5 Ideas for Your First Passive Income Stream as a Blogger

Having a passive income stream is like the holy grail of earning money. It’s the cash flow that rolls in with minimal effort after you’ve put in some initial work.

Picture this: you set up a blog, write killer content, and as people visit your site, you make money through ads or affiliate links. Or maybe you invest in stocks that pay dividends, and you get a slice of the profit without actively trading. It’s like making money while you sleep!

Passive income isn’t about getting rich quick; it’s more of a slow burn. It requires patience, dedication, and often a bit of upfront investment, whether it’s time, money, or both.

But once the wheels are turning, passive income can provide financial security, freedom, and flexibility. It’s all about creating streams of revenue that keep flowing, even when you’re not actively working.

When you’re just starting out in blogging, a passive income stream seems like the dream. But right now, there’s a lot of work to be done so you can get traffic to your blog, create content, start and grow an email list, and begin thinking about monetizing.

But hold on! Focusing on everything else before creating passive income is a common mistake beginner bloggers make.

In reality, you can start profiting from your blog even with a few hundred readers, even with 100 email subscribers, and even with a small social media following. And because a passive income stream takes some time to be built, you might as well begin this process today.

Here are 5 ideas:

Your First Passive Income Stream as a Blogger

1. Sign up with an ad network.

Gone are the days when Google AdSense was the only option for website owners to earn from advertising.

Now, there are much better and profitable ad networks to sign up with that allow you to immediately start earning a few hundred dollars from your blog every month (depending on your traffic, of course).

That’s what happened to me once I got accepted to Mediavine. As the traffic was growing, so was my monthly ad revenue. At some point, I was earning $1000/month solely from that in passive income.

However, there might be certain conditions. Right now, for example, Mediavine requires publishers to get at least 50K page views per month so they can apply. That’s a big deal for most new bloggers and it means they will have to wait.

Here’s an example of a blogger who got into Mediavine in 1 year.

Other reputable ad networks you might consider include Media.net, AdThrive, Infolinks, BlogHer, RevenueHits, and Monumetric.

2. Create an eBook.

What if you create an eBook and start earning passive income from it? That’s absolutely possible and it can be easier than you think.

By using a service to turn your existing blog posts into a manuscript. That can then be turned into an eBook, audiobook and paper book – 3 different passive income streams (and more choices for your audience).

You can begin promoting the product through your email list, on your blog, via social media and paid advertising. Once the word is out and people buy it and leave reviews, you won’t need to do much else.

3. Affiliate marketing.

Many bloggers stay away from affiliate marketing as they think they are not experienced enough or don’t have many page views on their blog. But you can become an affiliate marketer today by simply signing up to some programs and inserting affiliate links in your existing blog content.

You can also check if the products you’re already using (tools, services, courses you’ve taken) have their own affiliate program. If so, sign up and start sharing your experience with the product and recommend it to others.

If not, contact the brand or blogger personally and ask them if they work with affiliates.

4. Have an online course.

You can also start creating a course now, before you’ve grown your blog and are earning in other ways.

As soon as you have enough knowledge about a topic, you can sign up for a platform like Teachable and begin writing content or recording videos for your lectures.

That kind of product takes more time but it’s also something you can price higher. People love tutorials online and if you’re in the right niche and promote your course to the right people, you can welcome your first students pretty soon.

Then, they can become your affiliates (Teachable allows you to easily turn students into affiliates) and promote your course with their audience. How’s that for yet another passive income stream!

5. Sell printables.

The printables industry is booming and you don’t need to be an expert in order to create your very own digital products of this kind and start selling them. While most of these products will cost very little, it can still be a profitable passive income stream if you bring in enough sales.

With a graphic design tool like Canva you can even do that for free. And the printables don’t need to take too much time or be complicated.

Such products are meant to be printed out and used by people to achieve a certain result (such as plan their meals, track their savings, write they to-do list)

Create a dozen printables on a topic related to your niche that people need help with. Help them make their life easier (get organized, for example), save time or money (or make money) thanks to your product and they will be forever grateful.

Such products aren’t expensive and that’s yet another reason why so many people go crazy about them. You might be surprised to know that you can actually sell this more than your bigger digital products and thus earn more on a monthly basis passively.

Consider starting an Etsy shop too and offering your printable products there. That’s where the right audience for this type of product is, assuming you don’t have many readers on your blog yet.

Are you ready to give your first passive income stream a try? Good luck.

5 Ideas for Your First Passive Income Stream as a Blogger