
Ever wondered how some people make so much money without sweating too much? I mean constantly awakening to the sweet sound of credit alerts every single day?
What if I tell you you could make money every minute of the day, even in your sleep, would you believe me?
In this article, we will focus on ten passive income businesses you may have heard or not have heard about.
Also read: How to promote a service-based business on Facebook
The desire to be uncommonly rich created processes and systems that enable some people to earn money, even when they are not directly involved in any money-making activity.
• Have you ever thought about these before?
• Is your income active or passive?
• Do you have to work every single day to earn an income?
• If you lose your job right now, what would become of your finances?
These germane questions are meant to audit you, as you will need to sincerely rethink your wealth creation strategies, in order to be sure you are not missing out on opportunities to do less work for more money.
Now, getting closer to the crux of the subject matter, most of the passive income ideas listed here are so suitable for individuals who do not desire the strain that culturally accompanies starting a business from the scratch.
Table of Contents
What is Active Income?

Active Income is solely the cash you earn from your direct efforts. It is the foremost and commonest way people make money.
In more simplified terms, active income is any money you earn because you probably did something. Examples of active income include:
- The cash you get from completing a client’s project;
- Your salary at month-end;
- Income from freelancing;
- Coaching or consultancy fees.
What is Passive Income?
This is often the cash you earn from assets. Here, you do not necessarily have to work to earn passive income. It is the income you earn without participating actively along with your physical efforts.
For instance, if you have some assets that provide you with a steady income, like some assets that pay your rents, stocks that pay you dividends, or perhaps a business that generates profits.
One actually must start thinking out of the box. Examples of passive income include:
- An autonomous profit business;
- Affiliate marketing;
- Real estate rents, etc…
You should know that before you start thinking of earning passive income, it is advisable to take a firm position and devote much time and resources to steadily build the assets.
Warren Buffet once said:
“If you do not find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”
10 Passive Income Ideas
Passive Income businesses to form money in 2021 will be listed below. I actually have to lay emphasis on the very fact that before you can start earning a decent residual income from your assets, you must have put in a stack of labor.
These passive income-generating assets just do not happen, you have got to grow them with time.
If you are able to put in this initial work to grow a residual source of income, below are legit passive income ideas to grab up immediately.
Incorporating Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is a superb way to earn passive income, only if it is done right. The most interesting part of it is that one can still do affiliate marketing, either online or offline.
Affiliate marketing simply involves selling other people’s products and getting a pre-agreed commission for your troubles.
However, before going into affiliate marketing, here are some points you need to have in mind.
- You do not need to own any product or service.
- Be capable of selling, either online or offline.
- Only promote products you trust, it is way better if you have sampled the products, as it further boosts your marketing confidence.
- Have a system to draw in leads.
And now, since our goal is to generate residual income from this affiliate marketing, you will need to focus on creating a system so that whether you are there or not, it will be making you steady money.
Converting Expertise into Product
The simple idea behind this is turning your knowledge into a product and selling it for passive income.
You also have to be sure that the particular knowledge you want to turn into a product has a ready market.
It would not be so nice to spend long hours creating a product and then getting to know that nobody is interested in buying what you are selling.
So, before any further ado, you need to:
• Identify who your customers are;
- Know where they hang out (this is very important information);
- Know how much they are willing to pay;
- Know how urgently they need your solution; etc…
The necessary tools you need to create an e-book are:
- Word processor
- Book design cover
- Canva or Photoshop, or you can go ahead and hire a designer from Fiverr.
There are as well a few tools to create a video course, they include:
• Microphone
• Screen recorder
• Video recorder (this could be a smartphone or a digital camera)
• Course hosting platforms
• Video editor
Most importantly, it is necessary that you take out time to handle customer queries or better still employ the services of a virtual assistant.
Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT)

REIT is extremely suitable as a long-term source of residual income, most especially if you are interested in taking a bite of the real estate pie.
It sounds great, right? Yes, but unfortunately, you may not have quality capital to invest.
Think of it as some sort of mutual fund, though in this case the fund is dedicated to investing in real estate assets only.
However, before you can finally take the bold step of investing in a REIT, you may have to research the available funds first, after which you can decide whether to invest in traded funds or not.
Crowd Funded Agro-tech Farms

The income from Agriculture should never be underestimated.
It is one investment vehicle that is sure to return a high ROI, with no doubts, though the main challenge here is that investing in Agriculture is labor-intensive.
You do not necessarily need to go and start farming, bearing in mind the essence here is generating passive income.
This is where agritech companies come in. These platforms have made it easier to participate in agriculture without physically going to the farm.
How Crowd Funded Farms Work
• Visit their websites and then create a profile;
• Browse through to see their selection of farms;
• Identify the ones you want to invest in;
• Then buy.
It is that easy: think of it as shopping online, though investing in farm units in this case.
Self-Publish on Kindle
Publishing a book is such a great way to earn passive income. Once this is done right, you will be amazed at the sales you make.
However, the challenge most people face is being able to find a publisher that is willing to publish and market their works.
The good news is that, with Amazon Kindle, you really do not need any publisher to get your works in the hands of your readers.
You can proceed to create your account on Amazon, upload your book, and then follow up on the prompts to fill in the necessary details about your book.
Once all these have been observed, you can then click on the publish button and there you go!
Dividend Investing
This is surely a good one for financially savvy people with a passion for trading the stock market.
You might be wondering if an average person with no technical knowledge about investment could earn from this too. Oh yes!
Although the person in question would have to put in so much effort to learn every single thing about dividend investing.
Similarly in other passive income businesses, one would have to put in a quality amount of effort, in order to learn and also invest, before you can start earning a nice amount that will keep you smiling.
Invest in Crowd-Funded Startups
Can you remember platforms like Kickstarter and Gofundme?
These platforms enable users to invest tiny amounts in startups.
As it is now, there are platforms that get funds from users and pay them in interest and their initial capital after a set period.
Here in Nigeria, there is an app called PiggyVest that helps you save money. This software also has a feature that enables users to invest their cash.
Certificate of Deposit
Certificate of Deposit (CD) is a time-restricted deposit you make to a bank or an organization where your money is being deposited for a fixed period of time, at a full-term end, whilst you are being paid the initial capital and interest.
Unlike saving your money in a bank account, here, you get better interest rates. It actually has a set maturity date and already fixed interest rates.
If you are in urgent need of cash, you can trade or transfer the CD to someone else, as it is easy to invest with Certificates of deposit in Nigeria.
You can simply walk into any bank of your choice and talk about investing with CDs.
You may also need to visit the bank’s website to make this process easier for you.
Display Ads on your Website

If you are a website owner, one easy way to make money is to display third-party ads. You can earn a decent income from ads, but your site’s traffic needs to be sizeable.
The Revenue from ads on your website is a unique example of passive income, as you only have to work just once, and guess what? You earn potentially from the effort as long as your website is up.,
Outsourcing Services
The idea here is really straightforward. Get someone to get the job done while you get a cut of the pay.
For instance, if you are a web designer and your clients keep asking whether you can handle content creation for their websites as well, you can take up this service and then hire the services of a writer while you focus on web designing.
By doing this, you have just successfully added another source of income for yourself without any additional work. Can you see how easy and interesting this is?
To be successful at this, you need reliable freelancers to work with.
Conclusion
There you have it! Although this article does not contain all the passive income ideas you can think of, trust me, it is a good way to start!
You can start with one or a combination of two of the passive income businesses here.
It all boils down to how much you want to earn and the amount of time you are willing to put into it. This will determine how far and well you will go.
Thanks for reading 🙂