Personal Money

6 passive income ideas to grow your assets

How to build a self-sustaining source of income and free up your time and energy.

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First things first, what is the definition of passive income?
Passive income, as opposed to active income, refers to a stream of income that is generated without having to actively work for it. It’s not sourced by salaried jobs, whether for a company or as a freelance worker. In short, if you have to wake up in the morning and work for it everyday, it’s not passive income.

The most well known forms of passive income usually include rental properties, stock and services such as online businesses and digital products and courses. When thinking about your own source of passive income you should picture a way to build a “structure”, a system that generates income by itself, without too much intervention. Freeing up your time and energy. It might take months or even years to build a self-sustaining source of income, but once you do you’ll be able to get a reliable side hustle.

The idea of building an enterprise or creating a source of passive income might sound threatening for people who do not have access to large sums of money. Of course building a passive income net is easy if you can afford to buy apartments and rent them out. But the lack of starting capital should not scare you, there are ways of exploring alternative methods and with a pinch of creativity you’ll be able to succeed.

Let’s take a look at 6 different methods of building passive income for someone with no startup capital.

1. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing has been a keyword in the online communities for quite some time now. You might have encountered it on instagram and other social media content creator pages. Affiliate marketing is a marketing technique where companies and businesses reward affiliates (you) for every new customer brought to them. For example, if you happen to have a decent instagram follow you might be sent an “affiliate link” by a company you decided to collaborate with. If one of your followers decides to subscribe to their services or to buy their products you’ll earn a commission. It’s a win-win situation, the company gets to sell its product and you’ll both win a commission and create a tighter relationship with your followers.

2. Write an e-book

If you have a talent, capitalize on it! If you’re good at writing or feel like it could be a good outlet for your creativity, why not create and sell e-books? E-books can be written on virtually all topics: fiction, mangas, guides or even technical manuals! You name it. Once you have chosen the topic and what medium you feel more comfortable writing in, you can start looking into how and where to sell and distribute your book. There are various platforms that offer these services to “self made” writers, such as Amazon Kindle or Apple iBooks. If your book hits the right spot with your readers you might be looking at a constant source of passive income for the years to come.

3. Template creation

If content creation or writing books is not your thing, and if you’re into design and have a programming background you might want to look into creating and selling templates for websites and blogs. Most small businesses and creators with an online presence use websites such as WordPress to advertise their products, creating a huge demand for functional and good looking websites. By selling your creations on ThemeForest or Creative Market you’ll be able to create a steady flow of income from each sale.

4. Dropshipping

Dropshipping, in short, means you’ll open an online shop without actually having a material inventory. After finding a product that’s high in demand you might want to set up an online shop and find suppliers and establish a relationship with them. When an order is placed in your store, your supplier will ship the item directly to your client. This method might take some time to start producing a consistent flow of profit, and it might take a while until your shop is established and if you’ve managed to build a strong brand.

5. Content creation: create and monetize a blog, YouTube channel, or podcast

If you have a skill you want to share with the world, you might want to look into how to monetise blogs, channels and podcasts! By creating engaging, valuable and catchy content you’ll be able to explore the various ways of generating profit on it. Sponsors, ads, affiliate marketing (see point n.1), are just a few of the various ways to generate passive income through social media. Remember to stay true to yourself and to be consistent.

6. Online courses

If you think a blog is not enough, and you want to offer a deeper insight into your niche of expertise, you might want to look up how to start your own online courses. Once you’ve found your niche and after researching the market you can play around the topics of your choosing and create content. Platforms such as Udemy and Teachable offer their platforms to knowledgeable individuals looking to share their skills, while taking care of the payments.

These were only six ways of building passive income, depending on your skills or economical possibilities there are other alternatives you’d want to look into. This list includes lower risk alternatives that might be more approachable to university students or younger investors.

Laura Ghiretti
February 2023