The Most Profitable Ways to Generate Passive Income in 2022
Is passive income, really a thing? Is there really some sort of magical system that we can set up whereby we sit around on our duffs all day and just watch our bank accounts fill up with cash? It's not really that easy, but passive income is definitely a thing. It does exist, and today I'm going to be taking you through six ways that I think are going to be the most lucrative options for you to start generating passive income in 2022. If you're new here, my name's Rachel Harrison-Sund, and I help people generate passive income selling journals, planners, notebooks, and more on the Kindle Direct Publishing platform.
If that sounds interesting to you, please do subscribe and hit that bell as well so that you can be notified every time I put out one of these videos, which is each and every Monday. So what exactly is passive income? Passive income essentially means that you're no longer trading time for money, but all passive income streams do require you to put up an asset up front. That's either going to be money or it's going to be time. You're either putting up a financial investment up front, or you're going to be front-loading a bunch of work and then essentially setting up a system that allows you to earn money without your real-time presence. Here's what passive income isn't. It is not easy.
Setting up a passive income-generating system usually does require immense effort alongside self-discipline, consistency, patience, resiliency, and the mental toughness to keep going when things get really hard, which it invariably will. It is also not fast. It usually takes a substantial amount of time to set up and fine-tune any passive income stream, and you may have to work for months before seeing any financial return on your efforts. It is also not, I'm sorry to say, 100% passive. While you may eventually get to some sort of "set it and forget it" stage, there's nothing really passive about the work you're going to need to do up front to get there, and growing that stream once it's actually generating revenue is going to require some further efforts still. Before we move on, tell me -- do you currently have any passive income streams that are bringing in some recurring monthly revenue? Or maybe you've got a couple of them. Either way, let me know in the comments below if you've got any recurring passive income streams coming in or, if you've got several, which one is your favorite? Let's get into the various types of passive income that I think are going to be the most lucrative. I'm going to skip the ones that require significant up front financial investment. Instead,
I'm going to focus on those that'll be kind of generated primarily through your own elbow grease. And I'm going to present these in order of what I think are the easiest to get started with to the most difficult. First up -- YouTube. If you're watching me right now, you obviously already know what YouTube is and probably already know that the way that you get paid is through ad revenue. How do you get started to create a personal channel? You're just going to sign into YouTube on your computer or even on the mobile site on one of your devices, you're going to click your profile picture, and then "create a channel." You'll then be asked to create a channel. You're going to check your details and confirm to create your channel.
You can also create a business or a brand channel, which is a good idea if you think you're going to have more than one person that's going to need access to the channel. Unfortunately, you're not going to be able to start generating revenue straightaway. In order monetize your channel you're going to need to have, firstly, a thousand subscribers, so that's going to take a little bit of time to build. And your videos are going to need to have generated 4,000 watchtime hours over the last 12 months. Then you're going to have to set up an AdSense account; that's super simple. So what will it cost you to get going? It's not going to cost you anything.
It totally free to set up a YouTube and an AdSense account, and despite what you might think you need in terms of fancy equipment, you really don't need anything more than a smartphone or a laptop to get started. When I first started, all I did was plop my laptop in front of a wind in my living room for some natural light and I used the webcam that was just in my laptop and the laptop microphone. Even now two years in, I am still just using a simple Logitech webcam. Although I have upgraded my microphone, still it's nothing super, super fancy. So how much can you make at this? This is going to be determined by the quality of your content, whether other people on YouTube actually care about the content you're creating, and then course the frequency and the consistency that you tend to publish new videos. Top YouTubers like jeffreestar, PewDiePie, and even the six-year-old Nastya earn in the millions each year.
Obviously this is not typical. I can tell you that for me currently, with 40,000 subscribers and posting just one video each week, I generate anywhere from between a thousand, usually, to $1,500 US a month. And, by the way, I'm in Canada, so for me that actually translates to about $1,500 to $2,000 a month.
So this isn't a huge amount, but this essentially being a bonus income stream on top of my main sources of income, it's a really nice additional income stream that I'm grateful for. So how passive is it, really? Definitely requires a time commitment and you've got to be consistent. So personally, like I said, I publish videos once a week, but I batch all of my videos. So every month I spend a couple of days coming up with ideas, writing the scripts, and then shooting four videos at a time, usually.
But once those videos have been published, they do continue making money, even if you take a break. Most of you know I took almost this entire last year off from publishing any new videos when I had my second baby, but I was still generating that thousand to $1,500 a month. Actually, during the summer it went up to about $2,000 US. And this was, like I said, while I was taking almost the entire year off and not publishing any videos. So like pretty much all of the passive income streams I'm talking about today, you are going to need to frontload that work and kind of experience the passive part of things later on down the line. If this is something you are interested in getting started with, I recommend checking out channels like Sunny Lenarduzzi.
She's probably my favorite. Her channel is where I learned how to get going on YouTube. I will link to her channel down below. You should definitely check it out if getting involved in YouTube is something that you're interested in. Next up is self-publishing. The idea here is that you self-publish books in either e-book or paperback format on a platform like Amazon KDP and then you earn a royalty each time a copy of your book is sold.
This is actually pretty easy because you're able to take advantage of an already existing marketplace -- Amazon -- so there's not as much of a crucial need to drive traffic. That's what I'm saying by "easy." Also, we're not talking about writing a novel or a thick volume here, like a thick non-fiction volume. If you want to scale, unless you're an established author, someone with an already substantial following, you are going to need to publish many books quickly. You can do this by outsourcing the writing of fiction or non-fiction books so that you can have multiple books being created at the same time, or you can go my personal favorite route, which is publishing low-content books that you can quickly and easily create yourself. That includes books like planners, journals notebooks, guest, books, logbooks, anything kind of in that sphere.
This is one of my absolutely favorite ways to make passive income and, personally, I still think it's the fastest and easiest way to start making the biggest amount of passive income. So, how do you get started? Well, you can write or create your own book, or you can outsource the job to a writer and/or a designer on a freelancing platform like Upwork or Fiverr. Once you have a completed book, you just upload the files to KDP and then your book is made available for sale on Amazon. If you want a little bit more of an explanation of how this business model works, or you're looking to just simply get started, please download my free guide, "3 Steps to Publishing Your First Low-Content Book in Less Than a Day." I've linked to that down in the description below. What will it cost you to get started? If you create your own books, this is not really going to anything to get started.
If you decide to outsource the process, it can be anywhere from $10 a book, maybe, if you're doing low-content, to $500+ a month if you're doing something like fiction or non-fiction and you're going to need to hire some writers. How much can you make? Hundreds to tens of thousand dollars a month. Like I already said, I still think self-publishing -- specifically publishing low-content books -- is the fastest and easiest way to start making the biggest amount of passive income. I have personally made about half a million dollars publishing some fiction, some non-fiction, but mostly low-content books. I got started back in 2014 and that's how much I've made since I began, or since I started those several years ago. How passive is it really? Some types of books might require a regular promotional regimen.
Others though, might fall into the kind of more like the "set it and forget it" category. In my peak publishing stage, I was probably spending about 20 hours a week on my low-content publishing business, but when I had my daughter at the end of 2017, I completely walked away from that business for six entire months. And I was still able to generate 10 to $20,000 a month passively. That, my friends, is true passive income. The next lucrative passive income stream is digital products. Here,
you create a digital product such as an ebook; an online course; or even creative works like photography, video, or music. Then you sell that product either on your own website to your own audience and email list, or you can use someone else's audience through their website and email list or, in the case of creative works like photography video, or music, you can submit that stuff to be sold on stock websites. How do you get started? At the bare minimum end of the scale, you could conceivably just produce a simple ebook over the course of a few days and then partner up with a few affiliates who would promote your book to their audience. Or you could take your existing creative works -- like photography, illustrations, video, music -- and then you could submit them to stock websites where other individuals or companies will pay for the right to use those works in their own projects.
At the more laborious end of the scale, you'll need your own website with a decent-sized audience email list, and probably at least a few months of hard work to create an online course. This is what I did to create my own digital course, Low-Content Profits Academy. This is a course where I teach people how to earn passive income selling low-content books, which I just talked about in the previous section where I was talking about self- publishing as a passive income business model a few moments ago. This is something that's been an amazingly lucrative income stream for me.
What will it cost you to get started? Nothing, if you just create a simple ebook and then leverage someone else's audience. Otherwise, you're probably looking at about maybe $6 to $10 a month for web hosting, zero to $10+ a month for an email service provider, probably around $40 to $100+ a month for an online course platform such as Teachable or Kajabi, which is the one that I use. How much can you make? Again, we're looking at hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars a month if you create a quality product that solves a problem for your audience. How passive is it really? Ebook sales are pretty passive, but a course that you launch multiple times a year could require a lot of ongoing work. For my course, LCPA,
there was quite a lot of hard work in the beginning, but now that I have all of my systems set up and I'm no longer doing live launches, it's all on evergreen. The entire thing runs totally in the background, and it's now my biggest stream of passive income. Next up: affiliate marketing. So what is it? Essentially, you receive payment for promoting other people's products or services to your audience.
You can do this by either writing blog articles that include links to products or services offered through an affiliate program such as Amazon Affiliates, ClickBank, or LinkShare. When a visitor on your site clicks on one of those links and makes a purchase, you earn a small commission. Or you can promote other people's products or services, usually digital products or online courses in a similar niche to the one that you serve, either on your own blog or to your own email list. So,
how do you get started? Well, you'll first need a website and ideally an email list that caters to the same audience as the one you'd like to become an affiliate for. And again, the more traffic the better here. If you're starting from scratch, there's probably going to be many months of hard work required to build your audience. What'll it cost you? About $6 to $10 a month for web hosting and again about zero to $10 a month for an email service provider. How much can you make? Hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month, depending on the popularity of your website or your blog.
This is another favorite source of passive income for me, generating usually around a couple thousand dollars a month. Again, it's not huge, but it is a really nice bonus income stream. How passive is it really? It's pretty darn passive.
Once your affiliate links are set up, you are ready to start earning commissions each time a purchase is made after a customer clicks the link. If you're promoting a product to your email list, then you'll be writing a few emails. Technically, this is probably the easiest form of passive income, but I didn't list it as the easiest because you need to build an audience first, and that does take some time. If your website or blog is already up and running and you want to get started with affiliate marketing, you can check out Pat Flynn's affiliate marketing cheat sheet. I've linked to that down in the description below as well. Even if you don't have a website or a blog do check out Pat Flynn anyway; he is awesome. Next up: niche websites and blogs.
What are they? Despite what some say, blogging is not dead and there are many people out there who are still making a killing on their niche sites and blogs. The idea here is you create a small web website or blog that contains basically as much information as possible about a particular niche, and when it comes to niches, the narrower, the better. The main sources of revenue on a niche site are going to be advertising, where you can generate ad revenue from Google AdSense, banner ads, sponsored posts or paid reviews, as well as affiliate sales that you can receive by writing blog posts that contain links to products that are related to your niche.
Your niche site might be about, let's say, knitting, so you write a blog article about a particular brand of yarn. Then you can link that article to that ball of yarn somewhere on like Amazon, and then you receive a commission from that sale. So how do you get started? First, you will decide on a niche based on some research.
You will then create your website, your blog, and then you'll be creating content like articles and blog posts, and this is what's going to be used to attract that traffic to your site so you can start generating some ad and affiliate revenue. The main factor for success in a niche site or a blog is an in-depth understanding of SEO, or you need the willingness to be able to pay for someone else's expertise in this area. SEO is what's going to allow your articles and posts to show up in Google when people are searching for content like your, and without it, your site really is going to attract nothing but crickets. SEO is extremely important here. What will it cost you? Your only real up front cost is web hosting. Again,
probably in the order of like $6 to $10 a month. What is the earning potential? There's huge earning potential in the order of, again, hundreds, thousands, sometimes even tens of thousand dollars a month, but this one will take months, maybe even years to start paying off in big ways like that. It's all going to come down to your ability to drive traffic to your site, and like I said already, that's mainly going to be through SEO. How passive is it really? There is a lot of work up front, just like most of the ones we're talking about here. Once it's going can be quite passive, but if you need to keep creating fresh content like weekly blog posts, there's definitely going to be some maintenance. Last one: physical products. This is -- surprise, surprise --
the sale of physical products online. Generally, there are a couple of ways to make income in the ecomm space. Firstly, drop-shipping. You either sell other people's products in your online store or you can use a print-on-demand platform like Redbubble to sell your own custom designs on items like t-shirts, mugs, sheets, whatever. In both cases, the supplier ships directly to the customer and you never actually have to deal with any of the inventory, which is a huge bonus.
Then there's Fulfillment by Amazon. You've probably heard it referred to as FBA. In this instance, you send your products to Amazon and they fulfill the order when it's placed by a customer. So, how do you get started? Unless you use a site like Redbubble, both drop-shipping and FBA are going to require you to source products to sell. If you're drop-shipping, you'll need an online store.
Most people tend to use Shopify. When an order is placed on your site, you will relay the order to your supplier who will then fulfill the order for you. For FBA, you will have your products sent directly to one of Amazon's warehouses. And then when an order is placed on Amazon, Amazon will fulfill the order for you. This is great because you don't have to deal with inventory or customer service.
What will it cost you? You can sell your own designs on a print-on-demand platform like Redbubble completely for free. That could be a great way to get started. If you're drop-shipping, all you need is a basic e-commerce website, or you can join going to Shopify for, I think it's about $29 a month (correct me if I'm wrong). If you go the FBA route, however, you're probably going to be looking at about $2,500 to get started, and that cost is going to include product samples, inventory, promotional giveaways, UPC codes, and a modest advertising budget. Earning potential here...again, great potential, but this one does have a very steep learning curve paired with high competition. That can make getting started a lot more challenging than some of the other models, which is why I've placed this at the most advanced level of passive income earning. Drop-shipping is probably the easiest and cheapest way to get started with physical products. So how passive is it really?
Your main job after getting your store up and running is going to be that of customer service rep (unless you're going the FBA route), which could take up anywhere from a few hours per week to sometimes maybe a few hours per day, depending on the size and the success of your store. FBA, does remove customer service from the equation, but you can probably still expect to spend anywhere from five, maybe even to 20+ hours per week on your e-comm business, depending on how many products you sell. If you're interested in exploring a physical product business model, I highly recommend checking out Steve Chou's website. It's called mywifequitherjob.com.
I've linked to an article from his site below that offers a really great deep-dive comparison into eight different e-commerce business models, so do check that out if you are thinking about getting started in the whole e-comm physical products space. Whew!There you have it. Those are the most profitable ways to generate passive income in 2022, going from easiest to most challenging. Like I mentioned, the ones that I have direct experience of are YouTube, affiliate marketing, and digital products, and they've all become invaluable sources of income for me over the past few years. Please do check out my free guide, "3 Steps to Publishing Your First Low-Content Book in Less Than a Day," if you want to learn more about how to start generating passive income selling journals, planners, notebooks, and all of those kinds of fun things on the Kindle Direct Publishing platform. You can also join my free Facebook group, Low-Content Profits, so that you can get some help from other low-content publishers on your journey. Check out these videos next for more low-content publishing tips, tricks, and tutorials. And please don't forget to like this video, if you did. And,
of course, subscribe and share it if you found it useful. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time.
2022-01-20 08:51
