How To Make Money Overnight – 14 Legit Passive Income Ideas (2024)
Do you always have to trade your time for money? Do you always have to go to work before you get paid some amount of money every hour? What if you can start something that can generate money for you over and over again even when you’re sleeping?
For me, being able to do that is what I call true freedom. Because your income won’t be strongly tied to your input. It means you can go and watch a football game whenever you want to, it means you can go for one month vacation, it means you can take 3 months off to see your sick mother, and still be able to make money (that’s the freedom).
Since you cannot work 24 hours per day (only machines and robots can do that), a passive income will be the best!
Some of the best passive income ideas have been discussed in this post. Maybe you haven’t started any of them because you didn’t know, sorry for that – but you shall soon get to know about them.
And frankly speaking, any one of them you start has the potential to give you financial stability.
Other ways to make easy money – check them out:
- Branded Surveys: Answer online surveys and earn PayPal cash.
- Prime Opinion: Another survey site to make decent money using your phone.
Passive Income Ideas To Make Money While Sleeping
If you want to make money while you sleep, these are some of the best ways to make it possible:
1. Start Affiliate Marketing
One of the best passive income ideas is affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you can make money while you sleep, and the good news is that you don’t need a podcast, website, blog, or YouTube channel to make money through affiliate marketing. If you have an Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media account, you can make money.
In case you don’t know what affiliate marketing is all about – it’s simply about promoting products and services of brands and receiving commissions (percentage of the price) whenever someone clicks on your unique links to buy the products or register for the services.
Finding people to click on your links is easy, you just have to hang around people whom you think the products and services you’re promoting may help.
For instance, if you’re promoting weight loss products, you can join Facebook groups of people wanting to lose weight. Answer some of their questions while in the groups and recommend your products.
Best Affiliate Marketing Networks
There are platforms that you can join to get tons of products to promote. Our favorite affiliate networks include:
You will be able to partner with many brands as an affiliate by joining these affiliate networks. Affiliate marketing is good, I usually wake up to see money in my accounts because of affiliate marketing. You also can achieve similar results – just decide today and start.
2. Create a Blog
The reason why a blog can make you money while you sleep is that it sits on the internet and can be accessed by everybody worldwide at any time. There are many ways to monetize your blog. But here are the common ways;
- Affiliate marketing
- Display ads
- Sponsorship
- Online courses and info products
- Coaching.
Starting a blog is very easy – first and foremost, choose a niche. Some of the niches available are health and fitness, personal finance, food and recipe, digital marketing, tech, lifestyle, travel, and fashion.
After picking your niche, get your blog up and running on Bluehost for only $2.95 per month. If you don’t like writing, you can outsource every article to freelance writers on websites like Upwork and OnlineJobs if you have the funds.
All the same, if you take the blog seriously and work on it like a business, it will make an impact on your financial life. You can watch some blog owners share their success stories on YouTube channels like Niche Pursuit and Doug Cunnington.
Suggested Post: Start A Lifestyle Blog That Makes Money
3. Invest in Stocks
Investing in stocks is also another passive income idea. You can purchase individual stocks from companies like Lockheed Martin, JP Morgan Chase, Home Depot, and BlackRock. These are dividend stocks that will pay you money every quarter.
Index funds and the S&P 500 are also perfect. Do you know that the S&P 500 has provided an average return of 8.91% for the past 20 years? It shows that your invested money will surely grow over time. If you always hear about diversification in the investing world, index funds and S&P 500 will help you do just that.
If you are new to stock investing, there is an app called Acorns to help out. This app saves your “spare change” after every purchase you make, and invests it automatically on your behalf. With Acorns, $3 – $5 per month is enough to start stock investing!
4. Create a High-Yield Savings Account
Rather than hoarding your hard-earned money in a traditional savings account, I recommend that you consider a high-yield savings account. The reason is that traditional savings accounts offer very low-interest rates (usually around 0.21%) – which means you’d earn a small amount on your saved money.
However, if you choose the latter, you’d get more than 1% interest on your saved money if all things are stable. Nevertheless, if you open a high-yield savings account, there is a caveat: you have to save your money for a minimum of 12 months.
If you have an emergency fund already set, and still got some money you’re not going to touch for the next 12 months – this is one of the best ways to make money while you sleep.
The best place to open your high-yield savings account is CIT Bank. This bank gives you around 5.00% APY. That means if you deposit let’s say $12,000 – you shall earn $600 in return at the end of 12 months (it’s far better than a normal savings account).
5. Invest in Real Estate
Image Source: Pexels
Even though there are other types of investments such as stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, options, bonds, retirement plans, etc – real estate remains the most stable. Moreover, so much money can be made from this type of investment.
Real estate investing produces cash flow if you buy the right properties. The majority of investors go for residential properties, which means they make money when tenants pay rent at the end of every month.
But if you don’t have huge money, real estate can be expensive – since banks require that you make a 20% down payment on the cost of the property you want to buy before you even get a loan.
Nonetheless, you can choose the REITs option. With real estate investment trusts or REITs, you can own shares of companies that invest in rental properties. As a shareholder, you will make money when properties are sold, as well as when tenants pay their rent.
Another option is when investors pull their money together to buy rental properties. This is known as real estate crowdfunding.
The good news is that you don’t need to have much money or be an expert to invest in real estate because Fundrise does everything for you. With Fundrise, you shall make money while you sleep through real estate investing.
6. Rent Out Your Spare Room
Another way to make money while you sleep is to rent out your spare. In case you have a spare room, you can get someone to rent it on Airbnb. Many travelers use Airbnb to find places to rent, so join the app as a host today and earn money.
You can also rent out your basement on Airbnb if only tenants will feel comfortable. Or better still, you can move to the basement and rent out your main rooms. Just add a kitchenette to the basement and you’re good!
Airbnb hosts make around $41,000 per year according to Glassdoor – so this is extra money you can make without any hassle.
7. Rent Out Your Empty Space
Your empty space can also be rented out for money. That’s another way to make money while you sleep or even when you’re on vacation. The best app I recommend is Neighbor. With Neighbor, you can rent out your warehouse, driveway, basement, garage, shed, parking lot, carport, and even closet.
Hosts who rent out their space on Neighbor make about $10,000 per year. The good thing about Neighbor is that all renters get up to $1 million in free coverage for property protection. So if your property is damaged, it will be taken care of.
8. Start a YouTube Channel
Every YouTube video you upload on your channel is an asset that will continue to bring you money through ads, affiliate marketing, sponsorships, brand deals, courses, etc, for years to come – if only you create quality videos that people want to watch. So if you’re able to upload tons of videos, it will get to a time when these videos will generate money for you even when you’re sleeping.
Am I saying starting a successful YouTube channel will be easy? No – it definitely requires hard work. However, start by deciding on the niche you want to be in. Get a digital camera, if you can’t afford to have one, that shouldn’t stop you because your smartphone has a camera. Also, get a microphone for crisp sound.
It may feel that it’s too late to start getting on YouTube but as long as you have something interesting to say, there are people waiting for your unique voice.
Some gear you will need for your YouTube channel
9. Create Online Courses
So there was this market research performed by Global Industry Analysts, and it revealed that the online education industry will be worth $370 billion by the year 2026. Thus, you can get your share of the pie by creating online courses on topics you have in-depth knowledge about.
Before the pandemic, online education was a thing – and it’s even more of a thing after the pandemic. People want to learn a skill right from their smartphones and laptops, so don’t shy away if you have knowledge about a topic.
You can combine videos, audio files, and texts to create your courses. Although it takes time to create an online course, when it’s complete, it can pay you for years to come.
Normally, those who do well with online courses are those who have an audience already – either through social media (Instagram, Facebook, etc), a blog, or a YouTube channel.
How to know the courses to create?
You can conduct a survey; just send a message to your audience asking them about problems that they face and if they’d like a course to help them solve that.
Furthermore, you can search for questions people are asking Google with the help of a tool like Google Trends, or just typing a problem you think people will want to solve in the Google search box will give you an idea.
The picture shows some autosuggestions from Google as you type “how to make a garden in…” These are usually the things people are searching for about gardening.
You can then validate the keyword using tools like SEMScoop, Keywords Everywhere, and Ubersuggest. If the question (keyword) has a high search volume – it means creating a course to address the problem will not be a waste of time. The online courses you create can be sold on platforms like Skillshare, Udemy, and Teachable.
10. Sell Photos Of Your Body Online
Selling your photos online is also another way to make money while you sleep. Brands, businesses, and designers buy these photos for website designs, advertisements, and more.
A single photo can be sold for between $5 and $100. If you’re uncomfortable showing your face, you can sell photos of your feet instead.
Some of the platforms you can sell photos include:
11. Create a Software or App
Have you thought of an app or software you can create to help people accomplish specific tasks? If so, you can go ahead to create the app and upload it to Google Play or Apple Store to make money even while you sleep.
You can design the app by yourself if you have coding knowledge. If you don’t, you can start learning programming languages like Python, C, Java, and Swift.
However, if you have the funds, you can pay an app developer to design your dream app for you. The best monetization model will be subscription – where users pay monthly fees. This way, you’re assured that money will come in every month.
12. Start Amazon FBA
People don’t hesitate to buy from Amazon because of the reputation it has – because of that, starting Amazon FBA will surely be profitable. Fulfillment by Amazon is a selling option available to sellers. With FBA, Amazon takes control over packaging, shipping, and everything in between when someone buys your products.
FBA is the best option to choose if you want to earn while you sleep – unlike Amazon’s Seller Fulfilled Prime and Fulfillment-by-Merchant which require that you pack and ship products to buyers yourself.
13. Flip Websites
You can use a platform like Flipper to buy websites, and improve them a little bit by redesigning them and adding new content. Later, you can sell them for profit. Apart from Flipper, another place you can buy and sell a website is Empire Flippers.
14. Wrap Your Car
If you don’t mind posting ads or stickers on your car, you can do so and get paid anytime you drive around. This is another way to make money because you will drive your car anyway. Some of the companies that pay you to wrap your car are;
Expect between $100 and $500 per month for wrapping your car.
Final Words
Even if you want to keep your day job, it’s still imperative that you find ways to make money while you sleep. Because no matter the amount of money you make at your day job, it is still money you’re earning within a limited number of hours.
If you work 70 hours per week, choose a passive idea, and create a system that works 168 hours per week. It’s the guaranteed way to reach financial stability so that you can finally leave the rat race. I hope this post has been helpful, I’m wishing you more dollars and freedom!
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Manuelo is an entrepreneur and a personal finance nerd. He is the founder of Dollars And Freedom. An expert in side hustles, online gigs, and everything about making money. His works have been featured on major financial publications, such as Business Insider, GoBankingRates, Investopedia, Entrepreneur, and more. When he’s not busy with his blog or writing for others, you’ll catch him hanging out with loved ones or reading books on stoicism and self-development.
