased. You’re going to be out shopping and buying anyway, right? At least you will get something back from doing what you would do anyway.

Sell your products on the internet

Here is all up to your imagination and skills. It might either service or handcraft things, or used stuff.

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Invest in real estate

One of the most solid ways to invest your money and make them work. Once you have a property that is established and fully rented, it’s mostly a matter of managing the property and keeping it performing well.

Buy a blog

Blogging is viral nowadays and thousands of them are created every years. The same amount is left abandoned by their owners in some time. If you can find a nice blog with a good traffic – it could be a nice investment and a passive income source.

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Pay off a credit card

Reducing a fixed expense is the financial equivalent of creating passive income. This is certainly true when it comes to credit cards. Let’s say that you owe $10,000 on a credit card, on which there is a monthly payment equal to 2% of the balance, or $200 per month.By paying the card off, you’ll be free up $2,400 per year in cash flow that would’ve gone to the monthly payments.

Write a book and collect royalties

The process is the same as with writing an eBook. But would be really great if you could sell it to the publisher who will pay you royalties for the distribution and sale of the book. You will receive a certain percent after each sale made.

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Set up a website selling a products

If there is some product you are really knowledgeable about, you can sell it on a certain site. It can work the same way as if you sold your own items, but instead of thinking and being busy with creation of the item, you would focus on sales instead.

Invest in real estate investment trusts

It is a bit different from investing into real estate. . You can do that through a real estate investment trust. This is something like a mutual fund holding various real estate projects. The fund is managed by professionals, so you never have to get involved. The benefit of them is higher dividends than stocks and bonds.

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Become a business silent partner

Have you heard about successful business that needs capital for growing. You can become a sort of an angel investor who will make this happen. But instead of simply loaning money, you will take a position in the business.

Become a referral source

Every small business needs such sources to maintain sales. Make a list of small business providers that you use on a regular basis and feel you can recommend to others without reservation. Then contact the owners and see if they have any kind of cash referral offers available. It can work with plumbers, electricians, cleaning services and so on.

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Rent out unused space with Airbnb

The system of renting out apartments and houses has really exploded. If you have an extra room or even apartment staying empty, this platform is what you need for passive income.

Build an app

Every second person is using smartphone and keeps downloading applications like crazy. You might be asking if there are so many apps out there, why would you want to attempt to create an app? Isn’t there a lot of competition? Well, yes, but fresh, creative ideas can win. If you can come up with something unique, you can make quite a bit of money. Simple — yet unique — apps can be pretty  passive.

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Create online course

If you are an expert in some area, why don’t you create a course about your passion? One of the best platforms to use is Udemy.com with more than 8 million students, whom you can share your content with.

Make an online guide

By providing  specific information in a guide-like format, you can make money through some of the means already addressed: advertisements through Google AdSense, affiliate links, and even memberships you can sell from your online guide. It’s a fantastic idea!

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Outsource most if not all of your business needs

If you’re spending too much of your time on an existing business running it yourself, why not outsource most if not all of your tasks? Yes, it will require you to give up some control, but in many businesses it’s the only way to free up your time so you can focus on other tasks that will result in more income. Here’s a list of tasks that you might want to outsource:

• Bookkeeping
• Writing
• Web design
• Editing
• Task management
• Social media marketing

Make money for tasks you would do anyway

For example, you will play games anyway, no matter how busy you are and InboxDollars allows you to make money for playing, searching web and more.
The list is pretty long and for sure you will find something appealing to you.

source:uk.businessinsider