Feel stuck on the hamster wheel of of a 9 to 5 J.O.B.? Let’s try something different with one of these passive online side hustles from home.
My grandpa always used to say that getting old was like a bowl of cherry pits…
I didn’t fully understand what he meant until I entered my forties and had all the responsibilities of midlife with the beginnings of the aches and pains of older life. It occurred to me that our time on this planet is relatively short, especially time where you feel good.
It also occurred to me that I was stuck. Stuck on the 9 to 5 hamster wheel of a J.O.B., and I was not happy about it. I needed out.
Which meant that I needed to make more money – for myself, from home.
I need to try a few side hustles from home to see if they would stick.
But, let’s face it, once you have a full-time job, kids and bills to pay, leaving the good ol’ job to pursue your dream is not all that comfortable anymore. It’s still possible, but I’m not willing to subject myself or my family to eating instant ramen packets to make it happen (however delicious they may be when the craving strikes).
I knew that the answer was a side hustle that could generate real, tangible money each and every month. Not doing Fiverr gigs or cleaning up my neighbor’s dog poop money, but money that could actually help me get ahead and create a new income stream that I could build on. Maybe, just maybe, this new income stream could help get me financially free from my day job.
This new money of mine also needed to be generated on off hours when I had time, from home (or when I’m supposed to be in an online meeting during work). I did not want another job, I wanted a monthly income stream, as passive as possible.
Below are all the online side hustles from home that I have personally done, would do, or would tell a friend to go and try.
They are side hustles that can be done online at any time and are considered passive or somewhat passive so that you are not trading your time for money. You are creating a system to generate money continually at all hours, even when you are not doing actual work – the cliché yet coveted “making money while you sleep” mantra.
I don’t think that any of these are necessarily easy, but they are not difficult either. You don’t need a college degree or thousands of dollars to start. You mainly just need tenacity to keep at it for a long enough period of time to outlast the others that do give up.
Pick one, or two and give them a whirl. It just might change your life. Your 9 to 5 hamster wheel life anyway.
This post may contain affiliate links. This means I could earn a commission if you purchase through my links, however, there is no cost to you. Rest assured, I only promote products that I use or think are great. Thanks for reading!!
The Best (In My Opinion) Mostly Passive Online Side Hustles From Home
Start a Blog
I can hear the groan in your voice already, but hear me out. Starting a blog is one of the best side hustles from home that you can start. It is low cost and relatively easy to get started, but the earning potential can be huge. There are hundreds of people online that you would not expect making six figures plus from very unassuming blogs.
How do you make money with a blog you ask?
The three main ways people make money with a blog are by adding onsite clickable ads, using affiliate marketing links, or creating their own products or courses.
Onsite ads are pretty self-explanatory, you sign up with ad networks to have ads on your site and when someone clicks the ad, you make money.
With affiliate marketing, you place a link to products on your website and when someone purchases that product through your link, you earn a commission. The buyer is not charged. It is a win-win for everyone.
You can also develop your own products to sell on your website. These can be digital products like printables or online courses, or physical products that you sell directly on your site or on large market places like Amazon.
The downsides to starting a blog are that it can usually take awhile to see any real profit, think a year or more of consistent posting of content. This is where the above-mentioned tenacity comes in.
I personally make a nice profit from blogging and I whole-heartedly recommend this side hustle since it can become a real full-time income stream that can help you become financially free.
Resources To Check Out:
Check out my post Believe the Hype: How to Start a Blog and Make Money.
For a domain name and website hosting, I use Bluehost.
For more on Affiliate Marketing, check out the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course.
If you have a blog, you will need to collect emails. I use ConvertKit.
You will also need to start marketing your blog on social media. I use Tailwind to manage everything.
If you need help with setup, design or execution, you can find help cheaply on sites like Fiverr.
Buy a Blog
One of the hardest parts about starting a blog is the actual step of getting started. Just the logistics alone have stopped many people.
That’s where buying a blog comes in.
If you buy an already existing blog, you don’t have to worry about initial content, starting up the site, or worrying about getting initial page views or income coming in. Someone already did that for you.
You’ll have to pay for this shortcut of course, but for those that are low on time, this can be a great option.
I haven’t bought a blog or website yet, but if I would definitely consider doing so.
Resources To Check Out:
To buy a blog or niche website, check out Flippa.com and/or EmpireFlippers.com.
For more info on flipping websites, check out my post Flipping Websites for Beginners: Digital Real Estate into Cashola.
Start an Online Store
Starting an online or ecommerce store seems like it would be for the big dogs.
In reality, starting an ecommerce store can actually be as big or small of an endeavor as you would like. You can sell one product or thousands. It all depends on your bandwidth and how big you want your side hustle from home to be.
Ecommerce stores usually break down in one of three ways – drop shipping, selling your own manufactured products, or selling other company’s products.
With drop shipping, you won’t carry any inventory. When a sale is made, the manufacturer will ship the product directly to the customer. There are less headaches this way, but the profit margins are usually slimmer.
With selling your own products, you will have to get them manufactured and shipped to you and then to the customer. There can be a fair amount of cost and work with this option, but the profits can be huge.
With selling other people’s products, you can either private label an already created generic product by putting your logo on it, or you can sell another company’s branded products on your site. Either way, you are dealing with all of the shipping and customer service.
I have not started an online store yet, but I have an idea in the works for one that I hope to start within the next year.
Resources To Check Out:
Read my post Make the Dream Real: How to Start Your Own Online Store.
For website hosting and domain name, I recommend and use Bluehost.
For an online storefront, Shopify is the leader. They make it as painless as possible to start selling online as fast as possible, even without website design skills.
If you want in-depth knowledge about starting your own online store, from manufacturing products to selling and marketing, you won’t find anything better than the My Wife Quit Her Job – Create a Profitable Online Store Course. I’ve personally signed up for this and still login and use the resources today. It can be a bit pricey, but I believe it is worth it.
If you have a website to sell products, you will need to collect emails. I use ConvertKit.
You will also need to start marketing your website and products on social media. I use Tailwind to manage everything.
Start a Master Resell Rights Online Business
Similar to starting your own online store, when you start a Master Resell Rights Online Business, you are selling a product. The good catch? You are selling a digital product or course that someone else created that you can brand as your own and resell as many times as you wish.
The best part is that you only pay the seller of the product once to buy the product and then you own it outright. That means you get to keep 100% of the profits. No upsells, no hidden fees, no shady MLM schemes. Just selling a product that you didn’t have to create. Nice.
If you really want to take this concept to the next level, you can choose a Master Resell Rights product that is a digital course that is something you want to learn about, like starting an online business. In that way, you get an education and a digital product to sell. There is ususally a step-by-step method to follow to get you up and rollin’ too. Win-Win.
Resources To Check Out:
Read my post: What is a Master Resell Rights Online Business and Why You Should Start One
Check out the Roadmap To Riches Master Resell Rights digital course product. They offer a step-by-step training, a community for support, and it is an unsaturated market area. This is the one I chose to promote and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Sell Printables
What on earth is a printable?
A printable is any file that can be downloaded and then printed. This can include artwork, planners, greeting cards, organizers, meal plans, invitations, decorations, etc…
The wonderful thing about printables or digital downloads is that you create them once and then you can sell them over and over and over again. This is what makes them one of the best passive online side hustles from home.
Your customers receive the download or download link, so there is no inventory to carry and no shipping hassles to worry about.
I personally sell printables and make a couple thousand dollars per month regularly from them.
Resources To Check Out:
Read my post Couch Cash: How to Sell Printables Online Without Leaving Your Netflix Zone for more information.
If you are looking for a solid program to walk you through selling printables, especially on Etsy, I recommend Julie and Cody’s E-Printables Course over at Gold City Ventures. While there are a ton of printable courses out there, I like that they focus on profits first, with support to make sure you are successful.
You can either sell your products on your own website storefront with a system like Shopify, or you can sell your products on an online marketplace like Etsy.
If you just want to start with a website, I use and recommend Bluehost for a domain name and website hosting.
You are going to want to get an email marketing campaign going so you can start to market to a list. I use and recommend ConvertKit.
You are also going to want to market on social media. I use Tailwind to manage everything. Not a necessity, but it would make my life so much harder without it.
Depending on what digital product you are creating, you will need some sort of design software to create them in. If you do not want to invest in the Adobe products, there are a lot of great free design options online to try out. If you don’t want to get into any of it, I recommend hiring a designer on Fiverr. Cheap and effective.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing sounds scammy, right?
Actually, affiliate marketing is simply telling people about products online, and when they buy them through your link, you earn a small commission.
It doesn’t cost you anything, and it doesn’t cost the buyer anything. The owner of the product pays the commission.
You can place affiliate marketing links into blog articles, social media posts, emails, product descriptions, or even in sign off signatures. As long as affiliate links are allowed on the platform you are posting on, you are good to go.
Just make sure you disclose that they are affiliate links so you are not pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes.
You will see a lot of bloggers and social media accounts touting affiliate marketing as one of the most profitable online side hustles from home, and they may actually be right.
I personally use affiliate marketing with my other blog and printables business and will add affiliate links to this blog eventually as well.
Resources To Check Out:
Check out the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course and the 90 Minute Affiliate Challenge.
Get an automated email sequence started with ConvertKit.
You will also need to start marketing social media. I use Tailwind to manage everything.
If you want a website (not 100% necessary, but I always recommend having one), I use Bluehost.
Flip Items
When you hear the term flipping, most people think house flipping. Flipping houses has made a lot of people a lot of money.
Since this article is on passive online side hustles from home, house flipping doesn’t fit the bill. However, flipping other smaller items that can be bought and sold online definitely does.
The concept is simple – buy low, sell high.
Finding undervalued or clearance items online for a below retail price and then reselling them for a profit is one of the easier side hustles to start. Most people call this retail arbitrage.
You can find items on Amazon, eBay, Facebook Marketplace or even Craigslist and then resell them on the exact same sites for a high price with better marketing, design, and/or exposure.
Some people like to go to garage sales, flea markets, or Goodwill type stores because they enjoy the hunt, but if that’s not for you, you can just keep your purchases all online.
This one is half passive because you will always have to find more “inventory” to sell and ship, but it can become a full fledged business.
eBay is usually the go-to place to start flipping items. It’s easy to get started and you can try it out with one or two items to see if you like it.
I have done this more with older items that I already owned and have had relatively good success on eBay.
Resources To Check Out:
Read my post: Unleash Your Inner Mogul: Start an eBay Side Hustle – No Skiing involved.
There are a thousand courses and articles on how different people sold different things on ebay, but I would start by just checking out the resources on eBay itself.
If you would like to make money flipping items right from your phone, check out my post Impulse Purchases Be Gone: Apps for Selling Stuff Online.
Flip Websites
Speaking of flipping… betcha didn’t think you could flip a website.
Like flipping items, this one isn’t as passive as some of the others on this list because you will have to keep creating websites to create profits.
However, I did want to mention website flipping because it is a legitimate way to make recurring income online.
The basic idea is that you create a website, usually using a modified theme and WordPress. You can take the website as far as you want depending on how much money you want to make.
You can simply set up the design and template for a specific kind of website, say a realtor website, and then turn around an sell it. A real estate agent might want to buy your website so they can just plug their information in easily.
Or, you could start a website, build it up with content, get followers and sell for a higher price.
This side hustle works best for those that are computer savvy and/or who have started their fair share of blogs or website and can do so relatively easy.
I have not done this one yet, but since I have started a few websites in my day, I think that this could be another good revenue stream for me.
Resources To Check Out:
As with buying a website, you can sell on the same sites – Flippa and Empire Flippers.
For more info on flipping websites, check out my post Flipping Websites for Beginners: Digital Real Estate into Cashola.
If you want to look into hiring someone to set up one of these websites for you, I always recommend Fiverr. You can sell your website for more than you pay the designer on Fiverr. Cool.
Write an eBook
Writing a book is the OG passive income stream.
You write the book once and can sell it multiple times for infinity. Dream.
With the advent of digital eBooks on Amazon, this process has become a lot easier. You don’t need a publisher, and don’t have any printing costs or inventory to contend with.
If writing a huge novel sounds intimidating, not to worry, eBooks don’t have to be as long. You can write shorter “how-to” type e-books that sell for lower prices.
Non-fiction eBooks around 100 pages or longer usually sell better, but pick what you know you can write about. Check out what other eBook authors are writing about and what’s selling best.
Resources To Check Out:
Check out my post Master The Magical World of Passive Income: eBook Writing for Beginners for more detailed information.
If you are intrigued by the idea of writing low content books and selling them on Amazon KDP, I highly recommend Jessica’s Low Content Book Creating Course. It is very straight to the point and will help you get up and running the fastest.
If you want an even more detailed description and more ins and outs than I can provide in the post above, I would head right on over to Amazon and buy one of the many inexpensive kindle books on how to write and publish an eBook. Best to get it from the source!
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon KDP) interface itself also has helpful information. The videos and info are laid out to help you get started as soon as possible.
For designing your eBook cover, you can do it though Amazon’s Cover Creator, or you can find designers easily (and cheaply) on Fiverr.
Sell on Amazon FBA
Speaking of Amazon… I would be remiss if I didn’t mention selling on Amazon FBA (fulfillment by Amazon).
FBA means that Amazon handles all of the seller’s inventory. When someone orders something on Amazon, the seller is not involved. The seller has already sent their inventory to the Amazon warehouse where Amazon will then fulfill the order and take care of the shipping.
To start an Amazon FBA business, you would need to buy low priced products, or have your own products manufactured and then send them to Amazon’s warehouse. You set your prices, write your descriptions, etc… and Amazon handles the sales, order fulfillment and customer service.
The upside is that you can make money really quickly with this model. The downside is that you will most likely need a decent amount to buy or create initial inventory.
I have not personally done this one yet, but have a friend that never got a “real” job out of college and has been creating his own products and selling them for years. He makes a great living and never has to leave his house. Ultimate side hustle from home indeed.
Resources To Check Out:
Read my post Get Your Piece of the Space Rocket Pie: How to Start an Amazon FBA Business with Little Money.
If you want the most comprehensive information, I always recommend Steve’s course Create a Profitable Online Store Course. This course covers selling on your own website, as well as selling on Amazon. I did this course and still login to the resources to this day. If you need info on sourcing products from overseas to listing products to promotion, this course is your best bet.
If you don’t want a giant course of info, but want more than what I’ve provided above, your best bet is to head on over to Amazon and get one of the books or eBooks that dive into the particular area of Amazon FBA that you’re interested in.
You will also need to start marketing your Amazon listings on social media. I use Tailwind to manage everything.
Teach an Online Course
Never thought of yourself as a teacher? Don’t have anything to teach anyone?
I bet you’re wrong.
Everyone out there has some sort of skill that others would pay for. Get creative and think of the thing that you know enough about or can research enough to provide value to someone else.
Arts and crafts, photography, finance, saving, Excel spreadsheets, organizing, interior design, etc…
You can sell your online course as you would a regular digital product on your own website, or you can share your course on a teaching platform.
Make sure to have videos, sheets or extras to add to your class for extra value.
Also think about having different levels of classes or more niche classes for very specific things at different price points to get the attention of a broader audience.
I have not personally done this one, but selling courses is a very hot topic. People online have made thousands of dollars every month with courses. It is one of the stronger passive side hustles from home on this list.
Resources To Check Out:
Read my post How to Create Online Course Income: 5 Side Hustles That’ll Make You Say, “Why Didn’t I Think of That?” for more detailed information.
I always recommend the Teachable platform. This is the one I see most people using.
If you want to sell your course on your own storefront, I would recommend Shopify for an easy online store.
You can also sell a course from your blog. Check out the Start a Blog section above.
Sell Your Photos
How many women do you know that have a photography business where they take pictures of people’s kids or dogs?
This is all fine and well, but you can’t do this all online and you are still essentially trading your time for money.
If you license, or sell your photos online, however, now you’re talking passive income.
Instead of taking personal pictures, think about stock photography that people would want to use for graphic design, publishing, or corporate advertisements. Landscape scenery, people working together or concepts like teamwork showcased in a photo usually do well.
This is one of the easier side hustles from home to start because most people have vacation, landscape or nature pictures that they can sell.
I haven’t made a real effort with this one yet, but I do have a lot of images that I intend to get out there this year.
Resources To Check Out:
You can sell your pictures on stock photography websites – Shutterstock and iStock are two of the better ones for people just starting out.
Set up a YouTube Channel
YouTube channel sound a little too young?
While millennials have probably embraced this side hustle seemingly more than others, anyone can realistically start a YouTube channel.
For example, I just watched a woman in her 50s apply concealer under her eyes to cover dark circles and not accentuate wrinkles. I bought the products she recommended too.
This is one of those side hustles from home that is not for the faint of heart or for those that are camera shy though.
You will need to have your face out there and you will need to create a lot of videos in order to start getting noticed.
To make money, you can display ads and get paid every time someone watches your videos. You can also add affiliate links (see above) into the description area for any products you recommend.
As a side bonus, you could theoretically repurpose parts of your videos and use them on social media sites like Instagram or TikTok with affiliate links for another profit boost.
I have not done this one since I’m not a huge fan of being on camera or being in videos, but I know this is one I should probably get onboard with.
Resources To Check Out:
Check out my post How to Make Money On YouTube Without Showing Your Face or Losing Your Dignity.
For one of the best in-depth courses on getting a YouTube channel going, I always recommend Erika Kullberg’s Mastering YouTube Course. It covers aspect about YouTube channels and then some. She is also a lawyer, so there is a lot of comfort in that.
Online Side Hustles From Home
Well, there we go folks. I picked these online side hustles from home because they have the potential to create a source of real, (mostly) passive income that can help anyone get off of the dreaded hamster wheel that is the regular job that we all know too well.
You don’t have to be a genius or have a lot of money to get started.
All you really need is the drive to keep going and to be consistent.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over an over again expecting different results.
Let’s not all go insane.
Let’s start something else.
Good luck and reach out if you have any tips or suggestions!
(If these seem like too much and you just want more of an online work/job type situation, but you’re still in control, check out my posts: How to Start Freelance Writing with No Experience and Not Cry Yourself to Sleep and Life-Changing Online Jobs That Pay Well.)
