Passive income works as a great way to help you generate additional cash flow for your ongoing financial needs.
As we saw first-hand from the economic disruption caused by COVID-19, having multiple streams of income could have provided a solid financial cushion, whether you suffered a job loss or not.
The pandemic knocked out the job situation for many and having passive income investments available to close the gap from unemployment or economic uncertainty is immensely helpful.
The beauty of passive income is that even with the main job, you can still have money coming to you through other sources of income. Use it to live easier or grow your wealth more. Either way, having passive income helps.
Take a look at this list of the best passive income ideas to see if any make sense for your situation and if you should consider them for your portfolio.
Many often view passive income as the most desirable type of income because it acts like money you earn while you sleep, go to the dentist, cook a meal, or do something enjoyable not for the purpose of making money.
You can see the appeal of this type of money on active income, or better known to the IRS as ordinary income. This counts as money that you will need to earn through your work.
Depending on the nature of the job, this may mean that payments come in wages and salaries, bonuses, commissions, stock compensation, and much more.
The amount of money will vary and how much you earn, but it all comes down to one fact: in some shape or form, you’ve made the decision to trade your time for money.
You can scale your equation of time for money by earning a higher income, working on commissions and making a larger share of each sale, earning shares in a growing company, and more.
Dividend shares
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Investors can generate a passive income stream by investing in dividend stocks of companies that share in their earnings. Businesses pay cash dividends quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, and all you need to do is invest in their stocks to get paid.
The amount of income you receive from dividends depends on the number of shares you own. The more capital you invest, the more dividends you can expect to receive.
Opportunity: Stocks offer a passive way to earn money because the income is not tied to any activity other than the initial realization of the investment. Investing in dividend stocks or ETFs represents a safe form of passive investment of income.
The company will distribute the dividends and they will automatically deposit them into your brokerage account.
Risk: A challenge with earning income from stocks is choosing the right ones through stock picking.
As an illustration, imagine investing in a high-dividend company with unsustainable dividends. You may not know it at the time, but the company could have a financial slump and choose to cut dividends shortly after buying.
Typically, other investors also bought the shares for the high dividends and might consider selling when this income performance wears off.
This will deal a double whammy to your investment: loss of high dividends down the road and a hit to your initial equity investment, as the stock will likely decline in value.
Before jumping into the market to find high-dividend stocks, you should use some of the top stock research and analysis apps to filter out several different characteristics that are likely to sustain those dividends.
Sale of information products (digital products)
One of the best options for passive income is to simply have an information product and wait while your earnings add up.
This can mean creating things like an e-book, audio or video-based course, an email course, or some other knowledge-focused product that provides ideas to help someone do something they might not otherwise know how to do.
If you make digital products like an e-book, you can distribute them through your website, social media, newsletters, or other forms of online marketing. If you have a course that you think can earn passive income for you, consider using sites like Udacity.
Alternatively, instead of creating a course as your only information product, you could consider building a longer sales funnel and using a “freemium model” in your digital products.
This allows you to build a following as an influencer through developing free content on your website or social media channels to raise awareness for your online course or other informational product.
From there, you can guide them through the sales funnel to the consideration phase where they not only know your product but consider it among the alternatives available in the market.
Opportunity: Information products are a great option for passive income because you make money as soon as your initial work is done upfront and people start buying your services.
You can set up an online store to market your course online and possibly even earn money through affiliate marketing on other creators’ online course offerings. All of a sudden, you’ve added another passive income stream in addition to your original passive income source.
Risk: Without a doubt, making a worthwhile product takes a significant amount of work and effort (and possibly money). And if you want to make money from it consistently, your information product must either beat everyone else on the market or compete in a market of its own.
There is no place for garbage out there.
To have a chance of success, you need to build a strong platform, market your products, and plan to create and launch more products to your satisfied customers if you want to be successful.
