Earn Passive Income: 10 Ways to Make Money in Your Sleep

Interested to learn about how you could earn passive income? Passive income is money you earn that doesn’t require you to do active or ongoing work – although it usually requires some initial effort to set up. My favourite way to define passive income is money you can earn while sleeping.

Even though it requires the least ongoing time and effort, I’d consider it to be one of the most satisfying ways to earn money. It’s brilliant waking up to notifications to say that you’ve managed to earn money in your sleep. If you’re looking to earn passive income here are a few options you can explore.

Passive income streams can often be created around your existing schedule and commitments, allowing you to earn money while you focus on other priorities such as your job or family.

woman sleeping in bed near smartphone

Earn passive income = money in your sleep

Affiliate marketing

As an affiliate marketer you earn commission by promoting services, brands and products. Anyone with a social media account or blog can earn affiliate income passively. I use AWIN to find new affiliate opportunities, but some of the most common affiliate marketing networks include: 

  • Amazon Associates
  • Awin
  • Directly with your chosen brand

The key to earning regular income from affiliate marking is promoting and reviewing products you use and would truthfully recommend. If you look in the footer of most major retailers websites you can often find information about their affiliate programs if they have one. Similar to affiliate networking, many services offer ‘refer a friend’ schemes too, you can promote those just like you would an affiliate link to earn passive income.

Savings accounts

A high-yield savings account is one of the simplest and safest ways to earn passive income. Unlike traditional savings accounts, these accounts offer significantly higher interest rates, allowing your money to grow steadily over time with minimal effort.

High-yield savings accounts are ideal for short-term goals or emergency funds since they carry no market risk. By consistently contributing to your account, you can build a reliable, low-risk source of passive income that requires little ongoing management.

Best Easy Access Savings Accounts

Rental income

Renting is a great side hustle if you have a spare room, property or are planning a long trip away. A rental property is a way to earn (mostly) passive income; providing a monthly income flow without you having to do any daily work. However, there are a number of things to consider before committing to becoming a landlord; you have costs and responsibilities to consider such as:

  • maintenance
  • insurance
  • tax on earnings

You’ll have to keep accurate records of rent received and your expenses incurred to work out the profit you’ll pay tax on. Find out about tax as a landlord, and how to work out your rental income if you rent out property.

Online courses

Creating and selling online courses is a booming market internationally. Distance education is part of the present and an inevitable future, and its market is growing at an incredible pace. Sell access to insider knowledge on your specialist subject. This is a particularly lucrative way to earn passive income if you have computer, technology, business, or personal development knowledge.

To maximise your earning potential sell your online course through your own website. There are also various platforms you can use to sell your online courses – Gumroad is my top pick.

Share your data

This is one way to earn passive income that not many people talk about. Companies and market researchers are always looking for consumer insights, and they’re willing to pay for anonymous data on browsing habits, app usage, and purchasing trends. I share my data with 3 different companies:

  • Incompass (£10 per month for your mobile data)
  • MobileXpression (£5 per month for your mobile data)
  • YouGov (earn up to 50p a day by sharing banking data)
  • Gener8 (app & browser extension)
  • Datacy (browser extension)

By simply installing a data-sharing app or browser extension, you allow these platforms to collect non-personal, aggregated data while you go about your usual online activities. The process is secure and your identity remains anonymous, as these services focus on broad trends rather than individual information.

Dividend stocks

A dividend is a distribution of profits by a corporation to its shareholders. When a corporation earns a profit it pays a proportion of the profit as a dividend to shareholders. Therefore, for every share of a dividend stock you own, you are paid a portion of the company’s earnings.

To earn passive income through dividend investing you’ll need to find companies that have a good chance of increasing their dividend payments year after year. The dividend yield is a financial ratio that tells you the percentage of a company’s share price that it pays out in dividends each year. I use Freetrade to invest and earn dividends.

This passive income stream also allows you to make some tax-free earnings and have the opportunity to beat the interest rate offered by savings accounts. You get a dividend allowance each year (for example the dividends allowance for tax year 6 April 2024-5 April 2025 is £500). You only pay tax on any dividend income above the dividend allowance.

Peer to peer lending

Peer-to-peer lending (P2P) is a way for people to lend money to individuals and receive interest when you’re paid your money back. The websites do all the repayment chasing on your behalf so this is completely passive, however there is still risk involved.

Peer-to-peer lending firms such as Zopa and Funding Circle offer rates to investors of up to 6%. But please be aware that with peer to peer lending (just like any investment) there is risk involved. Each P2P site has its own way of attempting to lessen this risk – make sure you know what provisions a site has in place before choosing it. 

Sell advertising space

If you own a website or blog you could look to apply to an advertising network such as Google Adsense, PropellerAds, Media.net, and Mediavine. These services will pay in a variety of ways including pay-per-click (a sum each time someone clicks on the ad) and pay-per-sale (a sum each time someone makes a purchase from the ad). Advertising platforms usually pay a much higher if you surpass a minimum number of monthly viewers.

Another way to earn passive income is by selling advertising space on your car, in your shop window, on a community notice board or other online or physical space that you own.

Write and publish an ebook

Writing any type of book requires a lot of initial effort but once published it could generate passive income for years. A big bonus to creating an ebook is that (other than the time needed to create it) there are no upfront costs to you. You can simply create a PDF and sell through your own website/blog or through popular online marketplaces such as Amazon, Etsy or Fiverr.

Remember, there are a lot of ebooks out there, so you’ll need to create something special to capture people’s attention. Working with a book coach can help you refine your ideas and execution. Once created you could run a giveaway or special promotion to generate some initial interest. Once created you could run a giveaway or special promotion to generate some initial interest.

photo of white ceramic teacup

Earn passive income by writing and selling your own ebook

Sell stock photos online

Licensing is one of the most popular ways to “sell” your photos online to brands, publishers, or anyone who might have an interest in using your photos for their own purposes. This can be a great way to earn passive income if you have or take a lot of professional pictures.

There are a lot of stock photo sites to choose from. Popular photo-selling websites include:

Versatile photos that express ideas tend to be popular, especially when they feature people working, relaxing or exercising. I use stock images across this website, feel free to browse a few posts to see the type of stock images I favour.

Create jingles or audio tracks

This passive income opportunity is for the more musically inclined. Create jingles or audio tracks to licence – this music is often used for example as background music for commercials, corporate videos, video games, radio or even movies. 

One way to earn passive income through this means is to create your own website and sell music through there, but there are other options like selling your songs through Soundcloud or specialist sites like Bandcamp and Vibedeck.

Passive cashback

Cashback is one of my favourite money-saving tools! When most people think of cashback they assume it involves effort, but there are many ways to earn passive cashback, such as:

  • A cashback or reward credit card (e.g. Amex) – earn points or money on your every day spending.
  • Automatic cashback apps (e.g. Cheddar & Airtime Rewards) – connect your payment cards to these apps to earn money back when you spend at selected retailers.

For more information on different types on cashback tools, visit my guide to cashback.

Sell digital products

Selling printable posters, digital spreadsheets, and online planners (for example) are all great ways to earn passive income. This opportunity can be brilliant for people who have a blog or good social following as you can leave a link to your products in a visible place.

You could also sell your digital products through an online marketplace such as Etsy.

Bonus tip: if you’re looking for some quick cash consider selling any unwanted gadgets, I made £300 by selling an old phone to Music Magpie recently – easy money.

It’s said that the average millionaire had 7 passive income streams. I hope that you’ve found some new inspiration from these passive income ideas. I’d love to know what other opportunities you’ve found to earn passive income, let us know in the comments below.