Top 5 Passive Income Ideas 2023 – $14k per month

Passive income ideas

I have a lot of notes in front of me, So I’m gonna be reading basically off those notes, so that I make sure I cover everything. So, passive income. I feel like there’s not actually no such thing as truly, truly passive income, because to make money, you usually have to have some sort of money, in the first place, or you have to do work to get that money, and then maybe you could use that money to make passive income.

But even then, you still had to work to get that money in the first place. So I don’t think there’s any such thing as truly passive income. What I see as passive income is income that you make that isn’t tied to your actual output. So it’s not like a regular job where you have to put in the hours and you make money. It’s that sort of thing where you make money even whilst you’re not working. And that’s definitely been a big goal for me throughout my career, is to start businesses, make businesses, and make money, where I don’t actually have to be tied to a certain time.

I don’t have to be working certain hours of the day, I can make money from wherever as well. I have the freedom. I think that’s what it is for me, mostly. Just having the freedom. And I think that’s the most important thing for me. So I did just wanna clarify that, I do wanna clarify that passive income, I feel like isn’t ever really truly passive because as far as I can tell, you still need money in the first place and you’ve had to work for that money to make more money.

I think when it comes to passive income, some of the things that are the most passive are things like maybe investing in property or buying stocks and shares. But like I said, you still need all of that capital first. You still need all that money to invest in that sort of thing. So these sorts of passive income ideas that I’m gonna go through are things that you can do without a ton of money, some of them maybe you need a little bit of money, but definitely not as much as you would need, for example, to make money from stocks and shares and to make money from property.

YouTube

the first one is YouTube. Oh yeah…! typical YouTube. And it’s just because I do YouTube. I do YouTube videos, I have two YouTube channels, I have this one, and then I have my main channel. And I just feel like, for me, they’re very much amazing sources of passive income. Because I’ll make one or two videos a week, I’ll make those videos, they’ll take me however many days, how many hours to make, I put them up, and they make money whilst I’m not actually working. And the output of them genuinely compounds, I think that’s the most important thing as well.

As I keep publishing more videos, as I have a catalogue of videos, as I build a brand around myself and the videos that I make, the money just keeps coming in and getting bigger and bigger as long as I’m consistent with it. With this channel, I haven’t been consistent enough, so the money has dropped off of this channel. But still, I like making these videos anyway. And the most important thing for me, like I said, is freedom. I wanna be able to make videos when I feel like making videos. I think there are two very important things to consider when it comes to making YouTube videos and having a YouTube channel. The first one is that it’s very easy to get started. It really doesn’t require much. You just set up your camera, you start recording, and that is it.

When it comes to how high-quality those videos are, now, of course, that can vary depending on the money. But again, you don’t really need an absolute ton of money to get started as a YouTuber. You can just use your phone. I know a lot of youtubers who use their phone for YouTube. You don’t need a fancy camera to make YouTube videos. No way. I like to use fancy cameras just because I like to use them. and I have the money to use them. But I know that if I didn’t use fancy cameras and stuff, I would definitely use an iPhone. iPhones these days are so good at making videos that you really don’t need a fancy camera at all. And you don’t need to spend a ton of money. I think the one place where you could maybe spend some money is on a microphone. I think audio quality is definitely very, very important. So yeah, make sure to have your audio quality up there, because that’s more important than the actual video quality.

If we look at how much I’ve actually made from YouTube, I’ve made $40,000 from AdSense alone, just ads that you see on the videos. I’ve made $40,000 last year, 2021, in AdSense. And then in terms of sponsorships, I made an additional $82,000. So yeah, $122,000 I made from AdSense and sponsorships, that doesn’t include any other source of revenue. I think that’s one of the best things about YouTube, is that it can really open up a bunch of other revenue streams. You see other YouTubers do it all the time with digital products, physical products, courses, ebooks, just anything and everything, you know? I feel like it’s such a good way to sort of build a brand, build a market, build a product around a YouTube channel.

I think YouTube is definitely one of the best ways to make money, for sure. It’s one of the ones that I would always recommend. I think for a lot of people, the tough part is definitely thinking of what to start a channel on, and of course, putting your face on camera. But you don’t actually have to put your face on camera, there are many channels out there, where they don’t have a face, it’s just content. There’s no actual person behind it, you just hear a voice, which is completely okay, you definitely don’t need to be your face in camera. I sometimes think to myself that I wish I could sort of go back and start a YouTube channel, start all of this without my face. I mean, who knows? I could even change my main channel to not have me on it at all. So, yeah. You don’t need to put your face on it. I can see why people get sort of disguised with that, but it’s something to consider. And like I said, I think YouTube is definitely one of the best ways to currently make passive income.

Digital Products

So the next one is digital products, and I think this is actually one of the most common ways to make money online, and sort of make passive income. There’s just so many avenues for revenue. I also think it’s one of the easiest ways to make money. Nearly everyone can make some sort of digital product. I think a lot of people think that you need to have an audience to make money from digital products. Sure, it makes it easier when you have an audience, to sell a digital product. But I’ll go through some examples where you can make money without having an audience. So one way I made money with digital products without an audience was with Tumblr themes.

So when Tumblr was popular years ago, I’m talking like 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, that sort of era. Tumblr was very, very popular. I didn’t have an audience back then. No one really knew who I was. But I was passionate about Tumblr, I really enjoyed using Tumblr. I had my Tumblr blog. And the great thing about Tumblr, is that even though it’s a social network, you still had your own website, your own sort of corner of the internet, you could call it. And with that website, you could modify it, you could change the HTML and the CSS to make it look the way you want. So I wanted to do that, so I learned HTML and CSS, which really didn’t take me long. I think it only took me one or two months, maybe three months to learn HTML and CSS. It’s quite simple learning HTML and CSS. And then Tumblr’s sort of theme system that they have is also very simple, very easy to understand and learn. So I made Tumblr themes.

I started making Tumblr themes. I made my first one for my own personal blog, and I liked it, and then people started asking me, “Hey, I like your theme, would you be able to share it with me?” So I started making free themes first and then that went into making premium themes, and then that went into me asking Tumblr if I could sell my Tumblr themes on their Theme Garden. And yeah, ever since then, that was around 2014, ever since then, I have made $690,000, which is just insane. And yeah, that’s not through my audience or anything, like I said, that’s just through Tumblr. And they still continue to make money. That $690,000, I made a lot of that earlier on when Tumblr was popular. Obviously now it’s nowhere near as popular and I don’t make anywhere near as much. Right now, I just make a few hundred dollars a month, but at the same time, there’s no input from me, I’m not actually really doing anything, it really is just passive income.

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I haven’t actually made a new theme for over five years now, yet I’m still making hundreds of dollars a month. Fantastic. I don’t market them anywhere, I don’t do anything. And they will just continue to make money. So yeah, Tumblr themes was a great money maker for me. I don’t know if it’s a great money maker for people nowadays, but I just wanted to give an example of how you can make money without an audience. Another one is ThemeForest. So ThemeForest is another great place where theme developers are making money, selling all sorts of website templates. The most popular theme– Well, WordPress theme last week has sold 2,200 times, making $132,000. That’s $132,000 in one week, which is just insane to me. That is just crazy. And obviously, that is one of the most popular themes. You don’t need to be a popular theme.

If I scroll down, there are themes that are getting hundreds of sales a week. At $60 each, they’re still making $6,000 a week, which is just pretty insane. Now, of course, there are seller fees and other expenses and stuff, but most of these developers, they definitely don’t have large online followings, they’re just making a product that they wanna make and then putting it on ThemeForest. And usually, it’s just one developer, maybe one designer, just very small teams who are making this sort of money. They’ve put in an existing skill that they already have, which is coding, making website themes and stuff, and then are selling it on an already existing marketplace. Notion templates. So this is something I’ve seen crop up a lot in the last few months. The market for Notion templates, which is just amazing to me, this one product, Notion, and people are just coming out with templates and stuff, and then just sharing them, selling them, giving them away for free, whatever it may be.

There’s a user by the name of Easlo, his real name is Jason, which I keep seeing popping up on Twitter. And he’s released a bunch of different templates for all different scenarios. Now in February 2022, they have over 60,000 followers and have generated $50,000 in income from Notion templates in 11 months. Just from pretty much nothing. They started with less than 100 followers in March 2021. And what’s even crazier is that they’re 19-20 years old.

That is just so impressive to me. I think this is a really fantastic example of someone who didn’t have a following, who was passionate about a product, a service, started sharing that on Twitter, started just sharing that for free with people online, and then ended up building premium templates and started making money from those premium templates. And that was in less than a year. So yeah, this is a fantastic example of someone who’s done both, where they’ve taken something that they’re passionate about, they’ve taken audience building, built the sort of two things together, and started making money from it. And they’re so young, 19-20 years old. If a 19, 20-year-old can do this now for like… Man, when I was 19-20, I wish I was this capable.

I wish I was able to do this sort of stuff. I think the most important thing that Jason has showed us here is that product launching and marketing, and things like that, should go hand in hand. If you make something that people want and find value from, and you share it online, on social networks and stuff, the marketing for it can be quite easy. You will build a following around it quite easily, as long as you make the effort of sharing that experience online. And I think Twitter, Youtube, and TikTok, are the best places to do that right now. Probably the most crazy story though, and it’s something that I’ve shared on the channel previously. is the story of the Excel, the Microsoft Excel TikToker. So there is a TikToker that shares tips and tricks on how to use Excel. And it’s one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen.

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Her name is Kat, and she started in June 2020. And she simply shares how to get the most out of Excel, that then evolved into teaching others how to use Excel through guides and courses. And she now makes so much money from it that sometimes she’s making six figures in a day. Six figures in a single day, which just blows my mind because it’s Microsoft Excel. I think this is such a clever way to make money because I don’t know a single person that doesn’t use spreadsheets, that doesn’t use things like Google Spreadsheets or Microsoft Excel. The market for it is absolutely ginormous. Yeah, at the same time, people aren’t really learning how to get the most out of it, and this is what she’s doing. Kat is helping people get the most out of that.

She’s tapped into a market of people, who use it every single day, and who just want to get the most out of Excel, and she’s able to sell courses and guides to those people. She sells them to businesses as well. So businesses will have teams, and they want their teams to be better at using Microsoft Excel and Spreadsheets and stuff. And she will sell commercial licenses to them and teach them and stuff. And again, that’s a fantastic way to make money. I also have a bunch of my own digital products including wallpapers, presets, classes, icons, ebooks, things like that. And when I look at my Gumroad dashboard, I made $50,000 last year from all of that. So yeah, on top of my youtube income and stuff, another $50,000. Yeah, it really starts adding up when you start looking at it like that.

Shopify

So Shopify has definitely become very popular in the last few years. I think especially because of the pandemic and stuff, people wanna start their own online stores, sell products online, ship them out to people. But I also think Shopify is definitely one of the toughest, and it’s probably the least passive on this list, mainly because it just requires a lot of work. I should know because I have my own Shopify store, and I know how much work it requires to run that store. I actually probably wouldn’t recommend starting a Shopify store unless you already have e-commerce skills, experience in wholesale, maybe you can source products, or you can make your own physical products.

Maybe you have a workshop or something, and you can make your own physical products. If you can’t do any of those things, I probably wouldn’t recommend it because you’re going to need a lot of money up front to start, and you’re most likely going to stumble a lot along the way because it is just hard. There’s no easy way to put it. With my own store, ulxstore.com, the upfront costs, just to buy stock, can start from $5,000. The most I’ve spent on a single stock order was $30,000 so far. And as my store goes, I’m just going to end up buying more and more, so making bigger orders. So yeah, it’s definitely a risky business to start, I think. I don’t wanna put people off, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it, but I think unless you have the money and stuff, unless you really think about it, it’s something that I just wouldn’t recommend. But the great thing about starting a Shopify store, starting an e-commerce store, is that you’re building a brand and a company around it.

If you wanna sell it later on, you can, because it’s his own sort of single brand, it’s own sort of business. It’s not really dependent on you. And because my ulxstore.com, it actually isn’t that dependent on me. I’d say only a 10% of the sales actually come from my audience, the rest of the sales come from all sorts of other forms of marketing, word of mouth and referrals, and things like that. So yeah, it’s a great thing to start if you have the money. And it’s something that I feel like I would recommend starting later on in the journey if you’re someone who already knows how to make money, already has capital and stuff. It’s something that I would definitely start later on. So yeah, Shopify, I definitely think it’s a great way to make a lot of money, definitely, you can make a lot of money with Shopify with your own sort of e-commerce brand and whatever. But yeah, I just wouldn’t recommend it for people who are just getting started on making money online or are looking to make passive sources of income.

Affiliate marketing

So I think most people understand what affiliate marketing is, so I’m not really gonna go too deep into it. But one of my popular ways of making money through affiliate marketing is Amazon. So I make a lot of tech videos, of course, on my main channel, and I link to a lot of tech products in my videos and stuff. And naturally, I try and link to Amazon as much as I possibly can. So this year, January this year, I actually made $1,400 from Amazon Affiliates, which isn’t bad at all. And yeah, some of the purchases that people make are hilarious.

I can see that people have bought things like COVID tests and stuff through my links. So that’s the best thing about Amazon, because Amazon is so big. As long as someone clicks on your link and they buy something that same day after they clicked on your link, and they haven’t clicked on anyone else’s link, you’ll get money regardless of what they buy, it doesn’t have to be this specific product that you’ve linked to. But yeah, it’s interesting to see what people buy because I can see that people have bought the laptop tray stand monitor mount thing that I mentioned in my setup video. 112 times. 112 times, which is just insane.

At the same time though, I’ve made Amazon $44,000, and I’m only getting $1,400 of that. I mean, I’m not really too bothered about that, mainly because obviously, it is very much a source of passive income, I’m not having to ship the products, I’m not having to really do anything other than link to the product. Affiliate marketing is definitely a really, really good way to make money. And I think it’s definitely one of the easier ways to make money for anyone who’s starting out, because if you’re making YouTube videos on products, it doesn’t have to be tech, it could be anything, just anything that you can buy on Amazon, and you’re making reviews and stuff on that. You can buy cheap products from Amazon, review them, and just be done with that, and then link to it, and you can make money from it. And there are a lot of people who are doing that, a lot of people who make serious money from Amazon Affiliates and other forms of affiliate income, just by doing that.

Saas Business

And then finally, we have SaaS businesses. So there are tons of people making money online through apps and service, subscriptions. People you will never have heard of. I think that’s one of the best things about it, you don’t really need to, again, have an audience to make money from these sorts of things. One example is Fabreezio, Fabrizió, I don’t exactly know how to say his name, I’m probably butchering it. He has a couple of services. One of them is Typefully, which is actually a pretty simple service that helps you write Twitter threads.

That makes $7,000 a month for him. And then he makes another one called Mailbrew, another very simple service that takes your newsletters, Tweets, and other services that you like, sort of like new services, and then condenses it down into a daily digest? Yeah, daily digest. And from that, he makes $14,000 dollars, I think it is. Yeah, $14,000 a month. Which is very, very impressive. Two services that are making him… Let me do a quick maths. Yeah, $21,000 a month, not bad at all. Of course, it’s not truly passive, he is working on them.

But at the same time, it’s not like he has to work on them eight hours a day, every single day. He could maybe decide, “Hey, I’m not gonna do any work today.” But he’ll still make money. And then maybe when he’s in the mood, he can work the whole day, if he’s in the mood, and he can improve the product, he can add features or whatever. Another example is Peetier, Peeter, Peter? I don’t– Again, I don’t really know how to say his name. He goes by @levelsio on Twitter. He has a job board called remoteok.com, where you can find jobs that are completely remote. So due to the pandemic, and more, more people wanting and looking for remote jobs.

His job board has seriously blown up. Last month he made $100,000 from his job board. And in the last year alone, he has made $1.3 million, all from a simple jobs board, which is just insane. It’s so impressive, because a jobs board, really doesn’t require much work. If you can automate everything, well, you can automate everything, nearly, all of it. And yeah, people just come along, companies come along, they wanna post a job, they pay their fee, they put the description, link to apply to the job, and that’s it, that’s all he does. And yeah, he’s making literally millions from it, which is so impressive, because he’s been doing this for quite a few years now. And due to the pandemic and stuff, it’s really blown up, and he started making serious money from it.

So those are just some of the ways that you can make passive income, make income online. There are a ton of other ways that I haven’t gone into in this Article. If you have any ideas of passive income ideas or income ideas just in general, please, leave them in the comments below. I’m always interested in hearing what other ideas people have. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed it. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter. And subscribe for more. And also, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter.