What comes to mind when you hear the term "passive income"? After you get past the images of palm trees and a life of luxury, you'll probably come back down to earth and think of all the too-good-to-be-true claims—"make $10,000 next week!"—that can tarnish the credibility of passive income.
While passive income isn't a guaranteed win, when you work with intention (yes, work is still involved), you can break out of the time-for-money exchange. I talked to real people who made real money with less hands-on work, and these are the 15 ways to make passive income that felt the most feasible.
What is passive income?
Passive income is a way to earn an income without directly trading time for money. While some work is involved, it gives you leverage to make more while working less.
Before we get into how to make passive income, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Things may not start off so passive. A few of the ideas you're about to read about took months to get off the ground, requiring a decent amount of upfront cost and time. But once you get into a rhythm and realize you've got an idea that's sustainably bringing in cash, the work should taper off into true passive income territory.
If possible, start with something you know. Working with a topic or industry you have experience in can make the process smoother. If your skills or interests don't align with any of the passive income ideas below, check out our guide to low-cost business ideas. There are plenty of ways to make money and have more control over your work.
Automate. Automation and passive income are both about doing more in less time. For example, Manfred uses Zapier to automatically forward new supplement orders to his third-party supplier, which means automations and dropshippers handle every aspect of fulfilling online sales. AI tools can also be a big help for cutting down on certain manual tasks.
Don't hold your breath. If passive income was easy—or guaranteed to work—everyone would be doing it. There's a reason most income isn't passive. So make sure you go into it with a realistic mindset and the understanding that there won't always be a pot of gold at the end of the passive rainbow.
15 examples of passive income
As we explore a few ways to make passive income, let them serve as inspiration for your own creation. While you can absolutely try one of these passive income streams, the goal here is to help you understand the various types of businesses and investments—and the characteristics they share—to get the juices flowing.
1. Rent out your car
Overhead investment: Low, assuming you already have a car.
If you don't live in a walkable area, you need a car for all the basics. But if you're one of the millions of people who work remotely at least some of the time, then you probably don't use your car as much as you used to.
Enter: car-sharing. Paul Sundin, CEO of Emparion, told me: "you can list your vehicle on a car-sharing marketplace to reach a local market of car renters. Once your car has met the platform's qualifications for listing approval, you'll have a car renting service."
Letting people borrow your car for short-term rentals on a platform like Turo can apparently earn you hundreds of dollars a month, so if you're willing and able to use this passive income stream, you could cover some or all of your monthly car expenses.
2. Sell an online course
Overhead investment: Medium. You'll need some tools, but getting started is mostly a time investment.
If you have unique skills or experiences, share the knowledge. This is exactly what Stefan Palios does to earn passive income:
"I currently have two passive income sources—both small right now, but entirely passive: My book, The 50 Laws of Freelancing (through Amazon) and my course, How to Find Freelance Clients Using Twitter (through Udemy). The marketplace element is what makes this passive income. Amazon markets and sells my book, and Udemy markets and sells my courses. Now, this isn't a life-changing income (yet!). But I published the book in 2020, and it still pays me monthly. The course is new, but I created it relatively quickly, so the time ROI is good."
Assuming the course you create is evergreen—meaning it will remain relevant for a while—you just need to create it once, and then folks can continue to buy it without any added effort on your part.
3. Start a blog
Overhead investment: Medium. You'll need some tools, but getting started is mostly a time investment.
Back in 2020, Megan Jones created her travel blog, Traveller's Elixir. "After working on it for a year and a half, I could quit my job," she told me. Her website has since grown to over 650,000 monthly readers: "I now make income passively every single day," she said.
Megan's blog generates money with display ads and affiliate marketing. "Advertisers pay me to show ads to my readers, and if a reader clicks on a link to a hotel or tour package that I've recommended, I get a commission if they buy it," she added.
Megan's hard work and consistency have paid off, and she noted that "once you've built up enough content on your website, you can earn money every day without even trying. The best thing about having a travel blog is that the profit margins are high, over 90%." Even just two years after she started, she was passively making around $5,000/month. To make running a blog even easier, you can use blogging automations to speed up your workflow.
4. Invest in rental properties
Overhead investment: High. You'll either need cash to buy your property or arrange financing.
Investing in real estate isn't an accessible option for most people, but if you have cash on hand, it's a tried and true way to grow wealth and one of the best passive income investments. Michael Green, the owner of Quick Cash Homebuyers, experiences the benefits of real estate investing firsthand.
"Thanks to my real estate expertise, I have been able to find and purchase affordable rental properties in different parts of the country, which I then lease out to trustworthy tenants. By building a healthy rental portfolio, I enjoy steady passive income each month without fail. After removing repair and maintenance allocation plus taxes, I'm still left with a significant portion as profit from my investments for me to re-invest in other passive income generation activities."
If you're interested in rental properties but aren't ready to add to your portfolio, you can start by renting out an extra bedroom or, if you're planning to buy anyway, buying a duplex and renting out half while you live on the other side.
5. Rent out storage space
Overhead investment: Variable to high. The cost to buy a self-storage unit varies widely, but you'll likely need at least $40,000 in cash or financing.
Another option for investing in real estate is buying and renting out storage space. Tomek Młodzki, the CEO at PhotoAiD told me: "If you buy some garage space in a city, you can be sure that the price will be increasing steadily, at least as much as the rest of real estate, and that you will find someone to rent it at any time. I've done this since early in my adult life and find it a nice way to invest without spending too much. Renting and/or selling such a space after a few years is guaranteed to be a good investment."
YouTuber AJ Osborne of Self Storage Income shared that the price to get started and buy a storage property depends on location, property size, and potential revenue.
6. Invest in the stock market
Overhead investment: Variable. You decide how much you're comfortable putting in.
If you're willing to play the long game with passive income, then investing in options like mutual funds and stocks could be a good move. If you want a more hands-off approach, consider a Robo-advisor mutual fund. You can try your luck in the stock market for something a bit more hands-on.
Historically, the S&P 500 has an annual average return of over 10%, but be sure you don't invest any money you might need soon (or ever, honestly). While over time, you're almost guaranteed to make money, because of the unpredictability of the market, you can never know when you'll have that money.
7. Promote affiliate products
Overhead investment: Medium. You'll need some tools, but getting started is mostly a time investment.
Some bloggers use affiliate sales as part of their passive income stream, but you can also create niche sites focused solely on affiliate products. Wesley Stryker has been building Commerce Caffeine for several years. The site is a curation of eCommerce software tools and growth strategies, and Wesley targets low-competition keywords that are highly targeted. You can see its early growth in the Google Analytics screenshot here.
"Commerce Caffeine makes money through referral commissions, sponsorships, and digital products. It's completely passive—I spend about 5 hours/week on it, mostly writing content. But if I step away for a few weeks (or even months), the business will be unaffected and continue making money passively. It's a great business model, and if I choose to spend time on it, it grows, and the more it grows, the more I outsource and the less time I spend on it."
8. Sell digital assets
Overhead investment: Medium. You'll need some tools, but getting started is mostly a time investment.
Have a knack for design? Try selling digital assets. Yanna Berman, the founder of Urban Mamaz, noted, "things like digital planners are popular because you are appealing to both regular people and business owners. The trick is to keep up with the trends and make sure you have popular products, so your sales remain high."
The best part about digital products is that you make it one time, and it's an unlimited resource to be distributed when the customer clicks buy. Lots of marketplaces, including Etsy, will let you sell these kinds of digital assets as well.
9. License your content
Overhead investment: Medium. It requires a solid upfront effort in scripting, filming, editing, and negotiating licensing deals, but once the content library is built, ongoing effort is minimal.
Licensing or selling stock photos, footage, and music to platforms like Adobe Stock or Storyblocks has become an increasingly saturated (and AI-generated) hustle, but Austin Benton, the founder of Speaker Drive, has managed to earn a steady income from licensing out speaker content.
"A few years back, I realized there was a demand for authentic, high-quality clips for leadership training platforms, corporate onboarding videos, and even niche edutainment content creators," Austin explained to me. Since then, he's created a small library of short, evergreen speaker segments and offered them to B2B clients via licensing agreements.
As far as the ongoing time investment, once the content is shot, edited, and the contracts finalized, he puts in around 2 to 3 hours/month—mostly for approving new clients and handling rights renewals. This venture consistently brings in about $4,000-$6,000/month.
"The key was finding a slice of content that was already being created anyway, then packaging it in a way someone else could reuse at scale," Austin says. "It didn't start with the goal of being passive—it just became passive once the system was tight."
10. Buy a vending machine
Overhead investment: Medium. Even used vending machines can cost a few thousand dollars.
Opportunity awaits in unexpected places—like during a snack run. Here's a breakdown on X of what went into a vending machine location that profited $40,000.
This vending location costed $3,000 for start up. Paid $1,700 total for the machines, $600 total for card readers, $500 product and $150 for delivery. The machines made over $3,000 a month. I got my money back in 2 months and sold the location for $40,000. Great investment pic.twitter.com/Ra5nCWiNYb
— Kenneth. J (@Theselfcareking) June 21, 2022
Other folks, like Jamon Garrett are taking advantage of vending machines as passive income, too.
Officially started my Vending Machine business (3rd business) with a location secured. I’m excited about this asset, passive income is the move ♻️ #VendingMachineBusiness #AssetsOverLiabilities pic.twitter.com/3HabfRgXAK
— Big Mon 👑🦁 (@_MoneyMakingMon) May 18, 2020
11. Own a billboard
Overhead investment: Variable to high. Used billboards can cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Display ads on blogs are the digital versions of billboards, so naturally, you can take the old-school route to make passive income, too. If you happen to own land with zoning that allows billboards, you can put up one of your own. Or you can buy an existing billboard through sites like OutdoorBillboard.
Once you own a billboard, you lease it out to advertisers. You'll need to keep up with applicable permits and ensure you always have an advertiser, but depending on your location, your billboard could earn thousands of dollars per month.
12. Sell a SaaS Product
Overhead investment: Medium. Requires development time and a modest upfront investment, but maintenance can be low once it's live.
You don't need to be a developer to create a SaaS product: you can vibe code your way to an app using an AI app builder—but you'll probably want to consult a developer for fine-tuning. If you can come up with an idea that's valuable enough, people—and even businesses—will pay for it.
With Electricity Monster, Benjamin Tom created a simple yet powerful tool that's been quietly generating income since 2019. "It's a JavaScript comparison engine that estimates quarterly energy bills based on postcode and household size," he explained. "I licensed it to five real estate groups who embed it on their rental listing pages."
Building the tool took about three months of weekend work and a $2,400 investment to hire a backend developer. It now runs on a virtual server that costs just $19/month, and Benjamin checks in once a quarter to make sure the SSL certificates are valid and everything's still running properly.
He makes around $1,500 AUD in monthly revenue—sometimes peaking at $2,100 during colder months when tenants are more energy-conscious. Each contract pays him a flat fee, plus extra per query over 2,000 monthly uses.
Benjamin's advice for anyone looking to start: "The value was in reducing guesswork for tenants. I just happened to be the guy who knew what energy retailers never say outright. People like to know what they are walking into before they move. That little widget does that, and it pays me quietly in the background."
13. Rent out a parking space
Overhead investment: Low. If you already own the space, setup is fast, and maintenance is almost nonexistent.
Chris Brewer has a side hustle that's as simple as it gets: renting out parking spots in downtown St. Louis. "It's not a fancy service—just a slab of concrete earning cash," he told me. "But it's a no-frills passive income setup that saved my butt a few times."
He got the idea when he saw neighbors renting out their space, so he decided to cash in, too. Chris lists his unused lot on SpotHero for $8-$12 a day. Setup took him just two hours one afternoon: he snapped a few pictures, set his price based on local rates, and the app handled the rest. "It takes me one hour a month, tops," he said.
And the payoff is about $300 per month per spot. "Last July, one of my spots booked out 20 days in a row and made me $250—with zero work beyond the original listing."
While it's not glamorous, Chris says it's about as passive as it gets. "Tenants enforce rules. I just collect. You need a spot you don't use, a quick app setup, and that's it—money rolls in practically free."
14. Sell a niche eCommerce product
Overhead investment: Medium to high. It may require upfront effort in SEO, product sourcing, and site setup, but once everything's established, maintenance could be limited to a few hours a week.
Since launching Cat Water Fountains Australia in May 2023, Matt Uebergang has grown his Shopify store to a consistent $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue. His edge was a deep understanding of SEO and a laser focus on filling a very specific gap in the market.
"I started by looking for gaps in organic search. Niches where people were searching, but the competition and offer were weak," he explained to me. "I found people were looking for decent cat water fountains, but all the top results were filled with overpriced, subpar products from big retail brands."
He decided to build a simple store, wrote in-depth content, and optimized every transactional page for search.
Now that things are running smoothly, he only spends about 4–8 hours per month on operations and customer service. But he cautions against assuming eCommerce is fully passive: "I made that mistake early," he told me. "I thought if I got the SEO right, the rest would take care of itself. It didn't. Product positioning, operations, customer service, copy, creatives—all of that needs constant iteration to scale and grow."
His ultimate advice: "Focusing on one narrow niche and being the best at it. I didn't try to sell everything pet-related. Just one category, done really well. That depth helped me attract the right customers and rank faster on Google."
15. License your voice
Overhead investment: Low. All you need is a quiet space, a good microphone, and time to record your voice.
With AI exploding in popularity these past few years, the possibilities for lucrative passive income opportunities are endless—to the point that it can be hard to wrap your head around what you can even do with AI. But AI speech platforms like ElevenLabs have made it simple for anyone interested to start earning.
A Reddit user who goes by hijoshua has been earning passive income by licensing their voice to the platform.
Six months in, he's earned about $1,555 AUD of income from his first voice, with an additional $310 AUD from his second voice.
Use automation to help generate passive income
Generally, passive income streams require upfront work but earn disproportionate to your time commitment as the business matures. Aim to automate as much as possible if you want to spend less time on your passive income businesses without sacrificing profit.
With Zapier, you have thousands of automation options at your disposal—whether it's juggling notifications, sending invoices, or updating spreadsheets. The more you can take off your plate early on, the more freedom you'll have as your income grows.
Related reading:
This article was originally published in July 2022 by Steph Knapp. The most recent update was in April 2025.
