Recurring, residual, or passive income is a type of income that is earned from assets that generate revenue for you or your business regardless of whether or not you are actively working on it. Recurring income will be earned no matter what you are doing, whether you are spending some time working on the project or are enjoying a vacation. It’s no surprise that more and more people are looking to create various streams of recurring income to make the money that they earn work harder for them and grow without having to put more hours in. 

The main difference between recurring and non-recurring income is that your recurring income will continue coming into your account regardless of whether or not you are working on it. While non-recurring income such as your monthly wage requires you to actually go into work to earn it, recurring income will continue flowing in even when you’re asleep. One of the most important reasons to consider ways to create a recurring income is that it provides you with additional security. While it may not be as easy to create a recurring income as it is to go out and find a job, it’s definitely worth putting the effort in. 

Here are some of the top ways to put your earnings to work creating a recurring income for your future. 

Invest in Stocks

While any investment can be a risk, it is also one of the best ways to build your passive income and grow your wealth while working smarter rather than harder. Making wise decisions when it comes to which stocks to invest in can make all the difference to how much you can earn from them, and automated investment tools from Wealthsimple can make it easier than ever to turn your investments into a passive income, allowing you to sit back and relax while the software takes care of the hard work for you to grow your wealth and enjoy great returns. Along with automated investment tools to consider, Wealthsimple offers a huge range of advice and tips for getting started, which can be very helpful if you are looking to buy stocks for the first time and aren’t sure where or how to start. 

Invest in Real Estate

Real estate can be one of the best ways to make a recurring income. Investing in a property that you can rent out to tenants is an ideal way to bring in additional money each month. In many cases, you can also ensure that the rental price is enough to cover expenses associated with the property like your mortgage, insurance, maintenance and property management costs while still earning a profit. One of the best ways to earn a huge profit while doing this is to purchase a cheaper property that is in need of some work before carrying out the necessary renovations to increase the rental value. Once you have reliable tenants in the property, the rental payment will continue to come in each month, offering you an ideal passive income stream. Since properties tend to increase in value over time, it’s no surprise that they are one of the best investments to make – but on the downside, they are also one of the costliest. 

Publish a Book

If you are looking for a low-cost and easier way to get started with earning a passive income, publishing a book might be an ideal option for you if you enjoy writing. There are several ways to do this; however, self-publishing is one of the best choices today since it is low cost and does not require you to wait to have your book approved by a publisher. Most self-published books are eBooks, which can easily be downloaded and read on digital devices and are becoming more and more popular today thanks to their convenience. 

Whether you write that mystery novel that you have had a great idea for or come up with a self-help book designed to help other people learn from your expertise in mental health, diet, dog training, home décor, or anything else that people might like to learn about, there’s a huge market for eBooks today and it’s one of the easiest ways to make a passive income, since once you’ve written, published and marketed your book, all you need to do is sit back while people buy it. However, the downside of this is that the price point for books is not very high, so you will need to sell a significant number of books for the passive income to be substantial. 

Create an Online Course

With more and more people turning to online courses to improve their knowledge and skills in certain subject areas, sharing your own expertise by creating an online course that people can purchase and download is a great way to create a passive income. Online learning is currently booming, and there’s a market for selling your knowledge and teaching others about almost any subject under the sun, whether you want to help people land their dream job, start their own business, or learn a skill like website design or video production. Once you have put the work into creating your course, you can simply list it for sale at an online course download site and earn money each time somebody downloads it. Depending on your expertise and the topic that you are covering, you could charge hundreds of dollars per download for your course. 

Rent Out Space in Your Home

While earning this type of income might not be so passive, since you will need to take care of general housekeeping, renting out a spare room in your home using AirBnb can be an easy way to make some additional money. If you have a spare room and live in a popular area that gets a lot of visitors, this could be a win-win situation for both you and your guests since people are always looking for cheaper places to stay when travelling for business or leisure. You could take short-term overnight stays using the AirBnb app or opt to allow guests to stay for longer periods of time. However, one of the downsides to this is that it will cost you to ensure that the room is prepared for guests to arrive, and you will need to do some continuous work to get the space ready in between guests. 

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can be an ideal way to earn a passive income when done well. However, this type of income is not always truly passive since you will need to conduct maintenance work on your website from time to time along with searching for new products to promote and ensuring that your affiliate links are always working correctly. Affiliate marketing involves looking for products that people might be looking to purchase and using your website or blog to promote an affiliate link. When your readers or viewers click on the link and make the purchase through it, you will earn a commission. There are several different ways to do affiliate marketing successfully, including highly-detailed review sites and comparison sites, which are popular ways for people to research a new product or service before deciding to buy. 

Create an App

If you have a great app idea that you believe people would pay to use, this can be an ideal way to make a passive income. Today, we are using more and more apps for various parts of our lives from shopping to managing our finances and planning our days. If you are a programmer or even if you have a good understanding of maths and logic, you could teach yourself various app coding languages and start creating smartphone apps on your own. Alternatively, you could invest in the services of an app developer to help turn your app idea into a reality and start making a passive income from it whenever people download the app or pay for in-app services. 

Dropshipping

While dropshipping can involve some work in keeping your website updated and managing your customer relations, it can be an ideal way to make a somewhat passive income from eCommerce. This is because dropshipping is a model that doesn’t require you to carry inventory or send products to customers; this is all done by the manufacturer who takes care of everything from the point after the customer purchases the product from your site. All you need to do is set up an eCommerce site and market it. 

However, bear in mind that it’s important to spend time choosing a reputable dropshipping service that you can rely on, since a dropshipper that gets customers orders wrong or sends deliveries late is going to quickly ruin your reputation. When done right, this eCommerce model can be an ideal way to make money from the booming online shopping industry without a huge amount of work on your part. 

If you want to make an additional income aside from your regular job, there are several business ideas, projects, and investments that you can make to start bringing a passive income in.