15 ideas to generate Passive Income in 2021

How can we make money while we sleep? Undoubtedly one of the bases of being able to reach an early retirement, and perhaps not so difficult to answer.

Although to be honest, most of these passive ideas require a lot of work, money or time to assemble, but once assembled they can generate returns for years with little or no maintenance.

With enough businesses set up this way, it can end up generating a snowball effect where performance can grow exponentially.

15 Passive Business ideas

1. Real Estate Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding allows many people who do not even know each other to pool their savings to invest in something bigger and share the benefits. There are multiple platforms that, in exchange for a percentage of the profits, are in charge of searching for rental properties, buying them with the money of the platform participants, exploiting them and distributing the profits. Some popular platforms are Estateguru or StockCrowd IN.

2. Investing in the stock market

Investing in the stock market is one of the best ways to escape the effects of inflation and seek refuge for our money. It can also give us returns of around 10% without too much effort or worry. Simply by investing in an index fund such as the S & P500, we would not need to study any of the companies that comprise it and if the history since 1920 serves as a reference, we would have a 10-11% average annualized return. Some popular investment platforms are Estateguru or DeGiro.

3. Peer to Peer (P2P) Lending

P2P lending is nothing more than a way to make loans between people without going to the bank. There are multiple websites (Mintos) that are in charge of putting people and they could act as an intermediary to guarantee certain security in the loan.

4. Rent space as a storage room

Although it is true that you could build or buy a professional storage room rental, it is not the only option.

There are people who rent their own storage room that they do not use to their neighbors or rent space from their garage as storage space.

5. Start a Blog

If there is a topic that we are really passionate about, we can write a blog. You don’t have to be a subject matter expert to do it. A blog gives us the opportunity to delve into topics that interest us but that we do not master since it will ask us to really understand a concept before explaining it.

There are many very inexpensive tools for setting up a blog (Wordpress) and countless tutorials to take it step by step.

6. Rent your car or your parking space

If we have a car in disuse or a parking space that is empty most of the time it is always possible to rent it either privately or through web platforms.

For example, I know people who take the car at 7 in the morning during the week, go to work and come back at 7 in the afternoon. During that time interval, someone else who works near your home could use it to park.

7. Write a book

Writing a book / ebook or recording an audiobook takes quite a lot of initial effort, but once written it can generate sales throughout our lives.

It has never been easier than today to write an ebook and have it published on Amazon and available internationally.

As with a blog, there are countless topics to write about. We should look for those topics that we really love or motivate us to write every day.

8. Create an app

Although I cannot say that it is up to anyone, there are many tools to learn how to make mobile or web apps quickly and easily. A paid app or a free app for advertising can give income for many years, especially if we take care to maintain it and update it when necessary.

9. Start a Podcast

Today, anyone can create a podcast and upload it to many platforms. There are podcasts on a variety of topics from history and politics to fantasy or engineering. It is then about finding a topic that we feel good rambling about and doing it for long enough to cultivate an audience.

Joe Rogan, one of the most famous American podcasts, signed an exclusive contract for his podcast with Spotify for about 100M, not counting all that he earns in advertising.

10. Create an online course

If there is a subject that we master, perhaps derived from our work and we consider that it may be of value to more people, taking an online course can be very lucrative. Pages like Udemy allow us to upload and organize videos made by us in online course format and give a percentage derived from the sales that our course generates.

11. Rent a room

For homeowners, they can always rent a room in their house. Of course there is a price to pay, which is not living alone. And an essential requirement: a house owned or with sublet rights.

12. Set up an online ecommerce store

With websites like Shopify setting up an Ecommerce no longer requires advanced web knowledge. The challenge is to find a product that people want and organize a supply and shipping chain.

13. Start a YouTube channel

If writing a blog or a book is not your thing, but you think that you still have a lot to say, a YouTube channel may be the right decision.

It goes without saying that the potential return for a YouTube channel can be huge, but just as with a blog, it will be time to make content for possibly a long time until the channel takes off. Persistence is key.

14. Sell stock photos

For photography lovers, there are ways to sell your photos to photo websites, which in turn will sell them to the interested public. For example, the website Alamy offers 50% of all sales on photography.

15. Sell second-hand items

Whether it is our old clothes or objects, or actively looking for products to sell more expensive. It depends on how it is assembled, it may require more or less active work on our part.