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Passive income is better than any side hustle because the money comes to you without you having to work for it. You’ll read about all kinds of ways to generate passive income, but most won’t earn the typical person more than some extra spending money at best — selling stock photos, building an app, writing an e-book, creating an online course, etc.
They all have one thing in common: Most require little or no upfront investment.
But, if you want to make some real money without having to exchange labor for your earnings — say, $50,000 a year — you’re going to have to pay to play.
The following is a look at a few ways to generate a heavy flow of passive income. Most of them require a significant cash investment; but, if you’ve been saving diligently and investing wisely, you can put your money to work for you instead of working for your money.
Buy a Rental Property Online
Owning a rental property is probably the most desired form of passive income — but scouting properties, screening tenants, performing maintenance and being a landlord is not for everyone.
Sites like Doorvest take care of all of that for you for a flat 10% fee.
You tell them about your ideal investment home and submit a fully refundable deposit, which puts you on a three- to four-week waiting list. When you reserve your perfect home, Doorvest buys it, renovates it, finds long-term tenants and, once you close, you own the home and begin building equity and generating passive rental income.
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Everything is guaranteed, and their average rental home sells for $225,000 with a $45,000 down payment. How quickly you get to $50,000 depends on your property value and the rent you charge, but you can factor in appreciation and lucrative tax cuts as part of your long-term profits.
Launch Your Own Mini-Fleet of Rental Cars
The P2P car-sharing company Turo lets anyone make money by lending out unused vehicles to people who want to rent cars. Anyone who signs up gets $750,000 in liability insurance from Travelers, 24/7 customer service, roadside assistance for their renters and access to a customer base of 14 million people.
The average annual earnings for one vehicle is $10,516 — not a bad haul by any means compared to most low-budget passive income pursuits. But if you really want to make a business of it, Turo says five cars generate an average of $52,579 per year.
They don’t have to be Ferraris; real people are doing it with real cars. A fleet of nine vehicles will earn you just shy of six figures.
Stake Cryptocurrency
Investing in crypto is volatile and risky — but staking it doesn’t have to be. Staking is the process of locking crypto holdings in the token’s associated blockchain. Blockchains that use proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms (as opposed to traditional mining, or proof-of-work) require staked tokens to confirm transactions, create new blocks and perform other maintenance needed to keep the blockchain healthy.
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By staking your crypto holdings, you agree to lock them for a set amount of time in exchange for rewards and fees — much like locking your money in a savings bond or CD in exchange for interest payments.
There are many staking platforms. One of the best is OKX, which offers access to staking opportunities for many of the top cryptocurrencies in periods of 15, 30, 60, 90 and 120 days. The yields are more than enough to earn a crypto whale $50,000 in a year. Shiba Inu pays 12% for 90 days. Skale pays 42% for 15 days. Lingose pays 62% for 15 days.
Buy a Blog
Starting a blog is one of the most commonly cited ways to start a side hustle and earn passive income. The problem is almost no blogs ever make any money and starting one doesn’t qualify as passive income. It’s a ton of work, and much of that work is highly specialized.
If you can buy one that’s already up, running, well-managed and profitable, on the other hand, a good blog can be a virtual ATM.
Blog and business marketplaces such as Flippa give successful blog owners a place to cash in by selling their sites to people like you who want the passive income they generate.
One of many examples is a blog called Perfect Tech Reviews, which is listed for sale right now for $85,000. It commands 50,119 page views per month and has a 92% profit margin. The 2-year-old site generates $4,374.04 per month in passive net income — about $52,500 per year.
Buy Into a ‘Goldilocks’ Dividend Stock Fund
Dividend stocks are probably the simplest and most accessible path to a steady passive income stream. On the lower, safer side are index fund ETFs that track major indices such as the S&P 500. According to Forbes, they typically pay measly yields of around 1.5%, which means you would need about $4 million to earn $50,000 a year in dividend payouts.
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On the other end of the spectrum are the enticing but dangerous stocks that offer gargantuan yields of 14% or 15%. Those kinds of shareholder payouts are rarely sustainable and often leave investors with less than they started with.
In the middle, however, are what Forbes calls the “Goldilocks” dividend stocks, which pay 7% or 8% yields. At that level, a retiree with a $650,000 nest egg could earn a reliable passive income stream of $50,000 a year.
Forbes profiled the Liberty All-Star Growth Fund (ASG), which blends mid- and large-cap stocks. It consistently outperforms and often raises its dividend payout. Its yield was 7.7% in 2019. Today, it’s over 8.5%.
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Disclaimer: Information is accurate as of Oct. 20, 2022 and is subject to change.
