Are you looking to generate extra cash flow for yourself or your business? You can make that a reality with minimal effort and investment if you start a passive income business. What is passive income, how can you generate it, and what platforms can you use, all in this blog.

Would you ever mind getting some extra cash flow without putting in too much effort? This is not too good to be true. If you already make money from your current job or if you’re an entrepreneur generating money from his/her business, this is called active income. Another type of income that we’re referring to in this blog post is called passive income, also known as unearned income.

What is passive income?

Unlike active income, which demands active participation in specific tasks, passive income requires minimal effort to obtain. It is the money that is consistently acquired with little or no effort on the recipient's part. The essence of this type of income is that you’re able to generate it parallel with your active income. As inflation rages throughout the economy, passive income can be a great way to help you increase your financial flow. 

ATTENTION! Passive income is NOT A second job. 

Some people misunderstand the meaning of passive income. If you work as a salesperson during the day and as a hostess during the night or on weekends, this isn’t a passive income. Working as a hostess is a second job that requires showing up and exerting effort to get paid. If you go back to the above definition, creating a steady stream of money without putting in a lot of effort is what passive income is all about.

Benefits of passive income for individuals and businesses

• Reduces stress
• Accelerates early retirement.
• Allows for location independence.
• Increases financial stability and security.
• Allows for more time to pursue other projects and passions.
• Helps businesses increase their wealth and cash flow. 
• Extends a company's reach, boosts bottom-line profitability, and saves time. 

Now that you know what passive income is and its potential benefits for you and/or your business, you’re probably wondering HOW you can start generating passive income. The idea of generating passive income is not new, and people would mostly do that through financial investments and call it “making money in your sleep”. Today and thanks to the rising technological advancements, there are several other ways to start a passive income stream, like creating and selling digital products.

SVA Agency has listed for you in this blog several ways to generate passive income and platform recommendations that enable you to create and sell products. 

Types of passive income

Before diving into the types of passive income, ask yourself these questions to help you decide on the best way for you to generate this income.

1. What kind of upfront investments (money, time, and effort) are you willing to put in?
2. Are there any skills or knowledge that you possess that may be useful to others?
3. How can the process of sharing your skills and knowledge be automated?

Dropshipping

One of the finest passive income opportunities, even if you don't have much in the way of cash flow to start with, is dropshipping. Some drop shippers claim to earn more than $100,000 annually. Dropshipping is not a get-rich-quick scam, though, as it requires an initial time commitment in order to make money. The dropshipping business strategy entails setting up an online store where clients can explore and purchase goods. Dropshipping is intriguing since you don't have to see or handle the actual things you sell. When you dropship, your supplier takes care of the whole process, including manufacturing, packing, and fulfillment. Also, this passive income business has a low financial risk because you don't need to pay your supplier until after your consumers have made a payment.

Creating Content

If you prefer using video as your medium, you may make money by submitting your original works to YouTube and setting up your account for monetization through the YouTube Partner Program. You may make any kind of video you like, including instructional, short films, ones with original music, and even ones with ambient noise. Still, there are certain prerequisites to joining the YouTube Partner Program, such as having a certain quantity of subscribers and views. This is particularly useful for content creators that have a solid follower base, and you’ve probably heard a lot about famous YouTubers that invested their passion for filming, editing, and creating content on this platform. This is also true on other platforms like Instagram. Famous IG bloggers and after investing time in creating content to grow their follower base, now started making money from ads, collaborations, and more. 

Selling Digital Products

Digital goods have significant profit margins, making them excellent sources of passive income. The item just has to be created once, and you may sell it repeatedly through your online store. No inventory or storage space is required, so you can sell as many digital products as you want. These products are assets that can’t be physically touched, like ebooks, stock photos, printables, online courses, mobile apps, templates, PDFs, etc. In other words, digital products are downloadable files. Here are some digital products options you can consider to generate passive income:

1- Sell stock photos

To make money with photography, you must be present at an event or picture session, which might get tiresome after a while, even if you're making a fortune. However, with websites like Pexels, Shutterstock, Stocksy, or Adobe Stock, you may sell your unique pictures as stock images whether you're a novice or an experienced photographer. You can generate passive income from selling your high-quality photos and videos to these online media houses. 

2- Create an online course

It takes some initial time investment to teach online. You'll need to produce digital resources like templates for students to take away, as well as an outline for your course and a recording of it. Online course sales are now simpler than ever. You may produce pre-recorded courses and start selling them with a few restrictions, whether your area of expertise is marketing, illustration, entrepreneurship, or other topics that are in high demand. Platforms like Thinkific or Teachable can help you create your course content, and then you can host it on your own website. 

3- Self-publishing

You may create an ebook that you can sell online if you have a lot of knowledge or if you’re an expert in a certain field, or have a good story concept. A popular option that can help you convert your words into an ebook or print edition is Kindle Direct Publishing. For example, a dietitian can create an ebook that includes healthy tips and recipes and promote it to current and potential clients.

4- Sell templates

You might be able to make money off of your template designs if you love designing digital organization systems with applications like Microsoft Excel or Notion. You can sell your work for money on Etsy or other online markets.

In the following section, we’ll list some software recommendations that can be useful in helping you create or promote your passive income business. 

Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)

Trying to figure out where to sell your digital products might be a bit overwhelming. Easy Digital Downloads is an entire eCommerce solution that enables you to sell your digital downloads with WordPress. Here are some of the benefits of the free version of Easy Digital Downloads. You’ll have: 

• A shopping cart and a discount code.
• Access to e-commerce reports.
• Full control over pricing and branding.
• Protected product files such that only paying customers can access your digital product.

If you still need a reason to start selling your digital downloads, here are some of the benefits. Selling digital products has lower overhead costs (no shipping or inventory), unlimited scalability, access to a global audience, and, most importantly, easy to create and distribute through platforms like EDD.

Sellfy

Another alternative for EDD is Sellfy. It’s so easy to use, and besides being an e-commerce platform, it provides smart and quick tools for boosting sales and promoting goods on social media. Sellfy enables you to sell digital products on your website so you can be more hands-on with branding and design, but the good news is that you can sell on Sellfy even without a website. You have a 14-day free trial, and prices for selling on Selfy start at $19/month. The most popular digital products sold on this platform are design items. Other products include ebooks, comic books, videos, and music content.

Canva 

You are probably already aware of this famous app. But have you heard of the Canva Creators Program? Canva enables you to design templates or elements that, once published to the marketplace, will be accessible to all users all year long. This program is a great opportunity for designers, photographers, illustrators, artists, and specialists, no matter their level of experience, to showcase their work and receive royalties. According to your area of expertise, you can either create templates, elements, or educational resources as a specialist. You get paid for Free and Pro template usage, and the higher your template is used, the more you get back from the royalty pool.

Shopify

Are you considering dropshipping? If yes, then Shopify must be your top choice. Shopify is an e-commerce platform that has direct connections to hundreds of merchants that will stock, pack, and ship your items for little or no money. All you need to do is create a selection of items for your Shopify store, promote your brand, and let dropship merchants do the rest.

• Shopify offers a 14-day free trial, which makes it a risk-free way to test-drive a brand concept.
• Shopify’s plans start at $29/month only, which makes it a cost-effective choice for startups and small businesses. 
• Shopify has no upfront fees for listing up to 500 items in your store. 

Thinkific

Thinkific can be your go-to platform if you’re planning to build your own online course no matter what industry you are in. it can handle everything from A to Z. you can create your course, distribute and manage sales, and everything, all from one place easily, and quickly with just some little effort. A basic package with unlimited students and courses is $39 per month (paid annually). However, you can start offering online courses for free with a limited number of courses.

No matter what type of passive income you wish to generate, make sure that you’re doing what you enjoy, choose something you are skilled at and build upon it, and most importantly, keep a balance between work and life. Work smart, not hard. Passive income is one smart way that can help you generate more cash flow while putting in a minor effort. After reading this blog, what side hustle are you considering as your passive income stream?

Are you planning to generate passive income but feel overwhelmed with your current job or running your own business? Do you feel you're putting too much effort and time into solving minor business issues while you miss focusing on other goals and passions? It’s okay to ask for assistance and delegate some tasks. No one can do everything on their own, after all.

SVA is a virtual assistant agency that is dedicated to helping YOU.

Click here to get a FREE consultation with our team to learn more about how we can help you reach your goals with our services.