One of the biggest lies young people are told at the ages of 18, 19, and 20 is that “money doesn’t grow on trees.” This process starts in school, when we’re taught to follow the traditional path of getting a job and getting a mortgage, which leads us to work every hour of the day to earn enough money to retire and eventually die at age 67.
Let’s get real for a moment. Do you think this is how I make $67,257 a week?
There’s clearly something else going on, and no, I’m not talking about getting a high-paying job or starting a side hustle. To achieve this, you need a way to earn money that doesn’t rely on you working day and night.
This is called passive income, and here are seven ideas I strongly suggest you consider, along with my rating of each.
Idea 1: The Stock Market
Idea one, invest in stocks. There is more to investing in the stock market than that and you will earn passive income. I mean I can understand why people think that, because let's say you buy shares in a company and the value goes up.
Technically, you've made some money without having to do anything, but to actually get your money out, you have to sell your shares. Some people would consider this passive income, but instead I consider it just a bonus and not something to depend on.
I consider passive income to be nothing less than actual money coming into your bank account every month, without having to sell the asset that is making you money. So the only form of investing in the stock market that I consider to be true passive income is dividend shares. These are shares of companies that you can buy.
Think Starbucks, Pepsi, and McDonald's, and in exchange for owning them, you get a share of the profits paid directly into your pocket, as well as profits from the increase in the value of the stock as a bonus. They're one of the easiest ways to make money on a consistent basis without doing any work.
Well, that is as long as you pick the right ones to invest in. I strongly suggest you listen carefully to this next section so you avoid making any critical mistakes. To help you separate the good from the bad, dividend stocks are ranked in a kind of social hierarchy. At the top you have the dividend kings. These are stocks that have not only paid a dividend but have actually increased it for 50 consecutive years. Under that, you have the dividend aristocrats. These are stocks that have increased their dividends for 25 years.
That's where the official definition ends, but I like to think of the stocks that fall under it as the dividend working class. Sure, some of them will eventually become oligarchs and kings, however, it is very difficult to tell who will succeed. I would be very cautious with these because many people are attracted to companies that pay extremely high dividends. I can understand why this is, but remember, as much as it is about the money you are being paid, it is also essential that it is sustainable in the long term. So you can easily compare these seven ideas, I am going to rate them in three different categories.
Firstly, how long does dividend investing take? I would rate this one out of five, because all you have to do is download an investment app, deposit some money and buy some dividend stocks. Look, this is not financial advice, but a couple of apps I would recommend are MooMoo for the USA and Lightyear for the UK and Europe. Apps like these often give away free stocks upon joining,
Secondly, how much money do you need?
I would give this a five out of five, because it can be done very quickly, so you would have to invest a lot of money to make a significant income. Third, how easy is it to make a hundred dollars a week? This also gets a five out of five. Let's do the math. Since dividends are calculated on an annual basis and paid at the end of each quarter, let's first figure out how much money you need per year, which is pretty simple. There are 52 weeks in a year, so multiply that by a hundred, which gives us $5,200. Now, let's say we invest in one of my favorite companies, Starbucks, which currently pays an annual dividend of 2.4%.
To make $5,200 per year, or a hundred dollars a week, you would have to invest a total of, wait, $216,666. Now, I get what you're thinking. This sounds great for people who already have money, but what if I'm just starting out? In that case, it's a better idea to use your time instead of your money to create passive income, which is the next idea.
Idea 2: Automate the side hustle
Idea two, automate the side hustle. Many people don’t understand the difference between a job and an automated side hustle. When I was young, I had a friend named Jamie who had a small dog training business. He was great at what he did. I remember watching him petting crazy dogs. One day as we sat in the park, I asked him how much money he made, and I was surprised to learn that he was somehow making ends meet.
What I didn’t understand was how such a skilled person, who had so much to offer, didn’t earn the money he deserved. If we put aside the fact that he probably wasn’t charging enough, we come to the real issue, which was the business model. He had limited hours to sell and limited dogs to train. Therefore, he could only earn to the extent of his ability, as there was no way to automate and scale it at the time.
But now that we have the internet, these little side hustles can be much more passive and make a lot of money. So how can you go from a skill to an automated side hustle like Jamie? Well, here are the steps I would take, and I’m pretty sure I could turn a little side hustle like Jamie into a million dollar business nowadays.
First, you have to identify what you’re actually good at. Ideally, you should have some kind of unfair advantage, but this is where most people fall into the same trap as Jamie, because they start selling every minute of their time for a small amount of money. Instead, you need to focus every waking hour on building some kind of digital asset. For Jamie, it could have been a blog where he talked about training dogs, a manual for owners to train their pets, or a course that taught other people
how to start a dog training side hustle. Second, once you’ve decided what kind of digital asset you want to create, you need to put it on the internet so your prospective customers can find it. The best solution I’ve found for this is a tool called Hostinger, which is an all-in-one platform. I’m talking hosting, website builder, logo maker, and free domain name with an annual plan. I would personally choose this because the drag-and-drop website builder makes it very easy, as I don’t have any coding skills. Then it’s just a matter of effectively advertising your digital product on social media. I highly recommend creating viral TikToks about your product because you can reach a lot of people without too much time and effort.
So, how long does it take to automate a side hustle?
Well, if you’re doing it on your own, I’d give it a five out of five because creating a digital product takes a while, and then you have the added headache of building a website. However, if you decide to use something like Hostinger, I would give it three hours to five, as you don’t need to worry about having any technical or design skills for the website as you can use the built-in AI website builder to create your website. Or alternatively, you can use templates created by designers, which is great news for boomers like me, but those who are a little more knowledgeable can enhance their website further by choosing the WordPress option.
Now, let’s talk about how much money you need. I would give it a score of one out of five because this passive income idea is more about investing your time than your money. It depends on what digital product you want to create, but if it’s a course of some sort, you can do it all on your laptop using a program like Canva. When it comes to hosting it on the internet, it comes out to less than $3 per month if you take Hostinger’s 24-month plan. I've actually been using Hostinger for a while now, so I thought, since I was mentioning it a lot in the video, why not contact them and see if I can get a discount?
They actually contacted me. Finally, the part that everybody wants to know, how easy is it to make a hundred dollars a week? I would give this a score out of five, because once you get started, let's say you price your digital product at $25, all you have to do is make four sales a week and you've made a hundred dollars.
So within a couple of weeks you can make all your money back and then start making a profit. It's pretty easy if you're posting TikTok videos every day. You might even get a very viral video and make more sales than you were initially expecting.
Idea 3: Create content online
Create content online. For decades, millions and millions of dollars have been raked in by traditional media. I'm talking about radio stations and television networks. The public had no idea how much money there is in advertising until YouTube opened its doors for the public to create their own content. Then the curtain lifted completely. Traditional media hates it, and that's why they try to discredit social media at every opportunity.
People leveraging online content are already dipping their hands into an extremely secure pot of money and rightfully taking their fair share. It still stuns me that some people don't understand how content creators make money. I mean, the concept of advertising is hundreds of years old and online ads are far more trackable than putting a random ad on TV and hoping it will increase sales for a business.
Here's the best advice I've ever received about social media. It's not whether you do it, it's how well you do it. So how can we use this to make money? Well, it's just like I mentioned earlier. You can start a YouTube channel, and once you reach a thousand subscribers and 4,000 watch hours, you can start getting paid from ads on your videos. Whenever I tell people this, they respond with something like, "Well, the people who are successful are just lucky." Maybe that was the case a few years ago, but now if your content is good and designed for the algorithm, you will be successful.
The harsh truth is that a lot of people think their content is good when in fact it's pretty bad, and no one wants to tell them that. That's because they only ask family and friends who hide the truth to protect their own feelings. If you want an honest judgment, you need to ask people who don't care about offending you. Care more about people who don't care about you. It's best to choose whatever you feel most comfortable with, whether that's writing, taking photos, speaking into a microphone, or recording an entire video. As long as you can hold people's attention, you're onto a winner.
It's also worth noting that choosing a niche is important. In the early days of the internet, you could get away with talking about anything and everything, but now there's so much competition that you need to specialize in something specific. Think of it like your favorite TV show. Every time you watch, you know what to expect. Same characters, locations, and storylines. So you want to make sure your audience knows what kind of content you create and put it out regularly. This also makes it much easier for you to attract sponsorship opportunities.
I like to think of every video I put up on this channel as a little asset that will make me money for years to come. It also helps that creating content is super fun.
So how much time does content creation take?
I would rate this a five out of five because this is one of the most time consuming things in the world. I won't beat around the bush, but creating content is a long, arduous process. I mean, it probably took us more than five days to make this video. However, the benefits are worth it in my opinion. Just think, the more difficult a task is, the less competition you have.
Now, how much money do you need?
This is a five out of five because you don't really need a lot of money to get started. I see a lot of people buying the latest equipment or taking long courses to learn how to create content. This is a terrible idea. You just need to be an avid consumer of whatever you want to create. Take the good parts from all those different things and then combine them with your own ideas. There's a great book about this called
"Steal Like an Artist." Most importantly, how easy is it to make a hundred dollars a week? Well, this should be one of five. Within a few months of starting this YouTube channel, it was able to make over a hundred dollars a day, and you can do the same. No wonder traditional media wanted to pocket all this money for themselves.
The opportunity is incredible.
Idea four, start a private investment.
Idea 4: Start Private Investing
I want you to imagine that you are an investor on "Shark Tank." An entrepreneur comes in with an incredible business that you think you can help, and they are looking for some money to expand. You have the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of this business.
Would you take the risk?
What if you are talking to a family member and they share their plan for a business that will take over the world and they just need a small amount of money to get started? If you answered yes, private investing may be for you. Your first step is to decide what kind of private investor you are. There are two main types, sharks and angels. Some remain angels and some turn into sharks, but this will help you know the difference. Angels often invest in businesses run by friends and family. They often don't have a lot of money and are not interested in controlling the business.
They are generally seen as nicer and more forgiving, hence their name. Sharks, on the other hand, may invest smaller amounts but have more money at their disposal. They may also seek a controlling interest initially because they are confident that their expertise can make the business more profitable and therefore increase their investment. I personally lean more towards the shark end of the spectrum because I like to have as much control over my investments as possible. But whatever personal investing strategy you choose, you can also combine it with content creation.
Believe it or not, actor Ryan Reynolds is a great example of this. He is one of the smartest people on the planet right now, and I am not exaggerating. He is extremely good at playing the role of a common man, but under the mask, he is a business-savvy venture capitalist who has had several multi-million dollar exits, leading to a net worth of over $350 million. He finds interesting companies, offers to buy a small percentage as an angel investor, uses his social media following to drive up the value, and then when the company sells, he gets a big check for hundreds of millions of dollars, and it's almost all passive income.
This is genius. Now, of course, Ryan is a worldwide star, but you can replicate this strategy on a smaller scale and use it to create a lot of passive income. I mean, even if you could replicate 1% of his success, you'd still have a net worth of $3.5 million. So
How long does private investing take?
I'd give it a 2.5 out of five because it takes a while to find a business that you think is really worth investing in. Don't just jump into anything. Take your time and carefully consider whether you can see that business being successful in the future. You also need to ask the entrepreneur how dividends will be paid and what their ultimate exit strategy is because that is how you will get most of your money. The actual investment part doesn't take long because it is simply a matter of handing over the money and being assigned your percentage of the business. Now,
How much money do you need?
I would give this a three out of five, because it really depends on the business you are investing in. I have personally invested anywhere from a thousand to a hundred thousand dollars. Of course, the earlier you get into it, the less you have to invest, but also the more risk you take. So you have to decide how much risk you are willing to take. If you do this, I would also recommend making more than one investment, because I have often found that one good investment can offset nine bad investments. But the important thing is, how easy is it to make a hundred dollars a week?
I would give this a two out of five because it really depends on your negotiation skills and how much you invest. I invested $5,000 in a business and helped them upgrade their equipment as well as grow their client base. I started making easily a hundred dollars a week in dividends. The more value you can provide, the more you will get because you are not taking money out of the entrepreneur's pocket, but instead helping to increase the pool of money for everyone.
Idea 5: Affiliate Marketing
Idea five, become an affiliate marketer.
I remember a big bank recently had a promotion. My son’s girlfriend sent out a signup link to all her friends, telling them that if they downloaded the app, they could get $10 for free. She was amazed at the results. Every few hours a new friend signed up and thanked her for the free cash. Before she knew it, 30 of her friends had signed up using the link and she had hit the limit. But she wasn’t just doing it out of the kindness of her heart.
She is a kind girl though. She also got paid $10 for every person who signed up, which means she made $300 that day just by sitting in bed and texting a few people. Imagine if there were no limits. She could have made a lot more.
This is essentially affiliate marketing, but true affiliate marketing has no limits, so you can earn as much as you want. It is considered one of the simplest, yet most profitable ways to make money online because it doesn’t require you to have any additional skills or previous experience. All that is usually required as an affiliate is passion for your niche and strong persuasive skills.
Think of all the products that you love and perhaps even use on a daily basis. Chances are that other people will love those products too, and you are the perfect person to sell them. Most large companies have an affiliate scheme, so all you have to do is go to their website and do a little research.
If you don’t find anything, it’s worth contacting them directly and asking if you can become an affiliate. There are also websites like Impact.com where you can see a lot of different affiliate schemes that you can easily sign up for.
Now, you have to make some noise. You can do this by writing blogs, using social media, or posting reviews. You may have already seen this happen on TikTok with videos that talk about Amazon products you need to buy. Whenever someone makes a purchase through your link, you as an affiliate marketer get a kickback and make a profit, but keep in mind that if you are doing a review, you should actually buy the product and test it.
Using it for a while and reporting your findings will ensure that your content is useful and genuine. One thing to keep in mind before starting affiliate marketing is how you can provide value to your audience that is greater than the amount you get in return.
So how long does affiliate marketing take?
I would give it a 3.5 out of five. I’m not going to lie. It will be difficult to get started, so it’s important to have realistic expectations. While this is a great way to make money online, it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. It requires patience and a willingness to learn. It’s completely understandable to be frustrated if you don’t see results right away, but keep in mind that finding success in this field takes time. You need to build trust with your audience and create valuable content for them.
Now, how much money do you need?
This gets a one out of five because you don’t need any money up front. Assuming you already have a phone or laptop that you can use to access the internet and create your content. But how easy is it to make a hundred dollars a week? I’d give it a two out of five. If we take my son’s girlfriend’s example, she was doing affiliate marketing without even knowing it and she made $300 in one day. Of course, it wasn’t very passive because she was texting people.
However, once you have your content ready, it will do most of the heavy lifting for you. It’s reported that affiliate marketers earn an average of $66,029 per year passively, with earnings ranging from $35,000 to $124,000.
Idea 6: Build a digital tool
Idea six, build a digital tool.
My best friend decided to do this, and now he’s a millionaire who spends more time on vacations with his wife than at home. He noticed that the market lacked a digital tool that helped large subscription organizations keep track of all their customer data. At first, he decided to sell his software as a one-time purchase. However, he always had to look for a new customer. When he switched to a subscription-based model, he was able to create a very predictable amount of passive income each month.
Well, I say passive income. Of course, he still had to provide support to his customers, but eventually he hired people to do it for him and pulled out of the whole hands-off approach. He later sold his business for several million. Before you start thinking that you have to be some kind of idiot to build a digital tool, hear me out. The most important thing is to identify the problem that needs to be solved. Often you find that people who have the ability to code are not as creative and need a lot of direction. So if you can’t code, you might be the idea person, the business brains behind the genius. Then you have to choose the customers your software is going to serve.
There are two main categories, businesses or consumers. Serving other businesses is often seen as the least risky and you can make more money per customer. Once you have done this, you will be able to really see how people react to your solution. You have to make sure you don’t get too attached to your ideas because you might find that it doesn’t actually fix the problem you want. So, being able to adapt your digital tool after receiving criticism is very important.
Even though this might not be something you can start doing right away, it’s worth just taking note of problems you see businesses facing, in case you find a solution that no one has thought of before.
So, how long does it take to build a digital tool?
I would give it a five out of five. Not only does the process of coming up with the idea take a long time, but testing and building the tool also takes a lot of time. So if you decide to go this route, I don’t want you to be under any illusions. Make sure you don’t waste years building the final tool before testing it. I’ve seen a lot of people do this and realize they’ve actually wasted years of their life on something that no one wants.
But as I told my friend, if you succeed in building an amazing digital tool, it will give you a constant flow of passive income and you have the added benefit of being able to sell it for potentially millions.
Now, how much money do you need?
I would give it a 3.5 out of five because building anything like this will cost you a decent amount of money. However, there are two things you can do to reduce your costs. First, you can partner with a coder, and so you don't have to pay for his time, but you do have to give equity. Second, once you've built the first version of your product or MVP, if it's good, you'll start getting some interest from angel investors. At this point, you'll either have to continue using your own money, known as bootstrapping, or invest in your business in exchange for giving them equity.
But the big question is, how easy is it to make a hundred dollars a week? It's one in five. If you manage to build and fund it to a level where it can be released to the market and you price your subscription at $20 a month, you'll only need 20 paying customers and you'll make a hundred dollars a week. Of course, you'll have other expenses, but these will be limited to customer support and software updates. It's also likely that you'll charge a lot more than $20 a month and you'll have more than 20 customers.
I have to spend at least a thousand dollars a month on digital tools, so the money is definitely there. So we've talked about investing in assets and building your own assets, but one thing that's often overlooked is actually making money from the assets you already have.
Which brings me to idea seven, rent out your stuff.
Idea 7: Rent out your stuff
Most people don’t realise that they are sitting on a gold mine and that they can already afford everything they need to make passive income. I remember a few years ago, a friend of mine told me that he was struggling to pay his bills. I then suggested that he rent out his driveway to make some passive income.
He looked at me and laughed, but then a few weeks later, he messaged me back and said that it was working amazingly. That’s because he lived near Bromley train station, which meant he could charge people $70 a week to leave their car in his driveway on their way to work in London. He had the capacity for two cars, so he was actually able to make $140 extra passive income per week.
I know not everyone has a driveway to rent out, but most people have something they can use to make money. Make a list of all of your things and see if anything appeals to you. Some ideas that come to mind are storage space like an attic or basement, vehicles, camping equipment, camera gear, a garage or an empty room in your house, or should I say money.
Of course, you can always go the route of buying another property to rent out, but you’ll need a lot of money to do that. The world is certainly becoming more familiar with renting things out as things get increasingly expensive. Renting out your things can actually be a great way to justify buying property in the first place.
I mean, if I knew that an expensive camera would pay for itself after a certain amount of rent, wouldn’t it make sense to buy it? Once you’ve thought of what you could rent out to others, all you have to do is find an app that matches you with potential customers. There are plenty of apps out there. In the past, I've used Fat Llama to rent camera equipment and camping gear, Turo to rent vehicles, and Airbnb to rent filming locations. Peer-to-peer lending platforms also make it possible for you to rent your money to others. Although there is some risk involved, many lenders have earned a good income from this investment.
For example, one of the leading platforms, Prosper, has an average historical return of 5.4%. So, if you're willing to take a little risk, this could be a great option to explore.
So, how long does it take to rent something out?
I'd give it a score of one out of five, since all you have to do is take a few photos and upload them to an app or website that does all the work for you. The biggest drawback to this is the potential risk involved. Not everyone will be as careful with your items as you would. So it's important to have some sort of insurance. Usually, this comes with the platform you decide to use.
Now, how much money do you need?
I would give this a one out of five because if you are only renting out things you already own, it won’t cost you anything. The only cost is if you decide to get separate insurance or you decide you want to buy things to rent out. And the big question,
How easy is it to make a hundred dollars a week?
I would give this a two out of five because it’s pretty easy if you have enough property to rent out. Most people have a home that they can use to make an extra hundred dollars a week, even if that means renting out the driveway or a spare room.
If you want to know how you can get ahead of others.
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