5 Ways To Earn Passive Income

Make Your Money Work For you

Passive income is something every person should be striving to achieve in some way. Gone are the days, where you could simply leave your money in a savings account. Passive income can help you pay monthly bills and increase your ability to save, invest, and/ give. In this article I want to define exactly what passive income is, and ways that I make my money work for me. Along with, some of my financial goals and go to dividend stocks.

This article is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information may be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any significant financial decisions.

What is passive income? It’s a way to earn steady money with little to no daily effort. Earning passive income is not a sit-on-your-butt-and-make-fast-money gig. You’ll need to put in the work — at least on the front end. Some passive income projects — like building a blog or an app — take time (and sometimes money) to get up and running. But if you play your cards right, they could eventually earn you money while you sleep. — Ramsey Solutions

1 — Stock Dividends

Receiving dividends each month takes some initial money to get started. But, once established it could be a great stream of passive income.

Definition of a dividend: “Dividends are payments made by publicly listed companies as a reward to investors for putting their money into the venture.”

In other words the company is giving you a small portion of the overall companies earnings. I use two different investing accounts through two financial institutions, Fidelity and Robinhood. I use both accounts for a distinct purpose, one for a savings account by leveraging SGOV, a exchange-traded fund (ETF) and the other account is used to invest for the future, 10-15 years down the road.

My goal is to earn an extra $1,000 dollars a month in dividends. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an extra $12,000 a year in passive income? My current strategy is investing a large percentage of my portfolio into historically stable growth stocks. Then, after ~7 years of growth, I will flip a portion of my portfolio position to be more focused on income type funds like.

2— Real Estate

Real estate is one of the most sought after long-term investment strategies. I want to invest in real estate but don’t want to deal with all the headaches and work needed to actually own it. Well, there’re real estate crowdfunding investment companies that help solve that issue. What these platforms do is take investors money and fund different real estate projects.

In the past I have played around with multiple different private real-estate investment platforms such as: DiversyFund, Fundrise, GroundFloor, Landa and Roofstack. However, after years of evaluation in 2025 I closed all of my Real Estate investing accounts to simplify my investing portfolio.

3 — Peer-To-Peer Lending

I was weary at first when I decided to try out peer-to-peer lending. After reading through some reviews I decided to try out both Prosper Invest and Worthy. Peer-to-peer lending is investing in personal/business loans. You receive interest as the borrower repays the loan.

However, just like my comment on the Real Estate investing accounts above, after years of evaluation, in 2025, I closed my Prosper and Worthy accounts as well, to simplify my investing portfolio.

4 — Be Creative, Start Publishing Online Content

• Start a blog (like my wife and I did with Maverick Life).
• Start a YouTube Channel (Maverick Life | Mine)
  My buddy started a YouTube channel called American Automotive. He took something he was passionate about and turned it into an income generating vehicle.
• Release a book (like my buddy Patrick Ware did here).
• Release your own original music (Checkout my songs here).
• Develop a following on social media by posting photos/videos in your niche.
• Is there a certain video game that you play? Stream it.
• Develop your own video game and release it on steam.

There are some people making millions of dollars a year by putting content out on the internet. Who is to say that can’t be you? Leverage affiliate marking into each of these potential Find your niche and run with it! Be consistent, be creative and start pushing out content online. What do you have to lose?

5 — Get Paid For Being Fit

You walk, workout (at least you should haha) and sleep already so why not get paid for it? Here is a few apps that I have used to make some extra money each year. The more active you are the more you make. For example, if you’re a marathon runner you could rack up points needed to redeem money a lot faster. Evidation used to be known as Achievement, Sweatcoin and Walgreens Balance Rewards are all great options. The awesome thing is you can use all three programs at the same time! Which means you to earn three times the points.

I never personally earn a large amount of money through these apps. However, it was always exciting when I get the notification, stating I had enough points to redeem money out of my account.

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Well that is my list of ways to make your money work for you. Please, let me know what you think about my passive income ideas below. I would also love to hear about your ideas as well!