To make money? To build your brand online? To build relationships with other influencers? Whatever your reasons are, making passive income from your sites can give you immense joy, isn’t it? But here’s a fun fact: 81% of blogs NEVER make even $100. If you’re struggling to make money online, I’ve a good news for you. This detailed post will mostly talk about top passive income streams for bloggers along with some incredible tips to grow your passive income. Are you ready? Let’s get started.

What is passive income?

Passive income is all about making money even while you sleep. Simply to put, you earn money without taking any active part in it. Or I could say it is the revenue you earn even when you aren’t actively working. Passive income is also called residual income. In the case of active income, when you stop working, the money stops coming. If you quit your job, it’s most likely that you will stop getting paid. Your boss won’t keep paying your salary unless you keep showing up for work. There is yet another case of active income. If you do contract work for clients who pay you and if you stop doing this work, then you will stop getting paid. Yes, you may have more flexibility with contract work, but you still have to do the work to receive your payments. Why should you focus on residual income streams? Usually when someone needs additional income, they get the stereotypical suggestion to “get a part-time job.” Let’s say you don’t have time and energy to work on that. With passive income, you would keep getting paid whether or not you do any meaningful work. You may do a lot of work up front during the initial days, but eventually you reach a point where the passive revenue stream gets activated. If you want, you can essentially stop working on this income stream. But, more money will keep flowing to you through this stream regardless what you do or don’t do. So without further ado, let’s talk about some of the top residual revenue streams for bloggers.

Top 13 income streams for bloggers in 2023

1. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most powerful way that you can produce multiple passive income channels. If you have a blog which is very active then this is a passive stream technique that suits better. Sign up to promote certain products or services on your site, for which you will be paid either a flat fee or a percentage of the amount of the sale completed. It’s recommended to opt for the product or service  that you are either very interested in or is highly relevant to your website. Have a look at the screenshot below to easily understand how affiliate marketing works. You can find affiliate offers either by contacting vendors directly, or on dedicated websites, such as ClickBank. However, to succeed at affiliate marketing, you need a large following of users. Unless your site gets a fair amount of traffic, affiliate marketing deals don’t bring in much money. So, build and maintain a site to attract plenty of readers. For this, you can write posts specifically related to the particular product that you will be linking to. So that people will have a good reason to click on it. Here are the few tips you should follow while doing affiliate marketing:

Let your readers know that it is affiliate link: You should always disclose if the mentioned links in the posts are affiliate links. It is to make sure business is conducted fairly. Place towards the triggering item of your post. It’s all about trust: Focus on relationships more. If your friend recommends any product then you will listen right? And if any stranger recommends, will you try? Obviously no. So, always focus on building trust. This is very important if you want to succeed in affiliate marketing. Build your traffic: when your website gets more traffic, more people will look at your products. If you gain potential readers who really love to read your stuff then they will buy your products. So, focus on gaining potential readers by providing really really useful content. Promote the one’s you are already using: If you are into SEO or marketing niche and if you open such niche sites, you will see they offering try bluehost banners etc.. whether you are a food blogger or yoga blogger or fashion blogger, if you are using that product then write a post on it and promote it. Be genuine while promoting: Just because you want to earn money, never recommend useless products. Be genuine while promoting. Always be honest: Be fair and build trust. Talk about what you like and don’t like. Know your audience: If your blog is about clothing and fashion products then they won’t be interested in spiritual stuff. So, think what your readers will buy in real. Review your old posts: Find your most popular posts and update those posts with your affiliate links. To find such posts, go to Google Analytics dashboard, under behaviour, click on site content and you see “All Pages”. There you will find your popular posts. Promote products within your posts: Instead of including in your sidebar, promote products within a post. Make sure you include your personal experience with the product. It will be good if you can post your own photos or videos of yourself using the product. Add bonus: When promoting a particular affiliate product, offer something of your own as a bonus. For example, if you are promoting an online training as an affiliate, then offer your own ebook as a bonus.

2. Sell eBooks

You can either sell the ebook on your own website or offer it as an affiliate arrangement with other websites that provide content related to your ebook. Don’t expect instant success as it takes a lot of work upfront, but once you create ebook and does enough marketing then it can provide you with a passive revenue stream for years. That being said, here are the 5 tips to sell your eBooks online successfully to your audience.

  1. Fix a reasonable price: Well, you have put a really great hard work and it is difficult when it comes to putting a price on your work. If your is a first ebook then probably you are unknown writer. In that case, don’t take risks by keeping heavy prices. Pricing between $2.99 to $4.99 is okay or else you can just let you buyers decide like ‘Pay What You Want’. Check out what other writers are selling.
  2. Offer discounts: Approach bloggers in your niche and send them a copy of your book. Most Instagrammers love to receive anything that’s going to make it easy for them to create fresh content. Be sure to send them a good quality image of your book cover. Offer discounts on your ebook. Writing about business or marketing? Using case studies, or other entrepreneurs as examples in your work give you the chance to reach out to those people.
  3. Send to your mailing list: If you have already one mailing list that’s great as it is the most valuable marketing tool. Email is the most effective way to make sales for your online products and eBooks.. . If you don’t have a mailing list, then build your list pre-launch. Create a way to capture email addresses on your site and social media accounts and promise that anyone signed up to the mailing list gets first dibs on the book or perhaps a special deal. It’s also important to collect email addresses, so that you can promote future books to existing readers.
  4. Offer free download: Before you even sell, ask yourself, “What is the purpose of my book?”. If you are using your book as a way to establish authority in your niche then giving away your book as a free download. If you don’t want to give away your whole eBook for free, then give a few chapters to them  Again, make sure you are collecting those email addresses in exchange, so that you can follow up with a friendly email to close the sale.
  5. Reach out to many people: Do post-launch promotion like regular emails, social media campaigns, webinars or interviews and guest blogging. Reach out to relevant people for your ebook.

3. Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a free service offered by Google that helps publishers to monetize their web content. It is the most popular ways to monetize the content for people who want to earn online. Once you are done with initial configuration, you can just sit back and see money coming into your account. You need either a blog or YouTube channel to get started with Google AdSense. You also need to get approval for AdSense account. Create ads and place the AdSense code on your blog using free plugins and it will automatically display ads. Now, When a reader clicks on those ads, you will earn money from it. But if you use any illegal methods to get more clicks, then it will cost you more. Google will just disable your  AdSense account. So, get organic and legal traffic. Here’s how AdSense works. Firstly, you need to have a blog or website that gets good traffic. Choose a niche and create a website using WordPress and start writing useful content. Promote it on all social media platforms. Once you see good amount of traffic then follow these steps to create AdSense account to enjoy passive income.

Steps to create Adsense account:

Go to Google AdSense and sign up. If you have a custom domain email address, use that. For example, [email protected] The chances of getting your AdSense application approved is very high. If you don’t have one, the you can use your gmail address too. Enter your website address and select the content language. Use the same name whatever the name you have in your bank account for your payee name too. That means your bank account name and payee name should be same. AdSense sends you checks or EFT payment under that name. Read the AdSense policies and checkmark all three boxes. Then click on “Submit”. Once the signup process is complete, add AdSense codes to your blog. The AdSense team will review your application again after you add the codes. Your account will be activated with an Adsense Pin that will be sent to you.

It is not an easy go. It takes approximately 1-2 months depending upon your geographical location. In order to get paid from AdSense, submit your tax information and enter your pin. Once you reach the threshold of $10, you will be mailed AdSense pin and you will start receiving payment once your AdSense account reaches the $100 threshold.

4. Create YouTube video tutorials

Hands down, YouTube is the ultimate residual income stream. These days I see some YouTube revolution. People in and around the world makes awesome videos especially the college students share short films, flash mobs, comedy pranks etc.. You too can do that. Create videos in just about any area that you like. For example, music, tutorials, opinions, comedy, movie reviews and anything you want,  then upload on YouTube. Then attach Google AdSense to the videos. So that, it will overlay your videos with automatic ads. When viewers click on those ads, you will earn money from AdSense. Just creating videos will not fetch you anything. Promote those videos on social media websites. Once a video is done, it can become a completely passive cash flow source for a very long time. Research what the most popular YouTubers are doing and get ideas. There are lot of people who took their passion to YouTube and achieved massive success. So, give a try. The process is slow but surely it works. Here are few quick tips to use YouTube tutorials to make passive income online.

Making money from YouTube works almost similar like AdSense. You need to have a YouTube channel and you also need to get registered to Google AdSense account in order to start making money from YouTube. Once your AdSense account gets approved, you can start showing relevant ads on your videos to monetize your channel. Focus on using the right ad formats to maximize your YouTube channel earnings. The more subscribers you have the more views your videos will get and hence you can make more money from your YouTube videos. So focus on increasing your views, subscribers and likes. Ask people to share your videos with their friends. That way your videos get maximum exposure. The more exposure you get the more people will click on your videos. It’s as simple as that.

5. Create an app

Most of the people today uses smartphones. So, apps are a lucrative source of income. Now, you may think it’s not everyone business to create app. It needs lot of coding and other technical stuff. But if you are into technical field and can understand the dynamics of business and smartphone applications, then this is definitely worth your while. But if you have creative ideas that will win, then create app while learning code. And there are plenty of tutorials and online free courses available. If you still think, it’s not possible then you can hire a developer to build your app based on your idea. This is bit an expensive option, but it is worth if you have really killer app idea. If either of the options won’t work, then use the tools like Appy Pie’s App Builder for creating simple web or mobile apps. You can do a lot without knowing how to code or hiring a developer. You can create a simple app that makes you a few thousand dollars a month.

6. Create a membership site

If you are wondering how to run a successful online business then one of the best ways to do so is creating membership site. Now, you may think what is this membership site? It is a gated part of your online business where only members who subscribe can access the content you have placed behind the gates. Here the gates means a barrier you build into your website using a plugin. Only those members can login and access exclusive content, special offers, and even be part of a community of other members. Here again content means digital products like ebooks, webinars, online courses and podcasts rather than physical goods that require shipping. Simply to put, if you are subscribed to that website, then only you can access offers provided by it. A membership site is a great source of recurring income on your own terms. The amount of work involved in your membership site depends entirely on what you are offering.

Benefits of membership site:

You can increase revenue: You need not worry about driving more traffic to your site as the financial benefits of membership sites are massive. Imagine you have just 100 members who pays you $30 a month!…. Yes, that’s $3000 a month. It’s like you sell a product and then get paid again and again each and every month! Builds relationship  with customer: If a customer becomes a member then you will be providing a service and new information to that member on a daily, weekly or monthly basis which builds loyalty and respect. Lots of free traffic: You will get a consistent flow of traffic.

Install free membership site software

If you are using a WordPress platform then use a membership plugin to take care of all of the back end stuff that is required for the running of membership sites. Go to your WordPress dashboard. In that click on ‘Plugins’.  Under that you will find ‘Add new’. In the search box type, ‘S2member’ and click search. Now select the S2member plugin and Install it on your site. They offer completely free version and paid version too. This plugin comes with easy payment integration with the leading payment gateways.

Set up your membership site

Create 2 new pages called, ‘Subscribe’ and ‘Members’. Where ‘Subscribe’ page is your membership options page and the other one is the first page that new members will see. Go to dashboard, click the ‘S2member’ tab. There you will see ‘General Options’. Click on that and you will be presented with lot of options. Configure each settings. Under ‘Email Configuration’, enter the email address that you want to associate with your membership site. Under ‘Login welcome page’, select ‘Members’ page. This is to make sure that your site is protected and it redirects all members to this page after they login. Next you will see a ‘Membership Option page’. Here select the ‘subscribe’ page that you created earlier. It displays payment buttons and ‘non members’ are directed to when trying to access a protected members page.

Save all the changes and set up payment options. If you are operating a more advanced membership site, then you can integrate an affiliate program too.

7. Banner ads

Banner advertising is also called display advertising and the main purpose of banner advertising is to promote a brand. The banner ad can take the visitor from the host website to the advertiser’s website or a specific landing page. These are intended to generate traffic to a website by linking to it. Banned ads are mainly used to increase brand awareness, generate leads, retarget your audience. The main indicator is Click -Through-Rate (CTR). Higher the CTR is, the more effective the advertisement is. If you have a blog that receives huge amount of traffic and awesome content, you can use these banner ads. You don’t have to be a professional designer to design a banner ad. With Creatopy, you can create static or animated banner ads. Before you create banner ad, keep these in mind.

Know who is your core audience and what you want from them. Click on your website, or to buy your limited sale product or to try your service for free. Choose a standard web banner ad size. 728×90, 160×600 or 300×250 banner ad holds one of the keys to your online advertising campaign’s success Use readable fonts and your brand color.

Once you create the banner, you need to buy ad space on websites. Usually, contacting blog and website owners and negotiating with them individually is time consuming, so most of the people choose an advertising network to help them distribute their ads. Some of these advertising networks are: Google Adwords, Aol Advertising, OpenX. Now, start banner advertising. Visual advertising is always effective. You can use buttons, colors, images, text or even animations to create an understandable message. Think about your product or service and see what’s the specific idea you can build your campaign on. Get a clear picture on how much money you want to invest in this banner ad campaign. Banner ads helps a lot in increasing your business. You can get the best out of it.

8. Sell professional photos online

If you love photography, why not use that to earn passive income. Check the photo-selling websites such as iStockPhoto and ShutterStock. If you enjoy photography you can submit your photos to stock photo sites and receive a commission every time someone purchases one of them. In this way, a single image generates a residual income since it can be sold again and again. These are the kind of photos that are in demand:

Photos of work situations Photos of nature Photos of animals Photos of travel Photos of cities Photos of things like table, box, medication, signs, books, computers, tools, bags, cables etc. Photos of people.

If you still want to know what kind of images are more popular, take a look into each category. That will give an idea what category is most wanted. Now, you may be wondering how to create best images. Here are the few tips:

Websites to sell images online

There are several websites that sell stock photos and these photos can be sold over and over again providing long-term residual income.

Alamy:  It offers a 50% royalty and no exclusivity clause. Shutterstock: Contributors earn 20-30%. Payments are made monthly with a $75 minimum. You are free to sell your stock elsewhere.

There are some themes and software like PhotoShelter  where you can sell your photos without any ongoing fees or giving up a percentage of each sale. Finally, market your available photos. Get active in photography forums, social networks, guest posting about photography will help you a lot. You probably aren’t going to get rich selling photos online, but you can earn some extra cash passively.  Say you earn $1 per month for every image listed and if you have 50 images available for sale, you may be earning around $50 per month.

9. Build a niche website to monetize

If you have an understanding of SEO and online marketing, you can start building niche or guide websites to help generate leads and referral income. Once you start your website and drive massive traffic, here is how you can monetize your niche blog. When creating ads, make sure you follow these to increase better click through rates with link ads. These are just some of the issues you need to keep in mind when creating your ads.

10. Create online courses

Well, everyone is good at something. Whatever the skill or passion you have, turn that to an online course.There are a number of ways that you can produce and host your own online course. You can create an online course on Udemy. It is a great way to automate some of your cash flow. You will earn money when users register for them. Now you may be wondering what to put in the online course! You can add audio files for people to listen while they are travelling or video lessons or animation, small ebooks that supports the lessons, informative interviews and so on. You can create several packages at different price points.

Tips to create and sell your first online course:

11. Real Estate

Real estate investing or buying rental properties has become one of the trending passive income ideas for most people in 2023. There are basically two types of real estate rentals where you can earn passive income which are listed below;

Residential real estate rentals Commercial real estate rentals

Residential real estate rentals are the type of rentals where you can earn passive income by owning and renting out for residential purpose to bachelors, friends and family whereas commercial real estate rentals are those type of rentals where you rent out to offices, small businesses, companies (where you mostly lease out your property for a couple of years). So it all comes down to where the location of your property is and how big it is to pick the right type of real estate rental to make passive income even while you sleep. The great thing about real estate rentals is that you will be generating more money depending on how popular your location is and you can increase your rental value every year by upgrading your furniture, installing better lighting, making miscellaneous upgrades to the property and so on. That being said, here’s an intelligent way to use real estate property to earn passive income even while you’re sleeping. “Focus on seller financing”. If you’re wondering about what seller financing is, let us explain in simple terms. Seller financing is when the seller of a property takes the place of a traditional mortgage company or bank and lends money directly to the buyer (to help him buy a rental or commercial or any real estate property). The buyer and seller sign a document (which is known as real estate note) listing out all the terms of repayment such as;

Interest rate Number of years to repay the loan Monthly payment (EMIs) Other terms if any

Here’s how the whole process looks like; That being said, getting loans to buy real estate property has become easier and simple as well. Consider the below example assumption given by Well Kept Wallet. For example, a three-year $10,000 loan with a Prosper Rating of AA would have an interest rate of 5.31% and a 2.41% origination fee for an annual percentage rate (APR) of 6.95% APR. You would receive $9,759 and make 36 scheduled monthly payments of $301.10. A five-year $10,000 loan with a Prosper Rating of A would have an interest rate of 8.39% and a 5.00% origination fee with a 10.59% APR. You would receive $9,500 and make 60 scheduled monthly payments of $204.64. Origination fees vary between 2.41%-5%. APRs through Prosper range from 6.95% (AA) to 35.99% (HR) for first-time borrowers, with the lowest rates for the most creditworthy borrowers. So what are you waiting for? Find different ways to use real estate properties to get passive income ideas to make money in 2023 and beyond.

12. Start An Etsy Shop

Etsy is an eCommerce website where you can sell handmade or vintage items and supplies to earn passive income from online. Etsy is becoming so much popular as more and more people are preferring to buy handmade items from other creative people all around the world. Just in case if you’re wondering about how an Etsy shop looks like, have a look the illustration below (source: Milk And Honey Tees on Etsy). Here are some of the tips to earn passive income by setting up an Etsy shop online. Learn the basic SEO: Make sure to learn SEO so you can easily optimize your product listings on your Etsy shop which can be a great asset which will help you attract potential people to buy from you. Using a service like ETSY Rank will help but if you learn and implement some of the basic principles of SEO, you can get amazing results and sales to your products on Etsy shop. That being said, here are few SEO basics you can learn to build a profitable Etsy shop.

Learn keyword optimization so you can optimize your listings with highly competitive keywords. You can use tools like WordPress SEO by Yoast to optimize your listings. Make sure to perform keyword research using tools like Semrush, keyword planner etc so you can easily find tens of keywords for your business – whether you’re a painter or sell custom pillows.

Make sure to get 5 star reviews: The amount of sales and passive income you make from your Etsy shop is directly depend on the number of positive feedback i.e 5 star rating reviews you get for your products. Why? Because the first timers who visit your Etsy shop will be mostly skeptical about buying your products. If they see a ton of positive 5 star reviews about your products, work or shipping – most people will be quickly convinced to buy stuff from you. It’s as simple as that. That being said, here are few quick tips to get 5 star reviews for your Etsy shop.

Photos can make or break a sale on your Etsy shop: The first thing people see while browsing products on any Etsy shop is photos. If they are looking professional and compelling, people will definitely spend more time browsing them, so use high quality photos for your product listings. Write compelling description: Don’t list a product without writing a description. A product description is what most potential buyer read before they make a purchase. Send a thank you note: Whenever you deliver goods to your customers, make sure to also send a thank you note for purchasing products from you. Make sure to give a 5 or 10% discount for their next purchase and also ask for a feedback. If they find your products useful, they will definitely return the favor.

Be unique and ship fast: No one waits for 10 days to get a product delivery to their doorstep after placing an order. If you’re selling on Etsy and offering a 2 day home delivery of your products, try to ship even faster by shipping it in 24 hours so your customers would love to buy more from you in the future. Also make sure to add some uniqueness to your Etsy shop. If you’re like just other 1000 shops which are providing the same features or products listings on Etsy, no one will find it unique and it’ll be harder for you to get more sales and make passive income. So be unique from your competitors.

13. Start A Dropshipping Business

Dropshipping is one of the most effective passive income investments to earn huge profits in 2023 and beyond. If you don’t have a clue about what dropshipping business is all about, let us explain in detail so you can consider it as one of the best passive income ideas to earn more money. Dropshipping is a method where a store purchases the product from the manufacturer or wholesaler instead of storing the products it sells and has it shipped straight to the customer. So what does it mean basically? You’re completely taking out the risk of storing and shipping the products you sell to customers. It means the store owner needs NOT to worry about investing in creating products, paying for storing products, shipping costs, product returns, and so on. Here’s a great illustration of dropshipping business. In the above illustration, you can notice things like;

Customer paying you $200 for an order You’ll be getting the same product for $150 from the manufacturer or wholesaler (where they ship the product directly to the customer, so there’s no need of your intervention) You finally make $50 profit

The best way to build a profitable dropshipping business is to rely upon eCommerce related websites so you can outsource everything from your fingertips online. Read: List of best dropshippers and lessons from them Let us explain about it in detail so you can understand it better. In an eCommerce based online dropshipping, as a retailer, you can set up a website on eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, Opencart etc only for managing the inventory which you can get from the product suppliers. Recommended resources around making money:

How to use Google Trends to make money online in 2023 How to make money selling banner ads on your blog in 2023 How to make money online in India [Beginners guide] How to make money blogging in 2023 [Beginners guide]

Final Thoughts

There are literally thousands of passive income ideas to earn money while you sleep. The key here is to know your skills and be passionate about what you do. It takes a while to build a strong passive revenue source online but once you start generating money, it keeps rolling in. That’s the beauty of passive income streams for bloggers. So what are you waiting for? Stop wasting your time and start utilising your time to build a better blog, YouTube channel or a Udemy course to start making money in your spare time. Which income streams for bloggers did you like most? Share your thoughts in the comments.