Here is a list of our favourite passive income books for beginners. These books are a great place to start if you would like to learn more about how you can create sustainable passive income streams. From motivation, to better understanding what passive income is and how it can improve your life, these books are among the best of the best.
9 Top Passive Income Books
1. The 4-Hour Work Week | Timothy Ferris
The Four Hour Work Week, “Escape 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich,” by Timothy Ferris is an incredible book that was far in advance on its time. First published in 2007, it is still known as one of the most inspirational books of today’s growing Digital Nomad mouvement.
In the Four Hour Work Week, Timothy talks about how you can create passive income through “DEAL”: Definition, Elimination, Automation, and Liberation. He walks you through how he went from $40k per year working 80 hours per week, to making $40k per month working 4 hour weeks. The book covers topics such as defining one’s greatest financial dreams, minimalism, and outsourcing.
Even though some of the content is outdated (some of the websites provided as references in the book no longer exist), the vast majority of the topics discussed are still relevant today. The 4-Hour Work Week is still one of the greatest places a beginner can start to learn about passive income.
Book About Passive Income
This is a piller book in the passive income sphere. It’s a must read for beginners and is well recognized in the passive income and digital nomad communities. This is a must read book.
2. Rich Dad, Poor Dad | Robert Kiyosaki
“You must know the difference between an asset and a liability, and buy assets.”
Rich Dad, Poor Dad is far from a tutorial on how to make passive income. However, the book is an excellent place for beginners to understand what passive income is and why it’s so important.
Robert Kiyosaki uses a key analogy to explain the difference between the “poor middle-class” and the rich. His analogy is based on the comparison between his “Poor Dad,” who is his actual father and a professor, and his “Rich Dad”, who is actually his best friend’s father and entrepreneur. Robert explains how you do not need to earn a high income to be rich because rich people make money work for them. The book covers the importance of saving money to reinvest it, as the poor and middle-class have a tendency of acquiring liabilities they think are assets.
This is an excellent, inspirational and motivational book for beginners looking to learn more about how to make passive income. It’s a very easy read with 6 lessons that are very easy to understand. We recommend reading Secrets of the Millionaire mind and Think and Grow Rich after having read this book first.
3. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind | T. Harv Eker
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind is an excellent book to engage in changing one’s mindset about money. Harv Eker explains how we all have a Money Blueprint that was created by verbal programming, modelling and specific incidents that occurred in our lives. Eker compares our Money Blueprint to a sort of “internal thermostat”, or the default financial setting that we tend to fall back on. If your thermostat is set to earn and possess a low amount of money, then the chances are you will remain at that level your entire life – unless you change your Money Blueprint.
Secrets of The Millionaire Mind uncovers 17 ways in which rich people think and act differently from the poor or middle-class, and develops each in great detail. Eker provides ways to change one’s mindset about money and increase our Money Blueprint to a higher level of income. The book is very actionable with a variety of declarations, mantras and exercise you can carry out to reprogram your Money Blueprint.
This book is excellent for beginners looking to create passive income as mindset is often a key element keeping people from boosting their revenue to higher levels. This book helps unlock patterns we may not have previously noticed with regards to how we perceive money, and provides alternative views – those of the wealthy.
4. Think & Grow Rich | Napoleon Hill
Think and Grow Rich was written in 1937, which may sound outdated, however the book has sold over 100 million copies since its release and still sells copies to date. Over a 20 year period, Napoleon Hill studied the habits of hundreds of wealthy individuals of his time to find the “laws” governing their success.
Think and Grow Rich summaries these laws, providing the reader with actionable principals. This is an excellent motivational book that covers the importance of desire, faith, autosuggestion, specialized knowledge, imagination, organized planning, decision and persistance in creating wealth.
We recommend this book for beginners looking to create passive income to build a healthy mindset when engaging in creating passive income streams. Contrary to popular belief, creating sustainable passive income sources does not happen overnight, and this book provides tools that can help keep you motivated and on the path to creating the financial success you dream of.
5. Essentialism | Greg McKeown
Essentialism by Greg McKeown is a book that is fundamentally about improving one’s life by focusing on what is actually important. This book is part of a broad minimalist movement as it promotes the quest for less, not only with regards to physical possessions, but also to regain control over our own decisions in order to focus time and energy into making the greatest commitment toward executing personal goals.
In Essentialism, Greg covers the mind-set of an Essentialist (“Essence”), how to make choices between what is important in our live vs what is unimportant (“Explore”), how to cut out the unimportant things (“Eliminate”), and how to make the most important things in our lives effortless (“Execute). One of our favourite quotes of the book is, “if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.”
This book is key to beginners wanting to create passive income because it helps build a healthy mindset. You will notice that distractions abound when wanting to build passive income streams. If you do not stay focused and motivated, there are high chances execution will lack in building your dreams. This book is an excellent reminder to stay focused on your dreams and goals, and to eliminate what keeps you from achieving them.
6. Getting Things Done | David Allen
Getting Things Done is a key read for anyone planning on creating passive income streams due to the workload that will be involved. Building a successful, sustainable passive income stream requires time, dedication and focused work. And of you do not know how to allocate your time and stay motivated, you wind up getting nothing (or useless things) done. This is especially true if you plan on leaving your day job. You will no longer have anyone telling you what to do – you will have to create and respect your own schedule to build your income.
Getting Things Done by David Allen is divided in three parts. He explains how to obtain more control over your life through a clear workflow pattern following these steps: collection, processing, organizing, reviewing and doing. The entire book can be summarized by this workflow chart on the book’s official site.
As a quick summary, if you have something to do that is actionable and takes less than two minutes, do it right away. If it is not actionable, either trash, incubate or archive it. If what you have to do is actionable and takes more than two minutes, either delegate or defer it. If you defer it, add it to a calendar or setup the next actions you need to take on it. We highly recommend and actually follow this methodology at Beginners Passive Income 🙂
7. One Minute Entrepreneur | Ken Blanchard
Do not leave your job until you have obtained a certain success elsewhere
The One Minute Entrepreneur by Ken Blanchard, Don Hutson, and Ethan Willis, tells the story of a man’s challenges in creating his own business. From his beginnings working for others, to building an empire, the story is told with engaging narrative. The story talks about typical problems all entrepreneurs face in starting up their business, from hiring, trining, customer acquisition and loyalty to boosting revenue.
More importantly, One Minute Entrepreneur provides the secrets to becoming a successful entrepreneur and the key lessons to remember after each short chapter. Readers who enjoy easy-to-read narrative will appreciate the short stories told in each chapter. Those who prefer quick and concise information will like the lessons that are provided in billet-point form at the end of each story.
This book is an excellent read for anyone thinking of starting a passive income business. The lessons are applicable to entrepreneurs in any industry. The lessons in the book will provide value to those thinking of leaving their 9-5 to start their own business. Before jumping in, give this book a read to better understand the obstacles that will come your way and how to face them like a prosperous entrepreneur would. The end of the book provides 20 key traits of a successful entrepreneur. It’s worth the read.
8. Crush It! | Gary Vaynerchuk
“Passion is everything”
Crush it! Is a must read for beginners interested in making money online. Gary talks about his personal parcours from working in the trenches of his fathers liquor store, and being one of the first to create long-form content on YouTube, to bringing the store’s yearly income from $3M to $60M. Gary Vaynerchuk is an incredible, well-known speaker in the business world. He has been building his personal brand for over twenty years now and explains how you can do the same.
The book talks about how you can build a blog to build your personal image and make money from what you are passionate about. He explains how he used social media to leverage his personal brand, and boost the sales in his father’s liquor store. Gary covers how to create excellent content, how to remain authentic, and how to monetize your work.
The book is not a tutorial, as he explicitly leaves that to Google and YouTube (anyway, things evolve so quickly), but it is highly motivational and inspirational for beginners. Many attribute their online success to this book that has shown them the way towards leaving their 9-5, monetizing their passions, and living life fully and happily every day.
Book About Making Money Online
If you are thinking about making passive income online and are completely new and don’t know where to start, read this book.
9. The Miracle Morning | Hal Elrod
“If You Win the Morning You Win the Day”
Miracle Morning is an excellent motivational book to help you get your day started off on the right foot. Miracle Morning is a best selling book on Amazon and teaches how to win the day with a variety of rituals Hal calls SAVERS. From Silence, Affirmations, Visualisations, Exercise, Reading and Scribing, this book covers some of the morning habits followed by the most successful people on Earth.
This book is an excellent read for anyone who wants to re-center and start their day off right. It is a great read for those leaving the 9-5 and wanting to use their new-found time and energy efficiently. Learn how some of the worlds most successful people start their day off.
Book About Personal Growth
If you would like to find ways to relax, be productive, organise your mornings and find motivation in your life, this book is a very easy and thoughtful read.