At some point, you’ve probably come across, “Make money while you sleep.” It’s a common phrase many finance articles state when it comes to investing or working on a side hustle to earn more money. And it can mean a lot of things to you when you first hear it.

Like, thinking it’s a way to make extra cash for getting to sleep. That actually is a thing, but that’s not what will be covered here. Instead, you’ll learn what making money while you sleep means and the best ways to do that in your own life. At first, it might sound like this is all a bit impossible.

But with a bit of work and following the steps below, you’d be surprised at the income you can generate while snoozing or relaxing.
 

The Best Ways to Earn Money While You Sleep

Now that the passive income wheels are turning in your brain, you probably have some ideas about the best ways to earn money while you sleep. 
There are certainly quite a few you might want to consider, but I narrowed it down to the top options to consider.

1.Sell stock content

Secondary content is in high demand. From images to music, video and sound effects, people are willing to pay for good content. If you're creative, this could be a great option for you.

How do you create content?

Start by reviewing the work from earlier projects. It's possible that you already have a tonne of unwatched photos and videos. If not, start producing! Take pictures, record brief videos, or compose new music.
 

You could even mix socializing and content creation. For instance, you may record the sunrise on your way home from a night out or capture a photo of your friend's hot chocolate.

How to sell your content online?

You must post your work to various stock library websites in order to sell your content online. Users will search these websites for content they wish to purchase.

Remember that royalties are usually quite minimal. You'll need to create a bank of work if you want to start making good money. It's also wise to focus on themes that are currently popular or in high demand.

To sell stock content successfully, you don't have to be an expert. Actually, there is a huge market for unique ideas. You might come up with concepts for images, logos, jingles, stickers, buttons, and banners. There are no boundaries!

Online libraries for stock content

Here are some of the best websites to sell your stock content:

Shutterstock – Photos, videos, illustrations, music

Getty Images – Photos, videos, illustrations, audio

Dreamstime,Adobe Stock, Picfair – Photos

Patternbank – Fabric designs

Dafont, MyFonts – Typography

Envato – Everything from graphics to web themes and music.

While not as simple as using a stock site, you can also sell music and sound FX through iTunes and SoundCloud. Or, you could set up your own site and sell content through it.

2. Start a Blog or YouTube Channel

Starting a blog in 2023 is most definitely not the simplest way to generate passive income. You can make thousands of dollars through a blog if you understand SEO and write about a niche product. The better, the more specialized and searchable!
 

You need a domain and a blogging platform in order to launch a blog. You can choose from platforms like Squarespace and Wix to quickly and cheaply build a website. You may also use WordPress, which offers more freedom, for free.

In that it has a low entry barrier, YouTube is similar. You must provide your viewers something of value if you want to succeed on YouTube. There is a level of YouTube SEO that is simple to understand.

With both blogs and YouTube, you are likely to make money from advertising. However, this can take a long time. You can make money faster if you advertise and sell a product using your channel.

3. Sell on Amazon FBA

You can sell your goods and services on other ecommerce platforms as well, similar to Shopify. Amazon FBA, or Fulfillment by Amazon, is a well-liked substitute.

Individual sellers can use this service to find the goods they want to sell, and Amazon will take care of the business and logistics.

The product will be hosted on Amazon's website, the customer's transaction will be facilitated, and the product will be delivered.

The following are a some of the most well-liked products people sell via Amazon FBA:

Books on investing for children, teenagers, and young adults

Arbitrage between retail and wholesale

DVDs

You can see how it's quite passive revenue when you take into account that Amazon handles listing, selling, shipping, receiving and sending payment, as well as any customer service needs.

It certainly qualifies as an avenue for making money while you sleep once you find what you want to sell.

4. Digital Products

Think of digital products as electronic files you buy for consumption. So these are any goods that are stored digitally as well as delivered and used electronically.

This means you can create something that a user buys and they’ll receive that via email or as a product download.

There are quite a few examples of digital products you could sell like:

eBooks

Music Files

Digital images

Software

Templates

Manuals

Videos

Graphics

Similar to affiliate marketing, creating digital products and marketing them can take time. You have to create value, trust, and build an audience that will be willing to buy your products.

But as this grows and more people discover it, you can start making tons of sales passively.

From time to time you might want to update the product or add new ones, but you can make money at all times of the day with digital products.

5.Print-on-demand products

Selling print-on-demand goods is a timeless passive income strategy that we'll cover last. Many shops provide a wide variety of items that can be customised, from t-shirts to baby bibs.

How to market print-on-demand items

CafePress is one of the most well-known online stores, selling almost anything with a blank surface.
 

Choose which products can be customised with your art, then upload your funniest jokes, images, or illustrations. You receive a portion of the sale if an item is purchased. You don't need to worry about producing, stocking, or delivering anything, similar to affiliate marketing.

You don't even need to have any original ideas. If you're running low on ideas, you can advertise other people's unique products in exchange for a commission.

Go for cute or funny images, logos and quotes that work on multiple products. The simpler, the better.

It's also a good idea to get snapping your creations and promote them across social media. Get your friend to wear a t-shirt with your prints and share it with your followers.

Most of the sales platforms we've mentioned are free to list with, but they'll each take their cut in their own way. It's always best to check before you sign up.

6. Rent out a Room in Your House

If you have a spare bedroom, you can rent out your room through Airbnb. It is totally up to you when the room is available, what the daily rate is and you make the rules for your guests.

A great way to make money while you’re on vacation or out of town is renting out your whole place on Airbnb. Rental income is reliable and trustworthy.

Eventually, some opt to invest in rental properties but this has a higher barrier to entry. Not everyone can buy an investment property just to rent out.

It might feel weird leaving your space in the hands of strangers. But luckily Airbnb has up to one million dollars of insurance in case something goes wrong. There’s also a rating system, so you can review the renter’s reputation before letting them rent your place.

7. Affiliate Marketing

You can make money through affiliate marketing by promoting products. You should only advertise products online that you are familiar with and that you really feel to be of the highest calibre.

There are various methods for beginning as an affiliate. Direct affiliation with a certain business is possible. As an alternative, you can make money via a commission platform like LTK or Commission Factory. Alternatively, you might enrol in the Amazon affiliate programme.

So, how do you begin? A blog is a must.

When you have an online presence, you have a place to give recommendations and share your knowledge about products. Then you add affiliate links so the affiliate can track your sales. This is an essential part of affiliate marketing. Having a blog opens you up to all sorts of revenue streams. Not only can you earn passive income online with affiliate commissions, but you can also make money on advertising, too.

8. Dropshipping

We anticipate 300 million internet shoppers in the US alone in 2023. According to the statistics on internet shopping in this article, that represents 91% of the population of the entire nation. Crazy!

But because to fantastic platforms like Shopify, a sizable market for e-commerce enterprises also become available.

So what exactly is dopshipping? The model is not too complicated.

Here’s how it works:

You debut an online store (you can do this through Shopify). However, you may also operate a dropshipping business using a platform like eBay.

Add items from specific manufacturers to your website.

There is nothing in your inventory. When a customer purchases a goods, the seller sends it to them directly.

Although you must pay for the goods, the markup means that you will profit more from the sale.

Of course, that simplifies things somewhat, but depending on the products you offer, it may enable you to build a sizable business.

Additionally, thanks to the internet, you can make sales whenever you want, even while you're sleeping.

Dropshipping can be a little trickier to achieve in these days since Today, dropshipping can be a bit harder to succeed in as there is a ton of competition. But even if you don’t make a full-time gig, a few hundred or thousand bucks every month for little work is a pretty sweet deal.

9. Create and Sell an Online Course

Perhaps you are an expert in a particular subject and have a certain body of knowledge. You can make money using the abilities you've developed over a very long career.

You can design an online course to teach anything, including guitar and algebra. Utilizing websites like Teachable, Skillshare, and Udemy is quite simple. The platforms make it easy to sign up and offer lots of assistance to help you get going.

The course's actual creation is the only roadblock to entry. You must consider how to divide your subject into manageable sections for your students. To enhance the learning process, you could wish to create downloadable activities and guidelines as well.These aren’t a must, but your course may be better reviewed if it’s more complete than the others on the platform.

The best part about this idea is that once you do the initial work of setting up your course, you will continue to get paid when people take it.
 

10. Stock Market

One of the most common (and more obvious) places to make money while you sleep is via the stock market. Although it’s true the stock market hours in the U.S. do not run at night, it is a way to make passive income without doing much.

Whether you are investing in index funds, ETFs, or individual stocks and bonds — by simply investing in them you can earn dividends and capital gains.

There are even micro-investing apps that can make this all more manageable and can help you get started without a ton of money upfront, like:

Zerodha

Angel One

Kotak Securities

11. Turn Yourself into a Product

Perhaps you’ve found personal success—or you are firmly on the road to it—and have seen many promising opportunities to promote yourself as a brand.

When you position yourself as the authority in your target market, you can develop products and services to leverage this trust while simultaneously helping those people with problems you can uniquely solve.

If you have an inspiring story or successful secrets to share, you could turn your experience into a video series, a blog, or write a book to make money while you sleep.

In any of these examples, you put the hard work in upfront, develop a marketing mix with the 4 Ps and then you simply collect proceeds while you move on to your next project.

In addition to generating income directly from one of these products, you’ll also discover these products can dramatically improve the visibility of your personal brand, thereby boosting sales for your company.

In the end, you will not only yield a profit for yourself through creating a new revenue stream, but you will also have improved an existing stream through any business ventures you currently have.

What is the Best Way to Make Money While You Sleep?

It truly depends on your interests, work ethic, and the time you are willing to dedicate towards building passive income.

Most of the ways listed above will take work and patience to really bring home some good money.

But, if you are willing to use your time wisely, you can have years of passive income generating for you without doing much additional work.