5 Ways To Earn $1,000 in Passive Income Before the Holidays

The winter holidays are a fun, albeit expensive, time of year. The National Retail Federation’s 2023 holiday spending survey found that the average American consumer expected to spend an average of $875 on gifts, food, decorations and related goods. That’s a little higher than the year before.

If you want to celebrate the holidays without dipping into your savings or stretching yourself too thin, you might want to start making some passive income. Some options will require you to spend some time on the initial setup, but once they get going, you could theoretically generate income for months or even years to come.

Here are six ways to earn about $1,000 or more in passive income before the holidays.

If you have a spare room or even a second home that you don’t often use, rent it out on a platform like VRBO or Airbnb. You may need to spend some time tidying up your space, and you’ll probably want to get it professionally cleaned after people stay. But besides that, all you’ll really need to do is create a listing and keep the lines of communication with prospective guests open.

According to the latest Airbnb data, the typical host earns about $14,000 a year. That’s $1,166 a month. Given that there are still a couple of months until Christmas, that gives you plenty of time to make some extra cash. If you stick with it, you could end up earning even more next year and beyond.

For this one, it definitely helps to already have an online audience. But even if you don’t, you could still create a digital course and put it on a site like Teachable or Coursera for some passive income.

What’s great about this option is you can create a course on nearly anything, ranging from finance to coding to art. You don’t have to stop there either. You can also make money via other online products, like digital downloads and coaching services.

How much you can earn varies. One creator on Teachable earns $3,000 a month from a digital product she sells. Even if you don’t make that much, you could potentially earn a few hundred or $1,000 before December.

Platforms like Turo will let you rent out your vehicle for cash — kind of like Airbnb lets you rent out your home or spare room to guests. But you don’t have to limit yourself to just one car. If you want to, and you have vehicles to spare, you could list several at a time and earn money on each one of them.

Rentals can be short term, too. For example, if you know you’re not going to need your Honda Accord for the weekend, rent it out to someone looking to take a road trip. They’ll get a car and you’ll get cash.

Your earnings potential depends on several factors, like your car’s price, demand, availability and the market seasonality in your region. For example, you could rent out a Chevrolet Cruze for about $7,300 a year — that’s $608 a month. A Dodge Grand Caravan, meanwhile, can bring in an average of $10,138 a year — $845 a month.

If you use Turo, you can calculate your estimated earning potential online.

Peer-to-peer lending, or P2P lending, lets you lend money to an individual borrower online. You can do this through platforms like Prosper, Upstart or LendingClub.

P2P lending can be a good option for borrowers who might not qualify for a loan from a traditional lender. And it can be a lucrative source of passive income for you as you can set your own loan amount, interest rate and terms.

The earning potential here varies quite substantially. You’ll also want to check for any platform fees or risks that might be involved. But if you have some extra cash and simply want it to work for you, P2P lending could be an option.

If you love writing, why not put out an e-book? You can publish e-books on various platforms, including Amazon, Ingram, Kobo, Google Play Books and Apple Books. You’ll need something to write about, but if you already have a great story idea, then it could be an option for creating passive income.

Similar to course creation, this one is usually more lucrative if you already have an online presence. The more people who already know about and follow you, the more sales you could make. Even if you price your e-book low, you could potentially earn hundreds of dollars a month or more.

And don’t think that all e-books have to be epic novels. Some writers will put out a book in only a few weeks and start making sales shortly thereafter.