Who wouldn’t want to earn extra money without adding hours on to an already busy work week? That’s what passive income is all about—creating a stream of cash that doesn’t require a ton of time or work on your part.
While you might be thinking that generating passive income is great for people with loads of extra money to spare, there are also plenty of passive income strategies for the rest of us, too. These are ways that regular people just, like you and me, are earning a few hundred dollars—or a few thousand dollars—every month with minimal effort. None of them require a huge investment of money up front, and while the following passive income strategies do require some research or effort on the front-end it’s not an exhausting amount of work to get them up and running.
Sound too good to be true? Read on.
5 Passive Income Strategies that Work
1. Rent
Practically anything can be rented, from your bicycle to parking space in your yard during big local happenings, such as sporting events if you live in the right location. Of course, you can rent out a spare room in your home, or your entire house. Check out sites like Airbnb or Just Park to help you get started.
2. Self-Publishing
Self-publishing has become a mainstream source of passing income. Many of the books (both electronic and digital) that you purchase online though sites like Amazon are self-published. If you have an affinity for writing, it’s not all that difficult to self-publish your own book—in fact, it can be pretty easy. Keep in mind, however, that you’ll likely need to do quite a bit of upfront marketing before it turns into a reliable income stream.
3. Turnkey Property Investing
Turnkey property investing involves buying a property, often in another city or state, while allowing a third party (a turnkey property management company) handles all the duties of property management—from upkeep, to collecting rent, to choosing tenants. Note: Make sure you’re working with a reputable company, and do your own research before diving in.
One of the benefits of turnkey investing is that the homes are often rehabbed and sometimes even have standing tenants when you buy the property. The ultimate goal, besides generating passive income, of course, is to make the process as simple as possible.
See also Investing in Real Estate for Retirement Income
4. Launch a Micro-business
A micro-business doesn’t have to be complicated. Instead, it can be something as simple and straightforward as content marketing for startups, or developing simple websites for dentist and/or physician’s offices. Better yet, get a few clients under your belt and then outsource everything from writing to project management. You’ll just need to find reliable employees who can take over running your business (on a virtual basis) while you spend time building your next business.
5. CD Ladders
What’s a CD ladder? It’s a strategy in which you divide money you wish to invest into equal amounts of CDs with different maturity dates. Unlike stocks and bonds (another common way to build passive income) CDs provide a safe return on your investment without the additional stress of weathering the sometimes-volatile nature of the stock market. While it’s true that CDs these days have low interest rates, you can be sure of an ROI that will provide you with passive income.
