3 Free Passive Income Ideas

My grandma always said there was no such thing as easy money. Back in her day, I suppose this was truer than it is today. She and my grandpa worked tirelessly, sometimes several jobs each, to support their brood of seven children.

Did they live comfortably? Yes. Was it easy? Probably not.

Fortunately, by today’s standards, money can come easier. I’m not talking about get-rich-quick schemes or winning the lottery (although the latter could happen — fingers crossed!). I’m talking about passive income.

Now, don’t get me wrong, you do have to work initially to get passive income rolling in and keep up on marketing efforts to maintain it. In fact, you probably have to work that much harder if your ultimate goal is to earn money while you sleep. But once you do, you the reap the rewards of endless revenue streams that keep paying you over and over again for doing the work once.

If you are serious about creating residual income opportunities, read on. There are passive income ideas that allow complete beginners to set up avenues of incoming money with absolutely no money upfront.

Before You Start Earning Passive Income

Full disclosure: You don’t just wake up one day and decide to make passive income and then have money start rolling in. You work for it. Hard.

You will, in fact, invest a lot of sweat equity into creating passive income. If you’re not willing to put in the time, energy, and effort to get a passive stream of revenue flowing, it won’t be worth your time.

The only way to residual income success is to create a product or outlet that actually generates revenue. Doing this requires plenty of planning and many hours logged (for free) before launch.

If this sounds okay, or dare I say exciting, you are on your way to earning passive income. Now the question is, what kind of passive income ideas will work for you?

Online Passive Income Opportunities

In the real world, there are traditional ways to earn residual income like buying property and renting it out or smart investing. But today, there are plenty of online passive income ideas that give you the opportunity to have money rolling in day and night.

The best part is, online residual income doesn’t cost nearly as much as, say, buying a rental property. In fact, several passive income ideas come with zero out-of-pockets costs. The only thing you’ll need is time and the desire to make something out of nothing.

Write an eBook

You don’t have to be a well-known author to write a money-making eBook. If you can put together coherent sentences free of obvious grammar or spelling mistakes, you can earn money writing an eBook.

This is a great opportunity for the passive-income beginner because, one, it is free to do and, two, you can sell your product on big-name sites like Amazon and reach a global audience of millions.

If writing an eBook sounds like a good fit for you, great! There are a number of free valuable resources to help you get started. I suggest heading over to author of the 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss’s website. He provides real world case studies illustrating how people have had great passive income success just from writing eBooks.

For a practical how-to guide on the art of actually writing your Ebook, check out How to Write an Ebook by Amy Lynn Andrews.

Sell Stock Photos

You don’t have to be a professional photographer to make money selling photos. Chances are, if you’ve got an iPhone or  Android, you have a photo or two sitting in your gallery that is worth something.

For hobbyists and amateur photographers, microstock sites offer a platform to sell the pictures you take for profit. How does it work? Plenty of businesses, companies, and bloggers use microstock sites to source images for their blogs and marketing campaigns. They pay these microstock sites for a license to use these images.

Photographers can upload their photos for free. The microstock site will take a percentage of your earnings each time your image sells.

The best part is, you can take one photo and sell it over and over again. The Penny Hoarder has a quick-start Beginner’s Guide to Selling Stock Photography. For a more comprehensive look on what it takes to earn serious money selling photos (I’m talking quit-your-day-job-type-income) stop by Everything Microstock.

Create an Udemy Course

What are you good at? Can you juggle? Do yoga? Play the piano? Math whiz?

Whatever it is you’re good at, people will pay you to learn it. Udemy is becoming a favorite go-to spot for people who want to learn a new skill quickly and at a reasonable price.

This is great for those looking for passive income ideas since Udemy creates the perfect platform for you to sell your knowledge via an online course.

Forbes wrote up an interesting article on How to Create a Money-Making Course Online. In it, you can find out how the average Udemy Instructor earns $7,000 from one course. Some instructors can create a course in a weekend while others may take a month or two. But, keep in mind, even if you make one course in your spare time every two months, that is an average of $42,000 a year in passive income — not too shabby.

The best place to start if you want to create an Udemy course is Udemy itself. They have created their own course on how to be a successful instructor. Not only is it full of information that will set you up for passive income success, it’s completely free.

Establishing passive income is the goal for many but far fewer people actually succeed in doing so. If you’re willing to put in the work, you can reap the rewards. Remember, success often won’t come overnight but if you keep at it, you can eventually establish residual revenue streams.

For additional passive income ideas check out:

How to Earn Passive Income Online Writing for Revenue Sharing Sites by Free Work at Home Guide

15 Ways to Do the Work Once and Keep Getting Paid by Real Ways to Earn Money Online

Passive Income: The Most Effective Ways To Start Generating Passive Income Online Quickly. Proven Methods. (Passive income, multiple streams of income, make money online Book 1)