Top 4 Practical Ways to Make Passive Income in 2021

I am going to tell you some passive income ideas that you can literally start right after reading this story. And I won't say things like: Rent a property, or sell stuff online - because that's silly not everyone owns a property they can rent, and selling stuff online is a broad topic.

What I'm gonna do is walk you through some practical ways to make passive income, I will start with the idea, then the steps to set it up, and what you can expect to earn from it.

01. Start with YouTube

The good part about YouTube is that you can start without any investments, you can literally create an account in less than 5 minutes, and believe me the hardest part of creating a passive income through YouTube is just getting started, creating the channel, and committing yourself to actually to do it. After that, you can monetize almost anything with YouTube.

Maybe you know how to cook, maybe you're good at teaching people stuff like physics, programming, playing the piano or you know how to do a backflip.

You can start making videos about it, and when someone types in How to do a backflip and your video get watched you can set up ads to be shown before or during the video, and in the process, get paid.

Once you make the video and rank it properly, it can stay there for years, earning you money even when you sleep.

There are a ton of channels like Tim Schmoyer, Roberto Blake, and many others that can teach you how to start a YouTube channel, how to rank your videos, how to create Thumbnails, etc. And it only costs Nothing.

As I said the hardest part is actually committing yourself and starting out.

How much can you earn with YouTube?

Well as a rough estimate, multiply your monthly views by 1.5 and then divide them by a thousand. So, if you get 100 thousand views this month, you will earn 150$, 1 million views - 15 hundred dollars, 10 million views - 15 thousand dollars.

Keep in mind that this is a rough estimate because some topics like investing or money-related videos will earn more than let's say how to do a backflip.

02. Open an e-commerce store and dropship.

What's the idea?

The idea is that you can set up an online store, find products from Aliexpress or Amazon, market them on your site, and whenever someone buys the product from your store - you go to the seller website and buy the item with the money the customer paid you. Use the name, number, and address to order the item to their home.

Where to start?

There are a ton of tutorials about Shopify and drop shipping here on YouTube.

The basics are: You set up an online store with Shopify or WordPress and WooCommerce, you make it look professional - because you are professional. You pick a niche product that is not too broad, let's say face covers for skiing.

You find the product on sites like Amazon or AliExpress check how much it costs - and you set the price on your site high enough so you get a profit from each sold product. Then - you market your site.

You can set up Facebook ads and target people who love skiing, or you can message some Instagram influencer that has a following around winter sports, maybe send them one of your masks so he can take a photo with it, and either pay them to promote your post or maybe offer them to split the sales in the next 30days.

What should you expect to earn?

Unfortunately, there isn't a rough estimate with this kind of passive income, because it really, really depends on the product you are selling, how well are you selling it, what is your profit from each product sold, etc. But you can expect at least 50$ a day after the first 3 months if you do everything right.

03. Create and sell audiobooks, e-books, and courses

If you are an expert in something, flirting, cooking, or telling jokes you can probably write an e-book or course about it.

For example, when I first started with YouTube I had no idea how to make my YouTube channel look decent, how to create thumbnails or how to tag and rank the videos so people can actually, find them and enjoy them.

I had no idea, so what did I do?

I bought an e-book so I can learn all of that stuff. When I purchased the book, the author got paid a few dollars, and probably a dozen more people bought the book the same day.

The author could've been sleeping, eating, or maybe on a vacation but he still got paid for something he created only once. And you can do the same.

Now, don't get me wrong, this isn't easy because self-publishing now is pretty mainstream.

However, the book brought immense value to me and I'd happily buy it again, and that right there should be your goal, to create content that has high value so people can buy and share it with their friends.

After you write it, you should create an eye-catching cover and you're ready to upload it on several different sites, mainly Amazon Kindle.

The next step is to market the book because people won't be able to find it as there are hundreds of new books getting uploaded every single day. But if you don't want to market it you can contact some affiliate marketers and offer them to market your book for a percentage of each book they sell. Or maybe give it to a book review channel for free and if they like it they can review it with their audience.

Again, there is no rough estimate for how much you can earn, as it depends on how you price your book or course. But if you give enough value, market it decently, expect a hefty return for your investment.

04. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the practice of partnering with a company (becoming their affiliate) to receive a commission on a product. If you have a site, a blog, YouTube channel, Facebook page, or Instagram account, you can use it to become an affiliate marketer.

In this kind of passive income, you don't have to create any product, music, or course, you just have to connect the creator of the product with the right audience. In other words, you just have to market products.

YouTubers like Casey Neistat do this and are extremely successful.

For example, Casey is a filmmaker and vlogger and in the description, he often lists the equipment used in the video, and if someone clicks the links and makes a purchase, Casey gets a percentage of the transaction. And that's about it.

What can you expect from this type of stream?

Well, the typical commission rate is anywhere from about 5–25%, depending on the niche and competition of the product.

But don't expect to make tons of money on your first day as an affiliate marketer, as in my opinion, this type of passive income can be a great supplement to your YouTube channel or your Blog, combining AdSense and affiliate marketing to create a decent passive income stream. And that's it.

Those are some of the ways you can create passive income for yourself. And yes, they all require hard work and patience.

If someone is pumped up to start his own journey into passive income, a little piece of advice from me: Try not to expect to make any significant amount of money in the first 3–4 months, because there is a learning curve to it, and passive income needs some time before it kicks into gear - so don't lose hope, it's totally normal if you don't see any results, just keep going and keep trying.