How To Make Passive Income While Traveling (38 Ways I’ve Tried!)
Do you want to know how to make passive income while traveling?
Are you hating Mondays and find yourself looking out the office window wishing you were somewhere else – anywhere else in the world?
Do you want to wake up in the morning, hop on a plane to the Bahamas in the afternoon and lie on that beautiful white sand by sunset?
Have you thought about ditching that deskjob but are holding yourself back because you didn’t know how to make the financing possible?
I was in your exact same position a few years ago, and now I LOVE Mondays. (I know that sounds bit cringe but I am dead serious! )
I am writing this article in a beautiful little quaint cafe in Puerto Escondido,Mexico, excited to share with you all the possibilities of traveling while making passive income!
I am a freelance writer, coach, owner of 6 blogs and I have traveled to over 44 countries.
I am continuing to discover ways to earn passive income and it’s an incredibly exciting journey I am happy to share with you!
How To Make Passive Income While Traveling (38 Ways!)
It took me a lot of research and real life experience (tried and tested) to list types of passive income streams – here are the best 38 all laid out for you.
And don’t worry, they are all legitimate ways to make passive income!
1. Rent Out Your Home or Room
2. Rent Out a Parking Space
3. House Sitting
4. Start a Monetized Blog
5. Affiliate Marketing
6. Advertisement
7. Brand Collaborations Content
8. Online Referrals
9. Provide Subscription Service (Members-Only!)
10. Sell/Rent an Ad-Space
11. Write and Publish a Book
12. Create an E-book
13. Sell Digital Products
14. Sell Artwork
15. Sell Online Courses
16. Sell Stock Photographs
17. Sell Presets
18. Create a No-Code App
19. License Your Music
20. Sell Custom Products with Print-On-Demand
21. Cryptocurrency
22. Real Estate Investment
23. Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
24. Dropshipping
25. Vending Machines
26. Buy a Laundromat
27. Peer-to-Peer Lending
28. Cashbacks
29. High Yield Savings Account
30. Bond Ladder
31. Flip Domain Names
32. Buy and Sell Websites
33. Publish Videos and Monetize your Youtube Channel
34. Amazon FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon programme)
35. Merch by Amazon
36. Create Mobile Apps
37. Create a Lead Generation Website
38. Develop WordPress Themes and Sell It Across Multiple Platforms!
Affiliate Link Disclosure
Some of the links here are affiliate links, and I may earn if you click on them, AT NO EXTRA cost to you. I hope you find the information here useful! Thanks!
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What is Passive Income?
Earning a passive income means you get to earn money even when you are doing anything BUT working. It is the complete opposite of a desk job where the hours you work determine the money you get at the end of the day.
Why Passive Income?
As we go through life, we tend to appreciate things that matter most to us that cannot be bought with money.
Some of these are spending time with our loved ones, quality time for ourselves (self-care ftw!), or taking a long break for our own mental health.
All the above sounds great but in order to really gain the sweetness of having it all, we need to get our life in order first and that means all bills are paid in due, savings increased over time and emergency funds secured.
Having a passive income ensures that you have all your finances in check and still have the extra time to do things that matter to you.
I have no idea how that is not the dream of every sane person on Earth!
There are numerous types of passive income and this article will show you the list of passive income streams for you to dig in while traveling!
All these are not just legitimate passive income, they are some of the best too!
How to Make Passive Income While You Are Traveling (38 Ways!)
1. Rent Out Your Home Or Room
Since you are off traveling, what better way to make passive income than with the home or room you are leaving behind?
There are established companies that will help you list your home and find you suitable renters while you’re away.
These sites are the top 3 vacation rental sites which are trustworthy. Do read the guidelines and follow the easy steps to start renting out your home.
1. Airbnb – You can make an average of USD60 per night depending where you live and how big your space is
2. Vacation Rental By Owner (VBRO) – If you are a regular traveler who are away long, you can potentially earn up to USD33,000 per year
3. Flipkey – It is possible to earn around USD300 in one weekend with Flipkey
2. Rent Out A Parking Space
That empty space in front of your porch or garage may be useful to your neighbors especially when you are away on holiday.
Consider putting that space up for rent and watch the free money flow into your bank account.
1. Curbflip – For parking space rental, you can potentially earn from USD90 to USD360 per month depending on the city you live in and the location of your parking space
2. Neighbor – Large driveways or outdoor parking can potentially earn you from USD50 to USD150 per month depending on the city you libe in and the location
3. Vanly – You can earn up to USD700 per month by renting your parking space to campervans and RV trailer
3. House Sitting
Did you know you can house sit while you travel?
Other than free accommodations granted, this means you get to be paid while you take care of someone’s home and collect their mail or water the plants.
The “free housing” is the pay, but there are also paid house sitting gigs available. These are some trusted sites to explore:
1. Trusted House Sitters – Free and unique homestays around the world in exchange for caring for adorable pets
2. House Sitters America – Care for pets and live rent-free or even build your own house-sitting business!
3. House Sitter – Paid job board listed here for you to choose the location and the amount offered according to your needs
4. Start A Monetized Blog
Starting a blog is easy. Monetizing the blog, not so much.
If you want to start a blog and plan to monetize it, this free guide to learn is the best way to monetize your blog in a year.
Once you have churned out lots of good quality content and get the traffic you want, you will earn a good stream of money over time.
5. Affiliate Marketing
How to make passive income with affiliate marketing? Before you give it a miss due to its perceived bad reputation, affiliate marketing is actually 100% legit and worth it!
When someone purchases through a unique link from your recommendation, you earn a commission at no extra cost to the customer. 16% of all e-commerce orders in the US and Canada is generated from affiliate marketing – and this is worth USD 12 billion!
Check out these cool affiliate tips
1. 43 Coffee Affiliate Programs to Make You Money in 2022
2. Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest in 10 Easy Steps
3. 39 Best Affiliate Programs for Beginners Without a Website
6. Display Advertising
Putting advertisements on your blog can be a lucrative business. Few popular ways to make money by advertising on your blog are:
- Pay per click advertisement
- Sell your own advertising on your blog(s)
- Sell text links on your blog
- CPM ad networks
- Pop-up advertisements
- Display advertising
- Paid reviews
If you blog is already meeting high traffic, then consider generating revenue with AdThrive by checking out this cool guide AdThrive Requirements: Ultimate Guide for 2022
7. Brand Collaborations Content
Creating content on social media and websites has become a trend for brands to establish themselves in the market.
From brief product reviews to a full recommendation post on a brand in your blog, brand collaborations will help to increase your engagement and influence especially in highly engaging platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
8. Online Referrals
Online referrals is a form of marketing that brands use to reach a larger audience.
Once a user signs up or purchases a product using your code, you and the user will get referral bonus, often in terms of cash.
Here are some referral programs you can explore:
1. ShareASale – Referral fee of USD150
2. Payoneer – Referral fee of USD25
3. Swagbucks – 10% of what your referral earns
4. SoFi – Referral fee of USD50+
5. Rakuten – Referral fee of USD20
6. SafetyWing – 10% of the value of consumed purchases
As always, before signing up for anything, do read the terms and conditions and do plenty of research before committing.
9. Provide Subscription Service (Members-Only!)
With membership platforms like Thinkific and Patreons, you are able to provide exclusive content and earn a recurring income.
The best thing about this type of passive income is you get to create content that truly resonates to your passion.
10. Sell/rent an Ad-Space
If you own a car, consider renting the empty space on your car for an advertisement.
The rate you can get varies depending on your location and the visibility of the ads, but sure enough this is one of the easiest ways to earn a passive income.
Check out these companies that will pay you to advertise on your car:
1. Nickelytics – download the app, sign up as a driver and get matched to a campaign
2. Wrapify – download the app, sign up as a driver and receive offers for campaigns
3. Carvetise – fill up a form on the website, and get matched to a brand targeted to your area
11. Write and Publish a Book
How to make passive income while traveling? By publishing a book. Publishing a book can earn you royalties.
With platforms like Amazon, Kobo and Barnes & Nobles Press, just to name a few, published authors are paid handsome royalties on every book sold.
12. Create an E-book
Similar to publishing a book, creating an e-book can earn you royalties and the income from e-books is higher than printed books!
This is due to the minimal cost for the publisher as there is no printing, shipping or marketing costs involved. The percentage of royalties earned depends on the publisher. Check out Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, and Rakuten Kobo for more information!
If you’re not ready to write a full fledged e-book yet, check out a guide on how to sell short stories for money.
13. Create and Sell Digital Products
Did you know there are tons of digital products you call on various platforms?
Digital products can range from printable stickers and wall art, WordPress plugins, a music file, a PDF file – the limit is endless!
With platforms like Etsy, Koji and Sellfy just to name a few, it’s very accessible and simple to start selling digital products to generate passive income while you travel the world!
Here are some cool course and guides I found:
1. How to Make Stickers to Sell (2022 Guide)
2. 31 Best Digital Products to Sell on Etsy
3. Online Business Masterclass: Sell Your Own Digital Products
14. Sell Artwork
How to make passive income with art you ask?
Sell them in a digital art form! Turn those talented fingers and hands from paper art to digital form of art, and the new world is your oyster!
Digital art prints were the best-selling digital downloads in 2021 and potential is huge!
The biggest advantage of selling digital art prints, is that you don’t have to keep reproducing new art, or worry about restocking them – you will never run out of stock!
Sell them on Etsy or Shopify to start generating that income!
15. Sell Online Courses
With the digital age, people are looking for classes to take online, in the comfort of their own home, while traveling or with the flexibility they choose.
If you have a niche or specialty, share it to the world and generate passive income through it!
You can explore selling online courses on platforms like Udemy and Teachable. These are some guides I found to help you get started:
1. How to Teach English Online to European Students
2. How to Become A Yoga Instructor Online in 7 Steps
16. Sell Stock Photographs
This could be one of the simplest ways to earn passive income while you travel. All you need is a smartphone to get started! Yes – you don’t even need a professional camera OR be a professional photographer!
It’s as easy as taking photographs with your phone, uploading on the below sites and start seeing those dollars coming in!
1. FOAP – It’s a FREE app and they have cool missions where clients request specific photos! If you win a mission, you can get up to USD500 in bonuses!
2. Alamy – Simple and quick sign up process with high traffic to their sites!
3. Shutterstock – They pay you per photo download because they are so popular and have high traffic!
17. Sell Presets
What are presets you may ask? Presets are customized filters that you can apply to digital photos. With the abundance of digital platforms to upload photos on social media, you can bet that presets are high in demand!
On average, successful Sellfy creators sell 12-15 presets in a pack for around USD25. Lightroom Presets are popular, and easy to make, and you can get started here.
18. Create a No-Code App
You don’t have to be a coder in order to create your own application.
Today, there are no-code tools to create basic to advance mobile apps! Appy Pie, Bubble or Adalo makes this dream a possibility.
All you need to do is figure out if you want to create a website or a mobile app, think of a concept of the app (what problem will it aim to solve) and monetize it through:
1. Subscription of the app
2. Ads generated from the app
3. Pay to download service
19. License Your Music
If you are naturally talented and can write your own music (songs or lyrics), this is a possible way to generate a passive income while traveling. Find below steps and guides to get started!
1. Copyright your music
2. Find a music licensing company
3. Get into a contract with a music licensing agreement
Get inspiration for Joe Rogan’s USD100 million dollar deal with Spotify!
20. Sell Custom Products with Print-on-Demand
What is print-on-demand? It’s actually a form of dropshipping that allows you to sell customized products where you create designs, recommend products to print on and list them for sale.
A third party supplier will be the one to print and ship them to your customers directly, removing the hassle of logistics from you.
Here are the top 3 Print-on-Demand companies to explore:
1. Modalyst – long standing leader with newly-minted capabilities
2. Printful – you get your own storefront and integrate easily with Etsy and eBay
3. Printify – offers more than 600 products to print on, and syncs online with Wix eCommerce
21. Cryptocurrency
How to make passive income investing in Cryptocurrency?
There are 8 ways as listed below:
1. Crypto interest accounts
2. Staking
3. Lending platforms
4. Mining
5. Liquidity pools
6. Airdrops
7. Hard forks
8. Affiliates and referrals
Be sure to thoroughly learn about the Crypto World, and select the coin you want to invest in.
Once you’re ready, you can make passive income with Binance, or Kraken – these crypto exchanges can be good places to buy and sell crypto.
22. Real Estate Investment
How to make passive income with real estate? Several ways! And not all of them involve having hundreds of thousands of dollars to begin with!
1. Get a roommate – that unused extra room or the garage could be rented out to generate passive income
2. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) – companies like Fundrise offer private REITs where you can start investing in real estate for as little as USD10!
3. Crowdfunded real estate investment – Companies like Open Door Capital and White Haven Capital can help in bringing a group of people together to co-invest to buy a large real estate deal
23. Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) is the latest buzzword in the digital space.
NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain and cannot be replicated. They can be in the form of digital designs, photography, music, games, GIFs and videos.
It’s easy to create an NFT through platforms like OpenSea, follow the step by step guide and pay a small cost to mint your NFT.
Although it’s still very new, it has generated a USD10 billion dollar industry in 2021 alone.
24. Dropshipping
Without the need of a huge cash flow, dropshipping is one of the best passive income ideas especially while you are traveling and mobile.
You will need to create an ecommerce store for customers to browse and buy products.
The great thing about this business model is that you don’t physically manage the stocks of the products you sell.
The supplier handles everything from manufacturing to the logistics. It’s low risk – you only pay your supplier once the customer has paid you!
Check out how to be successful here.
25. Vending Machines
I knew a guy who invested in vending machines and placed them all over a small neighborhood.
He restocks them and cashes them out every 3 weeks. How awesome is that?
I found a great guide to help you get started with your very first vending machine!
26. Buy a Laundromat
Owning a laundromat is not entirely passive, but it does provide you the flexibility to travel and generate passive income.
Laundromats provide a high rate of return around 20-25% for minimal time invested.
As most of the work is done by automated machines (these do require a large sum of investment), it is rather low maintenance and can be outsourced to manage.
Many people do invest in a Laundromat for their retirement plan!
27. Peer-to-Peer Lending
Peer-to-Peer lending or P2P is a form of financial technology that allows you to loan money to borrowers who can’t qualify for a loan with banking institutions.
Using official platforms, you are in control to choose who you lend money to and spread your investment around to mitigate the risks. Platforms like Yieldstreet, P2P-credit and Lending Club are popular.
Read more here to learn more.
28. Cashbacks
Cashbacks are rewards in the form of cash that you get when you shop online at sites like Swagbucks, MyPoints and Rakuten.
Once you sign up, you just need to shop to generate your passive income.
The more you shop online, the more passive income you make!
29. High Yield Savings Account
If you have a good flow of cash, opening a high yield savings account that has low risk is a way to generate passive income. These are usually offered by traditional banks, online banks and credit unions.
30. Bond Ladder
Bond Laddering is investing in multiple bonds with different maturities to create a steady cash flow.
By creating the optimal ladder, you make a series of timed investments that enable you to collect interest through the year as a form of passive income!
31. Flip Domain Names
With a low capital of USD10 to USD100, you can purchase domain names you think may be popular.
All you need is a bit of expertise and a discerning eye, with lots of patience and hard work.
Here are some domain resellers for you to start looking into:
2. NameCheap
3. GoDaddy
32. Buy and Sell Websites
Learn from me right here from my personal experience in buying websites for passive income. I also break it down to a 12 month step by step guide to building, buying and selling a blog!
You can choose to build a website from scratch before you sell, or buy a cheap website to flip it for more money!
33. Publish Videos and Monetize Your YouTube Channel
If you enjoy creating videos, or Vlogs (Video Blogs), then this could be a potential passive income stream for you!
A whopping 74% of adults in the United States of America are on YouTube!
However this is for long term investment, as you will need to invest in time and effort in the beginning, with little or no return at first.
However, the long term potential is through affiliate sales, sponsorships, and ad income as your content increases.
The possibility is endless and there is no topic that doesn’t garner a following! Now you can earn passive income while traveling!
34. Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon Programme)
What is the Amazon FBA? It’s a service that allows businesses to outsource the logistical headache of order by fulfillment to Amazon. You can send your products to Amazon, and they will pick and pack, and ship the order for you!
The great thing is that Amazon provides New Seller Incentives, free promotional ad clicks, free storage and so much more!
35. Merch by Amazon
Another cool passive income generator from Amazon, Merch allows you to become a content creator by creating graphic tees and accessories that can be printed on demand!
They will handle everything from printing and shipping – so you can focus on designing!
With these simple steps, you just need to upload your artwork, choose the product type and color, and add product description! That’s it!
36. Create Mobile Apps
In today’s day and age, everyone is seeking a solution for a quick fix to their problems. If you have the right solution, your mobile app can be a unicorn and generate high income passively.
First you will need to identify the problem – and then commit to the time and investment into building the app with experts.
The competition is high and the app store is crowded, but this can be a great short term or long term income.
Free apps can also generate income, so there are many ways to slice this pie!
37. Create a Lead Generation Website
What is lead generation?
You are basically paid for generating a lead, and then handing it to the customer like a middleman. It’s different from advertising as advertising targets reach, and lead generation targets actual customers.
You will need to select the niche, buy a domain, get the right SEO and start getting ranked in Google!
38. Develop WordPress Themes and Sell It Across Multiple Platforms!
Businesses are always searching to purchase readymade WordPress themes and this is a very profitable way to earn passive income!
This course from Udemy will guide you on the steps to create a superior WordPress theme to sell!
FAQs on How To Make Passive Income while Traveling
Can You Make a Living Out of Traveling?
You most definitely can make a living out of traveling! From getting a location independent job, backpacking and picking up casual work, to building a travel industry career – there are so many opportunities out there!
Check these awesome guides to help you get started:
2. How to Make Money While Traveling Australia
3. Your Guide to Finding the Best Fruit Picking Jobs in Switzerland
How Can I Make A Lot Of Money While Traveling?
You can make a lot of money while traveling in so many ways! Here are 10 ways to make money while traveling the world:
3. Teaching Other People Your Skills
5. Offer Services at Coliving Spaces
7. Busking
9. Dog Walking and Pet Sitting
10. Answer surveys
How To Make Money While Traveling In A Van?
There are so many ways to make money while traveling in a van! Apart from being a vendor, you can also explore 50 other ways right here!
If you have a pickup truck or a trailer, you can also make money while traveling in them!
Having read all the information above, who’s excited to start making money while they travel today? Hopefully that’s you!
With my tips on how to make passive income while traveling, I hope you can start to take action and to earn that steady stream of passive income and live your nomad life!
Feel free to share with us in the comments below if you have or will try to work your way and earn passive income while you travel! 🙂
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