Dave Ramsey’s Best Passive Income Ideas for 2024 — 15 ‘Steady, Profitable’ Ways To Build Wealth Fast
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Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
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Molly Sullivan
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If you want to generate a steady stream of money with little effort, passive income is the way to go. While getting started with passive income — money not derived from active involvement such as a salary — can initially be time consuming, once it’s in place, you can just sit back and relax.
“Remember, building passive income takes time and effort, especially in the initial stages. Stay consistent, continuously improve your strategies and diversify your income sources to create a stable and sustainable passive income stream,” said Blake Whitten, financial advisor at Whitten Retirement Solutions.
“Always do your research and seek guidance from experienced individuals or resources to make well-informed decisions,” he said.
To get those interested started, Dave Ramsey made a list, “15 Passive Income Ideas to Build Wealth in 2024,” in which he explained profitable ways to derive passive income.
Also see how to earn passive income by simply moving money.
Buy a Rental Property
If you’re debt-free and have enough cash on hand, buying a rental property is a great way to derive passive income. However, as Ramsey noted, don’t ever go into debt to buy rental property.
Rent Out a Room or Part of Your Home
If you have a guest house or an extra room, you can rent it or list it on Airbnb, for example.
As Ramsey said, this might entail you having to take extra coverage to your existing homeowners insurance policy or get a new type of coverage.
Offer Storage Services
Again, if you have extra space, you can offer it for storage. Ramsey recommended checking out sites such as Neighbor, iStoreit or Store At My House to get started.
Charge People To Use Your Stuff
If you have sports gear — such as bikes, kayaks or skis — you can rent it out. You can even rent out your pool or backyard, Ramsey said. Rental sites such as Spinlister and Fat Llama will enable you to list your item.
Make Money Off Your Vehicles
According to Ramsey, if you have a boat, you can rent it on Boatsetter to make some extra passive income.
Another way to generate some cash is by renting out your car via several platforms. For instance, HyreCar stated on its website that owners can become “autopreneurs” by turning their car into a passive income stream.
“List your car within minutes. Set your own rates. Keep your cars safe with our protection plans,” as mentioned on their website.
Generate Income Through Blogs or Vlogs
According to Ramsey, if you have a great idea geared toward a specific audience, you could create an educational blog or a YouTube teaching series that doesn’t require constant new material to generate online traffic.
“This is like building a town square. You create content that attracts people and then businesses pay you to advertise in your ‘town square.’ It takes time to build an audience, but once you do, the ad revenue can be a steady stream of income,” said James Allen, founder of Billpin.
Produce Your Own e-Book or Digital Content
Ramsey said that if you’ve figured out how to create content that gets enough traffic to host ads, you can turn that into a product, such as an e-book, online course or app.
Make Money From Educational Courses
Certain websites, such as Udemy, enable you to create a course on their platform.
“Once it’s published, it doesn’t require any additional maintenance from you and you get paid when people take your class. It’s a low-output way of making some extra cash and helping people. That’s like a win-win… win,” Ramsey said.
Get Paid For Your Photos or Music
If you’re creative, use your skills to generate easy money. For instance, if you’re a photographer, you can sell stock photos on sites such as Foap.
Sell Your Creative Work
If you have original designs or artwork you can upload them on print-on-demand websites such as Redbubble, Spring and Zazzle. Added bonus: Most of these services are free to join and make it easy to showcase all your original designs.
Make Use of Affiliate Marketing
Another way to generate passive income streams is to partner with companies and promote their products or services through affiliate links on your blog, website or social media platforms.
“Now this doesn’t mean you can just hashtag your favorite running shoes on Twitter and expect to get paid. The companies you know and love have to have an affiliate marketing program for you to get paid for it and you’d need to apply to become part of it,” Ramsey’s post explained.
Certain websites, such as Rakuten LinkShare, can help you find and connect with those affiliate marketing programs.
Use Your Car To Advertise Others
An extra easy way to generate passive income is to use your car as a billboard for ads. You can use sites such as Wrapify to do it.
The average person who does a full wrap on their car makes about $260 to 450 a month, Ramsey said.
Consider Low-Turnover Funds
Ramsey said that if you’re on track with your retirement savings, you can think about investing in low-turnover mutual funds, such as index funds, through a taxable brokerage account.
Low-turnover funds hold on to the stocks for longer so there are less taxes for you to worry about, while using a brokerage account enables you to access your money at any point without an early withdrawal penalty, he added.
Look Into Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
A different way to invest in real estate is with real estate investment trust (REIT) — a mutual fund that buys real estate instead of stocks.
But Ramsey also recommended proceeding with caution — as while there are many good REITs, “there are still a lot of bad ones that use debt to purchase properties — which means more risk for you as an investor.”
Take Advantage of High-Yield Savings Accounts
According to Ramsey, high-yield savings accounts and money market accounts are one of the easiest ways to create a passive income stream.
Many banks offer online savings accounts and money market accounts with annual percentage yields (APYs) between 3 to 4%, which is higher than the national average for savings accounts, which is only about 0.37%.
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