I have been researching and trying the most efficient and profitable passive income ideas for many years. With this post, I share five very profitable passive income streams you can start with zero investment.

About Passive Income

For me, passive income is about leaving the life I want to live. It is about freedom — not only financially but also time-wise. Now, you don’t have to wait until you retire to live the life such a life. On the contrary, you can start building that life now. We live in a world with endless passive income ideas that allow you to earn money without putting in much effort (once they are established).

But careful, there’s one thing you must know: Almost every passive income stream requires an initial effort. Moreover, this initial effort can be pretty high. So, you have to put in the work. You have to hustle hard to create the life that you want.

A quick definition of passive income

When you search the web for “passive income,” you find hundreds of ideas and how-tos. However, many posts have nothing to do with passive income: They simply describe online income sources. For example, offering consulting services on Fiverr isn’t passive income — it’s merely a side hustle or freelance job.

Passive income is about creating income without actively putting time in. It allows you to sit back and relax as revenue keeps coming in — at least kind of.

As mentioned, passive income still requires a lot of work. However, usually, you put in the work upfront and enjoy steady income streams for a long time. The best example (although we won’t talk about this in this post) is an app. Creating an app requires lots of work. However, once it is submitted to the app store and people start buying it, you can enjoy the earnings without putting in additional effort.

But no worries, you don’t have to become a programming guru to earn passive income. The strategies I’ve listed on this blog are much easier and require no investment or specific knowledge.

So let’s get into it!

Passive Income Idea #1 — Start a Blog

Starting a blog is probably the easiest way to earn passive income. You can begin that immediately — even without setting up your blog.

Websites such as medium.com allow anyone to create blog posts on their site, so if you have ideas, you can start creating posts straight away and making them public. Moreover, once you have 100 followers on Medium, you can start earning money on Medium.

When I started on Medium, it took just ten days to gain 100 followers. On top of that, after ~20 days, I had more than 20,000 story views.

5 Passive Income Ideas You Can Start With Zero Investment

From a monetization point of view, I made more than $170 within my first 20 days on Medium. Since I needed ten days to reach 100 followers, I made $17 each day since I’ve been getting paid. Even if I stayed at that level, I could earn around $500 monthly.

As you can see, there’s no initial investment, you don’t need to set up a blog, and no technical know-how is required. Just sit down, begin writing — that’s all.

Passive Income Idea #2 — Create a Course

This is another straightforward way to create passive income online. Online courses are some kind of digital product. So, your first thought might be, “what could I teach in an online course?”

However, the truth is everyone has certain skills he/she can talk about: programming, painting, cooking, writing, sports, etc.

I am a total crypto enthusiast. Nevertheless, many people know much more about cryptos than I do. But that’s not the question because millions know less.

So I created a course that teaches the basics: How to use Binance, how to make your first trade, how to withdraw money, etc. Nothing special. Nonetheless, the course gave answers many people have in mind when starting with cryptos.

And remember your course can cover anything:

Sports
Business
Personal Finance
Fitness
Cooking

Movies
Music
Photography
Writing

Of course, creating your course requires time and effort. That’s nothing you can do in one day. My first course took me almost one month to complete. But again, that’s the idea — put in a huge effort initially and enjoy the earnings for a long time.

Passive Income Idea #3 — Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a powerful tool when it comes to passive income. Actually, I’m creating a considerable portion of my passive income with affiliate marketing today. However, I’ve always considered affiliate marketing an add-on to my other tools.

I don’t think it makes sense to spam people with your affiliate links. That’s not what affiliate marketing is about. On the contrary, I try to add value with affiliate marketing.

For example, when I write a post about bot trading, I add affiliate links to the common trading platforms. Thereby, it is seamless for the reader to look at it.

Therefore, affiliate marketing is a great way to create additional income streams when you have a platform that generates traffic, such as a blog, YouTube channel, etc.

Passive Income Idea #4 — Dropshipping

In fact, this is an income stream I’ve never tried. However, I still wanted to add it to the list. When you do dropshipping, you act as a middleman between a manufacturer or wholesaler and a retailer. Accordingly, you direct that sale to the manufacturer to fulfill the order when someone buys a product. So what’s in for you? Well, you take a cut of the profit as you have acted as a free marketer.

What’s needed?

First of all, you have to select a product. That can be literally everything: Hair brush, lemon tea, bicycles, or whatever comes into your mind. As the second step, you need to set up a webshop for your product. Again, Shopify might be a good solution here. Shopify provides store templates and many add-ons, helping to make your setup a breeze.

And as a final step, you need to promote your product and drive traffic to your shop. Therefore, social networks are very helpful.

I consider dropshipping rather complex compared to the other passive income streams in this post. Primarily because of town things: Creating awareness for your product can be quite challenging and probably not solvable without spending money on ads. Secondly, the competition can be pretty high. However, many people make juicy profits with it.

Passive Income Idea #5 — YouTube

Finally, YouTube. We all know the stories of people earning a fortune with YouTube. However, you must be aware that YouTube also requires much upfront work. You have to constantly post videos for several months (at least usually) before you are eligible to monetize your videos with YouTube’s partner program.

Therefore, don’t expect to crush it on YouTube within a couple of weeks

5 Passive Income Ideas You Can Start With Zero Investment