The Coronavirus pandemic has made the importance of passive income ideas crystal clear. I mean, it’s surprising that no sooner does a calamity strike than people start worrying about how they are going to survive. Fortunately, I am not one of these people. And I am going to share my survival tips with you today. Hi, my name is Francisco, and I am the owner of Planet Marketing, a Digital Marketing platform. My company specializes in Google Ads, Facebook Ads and Remarketing. Here is the thing; I last worked for somebody else over 10 years ago! And I am not worried about the lock-down. Why ? Well, because I have embraced the idea of passive income. Anyway, in this article, I am going to;
What is Passive Income?
We all go to work right? Well, at least most people in the world go to work, where they spend their days slaving to enrich other people. Okay, so maybe I exaggerate, but not by much. The whole point of going to work is to make other people rich. People work from dawn to dusk doing things that they mostly do not want to do. Some even work 2 jobs a day in a bid to make ends meet. It’s all very depressing. So, what is passive income?
Passive income, simply put, is the thing that liberates you. Instead of working for other people, you essentially set up a nice niche for yourself that gives you regular income without you having to put in regular work. Done right, passive income can actually become a main source of income. Believe me, I know what I am talking about here?
Why? Well, because my company, Planet Marketing, has build up a lot of passive income streams over the years. Today, I don’t even need to work to make a living. I can sit on my bottom for the rest of my life and I will still be getting more than enough every month to get by. But how did I do it? The answer is passive income.
Best Passive Income ideas 2021
I need to mention here that passive income does not necessarily mean you will be quitting your job. In fact, most people build up their passive income while remaining at their jobs. The following are some of the best passive income ideas that you can use for the year 2020 to help you get by in these troubled times;
Create a Blog
Most of the best passive income ideas for the year 2020 that you will find out there begin with the creation of your own blog. You can read about the difference between a blog and a website here. Contrary to what you may think, coming up with your own kickass blog is not that difficult. It takes a little time, but the reward is great at the end of the day. And if you would rather have a ready-made canvas, get in touch with us and we will be very happy to create and launch your site for you. From there, you can start painting it with your own content. So, why is a blog important and how can it be monetized?
Why creating your own site is important
In the digital age, having your own platform is usually the first step when it comes to generating passive income. A blog is a place where you can build and engage your audience. These are the people to whom you will be able to sell whatever it is that you will be selling.
Promoting your site
Once you have created your own site, and once you have build up an audience for it, you can begin thinking about monetizing it. Let me tell you, this is not the task of a single day. In most instances, it can take more than a year before you have big enough an audience to make it all worthwhile. You just need to be patient. Most people make the mistake of building their sites today and thinking they are going to start rolling in passive income tomorrow. That will not happen! Fact is, there are billions of web pages out there, many of which are competing for the same audiences.
There are many ways through which you can promote your site to give it the boost that it needs. You can promote your site via social media, as an example. You can also promote your site on social media, as an example. You can also do Search Engine Optimization to make your site more appealing to search engines. Now, SEO is a topic for another day. Needless to say that it is also not the task of a single day. It can take up to a year for SEO tasks that are taken today to begin to bear fruit! But the reward, at the end of the day, is worth it, because you won’t need to pay for traffic to your site.
Monetizing your site
There are a number of ways through which you can monetize your site. Some of these steps will be explained in detail later as part of the passive income ideas for the year 2020. You can monetize your blog in the following ways;
- Through affiliate marketing
- Using Google AdSense
- Through direct advertising
- Via Amazon Associates
- Through Dropshipping
- Using sponsored posts
- By selling goods directly on the site
Get Passive Income through Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the ways through which to monetize your site. It is also another way through which you can generate passive income in the year 2020. Affiliate Marketing does not take too much explaining. I have already covered the story on extensively on this blog. Feel free to refer to one of my articles for more. All that I can say here is that affiliate marketing is not that different from the type of marketing that used to happen way back, when people would go around totting samples around the neighborhood.
Today’s marketing mostly take place on the internet. With affiliate marketing, you are essentially acting as a salesman for other people. You use various internet based tools and your connections to peddle various goods and services. One of the tools that you can use to do marketing using affiliate marketing is your blog. That’s why we mentioned that blogging is the first step when it comes to passive income ideas for the year 2020. Once your site has a big enough relevant audience, you can begin pushing various goods and services to them.
How does affiliate marketing work?
The following is a summary of how affiliate marketing works;
- You create your marketing channel, such as a website/blog or a social media following.
- From there, you join affiliate networks such as CJ Affiliates. Here, you will be able to find relevant goods that you can sell using your channels. You can also join affiliate programs that are run directly by a company. As an example, InterServer, a company that does web hosting, can be found on CJ Affiliates and also runs its own affiliate marketing programs in-house.
- Upon joining, you get an affiliate link that you include in your content. The goal is to make people buy the products for which you are an affiliate using your link.
- You then get paid for the references that you make. So, it’s important for you to have a big audience. Otherwise you will not be able to reach the kind of numbers needed to effectively build passive income for the year 2020.
How we do Affiliate Marketing
This blog, planetmarketing.com, monetizes partly via affiliate marketing. So you can be sure that we know what we are talking about here. We are affiliates of tens of companies, including Shopper Approved, which does online reviews. What we do is promote products for these companies. When we make sales, we get a commission. Some of these commissions are once off, while for others, such as Shopper Approved, we get paid recurring amounts for as long as the persons that we referred continue to be customers. We have so far referred over 300 businesses to Shopper Approved. What this means is that we get thousands per month in income. So, we are getting passive income and we will continue getting it well into the future.
Amazon Associates
Amazon Associates is another great passive income idea for the year 2020. Amazon Associates is similar to affiliate marketing. The only difference is that you will be selling products that are sold through the Amazon store. Again, you need to have a channel, such as a website, to make it work through Amazon Associates. The following is how to get started;
- You join the Amazon Associates program.
- You start promoting the products that are on Amazon.
- When people buy via your links, you get a certain percentage as commission. The commission varies from product to product, but can be as much as 10%.
- If people that you have directed to Amazon buy other products within one day, you also get a commission. So, the commission is not limited to the referring product.
How is Amazon Associates a passive income idea?
Amazon Associates, just like affiliate marketing, allows you to build up your stream and from there, you can begin enjoying the results. Once you have created your site and put up popular and relevant content, you don’t need to do much more to start earning money. There are people out there who earn thousands per month on sites that they haven’t updated in years.
Find you own niche
This is a tip that’s applicable, not only to Amazon Associates, but to internet marketing as a whole. The whole trick lies in finding your own niche and focusing almost exclusively on that. As an example, I have read of a guy who makes thousands of dollars off a site that has 4 pages talking about pet chameleons! He hasn’t added anything to this site in ages. However, it still makes him money because he was able to corner his own particular niche. Not many people have talked about having chameleons as pets and he gets pretty much on number 1 on Google. The result is that he is able to direct people to Amazon products relating to pet chameleons. This includes food for pet chameleons that is sold on the site.
Create a course
Course are another great passive income idea for the year 2020. Like most of the ideas that we are talking about here, courses depend on you having a vibrant website. The thing that you need to know is that your site needs to be relevant. Using the example that we gave at the top, you can create a course on your site about how to take care of pet chameleons. It then becomes a source of passive income because once you have put it up, you will continue to make money from that course for a long time without having to add much.
As an example, I have a DIY Facebook Ads Marketing Course on this website. The course teaches people how to get started creating their own Facebook Ads. Many people subscribe to this course. So, it’s a way of monetizing my knowledge. People will always want to learn how to do Facebook Advertising and quite a number will continue to refer to my course for knowledge.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is another way through which you can generate passive income for the year 2020. AdSense is a program under which Google places adverts on website. Advertisers bid for space on these sites and owners get paid both for clicks and for views. The thing to note, however, is that Google AdSense requires a lot of traffic to be worthwhile.
I don’t personally use AdSense on this site. Why? Well, simply because there are better ways of monetizing traffic to my site. However, AdSense is great if you run a high traffic website such as a news site. Just to put things into perspective, you need about 500 pageviews to generate a single dollar through AdSense. So, you are probably not going to earn much if you have low traffic. In actual fact, you need at least 10000 views per day to make it really worthwhile. But if you have that, then Google AdSense is a great passive income idea.
Sell your own products-eCommerce
This is another way through which you can generate income through your site. If you have something useful to sell, then why not do it via your website. This is something that I do. Planet Marketing specializes in Google Ads and Facebook Ads. So, I sell Facebook Ads and Google Ads setup plans. People who arrive on my site via Google can buy these products. Other people arrive on my site via my affiliates. Once they have bought something, I pay the affiliates money for the reference. There are many types of products that can be sold via websites;
- Digital products including course
- Physical products such as toys, trinkets, curios and electronic products.
Sell your photos
This is emerging as another great source of passive income across the world. If you are like the typical individual, you probably have hundreds of photos festering somewhere on your computer or on a hard drive. The good news is that you can monetize these photos by uploading them to a stock photo site, such as Shutterstock. There, people will be able to buy these photos.
Invest in Real Estate
Real estate investments are long term in nature, but they can be rewarding. The great thing is that if done correctly, you won’t lose too much of the value of your investment. Of course, real estate is only going to work for those that have enough to make the initial investment. Once you have done it you should be able to sit back and relax while the money is rolling in.
I know of someone who has turned their properties into BnBs and they live their life on holiday. What they did is they initially had only one property. Then they remortgaged that property. With the money that they got, they were able to buy another property. Next, they turned the 2 properties into BnBs and they have not turned back since.
Get a housemate
This is another way of turning your real estate investment into a source of passive income. If you are up to it, you can sublet part of your home. What you can do is advertise on platforms such as Craigslist or Zillow and you will probably get a stream of people willing to pay to live in your house. Of course, this option is not for the finicky. You need to carry out proper research before allowing someone into your home. Otherwise the whole thing could turn out to be a huge source of stress for you.
Rent out your car
Did you know that there are people out there who are willing to rent your car for a while? This is another good option for those that are looking for passive income ideas for 2020. Of course, it will probably work best if you have another vehicle at your disposal. The most popular platform for doing this is Turo. They promise you that you can earn up to S700 by renting out your car whenever you are not using it. The great thing is that they also provide insurance, so you don’t have to worry about something bad happening to your baby.
Self publishing
I have previously given make money ideas for single moms, and self publishing was one of the points I gave. Your book can be about anything. The great thing about the age of the internet is that you no longer need to run around desperately looking for a publisher for your creation. You can do the publishing on your own on platforms such as Smashwords or Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. After publishing your book, you do need to market it, because there are millions of books out there and yours is only going to get lost without some boost. Books become passive income because once they are on Amazon, they will go on making money at the most minimal of efforts.
Make YouTube Videos
YouTube is owned by Google, and monetization on the platform is more or less similar to AdSense. The trick for YouTube is to make sure that you create content that people want to view. There are probably billions of videos on YouTube on at the moment. Most of these fall flat because, well, not many people are interested in them. Then there are some videos that make thousands per month for their creators. You need to find a niche that’s popular with people on the platform. Examples are;
- Fail videos
- Unwrapping popular electronics
- Funny videos
- Cooking videos
- Street food
- Tutorials
Put out vending machines
Vending machines are a good source of passive income because once they are up and running, you don’t need to do much work, other than to collect your money. What you need to do is to first identify appropriate platforms for your machines. Examples of vending machines are batting cages, arcade games and pinball machines.
Sell domain names
Try to register an intuitive domain name today, and chances are high that you will find that it has already been taken by someone else. And when you try to open the site, you find nothing. Why is that the case? Well, there are people out there who make money by registering and selling domains and you can join them to generate passive income. You do need to carry out proper research to find which domains will be in demand in coming years. You can then sell them when demand for them rises.
Storage space rentals
If you have extra space somewhere, why not rent it out to people who are looking for extra storage space. People accumulate lots of stuff over the years, not all of which is actually useful. But who are you to judge..? If someone is looking for storage space and if you have some available, this can become a great source of passive income for you. The space that you rent out can be nothing more than your garage!
