12 Totally Free Ways To Make Enough Passive Income To Quit Your Job
Written by
Andrew Lisa
Edited by
Rebekah Evans
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Earning passive income is a common aspiration because it represents money you make without working, even while you sleep. Most of the more common and lucrative sources require an often substantial upfront investment, such as buying a property to pursue rental income.
Such a hefty financial outlay is beyond the reach of many — but that doesn’t mean passive income has to be. The following free options offer ways to earn passive income, possibly even enough to quit your job and those that do require start-up funds eventually return your investment to you with interest.
Dividend Stocks
Stock investors can trade their existing holdings for dividend stocks to earn regular passive income without spending any new money. You can’t access the value of non-dividend stocks without selling shares. However, dividend stocks distribute payments to shareholders periodically, typically quarterly, which you can harvest as income without selling shares, allowing your holdings to appreciate and, therefore, pay continuously bigger dividends.
REITs
According to the SEC, the law requires real estate investment trusts (REITs) to distribute 90% of their taxable income to shareholders, providing ongoing passive income and a chance to invest in real estate without owning property — and you keep the money you invest by harvesting dividends without selling shares.
P2P Lending
Lending can be better than spending in the pursuit of passive income. According to U.S. News and World Report, top P2P lending sites like Kiva and Prosper, which let you issue private loans to qualified borrowers, have repayment rates of 96% or more, meaning you get back the money you lend while harvesting loan interest as passive income.
Crypto Staking
According to Fidelity, crypto investors can lock up or stake, some of their holdings to support proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains. In exchange for providing this vital collateral, the network rewards stakers with extra crypto when it returns the assets they staked.
NFT Staking
Per Coinbase, nonfungible token (NFT) investors can stake their digital assets in return for compensation, just like cryptocurrencies, earning them passive income with no added expense.
NFT Royalties
If you create your own NFTs, Coinbase recommended pursuing royalties as passive income or as the publicly traded crypto exchange puts it, “a continuous flow of compensation for creators from their work.” Creators set the royalty percentage at the time of minting and collect that amount with each subsequent transaction on their NFTs.
E-Book Royalties
Writing an e-book requires substantial upfront work, but those who succeed can collect passive income indefinitely in the form of royalties. For example, Amazon’s popular Kindle Direct Publishing platform offers 35% and 70% royalty tiers, based on where your e-books are purchased.
DeFi Yield Farming
Like crypto staking, yield farming locks up digital assets for a set time in exchange for rewards that can serve as free passive income, only in this case, they add liquidity to decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. According to Kraken, DeFi yield farming requires more management than staking, but has the potential for greater gains.
CD Ladders
If you can spare a portion of your emergency fund, you can earn a higher APY by locking some of it in CDs. According to Vanguard, CD laddering — buying multiple CDs with staggered maturity dates — allows you to retain liquidity while locking in higher yields for nearly risk-free and ongoing passive income.
Monetize Newsletters and Other Ongoing Content Creation
Just as individual books pay their authors in royalties, those who create ongoing content can collect passive income through subscriptions. For example, Substack combines blogging and email marketing tools in a platform that content creators use to distribute media while growing their subscriber base on subjects ranging from world politics to parenting.
Print on Demand
Shopify touts print on demand (PoD) as a business model that can generate ongoing income with virtually no startup costs. The creator comes up with a design for merchandise like coffee mugs, shirts, books and posters. When a customer places an order, a third-party company prints, packages and ships the product, relieving the creator of purchasing inventory and managing logistics.
Affiliate Marketing
According to Shopify, virtually any content creator can earn passive income from affiliate marketing. That’s a business model where brands pay bloggers, podcasters and social media influencers for access to their audience. When the affiliate company makes a sale or earns a subscriber, the creator gets a commission quietly in the background.
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