Here are some business ideas that are scalable and get make you a lot of money. Some of these ideas are inherently passive. For the other ideas, you will need to look at hiring out some of this work to make it passive income.
Table of Contents
1. Blogging: WordPress
Blogging on WordPress is one of the tried and true ways to make money online. You will need to focus on creating content. Look at optimizing it for search engines and making it sharable on social media.
You can get ad revenue, affiliate marketing, and sell your own products and services.
Read: Blogging as a Side Hustle
2. Blogging: Medium
Medium is a type of blogging website. It pools a bunch of writers for its articles. They have a dedicated following of readers that pay to read as may articles as they want.
Look at getting your content curated. They have a Partner Program where Medium shares the revenue with their writers. Look at developing an email list from this traffic.
Read: Blogging Ideas That Make Money
3. Podcasts
Podcasts have been a growing industry. A lot more businesses are looking to advertise on this platform because of their reach. Look at going on guest podcasts and inviting guests on your podcasts.
The more listeners you have for your podcast, the more you will be able to leverage it for business opportunities.
Read: Best Podcast Platform: Which is the Best Platform For You?
4. YouTube
YouTube is a great way to build up an audience. You can look at becoming an influencer, focusing on revenue for advertising money, affiliate marketing, and selling your own products and services.
Look at focusing on searchable content in the beginning. As you get more views, you will be able to get subscribers for content they might be interested in.
Read: Ultimate Guide on Making Money on YouTube
5. Single Family Rentals
Single family rentals are one of the best ways to get passive income. If you focus on building a rental portfolio, you can do really well by picking up more property.
Your tenants will pay for your mortgage over the years and increase your equity. You will be able to write off depreciation and mortgage interest. You can look at cash flow and generating wealth from the appreciation.
Read: 39 Real Estate Related Niches You Can Build A Business Around
6. Multi-Family Rentals
Multi-family homes are a great way to get cash flow. You are generally able to pay less per unit, the more units you have. You can get a residential loan up for up to 4 units in a multi-family.
If your market has a lot of multi-families, you can look at house hacking. It’s a good way to live in one unit, while you rent out your other units.
Read: Owning Multiple Rental Properties and Being Financially Free
7. Apartments
Apartments are great to get into. If you have a large enough apartment, it will justify hiring an on-site manager. They will help with leasing the units and make sure units are serviced.
Read: 13 Real Estate Investing Strategies and The Best Strategy When You Are Starting Out
8. Syndication
Syndication is when people come together to purchase a commercial property. It happens a lot with large apartment complexes. Many times, they need multiple investors to purchase these properties.
You can look at starting a syndication or becoming a private investor. It’s typical to get a much larger interest rate for being a part of these projects.
Read: Is Read Estate Investing High Risk or Low Risk?
9. Single Family Residential – Owner Financing
If you buy dilapidated properties, you can look at owner financing properties. You can owner finance properties directly or fixing them up before you do owner financing.
10. Land Investing – Owner Financing
Land investing is a sub-niche within real estate. It’s a great way to build passive income. You can focus on owner financing. You are able to purchase land cheaply and get your money back with the down payment. You can then get a steady stream of money for years.
Read: Owner Financing 101
11. Private Land Money Investor
For some deals, people need cash to close on a property. A land investor can join in for a deal and help by providing funds. It can be a good way to generate passive income through owner financing deals or a chunk of money from a cash deal.
12. Land Cash Flips
Once you own land, you can look at selling land passively. You can hire someone to do the selling on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. Once you have the deal, get your paperwork and enjoy the profits.
Read: Land Investing: Land Flipping 101
13. Real Estate Notes
Real estate notes are a way to obtain property and passive income. You can look at buying performing and non-performing notes.
If you buy a performing note, you will money every month. If you have a non-performing note, you can work out a payment plan with the owner or foreclose on the property.
14. SEO Agency
Look at specializing as an SEO agency. There are different businesses that need their products and services marketed.
If you know how to optimize their websites through search engine, you can charge a premium amount of money.
Read: The Ultimate Guide: Build Multiple Streams of Income
15. Advertising Agency
An advertising agency is a great way to make money. You can focus on different products to sell to your clients. Look at services a specific niche.
The more you niche down, the more you will be able to target these people.
Read: The Goal: How to Get To $10,000 per month
16. SEM Agency
Search Engine Marketing is a good way to offer Google and Bing advertising services. If you can target the high traffic and and low competition keywords, you can make a lot of money.
Look at optimizing your marketing plan with a marketing funnel. A marketing funnel with help businesses to make a profit.
17. Social Media Agency
Social Media is a huge industry. You can focus on creating organic content and paid services. Some businesses want to increase engagement and a following of people.
Read: Facebook Advertising For Small Businesses
18. Coaching
Coaching is a great way to make money and build a brand. Look at developing an online course and a membership group.
When you get large enough, you can have your membership group monitor each other.
You can hire students that went through your program as additional coaches as a way to make things more passive.
19. Teachable – Online Course
Teachable is a platform to put your online course. You will be able to create your content in an organized way. People will be able to purchase your course through teachable.
Read: How to Develop An Online Course
20. Udemy Courses
Udemy courses are a great way to make passive income. Udemy generates their own traffic. So, if you don’t have traffic, you can let Udemy promote your course.
Look at producing a lot of different courses because Udemy will do discounts. It’s a numbers games. A lot of people will need to buy your courses to make it worthwhile. The more courses you have, the more you will be able to increase your passive income.
Read: How Online Courses are Better than Offline
21. Amazon FBA
Amazon FBA can be very passive when you set up your systems. You can source your products from another company. You can have another company package and ship your product. A warehouse can label everything and ship it to Amazon.
Amazon will do the heavy lifting of selling your product and shipping it to the client. They will handle refunds and everything else.
Read: 30 Ideas On How to Start A Small Business At Home
22. Airbnb
Airbnb can become a passive income stream once you set up your systems. You will need to find a cleaning service company.
Look at getting more rental properties by coming into sub-letting arrangements. Look at getting reviews and Airbnb will do the rest.
23. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing has been a great way to make a lot of money. People have been able to get passive income and financial freedom from this marketing strategy.
Affiliate marketing requires traffic. There are two ways to get traffic. You can look at paid or free traffic. In general, paid traffic can be a way to skyrocket into sales. Free traffic is a long term game. In order to make it passive, you need to create enough content to generate traffic.
Read: Affiliate Marketing Business Model: How To Set Up Your Systems
24. REITs
REITs are a more recent development for investors that wanted real estate investments, but not deal with any of the management.
Make sure you look at the terms of the REITs, the company purchasing and managing the real estate, and the terms.
25. Hard Money Lender
Hard money lenders have become very popular for real estate investors that have limited cash. These real estate investors spend time finding the deal. Usually these deals are houses that require a lot of work.
Many of these real estate investors look at rehabbing the home or wholesaling the real estate. When you partner with these investors, you can make a large amount of money from these loans. You will be able to charge points and a higher interest rate.
26. Dividend Income – Stocks
Stocks are a good way to build up passive money. In general, you will look at appreciation and dividends to make money.
Appreciation is when a company is growing. It’s also the way many business owners with stock in their company gain tremendous wealth.
Dividends are the way to make passive income. You make your stock purchase, and the company gives money to their stakeholders. A lot of times, investors will use the funds and reinvest it into more stock.
Read: How to Make Money with Stocks
27. Savings Accounts
Savings accounts are a good way to hold funds. Some saving accounts offer an interest rate. Some online savings accounts offer higher interest rates for saving your money with them. You can compare these accounts and build up passive income.
28. Roth IRA
Your Roth IRA is a type of retirement plan. These funds were already taxed, so you don’t have to pay taxes at the end. Many people look at buying mutual funds, index funds, and stocks. It’s possible to look at non-traditional investments as well.
29. Pension
If you plan on keeping a job, look at getting a job with a pension. A pension is guaranteed money coming to you when you retire.
30. E-books
E-books are a way to generate passive income or be a lead magnet for other opportunities.
Amazon Kindle has a library of e-books. They have an assortment of different genres. Amazon allows writers to sell their e-book and also join their Kindle Unlimited Network.
Kindle Unlimited is a way for readers to pay a monthly subscription to read as many e-books as they want. Writers will need to opt into this service and will get a portion of funds for the number of pages read by an unlimited subscriber.
31. Licensing Music
The goal is to license your music for profit. Whenever people listen to your music, you will get a bit of money for your rights. Your music can be played on Spotify, YouTube, and other platforms.
32. Mineral Rights
Some investors look at purchasing mineral rights. You can have rights to timber, metal, water, oil, and minerals. All of these rights can be given or licensed to a company for passive money.
33. Vending Machines
Vending machines are a good way to get passive income. If you have your machines in good locations, they will give you money over and over again. Look at hiring someone to replenish funds and pick up the cash to make things passive.
34. Software
Once you create software, you can sell it over and over again. Some software is conducive for recurring funds. You can get paid monthly for letting people use your software. Make sure to have someone maintenance your software and answering questions.
35. Billboards
Billboards are popular for local businesses. It’s a good way to get in front of their local audience and increase brand awareness. If you can purchase billboards or get rights to put up billboards, you can generate passive income from the local advertisers.
36. Real Estate Broker
A real estate broker can make money by developing a team of real estate professionals. They will get a cut for every real estate transaction. These transactions can be tens of thousands of dollars.
Some real estate broker have looked at charging a monthly fee to for agent to hang their license.
37. Buying an Existing Business
Some businesses are for sale. If you are able to find a healthy business, you can look at buying the business with a loan. Follow and improve the systems provided to you to create passive income.
38. Stock Photos
If you are a photographer, you should look at generating stock photos. People will use your photos for their company products, services, and content.
Stock photos are listed by a company. They will usually charge by the photo or through a subscription. The more people download your photo, the more you will be able to get a cut of the revenue.
39. Leasing Equipment
Some businesses have done really well by leasing equipment. You can look at purchasing construction equipment and vehicles for renting. Look at seeing if their is a market for your equipment and the financial cost to purchase or manufacture your equipment.
40. Email Marketing
Email marketing is used by a lot of companies. Some digital marketer have made their business solely from email marketing.
You can look at selling and purchasing solo ads. A popular website is Udimi. People on the platform will sell the opportunity to send an email through their email traffic.
Look at sending automatic and mass emails to your email list. A portion of people will look purchasing product and services through you.
Read: How to send mass emails
41. Instagram Influencer
Instagram influencers are able to encourage people to buy a certain product or service. You can get sponsorships and get into affiliate marketing.
Read: How To Sell More On Instagram
42. TikTok Influencer
TikTok is a new social media platform. If you like creating little video content, it’s a good way to build up a following. People will follow people for more content. It’s a good way to get sponsorships and offer different product and service.
43. Influencer Marketing Agency
If you are an influencer, consider creating an influencer marketing agency. Look at connecting influencers and businesses. You can charge a fee for giving them access to these influencers.
44. Developing an Affiliate Marketing Program
A lot of marketing funnel have an affiliate marketing program. You can look at ClickFunnels, Kartra, and Teachable. These are different platforms that will allow you to create an affiliate marketing program.
You can reach out to bloggers, influencers, YouTuber, and podcasters. You can offer a commission for every product or service they help sell. It’s a good way to get free organic traffic.
45. Develop Distribution Channels
Distribution channels are important for wholesalers. If you can get get a network of different businesses, you can connect with manufacturers to sell their product.
This can be in the food, clothing, home, and other industries. Look at connecting with local stores and building a platform for people.
46. Manufacturing – 3D Printing
Industrial 3D printing is becoming more popular. You can create anything if you have the material.
Look at working with e-commerce businesses and stores. You can look at selling different physical products online and at physical locations.
47. Listing Websites
Look at creating a listing website. These websites will charge companies for putting up their business and products. Depending on the niche, you can charge a little bit or hundreds of dollars.
48. Lead Development Website
If you can create website that generates leads, look at offering these leads to local businesses. Focus on a specific niche. Look at connecting these leads to local businesses.
49. Franchising Your Business
Look at making your business profitable. Once you have your business and systems, you can look into franchising. You can get money by helping other potential business owners. They will pay you for the connections, brand, and systems.
50. Storage Rentals
Storage rentals are a great way to make passive income. You will need to develop or purchase an existing storage rental. Once you have your storage, you will be able to sell your space by the month.
If you have a way for people to pay and get into their storage, this can become very passive.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best passive income model?
It depends on what best means to you. If you mean minimum time investment, look at investing. If you mean potential income, look into real estate and business.
How much money do I need to build up a passive income stream?
Publishing on YouTube, a blog, podcast, or social media can be free or a very limited amount of capital investment. Other businesses may require ample funds to get going.
How much time would I need to invest to generate passive income?
If you look at investing, it can be very quick. If you have a business, it will take a sizeable amount of time and money to make things totally passive.
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