Passive income ideas 2022

20min read

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With passive income, you put in the work up front so that you have an income stream set up that keeps generating money for you down the road. In this article, we are going to offer you ideas for passive income streams for 2022.

We will also try all of these passive income streams out and compile the results into an ebook - but we will publish all of our findings first here, in our blog, so make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest updates.

We divide passive income in two categories: Full passive and half passive. The full passive kind, once set up, requires no maintenance anymore afterwards, whereas with half passive income, there will still be some work involved after the initial investment of time and/or money. That said, you can set most of the half passive income streams on autopilot by hiring someone to do the work for you.

Most of the passive income streams require very little money to start, but they all require a certain amount of work (ranging from medium to intense) to set in place and they all take some time until they start generating income for you.

Full Passive:

• Stock media (Selling Photos, Videos, Music, Graphics, Illustrations, Templates online)

• Sell Photo Prints and more (Sell goods online)

• Affiliate Marketing (online)

• Low Content Books (Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing - KDP)

• Crypto Mining/Network Storage Provider

• Investing (Dividend Stocks, ETF, Crowd funded real estate )

• Online Course

Half Passive:

• Rent out your car

• Rent out your property or a room

• YouTube channel

• Blog

Full passive

Stock media (Photos, Videos, Music, Graphics, Illustrations, Templates)

Requirements: A computer and internet connection, a smartphone, solid computer knowledge, some skills in photography, design, video, music an advantage

Selling stock inventory online is fairly simple. If you already have a certain amount of digital products ready to upload, then all you need is an account on one of the many online platforms (some require an approval process) where you can upload your work so that it can be purchased by others. Before you start signing up for a platform, make sure to check their requirements. Some are quite strict about the quality of the work they accept and they all have different payout models.

The amount of money you can make with stock inventory depends on your skill level, the niche you pick and on your “readiness” for adaptation (how quick you can react to upcoming trends). For example, at the beginning of the pandemic where limited stock products existed about the subject, those who could quickly come up with related material certainly had an advantage.

Some popular platforms for stock inventory: Dreamstime, Shutterstock, iStockphoto, Adobe Stock, Yay Images, Picfair, Alamy, Snugmug

(+) Pros:

• Full passive, once you have uploaded a certain amount of stock products, it requires next to no maintenance while generating income for you

• Fairly easy to start since there are no big investments needed

(-) Cons:

• Might take a while until you see your first paycheck since most platforms only pay out after you reach a certain amount

• Hard to find a niche, especially with stock photos, since the saturation is quite high

• Solid computer skills required or a willingness to learn them

Sell photo prints and more

Instead of selling digital copies of your photos you can sell prints. This involves a little more work than stock photos, since you need a web shop or a platform to present and sell them and a way to print and deliver the prints to your customers. Platforms who provide those services for you include:
https://www.etsy.com/ca/sell
https://fineartamerica.com/sell-art-online
http://www.imagekind.com/sell/art-photography.aspx
https://www.cafepress.ca/cp/shopkeepers/index.aspx?page=make-money
https://www.redbubble.com/about/selling
https://www.zazzle.com/sell
https://society6.com/sell-art
https://teespring.com/

Most of the websites above do not just offer photos, but a whole range of items you can sell with your own designs on it, from mugs, to pillow cases, benches, wrapping paper, stickers, laptop sleeves, water bottles, smartphone cases…you name it. Since they provide some services for you, from hosting your products, attracting thousands of customers daily to their platform, to shipping your products, they also want a piece of the pie, which is only fair. Just make sure to check the platforms out before you sign up.

The only way you can avoid splitting the profits is by setting up your own web shop. This means you also have to do the required marketing so that customers find your products. In today’s day and age, with web hosts like Squarespace, or Shopify where you can set up a web shop without any programming knowledge, it is not that hard to do.

However, setting up your own web shop will take some time and patience. You will need quality photos or illustrations to print and photos or videos of your final products for the web shop and for advertising purposes. And, last but not least, you will require a strategy to attract customers to your web shop.

(+) Pros

• Full passive income once you have photos and/or some designs and the shop is setup

• Minimal fees if you build your own web shop but can be time consuming to build

• No marketing necessary if you go with a popular platform

(-) Cons

• Hard to find a niche or get top rankings on a big platform (a lot of competition)

• Transaction and/or service fees may apply

Affiliate Marketing

Requirements: A computer with an internet connection, an audience either from your own YouTube channel, blog or mailing list and good computer knowledge.

Most companies these days who offer products or services have affiliate programs, which means that you can promote their services/products on your own platform (via a website, blog, YouTube channel, mailing list…) and if someone purchases something through your unique link, you will receive a commission. After you apply to an affiliate program and are approved, you receive a link to the products/services on the company’s website that contains information in it so the company knows the customer was referred to them by you (there is no additional cost to your customer for purchasing through an affiliate link). All you need to do is to put the link on your media (blog post, YouTube video description, newsletter…) so that your customers can click on it.

Make sure you check the terms and conditions of any affiliate program before you apply.

(+) Pros

• Full passive - once set up it can generate income for you.

• Does not require a lot of work to set up

(-) Cons

• Requires you to have (or build) an audience on a digital channel (YouTube, blog…)
  
  

Low content books (Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing)

Requirements: Computer with an internet connection, good computer knowledge and some design skills are an advantage.

With Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) you can produce low content books and sell them on Amazon. It is not a time consuming process (only the pre-publishing part may take some time) and you can publish any book with Amazon KDP. With low content books you skip the planning, research and writing components and focus solely on the design aspect. You can start with a blank or lined journal where you just design a nice cover and then work your way up to other products such as visitor guest books for Airbnbs and homeschool planners.

(+) Pros

• Free (No fees to sign up or print costs)

• Up to 70% royalty for every book sold

• Lifelong passive income stream

(-) Cons

• High saturation (a lot of competition)

• Hard to find a niche

Crypto mining/Network Storage provider

Requirements: At least $500 to buy a crypto miner (professional mining rigs cost $5000+), at least $500 to rent the mining equipment from a cloud mining company or the time and money to build a mining rig yourself.

Mining crypto currencies is one of the most popular passive income streams these days. There are tons of crypto currencies out there. For mining most crypto coins you need to buy (or build) a computer with as much processing power as possible, connect it to the internet so it can be the first to solve a very complicated math problem and if it does you get rewarded with crypto coins. The competition is fierce in this business and chances of winning the race are getting slimmer every day. That’s why there are so called ‘mining pools’ where a lot of individuals put their computing power together to increase their chances against the big commercial mining companies.

There are also other ways of mining crypto currencies that require less computing power. You can find an article on our blog on ways to mine crypto without heavy machinery - mine crypto from your livingroom. Another way to mine crypto are so called network storage providers, where you basically rent out your computer data storage. One of those providers we introduce here in our blog and we are working on an article with a complete overview of available network storage providers, so make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get notified as soon as it’s published.

If you don’t want to buy and set up your own mining hardware, you can rent mining equipment in the cloud. You can start with as little as $500 to participate in a cloud mining company and make between 80-100$ per month. With an investment of $5000, you can expect between $700-900 per month. Some popular cloud mining platforms are: Shamining and Gminers.

(+) Pros:

• Once you have a mining rig up and running or a cloud mining contract, it generates income for you

• Very little to no maintenance necessary

• Potential for income is technically unlimited

(-) Cons:

• High up front investment; professional mining rigs are very expensive ($5000 and up)

• Many mining rigs are very loud (75db or more), and generate a lot of heat

• Power consumption of mining rigs can be very high

• Most crypto currency prices are not very stable (yet) and their price can fluctuate dramatically

• Solid computer skills and basic knowledge of blockchain is required for most mining rigs and especially if you plan to build a mining rig yourself.

Investing (index funds, dividend stocks, crowd funded real estate)

Requirements: Bank account, smartphone and some savings - the more the better.

If you have some savings or you are willing and able to put some money aside every month, investing is one of the easiest ways to generate passive income. These days, all you need is an app on your smartphone and a bank account and you can start investing. For example with an ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund) you can invest your money and then sit back, relax and watch it grow.

The S&P 500 ETF, for example, tracks the S&P 500 index. This index contains the 500 leading companies in the U.S. The performance over the last year was almost 28.5%. So, if you had invested 500 CAD in the S&P 500 ETF you would have made $145 CAD in one year.

Another way of investing in the stock market long term are high yield dividend stocks. Here, you buy the stocks of a company and in return for holding onto them, you get an annual payment (dividend). Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, 3M, Pfizer are examples of solid, above average yield dividend stocks paying between $2 and $6 per share. For example with 100 shares from Johnson & Johnson you would have made $424 in 2021 in dividends.

Crowd funded real estate like Nexuscrowd, Addy Invest, Fundscraper, Crowdstreet or Fundrise is yet another way for generating passive income. Here, you can become a part owner of a piece of real estate for as little as $1 and then split the returns with the other owners. Check out this article for the best real estate crowdfunding sites: https://www.investopedia.com/best-real-estate-crowdfunding-sites-5070790

(+) Pros:

• Once invested it keeps making money for you

• The money invested does not lose its value like it would on a savings account due to inflation (Avg 2 % every year)

(-) Cons:

• High investment necessary

• Money is bound for a longer timeframe (ideal for a retirement savings strategy)

Online Course

Requirements: Computer and internet connection, solid computer knowledge, some video recording and editing skills are an advantage.

Online learning is a booming business. More and more people use platforms like Udemy, Skillshare, WizIQ or Teachable to improve and build upon their current skill set. If you have a special skill or unique teaching style you can set up and publish a course on one of the online platforms. Of course, there is some work involved before you can put your feet up and watch the money roll in - from developing a course idea, to planning and recording the content. Once done, however, the publishing, marketing and invoicing parts are done by the online platform.

(+) Pros:

• Online platforms available to easy publish a course

• Generates passive income once set up and requires very little to no maintenance, depending on the topic

(-) Cons:

• Needs planning and a good outline (easy to follow steps)

• Not so easy to find a niche since there are already a lot of courses available

Half Passive

Rent your car on a peer to peer platform

Requirements: A car and a smartphone.

In North America there are currently six peer to peer platforms where you can list your car for others to rent: Eligocars, Getaround, Turo, HyreCar, RideAlike and Rent your Ride.

However, the only one out of these six with an extensive network in Canada, the U.S. and Europe is Turo. The principle of each platform is the same: you download the app, apply as host, upload photos of your car and then people can rent your car on an hourly or daily basis. Each of the six companies has a slightly different business model - we will cover these shortly in a separate article, so stay tuned and subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest updates.

(+) Pros:

• Easy to participate, no sign up fees

• Can produce income quickly

• Reduces the amount of time your car might otherwise sit idle

(-) Cons:

• Requires a fair amount of work to manage bookings as well as clean, maintain, service and repair the vehicle

• Difficult to plan since bookings can come in any time

• Seasonal fluctuations

Rent out a room or house on an peer to peer platform

Requirements: A property or room to rent out and a smartphone

There are a bunch of platforms out there were you can list your property or spare room for rent like Airbnb, Tripadvisor, Booking.com, Vrbo. All you need to do is to sign up and upload some photos of the available house or room to have it listed to potential renters worldwide.

(+) Pros:

• The platform does the marketing for you

• Free to sign up

• Easy to set up; all you need is a smartphone (and a property)

(-) Cons:

• You need a spare room or house to rent out

• Seasonal fluctuations

• Cleaning/housekeeping

• Dealing with damages/repairs can be time consuming
  
  
  
  
  

YouTube channel

Requirements: Computer with internet connection for editing videos, a smartphone for recording, skills in video editing or a willingness to learn it (or hire someone).

A popular way for half passive income is a YouTube channel. Once you have found a niche and have the skills for recording and editing your videos (or can hire someone to do it for you), it can run almost on autopilot. The reason we put it in the half passive section is because most YouTube channels require regular contributions to grow the subscriber base (audience).

Of course there are some topics you can cover that produce income over a longer period of time without the need for new content every couple of days (for example fitness workout videos), but the majority of topics demand new episodes on a consistent basis. If the topic you cover finds a big enough audience, it can quickly produce a lot of income. Moreover, once you have an audience you can increase the earnings through affiliate marketing. Sponsoring of episodes, a merchandise store (T-shirts, hoodies, mugs…) or Patreon memberships are other popular ways to generate greater income.

(+) Pros:

• Can produce income over a longer period of time

• You can produce the videos ahead of time and schedule their release

• No limit for income

(-) Cons:

• Some knowledge and skills in video editing required (or can hire someone)

• Highly saturated; difficult to find a niche

Blog

Requirements: Computer with internet connection, like to write and do research (or hire someone).

With a blog you can use your creative writing, your planning and research skills to create passive income. To set up a blog you can use one of the many platforms like Squarespace, Wix or Wordpress. It requires no programming skills and can be set up in a couple of hours. You need, however, content - and the better the quality (valuable content) the more visitors. To build and grow your audience, you need to publish new content on a regular basis.

To make money with your blog, you can put advertisements in your blog posts (Media.net, Mediavine, AdThrive, Monumetric, Google Adsense, ), affiliate marketing links, publish sponsored content, sell merchandise, publish paid reviews, sell digital products (ebooks, online courses, workshops) and/or offer members only content.

(+ )Pros:

• Can produce income over a longer period of time

• No programming skills required

• You can write the blog posts whenever it suits you and schedule their release

• No limit for income

(-) Cons:

• Highly saturated; difficult to find a niche

• Passion for writing, planning, research required

We hope you have found some inspiration in this article. If so, consider subscribing to our newsletter to get the latest updates and notifications regarding upcoming articles. We are releasing new articles on personal finance every week.

If you have a specific topic that you would like us to cover, leave us a comment below or send us a message in the contact section. Thanks.