Passive income is better than any side hustle because the money comes to you without you having to put much elbow grease into it. You’ll read about all kinds of ways to generate this extra cash flow, but most won’t earn the typical person more than some extra spending money at best, whether it’s dog walking or affiliate marketing.
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Aside from not having to spend too much time generating passive income, it may be important to you to strive for options that require little or no upfront investment. However, if you want to make some real money without having to exchange labor for your earnings — say, $50,000 a year — you’re going to have to pay to play.
The following is a look at a few ways to generate a heavy flow of passive income. Most of them require a significant cash investment, but if you’ve been diligently stuffing funds into an emergency savings account or have been collecting dividend income through your stock market investment strategy, you can put your money to work for you instead of the reverse. Here are five ways to consider.
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Buy a Rental Property Online
Investing in real estate and owning a rental property is probably the most desired form of passive income — but scouting properties, screening tenants, property management, performing maintenance and being a landlord is not for everyone.
Sites like Doorvest take care of all of that for you. Here are a few key takeaways:
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Doorvest charges a 10% monthly property management fee based on the gross rent received from the property.
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You don’t pay a management fee if the property is vacant. This aligns their incentives with the investor’s, encouraging them to find and keep tenants in place.
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Doorvest also offers a premium property management plan at a higher fee of about 23% that includes benefits like an ongoing rent guarantee and maintenance credit
You tell them about your ideal investment home and submit a fully refundable deposit, which puts you on a three- to four-week waiting list. When you reserve your perfect home, Doorvest buys it, renovates it, finds long-term tenants and, once you close, you own the home and begin building equity and generating passive rental income.
Everything is guaranteed, and their average rental home sells for $225,000 with a $45,000 down payment. How quickly you get to $50,000 depends on your property value and the rent you charge, but you can factor in appreciation and lucrative tax cuts as part of your long-term profits.
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Launch Your Own Mini-Fleet of Rental Cars
The P2P car-sharing company Turo lets anyone make money by lending out unused vehicles to people who want to rent cars. Anyone who signs up gets $750,000 in liability insurance from Travelers, 24/7 customer service, roadside assistance for their renters and access to a customer base of about 3.5 million active guests.
It is estimated that a single car listed on Turo can earn between $5,000 and $10,000 on average annually after expenses. The total varies based on factors such as the model of car, its market value, the location and how active you are on the site. Some hosts report netting $700 to 725 a month per vehicle. But if you really want to make a business of it, Turo says five cars can generate over $50,000 per year.
Better yet, they don’t have to be Ferraris; real people are doing it with real cars. A fleet of nine vehicles will earn you just shy of six figures over a brief period of time.
Stake Cryptocurrency
Investing in crypto is volatile and risky — but staking it doesn’t have to be. Staking is the process of locking crypto holdings in the token’s associated blockchain. Blockchains that use proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms (as opposed to traditional mining, or proof-of-work) require staked tokens to confirm transactions, create new blocks and perform other maintenance needed to keep the blockchain healthy.
By staking your crypto holdings, you agree to lock them for a set amount of time in exchange for rewards and fees — much like locking your money in a savings bond or certificate of deposit (CD) in exchange for interest payments.
Buy a Blog
You’ve heard that freelance writing may be a way to trickle in some extra cash, as starting a blog is one of the most commonly cited ways to start a side hustle and earn passive income. The problem is that almost no blogs ever make any money and starting one doesn’t qualify as passive income. It’s a ton of work, and much of that work is highly specialized.
Muck like with real estate investing, it’s often better to buy the house than to build it. If you can buy a blog that’s already up, running, well-managed and profitable, a good blog can be a virtual ATM. Blog and business marketplaces such as Flippa give successful blog owners a place to cash in by selling their sites to people like you who want the passive income they generate.
Buy Into a ‘Goldilocks’ Dividend Stock Fund
Dividend stocks are probably the simplest and most accessible path to a steady passive income stream. On the lower, safer side are index fund ETFs that track major indices such as the S&P 500. As they typically pay measly yields of around 1.5%, which means you would need about $4 million to earn $50,000 a year in dividend payouts.
On the other end of the spectrum are the enticing but dangerous stocks that offer gargantuan yields of 14% or 15%. Those kinds of shareholder payouts are rarely sustainable and often leave investors with less than they started with.
In the middle, however, are what investors and financial experts call the “Goldilocks” dividend stocks, which pay 7% or 8% yields. At that level, a retiree with a $650,000 nest egg could earn a reliable passive income stream of $50,000 a year.
Caitlyn Moorhead contributed to the reporting for this article.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: 5 Ways To Make $50K a Year in Passive Income
