Building passive income streams can be hard work. They usually take a significant amount of work and/or money to set up before they can really become a full-fledged passive income stream. It’s part of the argument over whether they really are “passive” or not. Obviously, as with anything, the more work or money you put into your passive income ideas the better the resulting passive income streams will be. But, when you’re first getting started, there are several ways you can set up some small passive income streams that will provide with different forms of passive income.
Here’s a few passive income ideas.
Blogging – As a blogger, myself, this one is one of the first ones I usually suggest. To be sure, it’s not for everyone, but it can set up a rather nice passive income stream. Blogging is work, but a well set up blog, with some content, could eventually be left alone to collect traffic, and Google adsense checks. The initial work is a bit heavier, but the maintenance while setting it up can be as little as a few hours a week.- Cash Back Cards – Some might argue that this isn’t really a passive income stream, but I think that it can be. Using a tax free cash back card to pay for bills/things that you would normally buy anyways makes the cash back an added bonus. The only added work is to immediately pay the balance for the things that you’ve bought, and the cash back becomes an extra stream of income that you earned by buying things you would have anyways. I have a coworker that does this and makes $500-$600 a year.
- Peer-to-peer lending – I’ve written before about my portfolio on LendingClub, and how, with very minimal maintenance, I’m slowly building a passive income stream that earns me money. As my portfolio grows, and I reinvest the interest, the interest income from the portfolio grows with it. Eventually, if I keep with it, I could have a compound interest passive income machine, built with less than $20 and 20 minutes a month.
Those are just a few quick and easy passive income ideas to build passive income streams. They don’t require a lot of work to get started and maintain, but they will provide for extra income that you can use to build them further, or to help beat broke.
photo credit: alancleaver_2000
I don’t count blogging as passive income. It’s too much work to count as passive income.
P2P lending sounds good though. I just opened an account and will start lending soon.
@retirebyforty I don’t know that I count active blogging as passive income either. But, either of us could stop adding new content to our site today and still get income from advertising and the occasional sponsored post. Then, it becomes passive blogging. I have another blog that is essentially that way.
Tobe perfectly honest I would not glorify blogging as source of income. It is really requires a lot of time and ideas. Competition is fierce and you need to have unique content.
But every little counts on your way to financial independence.
I agree completely with retirebyforty! My husband has a blog and I swear he spends so much time with that blog that I couldn’t see calling it passive income. I have heard a lot of good things about Peer to Peer lending.
@BB That’s nice to know. I always wonder what would happen if I stop adding content.
I have to start looking into P2P lending…what happens when they don’t pay back?
@Aaron Both Lending Club and Prosper have agreements with collection agencies so that they can send the loans to collections should they default.
I’m a passive income skeptic. I know it happens, but I’ll never be a professional athlete, singer, or actor either. I have some experience with inventing things. This too is risky, but from what I’ve seen, you can achieve passive income nirvana if you can license your invention or trademark to companies. For instance, “Moose Tracks” ice cream.
Thanks for this post. I haven’t as yet looked at peer to peer lending as any sort of income but I will definitely be looking into it now.
Gemma