How to Create Passive Income Online -The 9 Best Passive Income Opportunities in 2020

First, let’s not confuse “Passive Income” and “Residual Income”.

Residual Income is “the calculation” of what money is left to spend after all financial obligations (bills, loans, etc.) are paid.

Passive Income is money earned while little or no ongoing effort is being performed or involved (At the moment of earning the money).

Sometimes passive income could be coming from something which you did in the past or something you are doing presently, but only part-time (or even full time), and it keeps producing income even when you are not actively involved in it (when you sleep for example).

Such revenue is different from an active income (such as a 9-5 job) because you are not actively involved in the activities that produce that income when it is earned.

Even if you are very busy, you can still engage in activities that yield passive income.

This type of earning is very helpful especially when you need some extras to make the month-end a little easier.

Everybody requires alternative sources of income to pay all the necessities and bills to live a comfortable life and if you can build multiple sources of passive income, time may come when it could surpass your active income.

Now that you know what passive income is and why it is necessary to create a life that you don’t need a vacation from, the question now is what are those activities online that you can engage in that can earn you that passive income?

We are here to help you to discover the best of them on the internet today.

Online sources are the best because you can do them at the convenience of your home and are usually very cheap to start with.

The 9 Best Passive Income Opportunities in 2020

1 – Affiliate marketing (My personal favorite)

Affiliate marketing is a very simple method of creating passive income and it offers a great opportunity for people to make money. It’s easy to set up and you don’t need a hefty budget to get started either.

As an “affiliate“, you promote (via an affiliate link) products and services created by other people. You earn money when your efforts result in a sale. This is perhaps the easiest way of earning money online because you do not get involved in the creation of any kind of product or service.

Rather, you would be promoting high-quality products and services produced by other people. As an affiliate, you can market any kind of product. Once you have the interest and passion for the product and with the right marketing strategy, you can earn more than sustainable income through this process.

There are lots of websites today that offer affiliate marketing opportunities.

You must have heard of companies like ClickBank, Amazon Affiliates, JVZOO, Clickbetter, Commission Junction as well as Warrior Plus and several others. These platforms offer people the opportunity to market thousands of products from their platforms, have thousands and thousands of products to choose from, and are free to join. If a platform wants payment for you to promote their products, I would stay away, there are plenty of free options!

You can sell as many affiliate products as you want. If you do it the correct way, you will be making money from the process.

First, you must start from a profitable “niche“. Choose a niche from which you have a passion for and also the enthusiasm to promote.

You also have to study the terms and conditions of each of the merchants before you decide to affiliate their products.

Do your research and discover those items that people use the most. You will likely make more sales when you promote or market such as popular products.

We will discuss more affiliate marketing when we discuss blogging.

2 – eBook publishing

If you have great ideas that you think can help others to solve their problems, you can decide to publish it and ask people to read it and purchase it as a digital product.

Digital products mean a downloadable product. This book can be of anything of your interest but it must be such that can solve people’s problems. Lots of people come to the internet to look for solutions to their problems.

Even writing a book about how to make money online is an eBook.

The benefit if this kind of passive business is that you can virtually create it without spending a dime. It is one of the most cost-effective online business that anybody can do and make plenty of money.

If you want to make money with eBooks, you must be certain of the quality of information you provide. It must be those that are can attract readers’ interest. You must do your research very well and be certain of the information you offer. If you do that very well, you can receive a stream of income from that for many years to come.

If there is any need, you can always improve on the information provided in your eBook by updating it when you think that the ideas are becoming obsolete.

An eBook can also be part of an offer you have on your blog and be a method to create yourself an email list!

3 – Start a Blog (Blogging)

Perhaps the most important thing that you must-do if you want to start and earn passive income is to start a blog.

Blogs are always flexible and you can write about any subject of your choice.

Millions of blog owners generate a passive income with their blogs.

These days, it is not difficult to set up a blog. There are free methods of setting them up as well as paid methods. The most important thing here is the blogging platform where you can write your content and post such content.

The most common and popular CMS (Content management system) platform today is WordPress. There are 17 new blog posts created every second on WordPress! So it does make it the most popular.

With the redesign of WordPress 5.0 (called Gutenberg) in 2019, WordPress has moved away from a script base to a “block” base editor. Now, the entire editor is comprised of blocks. Each paragraph is a block. Each heading is a block. Each image is a block…So the less tech-savvy users can do everything more easily now.

And one big advantage of WordPress is website owners can cut costs (especially when starting out) with its free themes.

But there are several other options.

Wix – It has several pre-designed templates, easy to learn, and a drag and drop system.

Weebly – This one has hundreds of pre-designed templates and is also easy to learn.

Squarespace – It is a little more pricey and difficult to use than Wix or Weebly

Joomla! – It is a little more complex but powerful

Blogger. This one was developed by Pyra Labs and was bought by Google in 2003. It’s free and provides everything you need to get started. However, you must give up the infrastructure control. It’s like living in an apartment. You can decorate it the way you want, but you will never own it…

And this is just to name a few!!! There are a lot more options but these are the most popular ones.

Something I must say here is that all of these options require a new set of skills on your part because they all have different methods of publishing on the web.

Starting that new blog is not that expensive and it can cost less than fifty dollars. If you write quality content, then it is going to attract lots of readers and these can convert a paying customer.

If you get a paid blog it is better than a free blog.

Most (if not all) affiliate marketers use their blogs and website to promote goods and services which they are affiliated with.

If you maintain your blog consistently, create quality content, and help your customers (by getting them to purchase the items your promoting) you will continue to make persistent passive income.

If you already have an audience, it is possible to target those affiliate marketing products to those groups. With time, you will receive consistent income through this method by promoting items in your blogs through affiliate product links. Furthermore, you can engage in other seamless promotions.

Moreover, through your blog, you can make money through advertising. Google AdSense is another method to monetize your blog. Furthermore, you can sell ad space and make money through such ad sales.

Most importantly, you can decide the goods and services you want to promote to best suit your audience!

The bottom line here is that a Blog is the best way to start an online business. You can do it from anywhere as long as you have a laptop and an Internet connection, it’s fairly cheap to start, you can do it part-time (or full time), you can share your passion and ideas to the world and it’s enjoyable because you help people!

4 – Multi-level network marketing (MLM)

Although it’s not my favorite method, this type of business does not and will not die in the short or long term future.

It has been around for a very long time and it will continue to be around because of the huge income potential the system can offer. The Internet has made it possible for creators of MLMs to get a lot more people involved, instead of going door to door like they used to.

It is a system in which you can begin the membership from the bottom level until you reach the finest level. It is one of the ways big companies can promote their products and make money. It also offers individuals a great income opportunity. There are lots of companies creating opportunities to earn money.

Anybody can become an MLM distributor. You earn when you sell directly to the consumer who requires that product. If you engage more hands to sell the products, you are also going to earn more in the process. Those whom you have hired to work below you are called the down line.

You earn whenever those in the down line makes a sale.

As an MLM marketer, there are two different ways available to you to earn money.

The first is when you sell directly to customers.

The second is when those who you are hired and who are working directly under you make a sale, you earn passive income through that.

The major challenge and downside to MLM are that a lot of them are scams.

You must do your own research and read reviews before you join any MLM company to ensure that you make the correct choice.

There is also something called a pyramid scheme and some people associate this with MLMs.

Because of the unpopularity of that system, many people avoid MLMs and they associate with them with scams.

You should differentiate between MLM platform and pyramid and ensure that you are not misled into investing in a pyramid.

5 – Freelancing

Freelancing is another way of earning passive income on the Internet today.

There are lots of websites that offer different kinds of freelancing jobs.

If you register with such sites, you have to offer your professional service through the platform, and those looking for that kind of service can and will contact you.

There are several freelancing websites which one can join today.

Such websites like guru.com, freelancer.com, Fiverr, Upwork, and several others will help you get jobs (usually one at a time) in the field you chose.

You must create an account with those websites so that you can offer your services and those who want those services can engage you.

This type of work has provided a lot of people with passive income over the years. There are lots of jobs that you can do.

You can participate in any of the job opportunities offered on the platforms mentioned above by offering your particular skills to people in order to help them.

6 – E-commerce

An E-Commerce shop is another way of earning passive income.

This is a strategy put forward by big companies to sell their goods and services. You do not need to make your own products before you engage in E-Commerce, it is a great way of earning passive income and you can do that right in the comfort of your own home.

Dropshipping involves the selling of physical products using an organized e-commerce platform. You do not need to do any other work other to research the market and look for those top-selling products and promote such products through such a well-to-do platform. So basically, you sell products that will be shipped directly from the distributor to your customer.

One downside of this method compared to other methods is you will need a budget to get started. Every drops hipper has different goals and therefore, different budgets… If you want to quit your job and live off dropshipping, be prepared to budget big! If you just want to make 100 extra dollars a month, your budget can be much more modest!

The most common platform often used for such are Amazon FBA, Aliexpress, and Shopify.

When you research the product, you order the product while the company sends it to the owner and pay you your profits. It is one of the most effective ways of making passive income on the internet, but it is not an easy task, and let’s be realistic you’re not going to make your dropshipping fortune in two weeks.

7 – Digital Products or App creation

In the age of technology, you can earn consistent residual income if you create any mobile apps. Such an app must be able to solve problems and when created, would be deployed by the smartphone industry to solve existing problems.

You do not need to be a programmer before you can invent one. Once you have the idea, you can outsource the job of development and pay them for that. You would earn consistent income from that for a very long time. This is one of the ways of making money on the internet.

It is not only mobile apps that you can create. You can create other digital products and sell them on the multiple platforms that sell such products like ClickBank, Warrior Plus, Clickbetter, and many more.

If such a product can solve problems, people will buy them.

8 – YouTube Videos and Vlogging

YouTube has now become one of the most popular websites in the world. This is because of the millions of visitors coming to the site daily to watch videos. It is also one of the biggest search engines out there.

If you already have a blog, you can monetize your blog even more from this system by launching your own YouTube channel.

It’s great for anyone even just starting out and doesn’t have an email list or much money to invest.

Just like an affiliate marketing product, the videos could go viral and you could make plenty of money out of this. Even people with a small number of subscribers can make it worth their while.

You don’t need to be a technical expert before you can engage in video production. All you need is a smartphone or a PC camera. Newer generation laptops are equipped with very decent cameras that can produce high-quality video. Even if you have an older model of laptop or desktop with poor camera quality, you can purchase an add-on webcam and use it for your video recordings at a very reasonable price.

Once you are set up and you create relevant videos, people will watch them and you can earn money in all kinds of ways.

You can promote your blog posts and even embed them into your post. This is a great way to promote your website and make money from your affiliate links.

Once you have a good subscriber base and a decent number of “watched” hours (The YouTube Partner Program is available to the channels that have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watched hours over the last 12 months), you can apply with Google Adsense and make money with advertising on your channel.

For most people, the problem is getting started using YouTube for affiliate marketing is creating videos. They are either camera shy or don’t have an idea of how to edit videos.

If you aim to create great videos that encourage people to check out your offer and purchase using your link, then

you should be planning to create very interesting videos. After recording your video, you will want to edit it to add that professional touch that keeps viewers engaged. You can use already installed Movie maker (for Windows) or iMovie (for Mac).

When publishing your videos, you should also consider the YouTube search optimization techniques (which is similar to the Google optimization technique or SEO). So, begin by using keyword-focused titles so that when people search for something your video would come out in the search results.

There are many ways to monetize a YouTube channel, and I have just scratched the surface here, but hopefully, you do get the idea of how powerful this platform really is!

9 – Create a course and sell online

If there is a particular niche that you know much about and even are a master at it, you can make money from such by creating a course about it. It can be in the form of a tutorial.

Furthermore, it can be an instructional video, and based on an interesting topic. It has to be both interesting and instructional so you can sell such courses online to make passive income.

These days, anybody who desires can create an online course. There are some platforms where you can sell such online courses. One of the most popular ones is Udemy There are several others and here are a few of them: Docebo, Skillshare, and WizIQ

This is a very good method of creating passive income as you only create the lesson and courses once but with these platforms, the possibility of selling it multiple times is very possible!

Conclusion

These are some ways of creating passive income. There are several of them.

These are selected because they were tested and proven to be reliable.

You can choose any of these recommendations.