Earning money while asleep is not just a “wishful thinking” it is the reality for millions of people. While I am aware that there are tons of videos and articles promising 10.000$/month within a couple days — I decided not to add to this fire. Because whomever promises you thousands of dollars/euros for nothing — is probably trying to scam you.

So in today’s article I will present to you 9 different ways in which you can make passive income. In each one of them we’ll talk about how hard it is to start, and maintain it as an income source.

You can also watch this article as a video:

Now before we start — some of those are my passive income sources and I have been building them all for years. So do not expect an “easy 10.000/month in 30 days solution” or whatever else we want to call it. Good things in life take time.

But this is an article (and video if you prefer watching, not reading) I wish I had many years ago, when I started my own journey with passive income and financial independence.

Let’s start with what really is “passive income” and what it is not.

It is not “earning money without doing anything at all” ok? There’s no such thing.

It is money that’s not tied to our time. You do the work “once” and you make money every time something sells. Which means that you can earn while you sleep.

It does not mean “getting rich quick” there’s no such thing. And all the courses, schemes and great programs — are a scam.

TO make money — you need to provide value. Make a deal so good… and provide value — that people cannot say “no” to.

1. Starting a YouTube channel

So let’s kick off this video with a cliche — Starting a YouTube channel. I am a YouTuber, so I thought it would be a cheesy start. How hard is it to start? To start — you just need to set up an account and have a phone. In reality — Making a good video is complicated.

1/10 to start

How hard is it to maintain it? Well… On my smaller channel it took me 9 months and 40 videos to get monetised with 1.000 subscribers. By a rule of thumb — it takes around 70–90 videos to get monetised. So this would be 6/10 to maintain. Because if you love what you are doing — it’s fine to keep doing it. But at the beginning — you invest more than you make.

You will be doing it at least once a week, for some time.

The average YouTube CPM is 2$ per 1.000 views. So to make 100$ a month you’d need 4 videos a month, around 10.000 views each. (and that is considering not evergreen content)

Once your channel is growing and you make money — it gets easier. This is not entirely passive as you need to make new videos — but if you make evergreen content — a lot of this income will come from content you made already.

2. Starting a podcast

Podcasts are really popular and easy way of making some semi-passive income as you can get paid for the stuff you have made once, but people start wityh, share or come back to. How hard is it to start? Again. You can start by setting up your account on spotify podcasts, and all you need is a phone to start recording. Depending on the topic of your podcast you may need guests or some research for your episodes, but starting it out is not that hard.

Unfortunately — podcasts don’t really have an algorithm that helps them grow and oh the irony — most podcasts grow through having a youtube or other social media platforms, where you put snippets to.

So the starting is again 1/10

Maintaining — this is where it gets problematic, and I’d say it’s easier than maintaining a YouTube channel. It requires a bit less work, but it can get you pretty nice income. I’d say the maintenance is a 5/10./ Because getting money out of podcasts is also not the easiest thing and growth comes with time.

3. Investing in Art (Masterworks) 

Investments is one of my fav ways of making some passive income and I am personally using Masterworks to invest in art. With Masterworks you can buy shares of the paintings that go for millions, and see the results of your investments whenever masterworks resells the piece of art. They currently do pretty well, and you can see the results of around 15–20% return on investment for each sale. How hard is it to start? The setup of masterworks is a process — but with my referral link you’ll get an automatic invitation to the system, and you’ll also get a 200$ bonus. 

So hey — it’s a win. So when it goes to how hard it is to start? — I’d give it 3/10 — you will need some capital to invest, and it takes a little to start And like with most investments — this is a bit more risky and requires you to keep an eye on things. But — Art has a couple of perks… number 1 being — it is historically proven to remain stable and beneficial (like gold and silver) Number 2 — it is easy to maintain. So for the maintenance I’d put 2/10 — you just need to remember to invest in another piece.

4. Becoming an affiliate marketer 

Another one that’s easy to start but harder to maintain. To start — you need to set up an affiliate account on amazon, or any other brand you’d like to work with. I’d give it 2/10 to start with because some of the affiliates have requirements such as minimum following or require you to fill in a lot of papers. Maintaining though — I’d say is 5/10. To promote your affiliates — you need to create content. Weather it’s a blog, podcast or video content — it will require you to work, and you will need any type of an audience to purchase with your affiliate links. It can prove to be extremely easy or extremely hard. The plus side of an affiliate marketing is that you dopn’t necessarily need to show your face. It can be a blog, or any other written medium. SO if you are not the best with the camera — that may be an idea for you. Depending on the deal you got, a time of the year and the audience — you can make anything fro m 10$-10.000$ a month with the affiliate marketing, which is a tempting option.

5. Digital products

This one is… one of my favorite ways of getting passive income as it’s something you make once, and don’t need to update (most of the time). Using free software such as canva you can create pdfs, ebooks, journals and other products that can be sold on etsy, amazon or through your own website. The magic of it is — you don’t need to deal with anything. It’s all pretty much automated and you can make money while you are in your sweet, sweet sleep. 

Out of my personal experience I am selling email pitch templates, lightroom presets, ebooks, and other small things. I personally buy cheat sheets, templates etc as well. So it works. 

Starting? I’d say it’s 3/10 because you need to know how to work with those programs and have an actual idea of what people NEED, what value can you provide them with. Generally, the more value or the more time it saves someone — the better and more expensive it can get. Maintaining this gig is straightforward and pretty easy. I’d say 3/10 — although if you are in a saturated market — it may get much harder to keep your income steady, and you may need to invest or change a lot of stuff on the way.

6. Courses 

I love courses. They can be made in a written, audio or video form (although the best performing ones are video). Courses allow you to share your knowledge on a specific topic and save people time — making it an ultimate value giver. Starting with a course can be easy — you can use platforms such as skillshare or udemy to get access to their own audience and start sharing your knowledge fast with people already there. 

I personally host my older courses on those platforms and this is how I started. Creating a course can take you everything between 2 weeks and 2 months (it probably shouldn’t take longer than that) it involves scripting, recording and editing. 

So I’d say starting with it will be 5/10 when it comes to how hard it can be. At this moment I am hosting 3 courses (1 on skillshare and udemy about FPV Drones), FPV Academy on teachable which is a masterclass teaching about FPV Drones and how to fly them — in real detail, as well as a Dream Life University which teaches how to figure out what you want to do, and make it a lucrative business. I’m leaving you the links to all of those courses in the description if any of them interestes you. 

Maintaining a course on a platform like skillshare or udemy is straightforward. I’d say 2/10. It’s a lot more work upfront than later. If you feel fancy and have your own audience — you may discover that it’s much more beneficial for you to host a course on your own platform such as teachable. Teachable allows you to make your own course, price it and get the biggest margin of the price. You do need to have your own audience or do a lot of advertising for it though, which may make it harder to maintain as well. I’m leaving you links to skillshare, teachable and udemy in the description, so be sure to check it out.

7. Membership sites 

You don’t need an audience to have a membership group — you only need knowledge and an idea. (And good advertising). Membership sites allow you to create a group of people, who get the “value” from you each month for a certain price. This can be as easy as patreon connected to discord access, membership site or forum. The topic of the membership? It can be anything — from personal training, coaching and lessons up to weekly big posts about a topic. 

To start — I’d say it would be 4/10 — you may need a lot of work and advertising, plus the knowledge and the idea as of what you want to teach/share. Maintaining happy clients and keeping membership going will require you to actually spend time and prepare to things — so I’d say this one is actually a 9/10. If you don’t deliver — no one will pay and stay around. I personally have a membership for FPV Drone pillots, and it’s been going pretty well. So if you want to learn how to fly FPV Drones — I’m leaving you a link to it in the description as well.

8. Writing a book 

If you are a writer — or like playing with words — you can write a book and self-publish it through Amazon KDP or other means of self-publishing. This can allow you to get a % of each sale each time someone buys your book or ebook. So you get monthly royalties coming from those sales. Starting? 

If you know hoe to write and have a topic to write about — it can be a 1/10 because all you need is a word or google sheet. If you have a lot to learn and cannot do copywriting, cover etc all by yourself — it will require some more work and money — making it a 4/10 to start with. 

I have self-published a book with KDP about building up a business of your social media — and I’ve been happy to see it grow and get interest! And one of my goals for 2024 is to self-publish another book that will help people with being alone and travelling alone. Let me know in the comments if you’d like that. Maintaining it is as easy as advertising and making sure that you stay on top of your game. I’d say a 2/10.

9. Building a website/App 

Building a website or app that hosts ads can be a nice passive income stream. This one is probably one of the hardest things to start with — as you do need some knowledge and create enough content or value to keep people interested — and it also needs advertisement to start with and get people to buy it. 

This will be a 9/10 to start, but if your app or website is good — it becomes 3/10 or less to maintain. Depending on the style of the app that you have created. If it’s a game — you may not need that much to keep it up.

So, this is it — those are 9 passive income ideas that you can start working on in 2024. 

Remember — there’s no easy and quick way to keep things going, but after building up my library of assets and passive income streams — I am happy to say that it works and does a pretty good job. Now, my list of passive income streams has been built across a couple of years, so as I mentioned — don’t expect everything to work smooth and quick right away. Good things (and good value) needs time. If you’re interested in how much those things make me in a year — check out my video about the topic.