15 Unique Passive Income Ideas for Newbies In 2024

Introduction

I have found 15 unique passive income ideas for newbies in 2024. Some of these are passive, meaning you could start them tonight and earn passive income. Some take a bit of work before you can earn passive income, and some are a little bit less passive than others, but all of these are good options that you can look into. I guarantee you have never heard of many of them on this list. So, if you appreciate me writing articles like this, let me know by commenting in the comment section below. Let’s jump into it.

1- Sell Templates

The first passive income idea on the list will be selling templates. So, there are so many different types of templates that you can sell online. Some include resumes, presentations, websites, and Excel sheets for finances. One of my favorites is notion templates. For instance, with the notion template example, There’s a website called Notion. You may or may not be familiar with it, but it’s a website that helps with organization and getting things done, and it’s trendy among the productivity community.

There are many ways to create custom notion templates and then sell them to others to help them with their organization and productivity. There’s a YouTuber named Thomas Frank who started a second YouTube channel, started selling these notion templates, and made it to over a hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue, and there’s another Twitter user named Easlo, who talked about how he made over $500,000 selling notion templates as well, but it’s not just notion templates.

You can sell many things, such as financial planning, Excel sheets, websites, social media graphics, thumbnail templates, etc. There are a lot of other places you can sell them, such as Etsy, Creative Market, or even your website. The great thing about creating a template is you make it one time, and then after that, once it’s starting to sell, it’s completely passive. So yeah, this is a perfect option. It’s also something that I think is super underrated. Not enough people are doing it. I will give this one a 9 out of 10 opportunity score.

2- REITs

The following passive income idea will be Reits, which stands for real estate investment trust. This is genuinely a sedentary way of making income. You can invest in real estate without doing all the dirty and hard labor. So it works by investing your money into a Reit, and then you get a small portion of different pieces of real estate. Whenever the Reit company makes money from the real estate, you get a dividend or a percentage of their money.

By law, REITs must pay at least 90% of their taxable profits to shareholders. So they’re doing 100% of the work, and you’re getting at least 90% of the profits. So, this is a perfect way to make passive money and a great way to diversify your investment portfolio. Still, without being said, if you want to make a significant amount of money, you will have to invest a substantial amount of money as well. So, for that reason, I’ll give this one a 7 out of 10 opportunity score.

3- Selling Educational Worksheets

The following passive income idea on the list will be selling educational worksheets. This involves creating and marketing educational materials such as study guides, lesson plans, or practice sheets and then selling them on an e-commerce platform. Then, it’ll be purchased by either students, teachers, or parents seeking supplementary education materials. If you think you can’t make money doing this, Michelle Schroeder Gardener makes over $400,000 a year selling educational printables.

Now, you could sell this on many different websites, but one of them would be Shopify. They charge about 3% per transaction, plus 30 cents. Another one would be Etsy, which charges about 6.5% of the total order, and the website TPT Teacherspayteachers.com will do a lot of the marketing for you, but they also charge a pretty steep price depending on the plan you set up. You’ll be 55% to 80% per sale plus, and you have to pay an extra 15% to 30% per transaction.

So yeah, this one is pretty good. There is a lot of opportunity here. Many people out there need help creating educational materials or maybe are homeschooling their kids. So, I’ll give this one an 8 out of 10 opportunity score.

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4- Flipping Blogs or Websites

The following passive income idea is going to be flipping blogs or websites. So, there are many websites you can do this. One of them is going to be Flippa.com, and this is where you can buy a tiny blog or website and flip it for a higher amount. So it’s effortless to buy low and sell high. This is a very common side hustle. You don’t have to do it with blogs. You can also do it with domain names.

So, if you find a domain name that you think is undervalued or one that you think will take off shortly, you can buy it for a meager price and then sell it for much higher later on. So yeah, this is a prevalent one. It’s been around forever. You have to understand why blogs or domain names sell for low or, you know, they buy for high.

So this is something that you want to familiarize yourself with, but it’s something where, if you know, it’s a perfect keyword many people will be searching for in the future. You can buy and hold it for years and then sell it later on for a considerable profit, and it’s incredibly passive. So, I’ll give this one an 8.5 out of 10 opportunity score. 

5- Create & Sell Online Courses

The following passive income idea will be creating and selling online courses. Now, this is an excellent way of making money. Many people want a step-by-step guide on how to do something you know. They don’t want to search across the internet search on Google search on YouTube, you know, have to see a bunch of ads and sponsorships. They want a step-by-step guide on how to do something quickly and efficiently. There are tons of people out there making money from courses.

So, for instance, this guy says he built and sold an online course for 6 million dollars in two years. So, there are many different websites where you can research what types of courses people are looking for, and people are making and then make your course and upload it. Some of my favorites are Udemy and Skillshare, and I’ve taken many classes from both Udemy and Skillshare. These are typically lower-ticket courses, where you’re teaching something that’s a commodity.

So something like Python, something that a lot of people out there know, and you’re just teaching it and making it a little bit more fun, or you’re a little bit more insightful. So people buy your course over others. Now, you can sell courses for higher ticket prices, but typically, you have to do your marketing, and a lot of the time, it will have to be a course in something rare. You must learn a rare skill set and then sell a course teaching people how to do that.

But the great thing about uploading on Udemy or Skillshare is that they do the marketing for you. So, this can be a great side hustle. Think of something that you uniquely know, something unique about you, something that you’re good at, and then think of what the market wants. Then, make a course that fills both of those needs. I will give this one a 9.5 out of 10 opportunity score. 

6- Start A Youtube Channel

The following passive income idea is going to be starting a YouTube channel. Now, this is something that I have to warn you about: It is not passive. It took a lot of work to get it off the bat and the ground when you started. However, once you get it going, you can have videos that sit on YouTube and make you money for 5, 10, or even 20 years, and the more videos you make, the more money that will be coming in. Every single video is like a soldier that’s going out every single day and making you money.

Now, I recommend making an educational channel when it comes to YouTube. I’m not a big fan of making entertainment channels because I think making money is challenging. On the other hand, education channels are where you’re helping a natural person solve. A fundamental problem is getting views for and making money from it is much easier. So yeah, YouTube is incredible. But, of course, I’m biased, and like I said, it is a lot of work, especially when you first started.

But if you focus on giving value to others, AKA making educational content, that solves real problems for real people. You’re much, much more likely to succeed. So, yeah, YouTube gets a 10 out of 10.

7- Rental Real Estate Property

The following passive income idea is one of the most popular ways of investing: rental real estate property. Now, this is not entirely passive because there are many things you have to do, such as betting tenants, fixing things when things break, maintaining the upkeep of the property, etc. However, hiring a property manager will take most of the work away from you and eat into your profits. So, there are pluses and minuses to investing in real estate, and I think everybody knows how this works.

You invest in a house. You rent it out to people. You make money from the cash flow from people renting it and using that cash flow. You’re paying off the mortgage, and then you might even have a little bit extra after that, and that’s just pure profit for you. Then, additionally, the house itself will become more valuable over time. So you’re making extra money in the form of equity, and then on top of that, you’re also getting a bunch of fantastic tax write-offs.

So, real estate truly is a fantastic investment, but it is a lot more work than some of the other side hustles on this list. But with that being said, countless people are making money from it. This is widely known. This is not a secret; real estate is one of the best ways to make money. So, I won’t go over this much; it’s semi-passive. I’ll give it 5 out of 10. 

8- Rent Out Your Car

The following passive income idea will be renting out your car, so there are different apps. You can use such as Turo, where you can rent your vehicle. For instance, if your car sits at work for eight or ten hours a day, you can have somebody rent it while you’re working. This is a relatively new but also reasonably effective way of making money. If you know how to do it, right? It’s not entirely passive because you do have to have upkeep on the vehicle. So, for that reason, I’ll give it a 7 out of 10 opportunity score. 

9- Vending Machines

The following passive income idea is going to be vending machines, and this is where you can turn snacks into stacks. A person usually owns all those vending machines you see with soda or snacks, and they’re making passive income from it. Inventing machines is kind of like a silent salesperson who’s making you money 24/7. It’s kind of like owning your mini-mart on autopilot. One vending machine will probably not reach ten thousand dollars a year.

However, having hundreds of them scattered across the city or a state in strategic locations could bring you money you’ve never dreamed of. Again, vending machines are not entirely passive because you either have to buy food or the soda yourself or hire somebody else to do it, which will eat into your profits. But with that being said, this one’s still pretty good. I’ll give it a 7.5 out of 10 opportunity score.

10- ATM Machines

The following passive income idea is ATMs. That’s similar to this one but even better than the previous one. So, ATMs are an even better way to make passive income, and I think everyone knows what an ATM is. You see, you go up to it, you put your debit or your credit card in, and you can get money out of it. Every time you do that, there’s a transaction fee. But a lot of these ATMs are owned by individuals.

Banks do not own them, so individual people are the ones who are making money from these ATMs, and this is an even better way to make money than using vending machines. I’ll give that one an 8.5 out of 10 opportunity. 

11- Start A Membership Website

The following passive income idea is going to be starting a membership website. This is a website where you pay monthly to access content or whatever else they’re serving. So, a platform that’s easy to do this on is Patreon, and the math here is pretty simple. If you charge $50 a month and have a thousand members, you will make $50,000 monthly. But even a few hundred members could mean you’re making a few thousand dollars a month, and many people are doing this.

So yeah, this one could be pretty good. It’s probably a lot of work upfront. Once you get it going, though, it can be relatively passive. So because it’s a lot of work upfront, I will give this one a 7 out of 10 opportunity score.

12- Write An Ebook

The following passive income idea is going to be writing an ebook. So I recently talked to Joe, who is the CEO of the company Empire Flippers. This is a company that helps to buy and sell businesses. So, he’s a business broker, and because he’s a business broker, he has unique knowledge about what types of companies are doing well on the internet right now. I asked him if you were starting as an entrepreneur, what kind of business would you start right now?

What is the business that has the most opportunity? I think this was about a year back. I asked him this, and he said he would start an ebook business using AI and sell the ebooks on Amazon. Now, he is shocked when he suggests this. I did not expect him to mean that, but after looking into it a bit, I think it’s an excellent opportunity, especially if you’re a beginner. You look for subjects people are searching for on Amazon.

Then, you make ebooks about that subject. You can heavily utilize ChatGPT or other AI tools to help you do this. Now, will the AI do 100% of the work for you? No, it’s not. But can it do a significant amount of the work for you? Yes. So this is a pretty good opportunity. I don’t know if I want 100%. I agree with Joe that this is the best opportunity, but I will go ahead and give it an 8.5 out of 10 opportunity score. 

13- Create A Lead Gen Website For Service Business

The following passive income idea will be creating a legion website for service businesses. So, what exactly is Lead Gen? Well, it stands for lead generation, and this is basically where people search for a plumber online or something like that. Then, they would find your lead generation website, and then you can sell those leads to local plumbers, which can be done automatically. This is valuable for service-based businesses because they don’t want to spend much time marketing. They want people coming to them, AKA leads.

This one is pretty complicated to get into, and it does take a lot of work upfront. But once you have some websites that are getting many leads, this is highly passive. So this is a great way to make a ton of money, but it’s also not as passive as many others on this list. So I’ll give it a 7.5 out of 10 opportunity score. 

14- Blogging

The following passive income idea is going to be blogging. So this is a way to make money in many different ways. You can start your blog, work as a freelancer, or post blogs on websites like medium.com. Creating your blog or posting on medium.com is a way to make passive income because medium.com will pay you for everyone who reads your articles, and creating your blog is a lot of work upfront. Still, eventually, you’ll start making money from AdSense and affiliate marketing. Then, it also becomes very passive.

So, this is one of the most tried and true methods of making money online. It is a lot of work upfront, although you can pay others to write your blogs. However, if you have some cash, this is a way of getting passive income. Once you have enough articles written, it’s making money month over month because you’re just going to continue to get views from people searching on Google for the next 10, 15, 20 years, or maybe more. So yeah, this is another perfect one. I’ll give it a 9 out of 10 opportunity score.

15- Invest In Startups

The following passive income idea is investing in startups, which you could do without being a venture capitalist. So you can use platforms such as Start Engine, for instance, which allows you to invest in startups, and the truth is most startups will fail. But if just one out of a hundred of your startup investments does well, that can make up for all of the rest and then some.

So venture capitalists know that most of their startup investments will fail, but one that succeeds will make them 100, 200, 300, and maybe even 500 extra turns. So, the risk is worth it for them. I’ll give it a 6.5 out of 10 opportunity score.

Unlocking Financial Freedom: Explore These Unique Passive Income Ideas

In a world where financial stability is a coveted goal, passive income offers a refreshing alternative. Beyond the traditional 9-to-5 grind, these unique income streams beckon newbies with promises of financial independence and flexibility. As you build wealth, consider the discussed lesser-known avenues that can transform your economic landscape.

Now, by the way, I wrote an article called “14 Best Side Hustles You Can Do From Home In 2024.” it went viral and will give you a bunch more side hustle ideas. You can check that article out by clicking right here.