Abby B. Are you an introvert tired of sacrificing time chasing for active income? On most days, there’s no extra energy left to hustle further and make more money on the side. It is no longer an impossible dream to make online passive income for introverts. There’s just so many ways we can make a quick buck and build long term wealth today. Best part is you don’t even have to leave your room to start!
Here are 8 of my favorite ways to make online passive income from home as a modern day introvert.
*This post may contain affiliate links. This means I may earn a small commission (at no cost to you) if you sign up for a program or make a purchase using my link!
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1. Ecommerce
This is one of the most popular ways to make an income online today. Everyone is just raving to have their own product to sell online. It doesn’t sound too difficult as well.
Just build an ecommerce online website using Shopify, upload in-demand products, set up multiple ads and let it make you money in your sleep! However, not everyone knows how to automate an ecommerce website. These are three of my best ways to make money with automating ecommerce.
a. Dropshipping website
If you have not heard of Oberlo, it’s the system that connects AliExpress to your online ecommerce store to sync products, prices, descriptions and stock levels with just a click effortlessly. While many of us are ambitious and want to start a website selling 1001 products from AliExpress, it may not be the easiest thing to sustain.
For this, some ecommerce gurus recommend picking a niche, diving deep down and selling only 1 to 3 products on your website. This not only makes your brand look more credible, your workload is also lifted by 1000 times.
b. Etsy shop
Ecommerce doesn’t have to be all fancy and you don’t always need your own website to be successful. Start with what you have, start simple. If selling on Etsy is less of a headache for you and works for your product, why not?
I believe Etsy is simply the best place to start selling online – totally newbie friendly! If you’re not into creating physical products, I highly recommend selling digital products for A LOT of reasons. Listing them is super easy and involves almost zero cost of production!
c. Print On Demand
If you’re still eager to sell physical products but don’t want to be handling all the stock and shipping, you can explore print on demand. Fulfillment companies like Printify and Printful will produce and ship all your customers’ orders – you only have to upload your own designs online.
Sounds easy? It really is! You can also sync these products to an Etsy shop so win-win. You get to offer your t-shirts, mugs and tote bags to Etsy’s huge market of customers.
2. Digital Product
Etsy isn’t the only place to sell digital products. You can be selling on your website and promote them via social media like Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter etc. If you’re handy at something or have professional experience in a certain field where others can learn from you, you can monetize your knowledge by creating digital products in the form of text, video or audio. Some of the best digital products I would recommend to create are:
a. Online courses
Pre-recorded online courses can make you a lot of money (and passively!) as long as you provide valuable education to your customers. While you may think people are unwilling to pay for online courses, some people would actually pay a lot to not waste time at upskilling. This is definitely the growth mindset everyone needs!
For me, time is more valuable than money. You can’t get time back but you can always find ways to make more money. Some great websites to host your online courses are Teachable, Thinkific and Udemy.
b. eBooks
Ebooks are one of the best digital products you can sell for passive income. Among other ways, you can explore publishing your books using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. It is simple, straightforward and gets your book to the market with just a few clicks.
Amazon offers 60% royalty and you can sell your books in physical format as well – without the hassle of managing the stock and shipping. They will print it out and do it for you. I know a lot of you didn’t know about this so I’m hooking you up for only the best – this course teaches you how to do it A-Z without writing the complicated content yourself.
If you have a personal brand and people are raving to get educational or inspiring insights from you, you can offer a monthly paid newsletter service. Differentiate this special newsletter against free ones by offering valuable information that will really place your readers to a 1000x better position than if they didn’t read your email.
A freelance tech journalist shared his best learning points after launching his first paid $5 monthly subscription. Email marketing tools like Mailerlite are easy and simple for beginners to create paid subscriptions in just a few steps.
3. YouTube
You may be thinking – would introverts be great content creators on YouTube? It completely depends on how you feel about it. Entering my late 20s, I no longer worry about what others think of me and started talking to the camera for the world to watch. In fact, I sometimes regret not recording or posting earlier. There was just so much I could share that others can benefit from. Better late than never!
I watched a great video from Gary Vee where he mentioned that it does not matter if we don’t like the way we look or sound on camera, nor does it matter if our voice is monotone or high pitch… There’s enough room for all of us to be great content creators by being ourselves.
It takes patience and dedication to become a YouTuber but you’ll earn passive income once you monetize it – 4000 watch hours and 1000 subscribers. Just post one video each week for the next two years, I’m sure you’ll get there. Just enjoy the journey 🙂
4. Online memberships
Similar to a paid newsletter, you can offer monthly memberships to your exclusive content using sites like Patreon. What’s great is that you can create different membership structures with different goodies to upsell. I believe that upselling is the best way to make more revenue with a single sale i.e. greater passive income!
Use Twitter to provide free value and promote your paid memberships. People from all over the world will be signing up when you’re deep in sleep. It doesn’t take a lot to service as long as you provide what you have promised for the subscriptions.
5. Affiliate marketing
I know it gets daunting to read this whole article without feeling overwhelmed. Good news is that you’re on the right track! If you don’t want to be creating your own products or make your own original content (it’s simply too much to think about for you), you can choose to sell someone else’s products. How? Via affiliate marketing! This infographic article by Neil Patel explains all you need to know.
If using social media is all you know, that’s fine! For me, affiliate marketing works best on Twitter, TikTok and Pinterest. Unlike Facebook or Instagram, these three social platforms allow for opening external links not within their app. This makes it easy for you to share affiliate links to your audience. It is easier for them to make a purchase using an open browser and for you to earn your passive commission.
Best part of promoting others’ products is you don’t have to curate things yourself and it’s FREE to start. Most promotional tools are given with all relevant necessary info you should know. You just have to make honest content around it. Chances are people won’t ask you any questions, since most websites have their own customer support to handle queries.
I recently found Leanne via the Blogger Breakthrough Summit. She’s such a dear PLUS she has a FREE affiliate marketing course for beginners to dip their feet wet. Affiliate marketing is not just about inserting links but you need to know how best to structure your content for it! So please learn from the best!
6. Blogging
I believe blogging is one of the best ways to make online passive income for introverts. Why? Because for the first year of your writing, no one will notice you, no one will be reading your content. How is this great? Because you get to overcome your fear of producing content in someone else’s eyes, work on becoming better at writing for a whole year and build your self confidence.
I know it gets hard to place yourself front and face the world with great confidence as an introvert. Just know that everyone starts from zero!
It is so important to learn from others in the blogging world. It can get scary and often you might feel like you don’t know what’s going on and if you’re going to make it. It’s completely normal and everyone will feel this way because Google takes time to recognize your website!
If you don’t believe in your patience and want to get traffic fast, Pinterest is the best social media platform to promote your blog content. Not Instagram, not Facebook.
With the right strategy, you can make $1,000 with at least 100 quality blog posts – give yourself 12 months regardless. There’s also a few different ways to monetize your blog aside from advertising. If you’re a new blogger, Ezoic welcomes new blogs for advertising opportunities with no minimum requirement on pageviews or sessions.
Read: My step-by-step guide on how to start a blog
7. Podcasting
Feel like you don’t like writing or showing your face to create content? Today you no longer need to. Podcasting is a growing trend for content creators. It takes less time to create because you don’t have to put on makeup, wear a suit or edit videos to manage how you look on camera. You just have to talk and appeal to the audience on a topic of your interest.
Podcasting is famous for niches like self improvement, financial, business hacks and even ghost story-telling. Sounds doable for an introvert? Yes it is! You can try Podbean or Buzzsprout – it helps you get listed in all top podcast directories including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
Buzzsprout offers a 90-day free trial (if it’s free, it’s for me) for you to test their auto optimizing features – they add pre-roll and post-roll to your episodes PLUS transcriptions. You can also make money off affiliate marketing with your podcast episodes.
8. Photo stock
Ever wondered if you can become a photographer without having to face a direct client and skip all headaches? Well, you can sell your professional photos online via stock websites like Depositphotos, Alamy or Shutterstock. It’s even better because you no longer need to spend hours taking photos for others and be paid per project.
You can do it in your free time and sell the same photos repeatedly to a wider audience. Nevertheless, photo taking for stock requires a different skill and an eye for what’s marketable. Your photos can be sold to magazines, bloggers, websites and even be printed on merchandise or made into artwork. Great news is you can take a lot of different photos and test which one will sell – rinse and repeat!
Each platform pays you differently so do some research before signing up. Submit your best photos during your application to get approved! Interested to know how much you can make with selling photo stock as passive income? This article explains it well.
Bottom Line
If you’re new to making online passive income, I encourage you to explore as many things as you can. Do not limit yourself! You’ll be surprised at what you will decide to stick with for the long term. I definitely pivoted a great deal from what I started with. No regrets for all the things I’ve failed at because they are the reason why I am such a firm believer in what I do today.
Some of the online passive income methods above do require some initial investment to setup and educate yourself. If you’re not looking to spend at the moment and want to focus on generating income first, I’ve created a list of remote jobs I believe will work for introverts like you and I.
What are your thoughts of these streams of online passive income for introverts? If you have explored any yourself, let me know how it went for you! Would love to know what worked for you in the comments section below.
Photo by Samson Katt from Pexels
