10 Passive Income Ideas to Earn $1000 per month in 2021
1. Dividend paying stocks and other investments
The first passive income idea on this list does take some start-up cash, but it absolutely helps me earn more than $1,000 per month. Dividend-paying stocks, ETFs, and other investments like fund rise and Lending Club are helping me earn money around the clock – and all with no work on my part. While the amounts I have invested in these accounts vary, they’re all paying me more than $1,000 per month.
Dividend investing in particular has been a profitable endeavor for me and for many other investors. dividend investors who look ahead have the potential to score annual returns of 15%, 20%, or even 25%, if only they pick the right dividend-paying stocks and stay the course.
Obviously, it takes time and consistent investing to build up your portfolio where you’re earning $1,000 per month. But you have to start somewhere, right?
2. Affiliate Marketing
Where investing is a wealth-building strategy that has been around forever, the second passive income option on this list is fairly new. Affiliate marketing is an income idea that requires you to have a website or platform you can use to promote other companies, or “affiliates.” When someone uses your affiliate link to purchase a product or sign up for a service, you get paid.
My main website, GoodFinancialCents.com, earns all kinds of affiliate income through relationships we have with investment firms, insurance companies, online banks, and more. But you don’t have to do things the way I did; you could start nearly any type of website and find affiliates that work in your niche.
3. Selling information products
One popular strategy for passive income is establishing an information product, such as an e-book, or an audio or video course, then kicking back while cash rolls in from the sale of your product. Courses can be distributed and sold through sites.
Alternatively, you might consider a “freemium model” – building up a following with free content and then charging for more detailed information or for those who want to know more. For example, language teachers and stock-picking advice may use this model. The free content acts as a demonstration of your expertise, and may attract those looking to go to the next level.
As a third alternative on this theme, you could use advertisements (or sponsors) to generate your income, while you provide information or content to a growing audience on a free platform such as YouTube. For example, take your love of video games or music and turn it into the content.
4. Flip retail products
Take advantage of online sales platforms such as eBay or Amazon, and sell products that you find at cut-rate prices elsewhere. You’ll arbitrage the difference in your purchase and sale prices, and may be able build a following of individuals who track your deals.
Opportunity: You’ll be able to take advantage of price differences between what you can find and what the average consumer may be able to find. This could work especially well if you have a contact who can help you access discounted merchandise that few other people can find. Or you may be able to find valuable merchandise that others have simply overlooked.
Risk: While sales can happen at any time online, helping make this strategy passive, you’ll definitely have to hustle to find a reliable source of products. And you’ll have to really know the market so that you’re not buying at a price that’s too high. Otherwise you may end up with products that no one wants or whose price you have to drastically cut in order to sell.
5: Sell leads
After I launched Good Financial Cents, I launched a niche insurance site called Life Insurance by Jeff. Believe it or not, but I was able to generate $100,000 in income within just nine months of launching this website.
While building the website wasn’t passive at all, we made a lot of changes to the website over time to make it much more passive. Eventually, I even decided selling the leads my website generated was a lot better deal than earning commissions when a purchase was made.
While selling leads is a lot less lucrative than earning life insurance commissions, I realized over time that selling life insurance was way too much work. If I was going to keep things going, I would need to hire people, manage a team, and put in a lot of hours. I wasn’t really interested in doing any of that, which is why I opted to start selling leads instead. Now that I do, I’m bringing in passive income with hardly effort on my part.
#6: Course Sales
As of right now, the only course I sell is an online marketing course for financial advisors. Even though I hardly promote it at all, I still get plenty of sales. The course isn’t cheap, either — it’s $2,500!
While it took a ton of work to create this course three years ago, really all I’ve done since then is sit back and collect money off the occasional sale. I easily make over $1,000 per month with the course now, and that’s on top of the hundreds of thousands of dollars I made when I was actively promoting it every week.
With this in mind, earning money with course sales is not as easy as turning on a switch! You have to create the course first, which can require weeks or months of your time. Once you’re done with the work required to create your product, however, the income can become passive.
7. Create an app
Creating an app could be a way to make that upfront investment of time and then reap the reward over time. Your app might be a game or one that helps mobile users perform some hard-to-do function. Once your app is public, users download it and you can generate income.
Opportunity: An app has huge upside, if you can design something that catches the fancy of your audience. You’ll have to consider how best to generate sales from your app. For example, you might run in-app ads or otherwise have users pay a nominal fee for downloading the app.
If your app gains popularity or you receive feedback, you’ll likely need to add incremental features to keep the app relevant and popular.
Risk: The biggest risk here is probably that you use your time unprofitably. If you commit little or no money to the project (or money that you would have spent anyway, for example, on hardware), you have little financial downside here. However, it’s a crowded market and truly successful apps must offer a compelling value or experience to users. You’ll also want to make sure that if your app collects any data that it’s in compliance with privacy laws, which differ across the globe.
8. REITs
A REIT is a real estate investment trust, which is a fancy name for a company that owns and manages real estate. REITs have a special legal structure so that they pay little or no corporate income tax if they pass along most of their income to shareholders.
Opportunity: You can purchase REITs on the stock market just like any other company or dividend stock. You’ll earn whatever the REIT pays out as a dividend, and the best REITs have a record of increasing their dividend on an annual basis, so you could have a growing stream of dividends over time.
Like dividend stocks, individual REITs can be more risky than owning an ETF consisting of dozens of REIT stocks. A fund provides immediate diversification and is usually a lot safer than buying individual stocks — and you’ll still get a nice payout.
Risk: Just like dividend stocks, you’ll have to be able to pick the good REITs, and that means you’ll need to analyze each of the businesses that you might buy — a time-consuming process.
REIT dividends are not protected from tough economic times, either. If the REIT doesn’t generate enough income, it will likely have to cut its dividend or eliminate it entirely. So your passive income may get hit just when you want it more
9. Youtube ads
While YouTube ads aren’t nearly as “passive” as some income-producing strategies on this list, they still fit in with the rest of this post. I’m making YouTube videos anyway, so why not post ads that bring in additional revenue? The passive part comes in because I make the video once and earn income over and over as more and more people see it.
If you love being on video and want to earn some passive income while you sleep, YouTube ads are where it’s at.
10. Invest in a high-yield CD or savings account
Investing in a high-yield certificate of deposit (CD) or savings account at an online bank can allow you to generate a passive income and also get one of the highest interest rates in the country. You won’t even have to leave your house to make money.
Opportunity: To make the most of your CD, you’ll want to do a quick search of the nation’s top CD rates or the top savings account . It’s usually much more advantageous to go with an online bank rather than your local bank, because you’ll be able to select the top rate available in the country. And you’ll still enjoy a guaranteed return of principal up to $250,000, if your financial institution is backed by the FDIC.
Risk: As long as your bank is backed by the FDIC and within limits, your principal is safe. So investing in a CD or savings account is about as safe a return as you can find. However, while these accounts are safe, they’re returning even less these days than before. Nevertheless, a CD or savings account will yield better than holding your money in cash or in a non-interest bearing checking account where you’ll receive approximately zero.