9 Ways to Make Passive Income (How I Make $357,000/Month)

If I stopped working tomorrow, I would still be making $357,000 per month.

How?

Passive income.

In this post, I’m breaking down my 9 passive income streams to give you some ideas of how to make passive income for yourself.

Some of these might surprise you 🙂

Let’s go.

(PS: None of this is financial advice. Always do your own due diligence.)

How to Generate Passive Income: Have Multiple Income Streams

Passive Income Stream #1: Uniswap Liquidity Pools

I make about $323 a month from Uniswap.

What I did is I went over to the Uniswap site, found a liquidity pool, and I put money in it (about $19,000 dollars). Now I’m getting about an 18% return.

The simplest way to describe liquidity pools is if someone has one crypto and they want another crypto, how do they actually exchange it?

They go into a market and the market helps exchange it.

And so liquidity pools provide liquidity between two different tokens.

That’s a super simple way to break down the process.

To get started in this, I used a site called Zapper and what I can do on this site is search for different tokens and see what the payout is that they give you for providing liquidity.

Now to be clear: The higher the payout, the higher the risk.

So if you’re exchanging between Ethereum and some random altcoin, it might give out a 1000% return but there’s a high risk on that kind of stuff.

I’m generally boring and safe so I’ve picked two coins where the return is around 4.8% percent.

Passive Income Stream #2: YouTube Ad Revenue

This shocked me when I realized it, but I’m actually making over $3700 a month on videos that I posted on my YouTube channel over a year ago.

But okay, even though I’m making $3700 a month passively, we did spend around $400,000 on the channel last year to actually make all of these videos.

So keep that in mind.

What are your upfront costs relative to when you break even, and when do you start making passive income profits?

Passive Income Stream #3: Digital Products

I make $2100 of passive income per month from two products I created 8 years ago.

The first product is a Kindle book.

When I got fired by Facebook I wrote this story called how I lost $170 million dollars (boohoo, who cares…) but I published it 8 years ago! I’m shocked that it’s still generating $100 a month.

 

BONUS: Get to the ebook about my time at Facebook for FREE (it’s like the movie The Social Network, but crazier)

 

The other product is my Monthly1K course.

We’re still generating $2000 a month from this product that we created years ago. The first year it generated a million dollars (which is crazy) and there’s no cost to actually selling it which is a huge bonus. The only costs were the salaries we paid to the people to help actually create the course.

Would I recommend creating a course to get passive income?

Maybe.

If you already have an audience? Definitely.

If you can find an audience? Definitely.

If you’re already getting paid to teach people? Definitely.

If you’re not in any of those categories, it will be a lot tougher.

We already had an audience. We already had some expertise. So it made it a lot easier to create this product and then sell it consistently over a long period of time. But if you’re trying to create a course, it’s gonna take some time to create the material, find people to buy the material, and then scale that product consistently.

Passive Income Stream #4: My Blog & Email Lists

I’m making about $65 a month from my blog and email list (the audience goes wild) BUT, this has probably been one of the most valuable passive and active income streams I’ve had in my life.

It introduced me to some incredible people, like Tim Ferriss who has become a good friend of mine over many, many years.

And I think this is one of the easiest passive income streams to start. You can start a blog on so many different sites (I use WordPress and WP Engine) and you can start a newsletter super easily (I recommend starting an email list with SendFox) but the problem is that the immediate upside is pretty low.

I think it’s a great way to get some practice and get into the online world, but I don’t think it’s where you’re going to make massive passive income.

Passive Income Stream #5: Invest in Crypto

I make over $7200 a month from this and I believe it’s one of the most passive investments I have.

In Coinbase, I’ve staked my Ethereum to Ethereum 2 (ETH2) and by doing that, I get about a 4.4% return.

So I have about 100 Ethereum — which is currently about $300,000 bucks — so I’ve made almost $10,000 in the past year (by doing nothing).

I do this through a site called BlockFi — but there are a bunch of other sites out there that do similar things. In BlockFi, just by holding USDC Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other coins, they give you a return for holding them there.

Currently, just for holding USDC, they’re giving about a 5.5% return.

The one thing that’s good about BlockFi and holding your crypto there versus Coinbase is that you can actually move it around. When your stuff is in ETH2 and it’s staked within Coinbase, you can’t touch it. You can’t move it.

But maybe for some of you, that’s a good thing.

So in BlockFi, I’ve gotten about 2 Ethereum a month, for many months.

I choose to get paid in Ethereum, which currently is around $6000 per payout.

This is truly the most passive income I have. I throw my money in here, and I don’t have to do anything, and returns happen.

But there is risk in both these things. With ETH2 maybe it never happens. And with BlockFi, they can go out of business and I lose all the cash that I have in there.

Passive Income Stream #6: Index Funds

Through my index funds, I make almost $10,000 a month in passive income.

I’ve been investing in index funds since 2004, and all I do is every single month some money from my paycheck goes right into that account and I buy a larger percentage and it’s increased over the years.

I was putting 50% of my income into this and I lived really cheaply for many years, so that’s how I was able to become a millionaire by 30.

Passive Income Stream #7 Real Estate

There are 4 different ways I make passive income from real estate.

Real Estate Passive Income #1: Private Investments

These are investments where individuals collect money and invest in and buy buildings (AKA, syndicates).

I’ve invested over $300,000 dollars into this and it’s producing at least a 10% return on that cash. So right now, that’s about $3500 a month.

A great way to find people to do this with is:

• Ask realtors for recommendations.
• Ask people who mortgage brokers if they know anyone doing this.

That’ll help you get introductions.

Real Estate Passive Income #2: PeerStreet

If you’re not able to get private deals, there’s a site called PeerStreet that has a list of different deals and investments that you contribute to.

Over the last year, I’ve made around a 6.7% annualized yearly return, so I’m making around $200 bucks a month.

Real Estate Passive Income #3: Renting Out Office Space

I rent out office space to my company AppSumo for $10,000 a month. AppSumo’s extra office space to other businesses for $10,000 a month.

This is actually what a lot of businesses do. Think about Mcdonald’s — they’re a real estate company, not a burger company.

So if you’re running a company or starting one, become your own landlord and tenant!

Real Estate Passive Income #4: Airbnb

And the last way I make passive income from real estate is through Airbnb.

I’m making over $10,000 a month from 2 Airbnb properties, and one of them was a house that I just moved out of. So instead of selling it, I turned it into an Airbnb and hired a property manager to help run it.

It’s been really fun to see how much it makes on a monthly basis, and the mortgage is pretty small so I make a lot of profit from it.

Passive Income Stream #8: Build Your Own Software

This generates over $230,000 a month in passive income for me.

What I love about software is that once you create it, it doesn’t really cost you extra to sell it to more people.

So if you can figure out ways to create your own software products (and maybe sell them on AppSumo) then I think it is one of the best ways to create passive income.

There are two ways that I’m making this money.

Lifetime Deals on AppSumo

The first is lifetime deals on AppSumo.

So there’s an amazing team at AppSumo Originals that has created products like TidyCal and SendFox and, as an example, one of these tools makes over $27,000 a month from its lifetime deal.

So we created it once, and we make a significant amount of sales from it every single day. And we’ve hopefully made an awesome product for the people who use it.

Selling SaaS

That is one way of doing software.

Another way of doing software is Software as a Service (SaaS).

We built a product called Sumo, which is the #1 free email capture tool out there. And I’ve got to emphasize how amazing this is. We built this tool YEARS ago and we do minor updates as needed… And it’s generated us $1.62 million in profit.

So if you’re thinking about a business, definitely think about creating software and making recurring revenue, and if you want to promote it you can always check out AppSumo and we’ll help you out.

Passive Income Stream #9: Starting a Business

This is the big whale.

I’m making over $80,000 a month in passive income from AppSumo.

When I started AppSumo 12 years ago, it took a lot of work, and the first 3 years I made almost $0.

But what’s amazing is that through many, many years of:

• Consistency
• Putting in the work
• Finding a business model
• Attracting awesome customers
• And hiring a team

I’ve been able to create a company where, whether I’m involved or not, it’s been able to do really well for me as a passive income business.

I’ve stepped in to run the company this past year — which is not passive! — but the beauty is that I created something where someone else can run it, which is good for both me and the business.

If you don’t have time for passive income and you want to make hustle money right now from your phone, click the link below 👇.

DON’T MISS: 11 Side Hustle Ideas to Make $500/Day From Your Phone

 

And let me know in the comments below how you earn money from passive income.

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