It’s how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success.
~ David Feherty.
Hi guys, working 9-5 jobs is hard, especially if it’s your only source of income. And every time, it’s not enough. The salary arrives, and the month is longer than the money, a math problem as old as employment itself.
So here, I will list down what are the best ways to earn passive income (the Asian version).
🌱 What are the ways for a better future?
Here are the ways to make passive income even if you have a 9-to-5 job. I know it’s never easy, and never will be, so we must strive harder and think of more ways to earn.
📱 Creating a mobile app
Making mobile apps and deploying them to app stores or play stores can earn you passive income. Believe me, there are ways: first is running mobile ads to your app. Another way is selling premium features of your app. But one thing is for sure: once the app’s deployed, it will be like a stable revenue source sending you money while you sleep. The catch, as always, is the upfront work of building something people actually want.
🔗 Spreading affiliate links
Spreading links across the internet with your affiliate URL is one way to earn money. By spreading your affiliate link, you earn a commission for every user who buys a product. This needs a good marketing strategy, to earn more money in the minimum amount of time. The trick is to recommend products you have actually used, because your audience can smell a fake recommendation from a mile away.
🎬 Making YouTube videos
Many vloggers right now on YouTube are earning money from the videos they make. Post a video, wait for viewers to watch your content, then instant money. But there is a threshold before you can earn money from this, and mostly you have a lot of competitors. But sincerely, it’s one of the best passive income generators, because every video you publish keeps working for years after you publish it.
✍️ Make a blog
Earning through a blog may take years, but it pays off when you have a lot of readers. Also, it may take time before you get big. So, start now! One of the ways you could earn money from it is sharing your affiliate link and giving reviews, as well as accepting ads or earning ad revenues. If you don’t want to start from nothing, you could buy a blog, but the honest advice is that your own voice, built over time, is worth more than any purchased audience.
🎓 Creating online course materials and online seminars
Online courses have been booming since 2015, and it’s expected to grow more. This is the best way to earn passive income: just create content you want to teach and deploy it multiple times on sites like Udemy and Teachable. Once all your resources are done, all you need to do is relax and wait for it to earn money. Like online seminars, schedule webinars and deploy your pre-made course every now and then.
📚 Creating e-books
With the increasing popularity of digital books, it’s now considered one way to earn passive income. Authors now bypass publishers when publishing their own books. You could check out my article on using ASCII Doctor to create an e-book using open source tools here. Sell those e-books on sites like Amazon KDP, or sell them on your own store and keep the whole margin.
📷 Selling photos
Photographs that have deep meaning or have an artistic side could earn you some bucks. Post them to stock photo sites like Pexels, as many companies or individuals are searching for the right photo. One good landscape from a trip you already took can quietly earn for years, which makes photography the cheapest entry on this list.
🚀 Becoming an early-stage investor
One word: risky. Investing in early-stage startups has many pros and cons. Being a seed investor gets you a lot of rewards, as you can join the startup and promote it. But one thing: you should only invest in a startup you believe in, and only with money you can afford to lose, because most startups fail, and that is not a bug in the system, it is the system.
💼 Buying blue chip
Buying stocks is one of the best ways to earn passive income, but you must have years of patience waiting for it to grow. Also, picking the right stocks to invest in could make you a millionaire in just 5-8 years. Investing in it also needs large sums of money to gain a large position increase. For most people, the slow and boring compounding path beats every get-rich-quick scheme, precisely because it survives long enough to compound.
🧠 Final Thoughts
In this day and age, there are ways now to earn passive income. Probably not so passive, but still you’ll only need to put 20% and earn 80% from it, which beats the 9-to-5 ratio by a mile.
The common thread across all nine options: build once, earn many times. And the common trap across all of them is the same too, starting, and then quitting before the compounding begins. Pick one, the one that matches your skills, and give it two years. These posts will get updates from time to time as it is still incomplete. Stay tuned for more updates.