How to Make Passive Income Online Without Money
Making money online is the most lucrative thing about the internet but making passive income online is even more incredible. The chances are you’ve wondered how to make passive income online without money or any connections.
The truth is that you don’t need to be a tycoon or “loaded” to start throwing money at possible online businesses or ideas.
Instead, you get the same opportunity as everyone else to make an online business from scratch. I’ve done it that way and there are millions of business owners that come from the same background.
Working remotely or being able to make money online has pretty great benefits on its own. But being able to make passive income and generate it without always putting the hours in is the gold pot everyone’s aiming for.
Down below, I’ll show you a couple of ways you can start working on to create your own online business, a new income stream, and achieve passive income.
What is Passive Income?
If you’ve been trying to learn how to make money online – you’ve probably come across the words “passive income”.
But what is passive income? It’s often associated with the luxurious lifestyle that allows you to travel, live wealthy, and even make money by sleeping.
Most people are earning active income which is basically trading hours for the money.
Therefore, passive income is the type of money that you can earn without having to put in active work or hours to get it.
But how do you get it?
It’s simple. You do all the hard work now without making a penny and you reap your rewards afterward.
We live in a modern age and with the help of the internet, there are multiple channels and ways you can take advantage of to create a passive income stream.
I bet you’re excited to learn more about it so let’s go ahead!
How to Make Passive Income Online Without Money?
You can still make an online business that will generate passive income without having any money or having to invest loads of money first.
Here are some of the best ways you can do it:
- Starting a blog
- Affiliate marketing/niche site
- Starting a digital service business
- Start a YouTube channel
- Write an eBook
- Create a course
All of these suggestions are pretty straight forward but they all take a lot of time, work, and the right idea (business plan) to succeed.
Starting a Blog
I think that one of the best ways to make passive income online without money is to start a blog. Yes, you will need a couple of dollars for the domain name of your choice, and a couple of dollars per month for hosting – but other than that, you won’t have to invest any more money.
There are millions of blogs on the internet and I like to think that there’s always room for one more. Some of the best blogs make millions of dollars a month – but there are many more blogs that we don’t even know about and yet help people make a living.
What I like the most about blogging:
- It’s very cheap to get started
- It can turn into a very lucrative online business
- You get to start from scratch and build it with the help of your ideas and thoughts
- You get to choose a niche (as broad or narrow as you wish) and write about things you love
- Many possible ways to monetize a blog
- Can earn you a lot more money than an average 9-5 job
- Blogs are easy to maintain and run (even automate)
I wrote a full blog post on how to make money blogging so make sure to read it before getting started.
Of course, blogs take a lot of time, they require a lot of work, and you’ll be putting in a lot of effort while doing your best to stay consistent before getting your first dollar out.
Affiliate Marketing/Niche Sites
Affiliate marketing is one of the monetization ways you can use to monetize your audience, content, or following – but it’s my favorite one.
Why?
Because affiliate marketing is the perfect model that’s free to take advantage of and yet it allows you to earn passive income.
The income will depend on your audience, your niche, and even the click-through rate. However, it’s a great model that serves well everyone involved.
You’ll get to promote and review things and products you truly like, people will learn about it first-hand, and you’ll earn a commission in return.
What I like the most about affiliate marketing/niche sites:
- You get to review & promote products you truly believe in
- Niche sites can help you work on something you’re passionate about
- There are millions of affiliate programs you can join for free
- Affiliate marketing truly provides passive income once everything is set in place
As with anything else – you’ll need to work hard to the stage where you have a steady flow of visitors, a strong audience, or even a following.
It’s going to take a lot of time, effort, learning in the process, and even self-discipline. But once you reach the stage where your hard work starts paying off – you’ll thank yourself for not quitting!
Starting a Digital Service Business
I am a big fan of freelancing as a way to start making money online. However, that is an active way of making money online as you have to involve your time, skills, hard work, and more.
However, with so many digital jobs in demand – you shouldn’t miss out on the opportunities.
With the help of outsourcing – you can create a digital service business/agency. A great example would be a content writing agency.
You would need clients, writer/writers, and maybe an editor.
Instead of doing all the work by yourself, you could hire some help. Of course, hiring help requires money, right?
Well, if you can find people who are willing to work on a commission-based contract and you offer them a great %, this could benefit everyone in the long run once the business starts increasing.
The goal is to outsource 80% of the work, if not more and in the long run – achieve passive income. Even though you might not be keeping a high % of the profits from this type of business – it’s a lot easier to set it up and start making money than if you started a blog.
What I like the most about this type of a way to make passive income online is:
- The ability to create an online service business relatively quickly
- Outsource tasks/get help
- Do one thing instead of more than one thing
- Have no limit on the earnings you can make
- Be able to choose the type of service and set your own terms & rates
However, don’t get me wrong – this will still require a lot of work and you’ll constantly depend on others in this business – so that’s something to keep in mind!
I have a great guide on how to start freelancing which can be a great stepping stone to starting a service business as the concept remains and you only implement outsourcing as an addition.
Start a YouTube Channel
Who would have thought that the earliest YouTubers would be making millions of dollars by recording and posting videos on the platform, right?
Well, that’s the world we live in and that’s why YouTube is on this list. There are millions of YouTubers and yet there’s still room for more.
Even though everyone looks up to YouTubers and finds their business inspiring (or even envy their lifestyle) – they didn’t achieve such a level of success overnight.
I love YouTube as an option to earn passive income online because:
- You get to be as creative as you can
- Gain exposure to millions of viewers
- Be an authority in the niche
- Be able to monetize your channel in more than one way
- Record videos once and earn passive income for viewers you get years after
Even though it sounds like a dream business – you should know a couple of things before you create your channel.
YouTubers don’t just achieve success overnight. Instead, you will have to consistently record & upload videos multiple times a week, endure times where no one views your videos, and endure times where you have very few subscribers.
Everyone starts at the bottom and the way up isn’t going to be easy – but it’s going to be worth it in the end. Also, another thing to keep in mind is that you’ll have to stay loyal to your subscribers and continue uploading videos often even after you achieve a certain level of success.
Write an eBook
Everyone knows something and everyone is passionate about something. Creativity flows differently and while not everyone is creative enough to write fiction stories – some people are great at writing guides, sharing interesting stories, or analyzing different aspects of life or other topics.
eBooks are probably the best thing that happened to us as they’re relatively mini books that can teach people a lot.
I like to think of eBooks as guides and if you can write well and you have something to teach others – you’ll be able to successfully create a passive income stream by writing an eBook and watching it sell online.
What I like the most about eBooks:
- Write an eBook once and get paid for every sale you make (passive income)
- Gain exposure for yourself or your brand
- Teach others
- Share your thoughts, ideas, knowledge, and stories
Writing an eBook can take a lot of time, and even before writing, there is a research process to find the best audience type and the market for your eBook.
After writing, there’ll be a lot of proofreading, editing, and preparing the eBook for publishing. Even after publishing, there is still promotion left – but all the hard work can pay off when your eBook starts selling!
However, the best thing about writing and publishing an eBook is that you can do it for absolutely free (even get it published on Amazon).
Create a Course
If you’re really knowledgable about something and you think that you have what it takes to educate others on any topic out there – creating a course is another great way to make passive income online without money.
Even though you can create a course on your own and promote it on your own – this would involve some marketing costs. Instead, I highly recommend joining course providers/platforms such as Udemy where you get to create your own course for free, market it to their audience/users, and only pay a small % to the platform every time your course sells.
Here’s what I like the most about course creation:
- Create it one – sell it forever (passive income source)
- The ability to take advantage of existing course platforms
- Choosing the industry/topic for the course
- Being able to take as long as it takes to develop a quality course
- Build a student base / continue teaching
Of course, not every course is going to be a success and some courses really take time to develop – but once it’s published, just like eBooks, it can generate passive income whenever a student enrolls.
Conclusion
Learning how to make passive income online without money can be tough, especially considering the number of “gurus” that promise to teach how to do the same for money.
I’ve provided 6 different but similar ways to earn passive income online. Even though they require a lot of up-front work, time, effort, and consistency – I hope that doesn’t scare you away.
As long as you start, learn, take action, and stay dedicated – you’ll look back in a year and be thankful for giving it a try and not quitting.
Passive income is the most attractive & lucrative type of income that combines well with the opportunities internet provides. However, it also takes a lot of work, especially if you don’t have a budget to invest in your new business plan.
What is your favorite way of creating a passive income stream online without money?
I’d love to hear your thoughts, experience, and stories – so feel free to leave a comment below. If you have any questions, drop them down below as well, and I’d appreciate it if you could share this post on social media to help as many people as we can!
