12 Passive Income Jobs from Home

Yes, it is possible to enjoy one of these income streams and create passive income jobs from home. But, it's important to know that every passive income stream does require some activity on your part in the beginning. Nothing is ever truly “set and forget”, but with a little hard work, it is possible to both make money from home and while you sleep. Here is the list:

12 Passive Income Jobs from Home

#1 – P2P lending.

Got some cash sitting around? Try lending those dollars via a P2P lending platform. You lend your money, and over time the lendee pays interest, and you make money while they're paying interest with almost zero effort.

We like to recommend Lending Club as they're one of the most well-known in the space, but obviously, do your research before committing.

#2 – Long Term Rentals

Real estate investing is a great way to earn passive income. The only drawback is the time and capital investment involved in getting started. (Like we talked about in the opening paragraph.) Being a landlord takes work, but if you find the right tenants, it can be a great way to earn money month after month (and yes, while you sleep!)

Although setting up passive income through real estate via long-term rentals is very time and money intensive at first, once you find the home and a tenant, it becomes fairly passive. Especially if you leverage a property manager for maintenance and tenant turnover. Paula Pant, of Afford Anything, makes over $125,000 annually from her 8 rental properties. This averages out to just over $10k per month. While she doesn't get to keep all of that (because of maintenance, mortgages, repairs, etc.) that's pretty darn good #mailboxmoney.

#3 – Short Term Rentals

Listing rooms in your home or for the short term is very different than being a landlord, mainly because it's less work and time involved. However, with Airbnb, HomeAway, and Craigslist it’s easier than ever to list a room in your house and create a passive income job from home USING YOUR HOME.

For those who feel a little skeeved out by this, everyone who travels on Airbnb needs to submit a profile photo and confirmed phone number and email address. For extra assurance, hosts can also require their guests to submit a government-issued ID. These are just some of the ways Airbnb helps hosts succeed.

#4 – Buy an existing business

Want to earn passive income but don't want to do all the work? If you've got capital, you can invest in or buy other businesses outright: both digital and brick-and-mortar. The trick is to buy a business that already makes passive income: either from digital product sales, drop shipping, or websites with ads/ affiliate marketing in place.

Buy the business, take it over, sleep, earn, and profit.

#5 – Start an Etsy Store or E-commerce Site

Don't have the money to buy a business already up and running? You can still create your own digital or physical products to sell online! Here's a great tutorial for how to sell on Etsy. There are also a number of ways to sell without your on website through other platforms like Stripe, Square, and more.

The principles work whether you decide to go with Etsy or decide to start your own e-commerce website.

#6 – Renting out unused items

It isn't just spare rooms that can be rented these days. Anything from cars to camera equipment to surfboards is now up for rent thanks to the app and sharing economy. Below are just a few ways you can earn passive income by renting out spare items you already own:

• You can rent your boat
• You can rent out your bike
• You can rent out your car for other people to drive for Uber or Lyft
• You can rent out your car as a private rental via Turo
• You can rent out a vacant lot, boat slip, or parking space

Digital Passive Income Jobs from Home

#7 – Start a Blog

Read this post for a high-level overview of all the ways you can earn money with a blog. It does require some work and set-up, and it may be a while before you see your earnings, but if you're committed – blogging can be a GREAT way to earn extra cash around the clock.

Sponsored posts, products, writing for pay, affiliates – it's a great time to earn money in the digital economy. It takes a lot to get a blog going, but once it runs and you begin to outsource more and more, you do make money passively. (I've been doing it for over ten years now!)

#8 – Affiliate marketing

These days, you have to start a blog in order to really get “in” on the affiliate marketing game. You can purely leverage social media to harness the power of affiliate marketing, and those affiliate conversions really happen at all times of the day and night.

For those not in the know – an affiliate is receiving compensation for recommending and sending someone to buy from someone else. The most common affiliate is Amazon. Once you sign up for an Amazon account you can sell literally anything by dropping a link on social media or to friends and family via email.

#9 – Amazon FBA

Recommending products on Amazon is great, but actually selling items on Amazon is even better. The easiest way to do so is through Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA). Basically, you buy things for cheaper than they are selling on Amazon and then send the merchandise to Amazon.

This does involve risk and upfront investment, however, once you get going it becomes easier and easier and though you can’t negate risk completely, you can lower it.

The two most common techniques for Amazon FBA are retail arbitrage (RA) and online arbitrage (OA).

RA requires you to physically go into stores like CVS, Rite Aid, Walmart, etc. and look for merchandise selling for less than on Amazon. Typically in the clearance sections as most regular-priced items are the same or more than Amazon.

After you find the products you set up a shipment to go to Amazon and wait for sales to start coming in.

OA takes less moving around as you can do it entirely on your computer at home. However, it can be less profitable. It also takes more practice and patience. While in a store you can buy an item and send it to Amazon the same day. Buying something online you have to wait for it to arrive at your house and then ship it to Amazon. Sometimes the whole process takes a month or more.

#10 – Digital courses

We are all experts in something that others would love to learn about. Write about it and then sell it as an e-book. You can do this either on Amazon as a Kindle, via a course/product platform such as Teachable (like I do), or on your own site. Selling as a Kindle on Amazon may provide more exposure and sales however you will be limited on how high you can price your book. On your site, you set the price, whether it’s $20 or $200.

You don't have to have a blog or be a “blogger” to create a digital course using the expertise you already have. Platforms like Udemy and Coursera now make it easier than ever to create and access a network of students.

Just like you can teach people through an e-book, you can teach even more with an online course. Courses are often more time intensive to develop: often a course will have writing to explain a topic, a video to demonstrate, and a forum where you can ask questions and get help from the creator as well as those who have already been through the course.

But, you create the course once and you get to sell it over and over again. Hello, passive income!

Passive income jobs from home that are actually just smart money moves.

#11 – Investing/Dividends

Possibly the best way to make money while you sleep is to get a dividend payout. Purchasing stock or stares of a fund is as easy as pressing a button online. If you have done your research and feel confident in the future of a particular stock then you can invest in it. If you want to be more careful, an index fund that pays dividends is better.

You put your money in and you let it sit, and then you watch it grow. And if it goes well, the companies will pay you out a dividend. You can then reinvest the dividend (which is what I do) so your money grows with dividends and compound interest. Here's a list from Nerdwallet of dividend-paying stocks.

#12 – Compound interest

Compound interest isn't just for your debt payments or for stock market returns, it also works on simple savings accounts. Bare minimum, if you do anything from this list, please stick your savings in a place where you can earn as much money as possible. Savings rates are on the rise thanks to our high interest rate environment, so why not take advantage with a high-yield account?

The TL:DR

Every “passive” income stream is active at first. Fortunately, with a little work, you can set up things that really do make money without much lift. There's nothing better than when your money automatically makes money for you. Remember: your money can always work harder than you can, if you employ it strategically.

Want more information on side hustles? While not passive income streams, here's my favorite list of high-paying side hustles for people who are busy or have full-time jobs already. for more options, you can consider looking into online work-from-home job opportunities.

*Melody Van De Graff contributed to this post.