Learn to Earn Online: Passive Income Ideas For Millennials In 2017
In the past few years, it has become more and more alarming for Millennials to be reliant on a single job given how the American job market has been fluctuating lately more than ever. Once you taking the student loans piling up in consideration and the inevitable oil prices going up in the near future as well, it might be a good idea to either start looking for another job, or think about starting a business of your own! This article will explain passive income ideas for Millennials in 2017, and exactly what you can do about them!
What Is Passive Income
Before answering this question, let’s quickly define income: Income is all the money that you earn through any means and streams. There are 2 basic ways to earn money: Passive and active income. Active income is where you sell your time for money - this is your regular everyday jobs. You come into office, sell your time for a certain amount of money per hour, and then at the end of the month you collect your paycheck. Pretty simple and almost everyone understands that concept. However, many don't accept that concept as valid, and see it as slaving off your time instead of putting it to good use and things you actually prefer doing.
I would much rather like not to have to go to work Mon-Fri for 40 hours, and instead stay at home, play video games, drive a bike, run with the dogs, or perfect myself in some other way, but I can't because I gotta eat, and to eat I gotta earn money, and for that I need to sell my time for money!!
Or so I thought.
Then I learned about how people earn money without leaving their house, and even working from another country, and without having to spend too much time on it. This is where passive income comes into play. To be honest this hit me pretty hard the moment when I realized it - there are ways to earn money every month by doing almost nothing, and it’s not renting a house or apartment you inherited? First thing I thought when I heard this was “What can I do to make this happen, ASAP!?!”
The truth is, even passive income takes a bit of sacrifice. All passive income sources require either one of these two elements, but best results are reached when they are combined. Here are the elements:
- An upfront money investment, or
- A sizable time investment.
This means that you can either jump start your passive income by investing some money in it from the start - such as paid advertisement or something of that sort, or spend a sizeable amount of time perfecting yourself and working around what you’ve got without having to spend any money. Passive income generating is by no means an easy task, and will definitely take some action to reach, but it is very, very reachable.
What Does Passive Mean?
Passive income is the money you earn through alternate sources, as opposed to the active method through which you earn money by selling your time, as we established before. The most common definition of passive income is this: Income that you earn without being actively involved.
Residual Income
Financial freedom is another term that is often thrown around the internet when talks of passive income and means of earning are brought up. It means that you are good to do whatever you want to as long as your passive income is greater than the expenses you make.
Once the expenses become equal or greater than the passive income you are making you fall back into financial slavery, or how some call it - daily jobs. So basically, passive income greater than the expenses you makes simply put means you never have to work again.
Residual income is the amount of income that you have after all personal debts and expenses, including mortgage, car payments, insurance bills, and other monthly expenses have been paid. This calculation is usually made on a monthly basis, after the monthly debts are paid.
So, in a sense, the amount of residual income that you generate equals the amount of financial freedom you have.
Passive Income Ideas For Millennials
When starting up a passive income business from home, it is important to keep in mind that you don't have to limit yourself to only one type of income or business. Multiple passive income businesses can be combined to one tool in order to make a stronger and more profitable business.
Keep in mind that most passive income business ideas usually become largely profitable after a certain amount of time, depending on the time and money you put in. It is important to know that some, also, never make it and fail - just like any other business in the world. However, some passive income businesses are more vulnerable and others are less risky and more prone to giving a good payout at the end of the month.
Most of these require you to be at least to some point involved with the world of blogging, writing and content marketing. As you will see, many types of passive income rely on you to have some form of a website or an equivalent such as a influential Twitter page or a stacked Facebook fan page or group.
So, without further ado here are 8 passive income ideas that you can start with as of today!
1. Start A blog
Blogging is hugely popular in the world, as blogs provide a great platform to people who wish to earn money in alternate ways. You can start up your own blog or even website which will be dedicated to readers which are also your potential customers.
The way this works is that you use the blog as a platform for promoting stuff that sells well, write articles and reviews of those products, and somewhere along the line people start emailing your asking to review their products and services, and they will pay you for it.
These reviews usually go from 500-1000 words and can be charged anywhere between 5 and 50 US dollars. Another way to earn money by writing about things you find interesting is becoming a professional Off-Site writer, but we’ll get to that a bit later.
Starting a blog usually requires minimal computer skills as it is pretty easy to get setup with a WordPress or Blogger type of website in just minutes!
2. Become An affiliate
Becoming an affiliate for a company can be a great way to start earning commission by writing about their products. Mind you, this isn’t the same as getting paid to write a review, as affiliate marketing is paid by commission. However, most serious affiliate marketing programs require you to have a website, which as you’ll see will become a requirement progressively more as we go down the line.
There are many affiliate programs out there, which give you the opportunity to branch out your blog and start earning some extra passive income. Amazon and iTunes offer some of the more popular affiliate programs, as well as several other big name companies.
Affiliate marketing spins around having readers click on the links in your articles and then subsequently purchasing the products you were writing about. Once they click the link in your article and then buy the product, you get a piece of the pie through commission. Commission varies among companies, but usually it is anywhere between 2% up to 10%.
Let me show you on an example:
Yesterday I was going through some bills I had received via email, and they were wrongly formatted, so I had to use a tool that converts PDF files in order to convert them and properly edit before sending them to my accountant.
As you can see, I linked the word PDF with a tool that could help readers if they had the same problems, thus giving them a way for them to solve the same problem if they had it, while earning money from their downloads and in-app purchases. I haven’t actually placed my referral link as this is an educational article, but the principle is the same. That link doesn’t have to be an app, it can also be a page on Amazon, or a link towards some other online store that offers commission for affiliated sales.
You can also become an affiliate marketer by having a very popular social media outlet and sharing the products you tweet or post about through your Facebook and Twitter feeds. The end result is the same - you get the money as long as the readers purchase the product after clicking on your link.
3. Create An Online Course
Already have something you are ridiculously good at and you actually know how to transfer your knowledge and teach the topic? You, my friend, are halfway there to becoming a course writer for some very popular websites. Online courses have become a real hit and have taken off in sense of popularity lately, as people are starting to understand more and more that it’s not always about diplomas and which school you went to.
If you are good at Mobile app development, or perhaps you are an experienced welder, you can create educational videos and articles, and even teach a whole class by signing up to websites that offer such services. Making an online course is no easy task, however quality content and a little effort can make your course several hundred dollars worth, so it might be a good idea to consider.
Teachable is by far the best place to offer your online courses as it has been getting increasingly popular over the course of past few years, steadily becoming the most popular and most used platform on the internet for people offering online courses.
4. Write An eBook
eBooks are getting increasingly popular with the development of new and cheaper tablets such as the Kindle or iPad which are both great devices for reading digital books. Writing an eBook can be a great way to generate impressive amounts of passive income as they are much more popular than traditional books in certain areas.
eBooks are most popular in areas such as business ideas, self-improvement, psychology and fiction - as opposed to education books which are still holding strong with paper books leading by a mile over eBooks.
eBooks also go hand in hand with creating and online course as you can sell your eBook to people who take your course as an additional resource for learning. This increases the chances of your eBook becoming more popular if the word of mouth start spreading, which can later interest some new blog readers into taking up your course.
You can also sell other people’s eBooks on your website via Amazon, but I personally believe that Facebook groups and pages are a much better place for selling books and eBooks online.
5. Create YouTube Tutorials
This is just another piece of the puzzle that running your own blog represents. YouTube videos can bring in a lot, and I mean a lot of money through several means, but the main one being, you guessed it, advertisement.
Creating a YouTube tutorial that is closely tied to your niche can also contribute to your blog as you can write articles about what you just taught on the video, and then embed the video into the article. This way, your readers also become your viewers!
By monetizing your channel and allowing companies to present video ads prior to your videos that usually last about 30 seconds and can be skipped most of the times, you can create another way to generate ridiculous amounts of passive income. Just a couple tens of thousands views can bring in potentially hundreds of dollars through advertisements.
You can also create video tutorials that further explain things you teach in your online courses, thus becoming another tool for you to pitch to your students, and increase your income in a multitude of ways.
6. Become A Freelancer
I understand that this doesn’t completely fall into the category of passive income, but it also in a way kinda does. Becoming a freelancer means that you are not restrained by the strings that working a nine to five job brings, such as having a boss always nagging, or smelly colleagues working with you in a tight space with no AC in the room.
Becoming a freelance will change the way you perceive things in a way, since you will be your own boss, in charge of bringing all the important decisions. However, making even the slightest wrong decision can mean losing a client in the world of freelancing.
Freelancing can be a lot of things, such as content writing, mobile app development, graphic design, translating files, doing math homework for college students, and a lot of different things that I can't even start naming.
The only thing you need to know about being a freelancer is this: you will only earn as much money as your skills are worth. You decide what is the amount of money you will be charging your clients so it is very important to have the pricing down right, otherwise you will be looking for a new passive income gig in no time.
Freelancer is one of the first websites that offered their services to freelancers. This website helps you to set up your own profile, build a brand, get connected with employers seeking freelancers, and a lot more.
7. Sell Photos Online
In a world in which most of the population of countries in which selling photos is a real thing, almost everyone has a smartphone with a decent enough camera. A little learning of the principles of photography, some knowledge of how light works and how shadows are made, a couple good landscapes and you will be set to become a semi-pro photographer.
You can sell photos you make on many websites that offer stock photos to writers and designers which buy these daily. If you enjoy photography you can submit your photos to stock photo sites and receive a commission every time someone purchases one of them.
These photos don’t have to be really impressive at first sight, or mind blowing at all. Regular everyday photos of chickens, or iPads, or desks with some drawings on it get sold as well as others as you never know what someone might be looking for. Places like Shutterstock and iStock are among the best in their league as they also have the most buyers which is what you really want.
8. Create A Mobile App
Mobile app development is truly one of the best ways to generate passive income as it takes very little time and money, and sometimes not even money. Mobile apps are the ultimate passive income generating machines, as 25% iOS mobile app developers around the world earned on average of 5000 USD, per month.
So imagine this scenario: You get a brilliant idea for a mobile app you would like to make. You either need to know how to make it, or pay a programmer to do it instead. If you don’t have the cash, well good thing that you have a blog which earns you money through affiliate marketing commission, product reviews, as well as a the YouTube videos slowly piling up money from advertisement, and don't forget about the money from the online course and eBooks you sell.
All the little bits of money you earn through those channels can make up quite a nice sum after a year or so. Remember how I said that starting a passive income business either a lot of time or some money, or a bit of both? Well, mobile apps offer the best of both worlds. With a little time and a little money you can have an app developed and on the App Store in literally a week.
There are places online that can help you find developers, such as websites offering freelancing services similar to Upwork. These developers are willing to haggle for the costs of development, and creating a simple mobile app that generates minimal amounts of money doesn’t have to be too expensive. I’ve seen examples of apps that do the simplest measurement conversions (kg to lbs) or apps that show you the nearest parking spot generate thousands of dollars in just a few months.
Extra: Become An Uber Driver
This might be a weird one, but signing up for Uber (if it is available in your country) can be an amazing way to generate income by doing what you already do on a daily basis. If you drive a car and you have one you use every day, then picking up people that are along your way that give you cash for dropping them off somewhere nearby is, well, unheard of.
If Uber was a thing in my country I would do this every day as you can earn enormous amounts of money just by driving other people to work and back home, while doing the same thing for yourself. This can turn out to be a fun experiment as it will bring you money, and you will have people in your car keeping you accompanied on your way to work and back home. It’s like a school bus, but better!
Get Rich, And Try Not To Die Trying
As you may have noticed, creating more than one or two ways of generating passive income will slowly but surely turn you into a one-man company - a business that you can run anywhere you want, whether it’s from the comfort of your own home, or perhaps from a cruise ship in the Caribbean sea.
Getting rich is almost every man’s dream, and with this guide and the valuable information you now possess, you can now actually start working on it. So next time you check your checking account, try to refrain from crying out loudly and come back here to read this article again and give passive income businesses another good brainstorming session. You heard it here first - passive income businesses can be the best solution for a home business and working on your own!
