With the global cost of living rising at the fastest rate in the last decade (source), having multiple income streams can be very beneficial. There are many ways you can earn a passive income doing something you are passionate or knowledgeable about. Better yet, you can combine two or more passive income ideas to create multiple streams and make more money.
Can you create multiple streams of passive income? Yes, you can create multiple streams of passive income by combining different passive income ideas. Online, you could combine affiliate marketing, blogging, YouTube, and Ad placement, and monetized chatbots. If you were running passive income businesses (brick and mortar) you could combine a laundromat with an ATM, self-service vending machines and more.
In this article, we highlight nine ways to create multiple streams of income and how you can combine these ideas to create multiple streams of income. We are going to focus on online passive income ideas, but you can combine peer-to-peer ideas, businesses and more to create multiple streams of passive income. Most passive income ideas require you to be patient and dedicated to turning them into lucrative passive income streams. We will look at some passive income ideas that generate traffic including blogging, podcasts, YouTube and how you can convert this traffic into actual sales that generate revenue. Let’s get started.
Beginner’s Passive Income Tip: Combine the following ideas to build multiple streams of passive income!
Building an Audience You Can Monetize
If you have traffic, you can probably monetize it. But to be able to monetize traffic, you first need to have a platform you can send it to. This section will cover ways you can build an audience to monetize. All of these ideas can be combined to grow your audience and passive income streams.
1. Blogging
If you are looking for the first step to building a passive income online, blogging is the place to start. Building a blog following the right methodologies can help you create a strong base to build multiple passive income streams. Once you gain enough traffic, you can then monetize your blog and start earning passive income from a variety of sources. Some ways of monetizing your blog include placing ads, affiliate marketing, eCommerce and other ideas we explain in detail below. Project 24 is a full course on blogging.
Transform your active income into passive income in 24 months using Project 24!
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Building a successful blog may seem difficult at first. You need to provide high-quality content that interests a specific niche. If you are looking to make your blog as passive as possible, you should post evergreen content (or things that will still be valid in years from now), otherwise, you will have to update your content in the future. By posting quality content on search terms people are actually searching for, you can attract more traffic to your site. Income school by Jim and Rick has some good tips on how you can become a successful blogger in just 24 months. Blogging is very convenient as you can work from anywhere, including the comfort of your home.
Making passive income through blogging is very popular nowadays. You can combine blogging with other passive income ideas such as podcasts, YouTube, eCommerce, and Affiliate Marketing to build multiple income streams. Check out this guide for more information on blogging.
Learn More About Passive Income Blogging
2. YouTube
You can share your knowledge with others through a YouTube channel, generate traffic and monetize it. For example, video makers earn money by allowing YouTube to place ads on their videos. You can reach millions of people through YouTube, which makes it ideal for people looking to attract traffic to their platforms (like blogs or niche sites). With 4k hours of watch time in 365 days and 1,000 subscribers, you can submit your channel for review for monetization. You can make over $,1000 a month from a well-built monetized YouTube channel.
If you are looking to maximize your earnings, you can consider combining YouTube with other passive income ideas such as affiliate marketing and eCommerce. You can also make an additional income by selling products from your YouTube channel. Rick and Jim have made plenty of YouTube videos and have a lot of experience under their belt. In their course Project 24, they share powerful tips on how you can grow your YouTube channel and monetize your videos in a short time. Learn more about project 24 here, and learn more about making passive income on YouTube here.
Learn More About Passive Income on YouTube
3. Creating Niche Sites
Creating a niche site can help you make good excellent passive income if you follow the right methodologies. Creating niche sites is a very effective way of building a platform you can generate traffic to in order to boost your revenue. For example, let’s say you are passionate about art. Instead of creating blogs or podcasts about the topic, you can create a niche site that addresses a specific niche in art like spray painting. Alternatively, you can combine different passive income ideas on your niche site including eCommerce, Affiliate Marketing to create multiple passive income streams. Project 24 includes a full course on creating niche sites.
Since niche sites appeal to a specific audience, create a niche that helps you stand out, beat the competition. Your audiences visit your site in search of information, resources, and recommendations about a specific topic so your content must appeal to your audience. You should choose a topic you are passionate about because creating a niche site that is very profitable requires a lot of work, notably writing long-form content that is helpful to your audience.
You then monetize your site and start earning passive income from ads, affiliate marketing, selling merch, offering courses, email marketing, and more. With time, you can create other niche sites and earn thousands of dollars monthly as passive income. Rick and Jim’s Project 24 is made to teach beginners how to create a successful niche sites in just two years. For more details about niche sites and making passive income from them, please check out our detailed guide.
Learn More About Passive Income With Niche Sites
4. Podcasting
Podcasts are more and more popular and can be very useful when you want to generate traffic to your site. You can make podcasts on different topics and reach a wide audience right from the comfort of your home. You can then broadcast on multiple channels to boost your passive income streams. You can share your (monetized) podcasts on YouTube, Soundcloud, and other online platforms to generate traffic to your content. Creating a good podcast requires a lot of dedication, patience, and commitment, but can be an excellent passive income stream. Combined with other passive income methods, podcasts can be an excellent platform to generate multiple passive income streams. Project 24 includes a full course on podcasting.
Choosing the right niche will save you a lot of time and money when you create a podcast, and posting quality content goes a long way in attracting traffic to your content. Definitely choose something you are passionate about or your chances of following through to profitability will be low. You can then monetize your podcast and earn from ads, and affiliate marketing. When making a podcast you should try to make it as unique, interesting as possible, otherwise, your audience may get bored and this can affect how popular your podcast will become. You can combine podcasting with blogging, YouTube, Affiliate Marketing, eCommerce and more have multiple streams of income. Learn more about podcasting in our guide.
Learn More About Passive Income With Podcasts
Converting Traffic to Sales
You can use the ideas we covered above to generate traffic, but if you want to make revenue from it, you have to monetize or convert your traffic to sales. You can do this in a variety of ways, and we will cover some of them below. You can use the traffic you generate to your blog, niche site, YouTube channel or podcast to generate to create leads, advertise products, sell eCommerce products and more. Here we look at some of how you can convert your traffic to generate and boost revenue.
5. Chatbots
Chatbots can help you to convert traffic and generate sales to your products and more. For any online business, chatbots can save on costs, reduce customer support, generate leads, assist sales and ensure quick replies to your customers. For example, Facebook allows you to create bots in its Messenger application and, recently Facebook announced that it had hit 100,000 bots just a few years after it created this feature (source).
Demand for chatbots remains high, and you can use it to monetize your traffic in many ways from advertising, to generate leads, promote sales, interact with your customers, affiliate marketing, eCommerce sales. You can also create and sell a chatbot to make money. A well built and well-monetized chatbot can provide excellent passive income.
Learn More About Passive Income With Chatbots
6. Ad Placement
You can use your online platforms to offer ad placement services to businesses and people looking to promote their products online. It is one means that you can use to convert online traffic to sales. For instance, if you run a niche site on camping equipment, you can monetize your niche site by allowing camping ads from specific companies you work with to run on your site. You can then earn from the leads you generate and also help businesses promote their products.
You can also use ad broker services to place ads on your site automatically. If your site is brand new, Google Adsense is a great place to start since there are no minimum traffic requirements. You do have to respect a number of rules, but overall it is fairly easy to get accepted to their program. You can apply to premium ad brokers once your traffic grows. Their application processes are very strict but once you get accepted they can help you place premium ads on your site that can boost your income. Project 24 includes a full course on ad placement.
If you are looking to maximize on ads, you can combine this idea with other passive income ideas including affiliate marketing, blogging, YouTube, and eCommerce. As long as you have traffic flowing to your site you can make an additional income by placing advertisements. Popular online platforms like YouTube or Twitch help video creators make money from ads placed on their videos. Having ads placed in your content is a good way to earn passive income and to monetize your traffic.
7. eCommerce
eCommerce provides an incredible passive income opportunity that includes a variety of popular ways to make passive income. From selling physical to digital products, eCommerce can be a very effective way to convert web traffic into sales. You can combine eCommerce with other forms of making passive income and boost your revenue. For example, if you run a successful blog, you can appeal to your followers to buy certain products from your blog.
If you are using the right eCommerce tools to sell online (like Ecwid eCommerce) you can push your products to eBay, Amazon, offer drop shipping services or print-on-demand with third-party apps. Connecting to marketplaces can make it easier for products to reach more clients. You can choose to sell products you don’t stock physically and have a drop-shipper handle the shipping and packing for you. This can be very passive, but there are things to watch out for. We cover drop shipping in detail in this article.
You can also sell physical products yourself, but this may not be as passive. Selling digital goods is very passive, especially if they are evergreen. There is no need to ship products when they are digital it is awesome. eCommerce can help you monetize your traffic, and if you are good at it, you can make quite a lot. For more information on how you can make a passive income from eCommerce, check out our full eCommerce guide.
Learn More About Passive Income With eCommerce
8. Print-on-Demand
Many influencers are making money online by offering print-on-demand services. For the creator, print-on-demand services consist of uploading custom designs to merch (like shirts, hats, pillows, phone cases and more), and promoting the products online. When a sale is made, the order is fulfilled by the print-on-demand service that prints the item, packs it, and ships it to the end buyer. In most cases, print-on-demand services also take care of returns. This is amazing for creators who do not have to create the products themselves or deal with shipping. Print-on-demand can be very passive.
It is also a good method that you can use to convert web traffic into sales. A recent survey shows that custom t-shirt printing is expected to reach $10 billion by 2025 (source). You can earn by combining print on demand with other passive income ideas such as affiliate marketing, drop shipping, and blogging. For instance, if you have a YouTube channel, you can sell your customized products to your subscribers through your YouTube channel.
Printful is our favorite print-on-demand service. Getting started is easy, all you need to do is to open an account on one site and design your product from there. You can passive income by selling your designs, printing customized products, and selling them online. You can print on hundreds of items from shirts, to hats, hoodies, pillows, backpacks, bean bags, phone cases, posters, mugs, fanny packs and more. Create your own designs or have them made for you for a low cost on Fiverr. Platforms including Ecwid eCommerce can help you sell your prints through a variety of different social media platforms including Facebook, and Instagram. For more on how to make money with print on demand just click here.
Learn More About Passive Income With Print-on-Demand
9. eBooks
Creating an eBook is actually easy, and you can do it for free (we show how to in our guide). An eBook can be a great way to monetize your audience once you have enough traffic. You can use eBooks to convert traffic into sales that generate revenue. For instance, if you have a niche site on car repairs and maintenance, you can create an eBook on “Key Car Maintenace Tips” for example, give detailed and quality content on the topic and post it on your niche site. You can then promote it to your traffic and make a profit.
If you have writer’s blog, you can always outsource the writing process to a ghostwriter. Fiverr is a great place to hire ghostwriters who can do the work for you to make the income more passive. You can combine eBooks with other passive income ideas to create multiple earning streams that boost your revenue. eBooks can be a very passive means of making an income, especially if the content is evergreen. Check out our full guide for more information on eBooks and how you can make one for free.
Learn More About Passive Income With eBooks
10. Affiliate Marketing
There are many people making money promoting affiliate offers. Affiliate marketing platforms allow you to earn income by promoting certain products on your blog, niche site, YouTube channel, and more. For example, music artists promote products such as shoe brands, drinks, and car companies in some of the videos and earn commissions from the sales. You should promote products you are passionate about. The more you know about the product (especially from experience) the better you will be at promoting it.
Affiliate marketing is not that difficult, especially if you have the traffic. All you have to do is look for a product that you would like to promote, confirm whether is supported by an affiliate marketing company like Amazon associates and then market your product on your online platform. You receive income from commissions on leads, or on the sales you generate.
You can always combine affiliate marketing with other passive income ideas including blogging, YouTube, and eCommerce to boost your revenue and create multiple streams of income. For example, we are affiliates for Income School’s Project 24 by marketers Rick and Jim, because we are passionate about their course. It explains how to make passive income blogging, but also includes a course on most of the passive income ideas we covered above! Including how to make money with YouTube, podcasting, info-products (like eBooks) and ad placement. Check out our guide for more on how you can make an income from affiliate marketing.
Learn More About Passive Income Affiliate Marketing
Related Questions
How long would it take before I earn income passively? The time it takes before you break even depends on your effort, skills, choice of niche and the location of your business. You should make sure you observe good management skills to prevent losing your money. Courses like Project 24 can help you boost your skills and learn how to make successful passive income streams quicker.
See Even More Passive Income Ideas
What do I need to invest in to earn passive income? Just like any other business you might need to spend money to create and grow your idea, but the amount differs with each idea so it is important that you research extensively about the idea before you get started. Also, set your own budget limits. Most passive income ideas will also require a lot of time, commitment and skill.
Can passive income sustain my needs? It is possible to sustain a livelihood from the income you generate passively. However, this takes time, effort and skill. Following proven methodologies can help you build skills and achieve your goals quicker. Project 24 teaches how to make a full-time passive income in 24 months. Learn more here.
