Do you know what’s the actual craze on earth? Making passive income! Almost everybody is looking for the best passive income ideas for 2020 and me too!
Building an online business at the comfort of your home has its high and lows.
But the highs are definitely dominant! Getting to chance to work from home comes with a lot of perks.
That’s why the majority of people are searching for opportunities to make passive income online.
Without any further ado, let’s take a look at the best passive income ideas for 2020 and how you can earn it for yourself.
What Is Passive Income?
The big question is “What Is Passive Income”? There are lots of interpretations around these two words.
Some are true and some are really off track with their meaning.
So, according to Investopedia: Passive income is earnings derived from a rental property, limited partnership, or another enterprise in which a person is not actively involved.
Whereas in the modern-day world, passive income is something that encompasses much more “opportunities” than what Investopedia refers to as passive income.
Nowadays, passive income is basically, generating an income with little or no effort at all.
Again there are some myths around the concept of passive income which I will make clearer in the next paragraphs.
I have worked and I’m still working in the digital landscape for almost 8 years now and I do make passive income.
Let me tell you, as a passive income earner, what I understand by these two little words.
My Definition of Passive Income
Passive income, for me, is what others like to call “making money on autopilot”.
The launch of a business that brings passive income and one that does not generate passive income is pretty much the same.
A business that generates passive income requires a foundation, a roadmap, an action plan, and other business requirements just like any other business.
The difference is the business that will bring passive income will require from you very little to no involvement in the future but you will still be making an income.
One of the many antonyms for the word passive is “active”, right? So the word passive income is simply income that is coming from a non-active commitment to the business.
I hope you got this.
Example of How I Earned Passive Income
I’ve been earning passive income for three years now and in this article, I will share with you one of them.
So, I had, a digital store named GraphicXtreme (which I flipped a few months ago) where I sell Product Mockups.
I took 8 months to build the whole thing.
I spent a few months designing the mockups and then I started building my online store, uploading 200+ individual files, writing descriptions for each file, creating bundles of mockups and so on.
My main focus was to drive traffic was Google SEO. This was a side hustle for me so I didn’t actively promote the site with ads or even putting the content on social media networks.
After 6-8 months, Google started ranking my keywords and I started getting traffic and obviously, this traffic converted into customers.
It’s been nearly 1 year that I haven’t uploaded new mockups or even touch the site but it’s still bringing me traffic and income. For Black Friday last year, I just added a few bundles. But nothing more.
In the screenshot above, you can see how I made $2k in February 2020 on a site that I barely touch. This is what passive income is.
I did the work once and yeah it’s required hard work and dedication. I didn’t earn up money overnight, success was not instant.
But until now, I’m still making a good income from the work I did in the past. Today I’m barely involved and yet I make $1800 – $2500 per month.
Does Passive Income Really Work?
If you’re still asking yourself this question, re-read the paragraph before the question. ha!
Yes, passive income still works and more so that we have all the necessary tools in place to make it happen.
If you have a laptop, a good internet connection, and a spirit of commitment, everything is possible.
As I said before, passive income is not an overnight success. There’s, unfortunately, no magic wand to make it happen in a few days.
Myths About Passive Income Debunked
The concept around passive income like other concepts under the sun comes with a lot of myths.
Some gurus say A and others say A + B while other groups of gurus believe in B only.
Who to believe in?
I will debunk some myths around passive income from my personal experience.
Passive Income Is Easy To Earn
Too often, people focus on the word passive income.
But before income comes hard work. The greater the income you want to make passively, the bigger will be the challenge and commitment.
This makes no sense if you spend 10 minutes per day, building something and looking forward to reaping a passive income of $100k per month in the next few months.
As with my digital store, I worked very hard to set everything up for long months and it’s only now that I’m just relaxing and just let the cash roll in.
So, no passive income is not earned easily as some pretend.
You Don’t Have To Work At All
To some extent, the answer is yes but there you will always have a degree of involvement at a point in time.
Again, let’s take my store for example. The last time I uploaded something was in November 2019 but 5 months later, I’m still making money.
I don’t really have a workload for my digital store but I still have some microtasks to perform. For instance, I have to check if my site is still in line with Google algorithm changes, improve the speed of my site and other things to maintain my site healthy.
So, yeah you will still have some work to do.
You Need A Lot Of Money To Make Passive Income
False!
If you only want to make passive income with a blog, then I don’t think you will be needing a loan of $10,000 from the bank.
The things you will need to start a business that makes passive income is an idea, hard work and patience and a set amount of money.
And this is very dependent on the type of income stream you want to build, to reap passive income.
5 Best Passive Income Ideas For 2020
Ok, now comes the most interesting part: the best passive income ideas for 2020.
If you’re still here, this means you’re interested in making money online. So, click on this article in another tab and save it for later…You don’t wanna miss it.
How To Start An e-Commerce Store Without Any Investment
Ads Income On A Blog
Difficulty Level: Easy | Ads Income Potential: $500 – infinite | Main Requirements: Blog Traffic
The first time I heard about blogging was when I was in college and I also heard that these bloggers make money from their blog.
I didn’t understand this concept at all until a few years ago when I learned about making money with ads display on a blog.
So, yeah ads income is one of the easiest ways of making passive income these days.
Again, not because it’s the easiest means it won’t require work. Blogging is like any other business, requiring money (not much though) and hard work.
If you come across an article with this title: “Learn How To Make $10k With Your Blog In 10 Days”, JUST RUN!
That’s clearly impossible because to be able to monetize your blog with ads, you will need traffic. And a lot of traffic!
Basically, for you to be able to earn money with ads display, you should apply to ad networks like Google AdSense, Mediavine, AdThrive, MediaNet, Monumetric etc…
And each of them will require your blog to have a minimum amount of traffic for you to be eligible to send an application.
Mediavine is one of the best and high-paying ad networks. They are partners with Google and they also have their own portfolio of advertisers.
By far, they are the most strict ad network to get accepted to. For them, it’s not just a numbers game where the only requirement is the number of sessions you have as blog traffic.
But they will have a look at other essential factors that will play a role in both your revenue and theirs.
Making passive income with ads is simply an ad network company putting ads on your blog posts and you start earning money at every thousand views.
And this revenue at every thousand views is what we call an RPM (Revenue per Mille).
A high RPM is actually the most sought metric for bloggers because they can have an idea of their monthly income if they know their RPM.
So, basically, the higher the RPM, the higher the revenue.
Requirements:
- Blog – I guess you already know what a blog is. But if you haven’t started your blog yet, I encourage you to click on this full guide for beginners on how to start a blog.
- Quality Content – Ad network companies like Mediavine or AdThrive won’t accept your application if your content sucks.
- 80% US Blog Traffic – The majority of the ad networks will require that your blog traffic is high-quality traffic from the US.
- Minimum Monthly Sessions: To be eligible for ads display on a blog, you must have a minimum amount of monthly sessions.
How To Start A Blog That Makes Money (Definitive Guide 2020)
Affiliate Marketing
The second easiest way of making passive income is with affiliate marketing.
What is great about getting into affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to have any products or services of your own.
Affiliate Marketing is simply promoting a 3rd party’s products or services and each time is sale happens, you get a cut on the profit.
Your sole responsibility as an affiliate marketer is to get the products exposed so as to make the maximum of sales.
And there are many ways how you go about promoting your affiliate products.
If you have a blog, a personal website, a YouTube channel or social media account with a good following, then you’re good to go.
Remember that affiliate marketing is very dependant on the audience being served the product.
For instance, you cannot put an affiliate product, let’s say, a dog chain in front of an audience who loves cats. You won’t make any sales at all.
I know it’s a stupid example but yes it was just a stupid example to explain something stupidly simple LOL.
So, with that said, a good affiliate marketing strategy is, therefore, your key to success.
There are millions of companies offering affiliate opportunities. You just have to do your research and apply accordingly.
The biggest and most popular affiliate company to make passive income is no other than Amazon Associates. You can check their rules and guidelines here.
Requirements To Do Affiliate Marketing:
- Promotion Platform – It can be a blog, a website, a social media account, or a YouTube channel.
- Applications – You need to find the affiliate companies and send your applications. In some cases, it’s just a signup and you get your affiliate links but some take days or weeks to get approved.
- Traffic – Without traffic, no one will see your amazing affiliate products, let alone buy them.
Investing
Investments have been a well-sought option for those wanting to make passive income. Sure it requires an upfront investment but know that the returns are gonna be worth it.
For this to happen, you must ensure that you are investing your hard-earned money where you should. This way, you know you’ll be getting real rewards instead of peanuts.
There are multiple kinds of investments that you can consider such as dividend stocks, business investments, exchange-traded funds etc…
Dividend Stocks
Dividend stocks are shares that you buy in a company in exchange of returns, which are called dividends paid that company.
The way you earn passive income with dividend stocks is like this: let’s say you want to buy 500 shares and the share at par is $10. The money invested is, therefore, $5000.
Then the company agrees to pay you a return on $1 per share at the end of the year, you’ll get $500 as dividend paid at each end of year.
You can then gradually reinvest that return in more stocks, from the same company or another company if you want.
You may also want to invest in other things as well when you’ve started building a decent amount of money.
In fact, you are the one to decide what you want to do with your dividends.
It’s a great approach if you want to yield big passive income. It’s predictable and can be even more profitable as you can have more funds to reinvest.
As a result, you cash in much more money passively.
Exchange-Trade Stocks
An exchange-traded fund is an investment fund where you trade on stock exchanges.
The exchange-traded fund, also known as the ETF, holds stocks, bonds and other forms of assets.
ETF is an ideal form of investment for beginners because of its low cost and the IRS usually doesn’t tax these returns in the same way as business tax.
Basically, you pay much less tax. Consequently, you keep a bigger profit margin.
It’s also important to note that you must trade with authorized broker-dealers. They are recognized organizations that are engaged in trading securities.
So, make sure you’re trading legally with the best broker-dealers so as not to find yourself losing money.
There have been many cases where people have been trading with crappy ETFs and have never got their money credited.
Business Investments
Investing in other businesses is one of the best passive income ideas for 2020 because the amount of growing companies in the US alone is huge.
Getting an opportunity to invest in a business, be it a startup or well-established company can be super profitable.
Let’s say you want to help a small business kick-off, you inject whatever amount of money as capital.
This capital is used to fund their launch, purchase of various types of equipment, salaries to staff and so on.
Of course, you get to set an agreed interest rate and the capital you’ve invested in their business will be returned to you with a profit.
Sell Digital Products
With the increased use of technology in this era, digital products have become the backbone of almost every business.
98% of the most successful businesses in America make use of digital products and services. These digital items are what they call “life-savers”,
With this mind, you can think of a digital product that you can design and develop and put that in front of those needful businesses.
Digital products have the ability to enhance workflows, save time and cut production costs.
Let’s look back at my digital store!
My target audience is the graphic design community. My digital products are called mockups and they are used every day by graphic designers.
Mockups are very popular as they help enhance the presentation of design projects to clients.
Instead of just showing a client’s design on a white or black background, mockups are used to put their design in a real-life situation.
For instance, a graphic designer working on a coffee shop logo will use coffee cups mockups, a storefront signage mockup, an apron mockup, and stationery mockups to showcase the new logo of the client.
The digital niche is so vast and there are so many products you can choose from to create and sell.
Rental Services
Last but not least! I’m talking about rental last because it doesn’t really work to be done first and then you reap the passive income.
It’s pretty much instant reward!
I think that renting something you have is among the best passive income ideas for 2020.
If you need to make that extra money, rent something you have and you’re not using.
Nowadays, people are really about renting equipment that they won’t need in the long-term.
Let’s say you’re really out of cash and you have your car. Rent it for a few days or weeks or months.
Better, if you have a few thousand dollars in your bank account, invest that in a second-hand car and start renting it.
You can actually rent out many many things you can find in your house that are still in good condition.
Things to rent can include work equipment, cars, a space like an unoccupied room or garage.
Grab a piece of paper and walk around your house to find those things you can rent and make passive income.
Bottomline
Here you are with five of the best passive income ideas for 2020. Of course, there are other ways to make passive income from home but these are my top picks for you.
