Top 3 Passive Income Ideas to Start Earning

By passive, I mean you complete the task once and can see ongoing benefits. Passive income source number one is digital products, but not in the way that you probably think. If you do this method of creating a consistent income stream correctly, it can potentially be huge. 

This source alone has contributed significantly to my recent revenue, which is why I'm sharing it with you first. But in order to do this, you need to do something first to do it correctly, and that thing is known as skill acquisition. You need to acquire a valuable skill that other people also want to acquire.

Now, how can you acquire these skills correctly in a good way? Well, there's a website known as Skillshare. 

You can learn and acquire skills related to topics like health, wealth, relationships, online marketing, travel, and technology. Ideally, you want to learn a skill that can solve people's problems, and all of those topics that I just mentioned are typically areas where people have problems.

To give you an example, a huge trending topic right now is artificial intelligence and using AI to generate things that companies actually need. There are many different routes you could go down here. You could help companies generate ads or logos with AI, or you could use AI to help with generating YouTube or blog post thumbnails. 

That's why I've been looking at this class on Skillshare called the MidJourney Masterclass, which covers how to use the AI tool MidJourney to generate great AI art. These tactics of generating AI art also apply to YouTube/Blog thumbnails, which is why I'm really interested in learning more about it.

So, let's say you went through courses like this on Skillshare, acquired that skill, and learned how to use AI tools. It will show you all the prompts and everything you need to do. Now you have an incredibly valuable skill. 

Trust me, you need to do it in this chronological process, and you'll thank yourself that you did. Essentially, you'll go to marketplaces like Fiverr or Upwork.com and start implementing this skill for other people at a very low price initially. You're not going to earn much doing this, but trust me, this is all part of the plan.

For example, you start generating YouTube thumbnails for people, maybe logos for companies using AI and the skills you've acquired through places like Skillshare. By doing this, you'll build up great customer testimonials, especially if you're charging very little for your services. The key to achieving substantial earnings isn't through this freelancing we're talking about right now. 

The key to achieving substantial earnings is to eventually sell digital products. This is how you can start creating that semi-passive income where you do the work once and benefit from it for years into the future.

Eventually, what we're going to do is put together our own digital guide. After doing this and acquiring skills, you'll learn what are the best prompts for MidJourney, for example. You can start writing those down, putting them into a Google Document, which is a digital product, and then charging money for that digital product on places like Gumroad.com. 

When people buy your list of prompts for MidJourney off of Gumroad, boom! You've earned some money without additional work after the initial effort. You did the work once in the beginning, but you don't have to do any work every time a new person buys it. You can gain continuous returns without trading more time for money because you have infinite time now. The longer you have this revenue stream going, the more beneficial it becomes, and the more you benefit from that work.

You can also put together online courses, sell Excel spreadsheet databases, and more. The possibilities are essentially endless. Once you've got this passive income source of selling a digital guide about how to do YouTube thumbnails with AI, you might ask, "How can I get more eyeballs on that?" More eyeballs mean more sales. The way you can do that is by using our next passive income source, which is YouTube, but not in the way that most people think. 

You can run YouTube channels without stepping in front of a camera or being an influencer. You can do YouTube by putting together slideshows with Google Slides, using an AI tool like Tube Magic to write your scripts, come up with infinite great video ideas, and optimize your videos for you. Use something like OBS to record your screen.

Let's say you started running a channel about how to grow on YouTube and generate great YouTube thumbnails. You can saturate that channel with videos about useful information on that subject, taking bits of the skills you've learned and sharing that for free on YouTube. 

Then you'll start building up an audience, even if it's tiny, and you can achieve substantial earnings. I had a student in one of my courses who had less than 3,000 subscribers and was able to generate significant yearly income by offering a digital product on his YouTube channel. These people were already interested because they were searching for queries related to what he was talking about, and each of his videos barely got any views. 

Even if you're doing something as niche as how to make YouTube thumbnails, you can turn that into a full-time business. 

This student’s videos were literally just slideshows using Google Slides, doing a screen recording with OBS, and demonstrating different concepts in a slideshow format. You’re not limited to long-form videos; you can also create YouTube Shorts, TikTok videos, and Instagram Reels to diversify your content even more. 

You can use an AI tool like Opus Clip Pro to take your long-form videos and split them into great clips, letting AI do all the work for you. To make sure your videos are as optimized as possible, use Tube Magic's video optimization feature to automatically optimize your videos for you.

YouTube is incredibly passive. I have a business partner who’s been a YouTuber for the past 10 years, he’s still receiving additional income each month from videos he uploaded when I was just 14 years old. I know how passive YouTube can be, and hopefully, you can learn that as well. You can also generate income from ad revenue directly from YouTube. It’s always nice to receive an extra check every month passively from Google and YouTube.

Now you'll be generating income from ad revenue and digital product sales by referring people from YouTube to your digital product. Let's discuss your third passive income stream. We'll use the first two passive income streams you've set up to generate a third one. This third one is the easiest and laziest of all because you won't have to create a product or run more YouTube channels. 

You can simply plug something into the first income streams we talked about and turbocharge your income.

For example, let's say you're running a YouTube channel about how to grow on YouTube and make great YouTube thumbnails. What if there’s an easy way to add at least a couple of thousand dollars per month passively? It turns out there is. You can partner with software that helps people do what you're teaching them how to do, in this case, running YouTube channels and receive ongoing earnings for each referral to that software. One great software is my own, Tube Magic, which you can sign up for as an affiliate. We'll give you 50% commissions, which is unheard of for software. 

Promote it in the descriptions of all your videos, and you'll increase your monthly earnings. If you get a thousand people signed up for Tube Magic, paying you every month, not only will all those people benefit from the software, but you'll also add an additional consistent revenue stream.

Now you've got these three golden passive income streams, which I like to call the perfect trifecta for generating online income. Now that your earnings have increased, you might ask, "Kingsley, what should I do with it?" First and foremost, put a good amount of it back into the business by investing in more education and maybe buying ads. Any surplus funds after covering your expenses, bills, and whatever else you need in your life, like travel or hobbies, should be wisely invested. 

For example, I love to travel, and I've been able to see the entire world. Just in the past 30 days, I went to India for the first time in my life, which was absolutely incredible.

With the extra money, you can put it into something like a high-yield savings account, where you can earn interest and make more money off the money you've already made. Right now, interest rates are high, so you can benefit from that. However, this isn't investment advice; it's just what I personally do with my money. 

As I mentioned earlier, the best way to get tons of traffic to anything you're doing online to turbocharge these passive income streams is always relevant. My name is Kingsley Abbey, and I will see you in the next tutorial. You are absolutely going to love it. See you soon.