4 Obvious Passive Income Businesses You Can Start Today

Making active money online is fun.

But what's funner, is making money passively.

For those new, active income is the money you make when you trade your time to earn it.

While passive income is the money you make with minimal to no effort on your part. All because you did something that makes it so.

It's 2021 and obviously, mistakes will be made as well as money.

But how can you ensure you'll make money, and NOT just mistakes?

Simple. By focusing on smart income methods.

Now, when tackling this subject, I like to start with the obvious ones.

Why the obvious ones? Because they've been tested, proven, and perfected.

So, if the idea of working once, and getting paid over and over for your initial efforts appeals to you. Then sit up and pay close attention.

Just because it's passive doesn't mean it's permanent. – Dan Lok.

These methods although passive for the most part, they'll need regular maintenance. And if you're smart, you'll keep working on them even harder like they ain't passive, even when you're obviously killing it.

Enough with the tough talk.

Seriously though, if you've been wondering where and how to start creating these passive income businesses, then you're in luck.

Because in this post, you're going to learn 5 of the best obvious passive income businesses you can start today!  

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1. Affiliate Marketing

It's no surprise the first one is affiliate marketing.

I mean its business model, is quite simple and super proven to be profitable.

Essentially, you get paid a commission when someone buys a product you're promoting through your affiliate link.

The good thing about affiliate marketing that tends to draw scores of newbies and seasoned affiliate marketers, is the peace of mind it offers.

And by peace of mind, I mean, the risks product creators have to face. Dealing with customer support, the cost of creating a viable profitable product, brand PR, quality issues,…etc.

Now, to earn a comfortable income with affiliate marketing, traffic will be your primary concern.

And if this is your Achilles heel, it could cap your income level. And even worse, deny you the ability to promote some affiliate products with starting requirements.

If this is you, then I recommend checking out, sure evergreen methods of driving online traffic and profiting.

A big advantage of affiliate marketing is the ease of getting set up. In fact, once you get approved for an affiliate product, it's promoting there on out.

Thus far, it's passiveness isn't coming across, right?

Here's how then.

As much as you can promote direct-linking your affiliate products on guest posts, forums, social media, and so many other places.

It'll be more beneficial, in the long run, to be driving this traffic back to your blog or website instead.

This will help you spend time promoting only one thing. Your own website.

Now, this goes unexplained that on your website, that's where you'll be talking about your affiliate products, selling their benefits, while being helpful.

Having your own website isn't a requirement for you to start doing affiliate marketing, but it couldn't be more advised.

Evergreen traffic is crucial to ensure passive income with affiliate marketing.

You could do a post now on your blog or website promoting an affiliate product, and keep earning from it, month after month, year after year.

That's the passiveness of it all. And if these affiliate products offer recurring commissions, even better.

Now, don't forget to build your email list with a reputable autoresponder service like GetResponse.

This will help you follow up with your prospects and even sell more affiliate products down the line.

How so, by having a pre-written email series, that gets sent out after certain conditions or actions are met. Such as, subscribing, buying, opening and clicking links in your emails,..etc

Did you just say you don't know how to build an email list?

Don't worry, get trained on list building in this FREE course here.  

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2. Sell eCourses and Info Products

Another great passive income earner is through creating and selling your own digital products.

We saw how an affiliate can earn passively above, now it's from the product creator's side.

If you are an expert in a particular subject or area in your field. You might want to consider sharing your expertise with the world, by creating your own courses and info products.

To do this, you could house your courses on Udemy, Skillshare, Teachable, or do it yourself with the help of an all-in-one solution tool like ClickFunnels.

Get 2-weeks trial of ClickFunnels. This tool helps you create your own sales funnels, blogs, websites, membership sites, stores, landing pages, squeeze pages,..etc. In Drag-and-Drop style.

Now don't worry if the idea of creating your own digital products scares you, but you still want to.

See, you don't really need to have the first-hand experience in any subject to be able to create successful digital products to sell.

The thing is, there's always a workaround to every online problem. And this is no different.

How?

You see, you've got four ways you could do this.

1. Take the time to learn the subject, research it thoroughly, and apply it. Once you've got the knowledge and understand the subject well enough to teach it. Create your course or info product.
2. Outsource the info product or course creation to someone who actually knows the subject.
3. Buy the full license of someone's product you liked from them, and simply sell it as if it were your own and bank 100% cash.
4. Get a nice PLR (Private Label Rights) product. Edit it, rebrand it, then sell it.

Get access to 24,311+ DFY professional PLR products, to rebrand and sell as your own.

There are so many ways you could make money with PLR products. But using them to fast track one's info product creation, tops them.

The great thing about selling your own info products and courses is that you get to set your own price tag.

But keep in mind the prices you do decide to set could positively or negatively impact your sales. So make sure you check out your competitors' product prices and set yours accordingly.

Now, another thing you might consider doing, to bring in more bread, would be creating an affiliate program for your info product or course.

Going this route means enticing affiliates to promote your products by offering good shares of the profits.

Some people get turned off by this, and the thought of sharing their hard-earned profits with others is unbearable.

But the best way to think about this is, you're hiring salespeople to promote your product for you.

And since you get to keep a certain amount of every sale these affiliates make, that you wouldn't have otherwise, it becomes a win-win situation for everyone.  

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3. Create Mobile Applications

Now, this sounds very intimidating.

But I assure you, it's not.

It's now simpler than ever to create your own mobile applications. And it goes without saying this, but mobile apps can make you a ton of dough.

All you really have to do is create your android, ios, windows, html5 app, and upload it to its respective app store, market it and you're in business.

Personally, I would recommend focusing on Android and IOS apps.

Now remember, with mobile apps, it's all numbers game. The more you upload the better your income.

There are four ways you could go about creating or owning your own mobile applications.

1. Create them yourself, native or cross, using dedicated desktop software, like Unity3D, Godot, GameSalad, Android Studio, etc. This can be time-consuming but it's the cheapest way to do it.
2. Hire a programmer from freelance sites to do it for you. This could prove costly, more so if you don't know what you want, and keep changing ideas around.
3. Buy ready-made apps or templates and reskin them from sites like Flippa, Codester, CodeCanyon, ChupaMobile,..etc.
4. Create and pay per app or monthly basis, using drag and drop cloud-based app makers. Such sites include but not limited to, QuickAppNinja, AppsGeyser, Appypie, Appery, ..etc.

Note: This assumes you'll remove their branding, but it's Free for most of them if you decide to keep their branding.

For beginners, I would recommend checking out QuickAppNinja, AppsGeyser, and Unity3D.

You earn with mobile apps by incorporating ads from different ad networks, within the app. AdMob, Chartboost, UnityAds,…etc

And whenever a user clicks on these ads while interacting with your app, you get paid.

The good thing about mobile apps is that all you have to do is update them from time to time, do proper ASO (App Store Optimization), and that's it.

Once you start making money with apps, you'll understand how passive they can be, and you'll be hooked.

The only investment you'll need is a one-time $25 for Google Play and $99 yearly for IOS developer accounts.

You obviously don't need to start doing both concurrently. You could start off with one and add the other as you get comfortable with the business model.  

Photo by Alexandre Debiève on Unsplash

4. Start And Grow A Youtube Channel

Last, but certainly not the least, starting and growing a youtube channel.

Now, this, is one of those must-have online businesses.

And if you've not yet started one, I advise you to.

Everyone watches videos, in fact, the majority of people prefer watching videos to reading blog posts.

Videos can expand your audience reach while making you a ton of cash at the same time.

You simply pick your niche of interest and create awesome helpful content around it.

Over time you'll amass loyal subscribers, and once you reach 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers, you can apply for Google Adsense and start monetizing your videos.

Bear in mind that's just one of the ways you could monetize your videos, out of many.

The best thing about this approach is that you don't have to sell to get paid.

Similar to the mobile apps business model, when users, or in video's case, viewers click on the video ads, you get paid.

How much you make per ad click, will heavily depend on your niche. Finance, business, and such serious niches pay more per ad click, to say, entertainment, funny videos,… niches.

But it's always a numbers game, the more views you get, the more moolah you make.

So how else can you monetize your videos?

Through sponsorships, app installs and promos, merch, affiliate offers, building a list for email marketing – You can see here why you need to invest in email marketing now.

The way you do this, is you put the links in the video's description box and remind your audience to click on the links, to their respective wants-fix.

The options are endless. It will all depend on your niche and what you're comfortable doing.

And same as blog posts, you can keep earning from a youtube video you do today for many more coming months and years.

Making this a truly passive income method.

And if you love the idea of owning and earning from a youtube channel, but still have the fear of appearing on camera for the world to see you.

Remember, it's not a requirement to appear on camera. Though advised, for branding purposes and trust factor.

To make such videos, simply share your message recording your screen using software like Screencast-O-Matic.

Another thing at your disposal you could consider doing is reuploading creative commons videos for your chosen niche.

Creative Commons Videos, allows you to use them as your own while providing the necessary attributions, where needed.

This goes without saying, but editing these CC videos will be a plus to avoid duplication and also stand out.

And by editing I mean, adding an intro and outro, merging similar related videos together, adding your branding, shortening the video clips,…etc. Using any video editing software like VSDC or a cloud-based one like Wave.Video.

Simply, start reuploading these videos and soon enough you'll have your own audience and start earning.

Tip: Youtube video thumbnails matter a lot for clicks if you aren't gifted with graphical skills, use Canva.

They've got good templates you could edit into what you want. I hope you enjoyed these 4 obvious passive income businesses you could start today and profit for many months and years to come.

Ensure to check out CodeFuel's Top Marketing Statistics post, it'll help you know a great deal about what's working now so that no matter the direction you choose to go, you're equipped to make your business a success.

If something wasn't clear enough and want more direction or you just want to share another truly simple passive income method with us, do so in the comments below.

And if you've been trying so hard to make money online, but still can't quite do it. Read what to do if you aren't making money online today.

It will highlight some of the things you could be doing, that are hindering your online success.

That's it from me today. See you in the next post. Be Blessed!