Passive income is the holy grail of personal finance. Who wouldn’t want to earn money with little ongoing work? The truth is, while passive income takes effort to set up initially, it can provide a steady stream of cashflow with minimal maintenance once up and running.
In this blog post article, I’ll share my 7 favorite passive income ideas that have the potential to earn me over $700 per day. Many require an upfront investment of time, effort or money to launch, but all can run smoothly on autopilot once established. Read on to discover valuable income streams you can build!
Passive Income Idea #1: Investing in Dividend Stocks and ETFs
One of my favorite passive income sources is building an investment portfolio focused on dividend stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The idea is simple – I invest in companies and funds that regularly pay out dividends. By reinvesting these dividends, my portfolio grows exponentially thanks to the power of compound interest.
I’ve invested around $100,000 over time and now earn approximately $150 in dividends per day across my holdings. That’s over $50,000 per year in passive dividend income! While the initial capital required is higher, the largely hands-off maintenance makes this well worth the effort.
Key benefit: Relatively low maintenance once your portfolio is set up. Compounding growth over decades.
Passive Income Idea #2: High-Yield Savings Accounts
Another simple passive income idea is to open high-yield savings accounts. The idea is to take advantage of promotional interest rates as banks compete for new customers. Over time, I’ve opened half a dozen online savings accounts offering upwards of 2% to 6% APY interest.
Across these accounts, I maintain balances totaling around $200,000 in working capital for other investments and expenses. This earns me approximately $100 per day in interest across the accounts. And while interest rates fluctuate, the effort involved is almost nil – a truly passive income stream!
Key benefit: Extremely low maintenance. FDIC insured for safety. Easy to open new accounts occasionally.
Passive Income Idea #3: Peer-to-Peer Lending
Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms like Lending Club allow individuals to provide personal loans with attractive interest rates. I’ve invested around $40,000 in fractional loan notes, spread across 800+ borrowers to mitigate risk via diversification.
I earn approximately $75 daily in interest across my P2P account. And besides reinvesting repayments and occasionally screening new loans, there are no ongoing maintenance responsibilities – the definition of passive income!
Key benefit: Hands-off investment in consumer credit. Website handles loan servicing and collections.
Passive Income Idea #4: High-Yield Online Checking & Savings Accounts
This passive income idea is similar to the one above but takes more active effort for vastly higher reward. There is a class of financial technology apps that offer promotional interest rates, up to 4% to 6% APY, on savings and checking accounts if certain activity criteria are met each month.
I’ve opened accounts at apps like Current, Porte, and One Finance. By shuffling funds monthly between these accounts and making a few debit card transactions, I can qualify for their high-yield rewards rates, earning roughly $100 per day across the three apps.
The additional effort makes this more active than purely passive but can be worthwhile if you have time to responsibly manage the accounts.
Key benefit: Higher return than traditional savings or checking accounts. Drawback is modestly more effort.
Passive Income Idea #5: Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an online income stream with truly passive earning potential. The idea is simple – you advertise goods, services or offers on websites, social media, or online content. If visitors click your links and make purchases, you earn an affiliate commission, typically 5% to 30% of sales.
I focus my affiliate marketing mainly on financial services (bank account bonuses and credit card rewards offers for example), as well as physical products related to my personal finance blogging niche. By promoting offers organically on my sites, social accounts and reputable deal forums, I earn affiliate commissions from several thousand dollars per month up to $100 per day.
And after the links and creative are setup, affiliate income runs entirely passively in the background!
Key benefit: Completely passive after initial promotion of your links. No need to service orders or deliver products.
Passive Income Idea #6: Display Advertising
If you have a high traffic website or YouTube channel, display advertising including Google AdSense offers another largely passive earnings stream. Display ads require very little maintenance beyond embedding ad units on your site pages. I still earn over $50 per day from a personal finance blog I discontinued updating years ago!
Ad earnings definitely trail off without new content. But even still, advertising represents fairly passive money that requires nothing from me at this point beyond occasionally checking in. Sites with sufficient traffic, 10,000+ pageviews per day, can earn $500+ passively according to industry benchmarks.
Key benefit: Extremely passive but requires significant traffic to monetize well.
Passive Income Idea #7: Selling Digital Products
Creating digital products like ebooks, courses, audio files, graphics and more can lead to a sizable passive income stream. The goal is to invest time and effort upfront, creating products once. When customers purchase these products, you earn passively without any additional hours invested.
I have created several investing and personal finance courses and guides over the years. Today these earn me around $25 per day with just occasional customer service queries to handle. Like display ads, income from digital products can trail off without new releases. But existing titles continue driving largely passive, perpetual sales month after month.
Key benefit: Big time investment to create quality products upfront, but earns passively for years thereafter.
Conclusion
Adding even one stream of passive income can transform your finances over the long run. Implementing several together has the potential to generate $700 or more in daily passive earnings over time.
Certain ideas like dividend investing may require big, upfront capital while other concepts like display ads depend on existing website traffic and influence. Not every approach will be right for your unique skills and interests. But options exist at most budget and skill levels.
The key is taking that critical first step, choosing one passive income stream that appeals, and pouring your initial effort into launching it successfully. Let the concept grow roots, compound and gain momentum before branching out to implement additional ideas. Don’t give up easily as many passive income sources take months to start producing. But once flourishing, earnings can flow automatically while you gain financial freedom.