5 Easy Passive Income Ideas for 2026

[00:00] Hello, this is Taylor. So today we're going to talk about five ways that you can make a passive income. And for each of them, we're going to go over how difficult it is to start, how difficult it is to make $100 a week,

[00:12] and how difficult it is to maintain once it's up and running. And we're going to see a good amount of variation among these categories as we cover the five. So let's dive in. So what do I mean by passive income? Put simply, it's money that is not directly tied to your time.

[00:25] You put the time and or money investment in once in the beginning, and then you put it out into the world for it to generate income without it needing more of your effort. An example, you write a cookbook with all of your recipes once and then it can be sold

[00:38] repeatedly forever with little to no additional work from you. Now, I think it's important to clarify that passive income is not this rosy, magical, get rich quick while you sleep thing. That literally doesn't exist. You need to provide some type of value in order to make any income.

[00:53] I also think we often associate passive income with hustle culture, you know, starting multiple businesses on the side, Gary Vee, David Goggins. I actually think about it pretty much exactly the opposite because passive income plus diversification allows you more freedom and time to focus on other

[01:07] aspects of your life without the stress of relying on one sole source of income. So as with all income streams, even passive ones require your time and or money up front to get started. So here is to getting them started and let's kick it off with the king of all passive income streams,

[01:22] investing, with a focus on dividend stocks for this video. So this is one of the most straightforward passive income strategies out there and I'm excited to talk to you about it. So if you're new to investing, dividends are shares of a company that pay you out a portion

[01:35] of their profits on a regular basis, usually every quarter. And that is cash being paid out directly to you without the need to sell the stock, which is truly passive. As with any investment though, the key to making any money doing this is to choose the right stock. So when it comes to

[01:51] dividends, I would start by familiarizing yourself with stocks that are known as dividend kings. So these are a select group of companies in the stock market that have increased their dividend payouts for 50 or more consecutive years, which is really saying something, by the way. That means that

[02:06] even during economic downturns like COVID, dot-com bubble, the Great Recession, when these companies likely had lower earnings, lower market cap, they still maintained their commitment to increase their dividend payouts to their investors, which I think just shows forward management of cash flow and

[02:21] reserves and the company's ability to withstand tough economic cycles. So after dividend keys comes dividend aristocrats. No, I'm not making these names up. I wish I was. And these are stocks that have increased their dividend payouts for at least 25 consecutive years. So besides the

[02:35] obvious reasons of why, you know, dividend kings and aristocrats would be a good place to start because they're consistent and reliable, it's worth noting that there are a lot of companies out there, a lot of young companies that might draw you in by offering really high dividend

[02:47] payouts. I would be cautious of these because it's just tough, kind of impossible to know which companies will maintain that commitment without a long track record to show for it. Now, our evaluation metrics. How difficult is this to start? It is so easy. One out of five.

[03:02] We're using my dog, Willie, instead of stars. So one Willie. All you have to do to start investing is download an investing app, deposit some money, and buy the stock. My personal experience, I started investing when I was 14, just little bits of birthday money here and there. And then

[03:16] more and more in high school as I started to make an income. And then after my internships in college and now I invest the majority of my income. So point is, it is not hard to start even at a young age. And good golly, will you think yourself in 50 years if you do start at a young age,

[03:29] but no matter how old you are, the same years, the best time to start investing is yesterday, the second best time is today. And it's easy. Okay, difficulty to make $100 per week doing this. This is where things get a little interesting.

[03:42] Let's do some quick math. So companies' dividend yields are calculated on an annual basis. So let's start by annualizing our $100 per week. that's $5,200 per year. Now let's take Target, one of our well-known dividend teams, and their

[03:54] current annual dividend yield is 3.05%. So to make $5,200 per year or $100 per week just from dividend income with Target, you would need to invest, wait for it, $170,491. So I would give

[04:11] this category five willies. The capital investment needed to make a significant income from dividend payouts alone is quite high. Even still, any money is better than none and you can kind of think of it as a tree that grows really, really slowly but steadily. And finally, difficulty to maintain. I

[04:28] would give this zero willies if I could. We'll give it half a willy because you might want to check in on your stocks to see how they're doing every now and then. But even then, the long game is the best way to go for almost all investors. So dividend stocks are certified passive. Final

[04:42] note on dividend stocks because I like to insert my little personal opinion here. I personally elect for all of my dividends to be automatically reinvested because I'd rather just have that money stay in the market and work for me for longer since I'm young and I can have a lot of

[04:56] years for it to grow. I would probably recommend doing the same if you're young and you have all that time. But at the same time, if you do have enough income invested for your dividend payouts to earn you a significant income, I can also see that being a really nice cash flow to have. So

[05:10] whatever works for you, that's just what I do. And none of that was financial advice, I think I should say. All right, let's jump into our second passive income stream. And this one leans a lot more on the fun and creative side. So I'm excited to talk about this one. And it is print on demand. So what

[05:24] is print on demand? Basically, it's a way to create custom merch, like t-shirts, posters, mugs, coats, you name it, without needing to hold inventory because the product is printed and shipped only after the order is placed. It's kind of like drop shipping for custom merch. Whereas

[05:40] as with typical merch fulfillment, the products are created before the orders come in in anticipation for the demand. So it a really great option for entrepreneurs and creators and side hustlers who want to sell custom merch without having to estimate demand or hold inventory And for me personally merch was something I wanted to do for a long time There are two things that have

[05:57] just kind of made me put it on the back burner forever and that is one, finding a good fulfillment and production partner seemed like a really daunting task and so I just never did it. And two, I literally don't have space to hold inventory in my

[06:10] new orc city apartment in the event that I did any of the fulfillment myself. But print on on demand solves those problems. So I can show you exactly how to do this and I'm very lucky to have the world's largest print on demand network with over 140 production hubs

[06:23] in 32 countries, Gelato, sponsoring this portion of today's video. So I'm going to use their platform to walk you through this process and it's going to be awesome. Anyone can do this. You don't have to be a creator with a big following. There are people making thousands

[06:36] per month on Etsy by selling custom pet merch and lots of other things, which Gelato fulfills for them. So if we browse through the product catalog you can see there are lots of different categories. I'm going to do mug because I like to drink copious amounts of coffee. I'm going to drop

[06:51] in a picture of the love of my life. This is how it would look. Absolutely perfect. And that's it. Super quick easy example plus you can see that you get 50% off your first order. So if you're ordering a sample to you know quality check 50% off makes it like pretty reasonable. Now this is

[07:07] just an item that I would love for myself. I like to think everyone loves Lily as much as I do but if I wanted to sell custom merch, here's what I could do. So I just made three really quick custom pet templates. I used Lily, obviously, but I put your pet's name here so people can visualize

[07:23] what theirs would look like. And because Gelato integrates seamlessly with so many providers like Etsy, Shopify, a ton more, I could post these three things for sale on my Etsy shop directly from here.

[07:36] And one of the things that makes your life so much easier is that when the orders come in on Etsy, they're fulfilled directly, automatically through Gelato. They do the printing and shipping for you literally while you sleep, once those orders come in. So a thought that I have, that

[07:49] you might also have, is with the print-on-demand model, does that mean that shipping times and lead times are a lot longer since you don't already have the item ready to go when the order comes in? Well, turns out 90% of Gelato orders arrive within five days of ordering, and 90% are produced

[08:05] locally because they have so many global print providers, which kind of blew me away. Let's say your Etsy customer lives in Australia, Gelato will find its nearest print partner in Australia to produce and then ship locally that item. So to bring print on demand back into the context

[08:20] of passive income, let's run it through our evaluation metrics. So difficulty to start, I would give two willies. Of course, there's going to be some time and creativity involved upfront because you've got to make the designs and you have to make them good, otherwise you

[08:33] won't sell. But with such sophisticated platforms like Gelato with a ton of customization and functionality, it's honestly easier than ever to get a shop up and running without even having to make a financial investment, besides probably ordering a sample for the thing that you want

[08:47] to sell just to check for quality, you know? So it's very low risk with this model to start. You don't even need to prove this concept. Okay, difficulty to make $100 per week. I've been doing a lot of research on this, and here are some interesting facts. So merchants with 10 to 50

[09:01] products have an average of 7.5 times the revenue compared to merchants with less than 10 products. So it's a who's view to have a lot of things up for sale, which you can do using this method with no additional cost.

[09:13] So combining the low risk nature of starting this and the ability to scale it globally, my research deems it very doable to make $100 per week doing this if you have a creative design. So let's give this category two and a half willies.

[09:26] And finally, difficulty to maintain. I would give this two willies because you're probably going to want to post more items for sale as time goes on and monitor your sales, which is some time investment, but for the most part, once the designs are created and up for sale,

[09:40] it is quite passive. So if you're interested in trying this for yourself, you can try Gelato for free and get 50% off your first order if it's placed within 72 hours of creating your account using my link in the description below. And thank you to Gelato for enlightening me on print on the

[09:55] man. All right, jumping into our third passive income stream. I'm also excited to talk about this one. Kind of excited to talk about all of them. And it's to create a digital product. So this is something that you create once, like a budgeting template, or an e-book, or an online course, or a video scripting template, you name it.

[10:12] But before talking about a brainstorming exercise that you could do to figure out what you should make, let's talk about a few of the reasons why digital products are such a great business model for passive income. The first is really low overhead costs.

[10:25] So similar to print-on-demand where you're not holding inventory, a digital product is something that exists on the interwebs. So there's no production or shipping costs or any other logistic constraints that you typically have with a physical product.

[10:37] And with those low overhead costs and no physical inventory comes a really great ability to scale globally. It can be sold repeatedly without additional ongoing costs, which also typically means a higher profit margin because your cost is basically zero besides the time and effort put into making the thing.

[10:53] And finally, it is easy to update. So let's say you have a bonus chapter for your e-book or a bonus module that you want to add later. you can do that with a digital product, which is pretty cool. Okay, so those are some reasons that I'm such a proponent of digital products. But the hard part is making something that people will

[11:09] actually buy. The key is to create something valuable that your audience actually needs, whether it's sharing your expertise or tool, same as YouTube videos. So for example, let's say you're a content creator that focuses on personal finance and entrepreneurship. Maybe there's a budgeting

[11:24] template that you made and show in your videos that your audience asked you for. Or if you're a cook and you want to share all of your recipes in one place, a downloadable ebook could be a great option Or an online course is a really great business model for people who have expertise in one particular subject and want to consolidate all of their knowledge in one place via typically video modules But what if you not a creator that already in a specific niche and you trying to figure out what digital product to make

[11:51] Again, going back to providing value, whether it's your expertise or a tool, think about what you specifically could provide value on. What is your competitive advantage? That's where I would start. How you can transform something that you are extra good at into a tool that someone else could use.

[12:07] So, difficulty to start. I would give this one and a half willies. Really, anyone with a phone or laptop could do this. That's the beauty of it being digital. The hard part is what comes next, and that is actually making something that's worth buying and making sales.

[12:21] So without focusing on the $100 metrics just for a second, let's talk broadly about how difficult it is to make any money at all doing this. The reality is, for you to be successful with a digital product, it has to be genuinely very good because it is such a competitive space.

[12:36] There are just so many digital products out there, a lot of which are free, so yours has to stand out in some way for it to actually move. And as I think about market entry, I usually think about something being first, different, or better.

[12:49] Obviously, those are not mutually exclusive categories, but let's say your digital product is first. It's the first of its kind on your market. You have a first mover advantage there. Let's say it's different, where maybe your product is something that's been done before, but you put your own personal spin on it, or maybe you added different features.

[13:05] Or third, it's better. That's something that's been done before, but yours just offers more value in some way. Now, let's say that you get to that point where you figure out a digital product that is genuinely really good. From there, I would say that making $100 per week on this is very doable.

[13:19] Admittedly, creators or someone with an audience will definitely have a tailwind here because you likely already have some folks that would buy your product just because it's yours, which is something of value in itself. So I would give this category three and a half really.

[13:32] It's not easy to make a digital product that is very good, but once you do, I think that hitting the $100 per week mark is very achievable. And finally, difficulty to maintain. So there usually is some upkeep here, whether you're updating your product or checking in

[13:47] on sales to make sure everything's running smoothly, maybe some customer service. But the hard part of creating the product in the first place is over, and it's out in the world to serve as a really, really great passive income stream for you with little

[13:59] to no additional costs. Is it certified passive? Yes, but with some light maintenance involved. So let's say it's passive light and give this category two rules. Also give this video a thumbs up if you're finding it helpful so far. All right, we are getting there. Let's now cover our fourth passive income

[14:14] stream, which is affiliate marketing. So what is affiliate marketing? This is income that you could make from promoting someone else's product or service. And every time someone makes a purchase through your referral link, you earn a small commission of that sale. And this is very

[14:30] passive income. All you do is generate the links, pop it in the description somewhere, and the work is done. Probably the most popular affiliate program is through Amazon. It's called Amazon Associates, and literally anyone with a social media account can sign up for

[14:43] this and start making those links. So I have some top secret insider info here that I've picked up from my other YouTuber friends over the years, and we're going to get into it. Some of it might be surprising. But starting with how difficult it is to start. It is so

[14:55] Again, you just sign up for an affiliate network like Amazon Associates or LTK, so I'd give this one a really easy. Now, difficulty to make $100 per week through affiliate marketing is, as always, where things

[15:07] get a little more interesting. So I have a lot to share with you here. Depending on your business model, it can either be really easy or pretty hard. So I touched on this in my annual income video, but I have some creator friends who are making

[15:20] over $40,000 per month just from affiliate revenue. And those are just like friends of mine that I know personally that have talked to me about it. I'm sure there are tons of creators, big creators who are making a whole lot more than that from affiliate revenue. So what type of

[15:35] creator easily makes a hundred per week doing this? Typically it's creators with a focus on products. So I know I use him as an example a lot, but my friend Shervin makes a lot of reviews on health and fitness and technology items, which are typically more expensive things. Now, if he makes

[15:52] a commission on one of those more expensive items, you could do the math, that's obviously more money in his pocket. Plus, it's pretty often that expensive products have an affiliate program of their own. On the other end of things, have you seen those videos come up on Instagram Reels

[16:06] or Shorts or TikTok or whatever? 10 Amazon signs that you have to buy and it shows cute little like kind of useful things from Amazon. Those videos are made for affiliate revenue. So those

[16:18] are not high ticket items, but they are high quantity. As in, millions of people watch those videos because they're fun, short, easy to digest, and even if there's only a 1% conversion of audience to clicking on your affiliate link, that is a nice payday for that creator. So for creators

[16:35] that have a focus on products, it is, I would say, much easier to make $100 per week. Finally, last point in this section, if you're someone like me who doesn't focus on products but still pops links in my description to things that I get asked about a lot or that I just use to make my

[16:50] videos, I would say it's actually pretty difficult to make $100 per week. It is certified passive income for sure, but you kind of need two things. One, an audience. Two, pretty big numbers, whether it's the ticket price of the item you're promoting or the quantity of clicks that you're getting

[17:05] to make a real dent. So since there's a number of criteria to kind of meet here in order to make $100, I would give this category four willies. I still think any creator should pop affiliate links in the description to the things that they use in their videos at least, but I just wouldn't

[17:20] expect to make a significant income from this unless you're a product-focused creator. And now breath of fresh air difficulty to maintain is literally zero willies Once the links are in place it is so certified passive that it not even funny We give it half a willy because over time you probably want to update the links and add new things as you start using different products but yeah once the links are there

[17:42] the work is done. Alright, saving the best for last in my very biased opinion, the fifth income stream is to start a YouTube channel. Okay, hear me out. Putting my personal stake in YouTube aside for now, it is actually a really beautiful

[17:55] business model that can generate a lot of passive income. Now, you might be thinking, Taylor, how is having an actively running YouTube channel passive at all? And you'd be right. It is incredibly unpassive to create a new YouTube video.

[18:10] But the way that they generate revenue is largely passive. Let me explain. All of your videos, including old ones that you haven't even touched since you first posted it, will continue to generate ad revenue so long as they get used forever.

[18:23] forever. So yes, of course there is a time and effort, perhaps money investment up front to make the video, but once it's up, it's making money without any additional effort from you for as long as it lives on YouTube. So a real life example of this passivity. Let's look at some

[18:39] of my own numbers here. So this video of mine has generated a little over $19,000, which by the way actually is not a lot for a video with, geez, 5.8 million views, but I digress. So you can argue that this is the subjective timeframe that doesn't count as passive because it's the

[18:55] ad revenue that I earned pretty shortly after posting the video. But look at all of this passive income that has generated over the last two and a half years without me doing anything. Look at all those coffees this old video is buying me. $52 coffee. But down the

[19:10] business. It's all fun and games to talk about, but how viable is it to actually start, make money from, and to maintain? Starting a YouTube channel is easy. You just have to open an account and film a video with your phone and then press publish. The barrier to entry is extremely

[19:23] low. You don't need fancy equipment. You don't need to spend money. You just need a computer or a phone and some internet connection. So let's say two willies. If what comes after this, that is the hard part. Now, difficulty to make $100 per week in YouTube ad revenue. Let's walk through it. First,

[19:38] you have to become eligible to make money on YouTube. And for this, you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. Typically, a lot of creators hit this milestone anywhere from six months to a

[19:51] year plus after starting, and that's if you post high quality videos consistently, which is the hard part. But once you're monetized, what do we need to make $100 per week? So the average RPM, which means revenue per newbie or revenue per thousand views that you get on YouTube,

[20:06] is around $2. That's the average. It's pretty low. So to make $100 in one week with a revenue per thousand views of two dollars, that would mean that you need 50,000 views in one week. That sounds

[20:18] like a lot, because it is. The good news is, if you are watching this video, the odds are that the content that you would make would have a higher RPM. In other words, videos that focus on personal finance or entrepreneurship, self-development, things tangentially related to these topics,

[20:34] famously attract a higher earning audience. And for that reason, advertisers will pay YouTube more to have their ads shown on those types of videos. And that means a higher RPM for you than $2,

[20:46] probably somewhere closer to $8 to $10, which also means you don't need quite as many views to hit that $100 mark. Now, these numbers sound huge and super unattainable. If it's any motivation, use me as a benchmark. I started making $100 in ad revenue per week

[21:00] when I had about 7,000 subscribers, so it's very doable. So anyway, taking all of this into account, I would honestly say that it is four and a half willies to make $100 per week from YouTube ad revenue. Mainly because the first part of really grinding

[21:14] to get your channel off the ground, to get it moving, and then to continue making high quality videos consistently, that's the hard part. And that is what ultimately would earn you the $100 per week. The good news is that it's not quite as difficult to maintain once you have this kind of

[21:29] emotion. Now, I'm really proud of myself for this analogy I'm about to show you, but if you guys ever took physics, do you remember kinetic friction versus static friction? Basically, it is much harder to get something to start moving than it is to keep it moving. Now,

[21:45] this is a silly example. It's not hard to do either because I'm so big and strong. But if you think about moving a couch, the hardest part is that little jolt to get it moving. And then once it's sliding, it moves relatively easier once the hard part's over. It's the same with

[21:59] YouTube videos as it pertains to passive income. So once you have a long catalog of great videos behind you that can help you do a lot of the heavy lifting and filling up that $100 per week jar. The difficulty to maintain those is zero. I'll still give this category two

[22:13] willies because you still need to be honing your craft and uploading your videos to maintain this well-oiled machine. But the income on old videos is certified. So these five revenue

[22:25] streams, I think, vary quite a bit in terms of difficulty to start, make money at, and to maintain. But what they all have in common is that they can allow you to diversify your revenue without trading too much of your time for money. And it really is these types of revenue

[22:39] streams that I personally am going to be striving for in my life because that's what's going to help me lead a more balanced life, which is a big goal of mine. All right, question for you to leave in the comments if you made it this far. First, which of these five revenue streams would you be most

[22:52] excited to start? And second, if you could automate one part of your life, what would it be? If you found this helpful, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe for free. It helps the channel a lot and I'd really appreciate it. I also have more business and personal finance content coming soon that you won't want to miss.

[23:07] But until next time, Turtle out. Hello. Yo. Hi. I'm getting a thumbnail. Do you like the pants? I do.

[23:19] Yeah. Yay!