Imagine waking up every morning to find that your bank account has increased with new money; that feeling is truly amazing.
You might think it’s incredible to make money while you sleep, but I want to tell you that I have already achieved this goal. Even while I sleep, my blog generates income 24/7, earning me at least $500,000 annually.
Of course, don’t be too quick to envy me, as I have spent over a decade researching ways to make money from blogging. This is not something you can achieve overnight; building passive income requires a significant time investment.
In addition to blogging, there are many ways to make money online while you sleep. Today, I will share with you nine top ways to make money while you rest. Each of these ways can help you become a freelancer and enable you to make money online while you sleep.
Contents
How to Make Money Online While You Sleep: 9 Ways
1. Create a Blog
Among all the ways to make money while you sleep online, creating a blog is undoubtedly the best and most reliable method for everyone. Whether you are a college student, a full-time mom, or a working professional, you can utilize your spare time to create a blog and achieve your goal of making money while you sleep.
When I first encountered the internet over a decade ago, many people told me that blogging was the best way to make money online. At that time, I was quite skeptical because I had no knowledge about creating a blog or how to make money from it. I didn’t even know what I should do or how my blog would eventually make money.
However, I approached it with a trial-and-error mindset and created a blog by simply searching for some tutorials online and following the steps. When I actually set up a blog, I found it much easier than I had imagined. In just three months, I earned $1,000 from my blog.
If you want to create a blog to make money, don’t hesitate or worry. Setting up a blog is as easy as writing an article. Just follow the step-by-step guide I wrote for creating a blog, and in about 20 minutes, you can have your own blog.
Blog Creation Guide: How To Start A Blog: A Step-by-Step Guide
The biggest advantage of making money through blogging compared to the other eight methods for earning while you sleep is the diversification of income streams. These various methods can provide substantial income from your blog, even if your goal is to earn $50,000 or even $100,000 a month.
Common ways to make money with a blog include display ads, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, and selling digital products. I explain these methods in detail in the article: How To Make Money Blogging.
2. Affiliate Marketing
While affiliate marketing may be the main income source for many bloggers, it doesn’t necessarily require you to create a blog. In fact, many affiliate marketers do not have a blog; they promote affiliate links through social media platforms or use paid traffic to promote affiliate products.
Affiliate marketing primarily relies on helping merchants sell their products and earning a commission from those sales. Although the earnings from affiliate marketing may not be as high as selling products directly, it allows those without products to promote thousands of brands without dealing with production, customer service, shipping, or after-sales support, saving a lot of time for marketers to focus on product promotion.
To make money with affiliate marketing, you simply need to follow these steps:
Step 1: Register with an affiliate network and become an affiliate marketer.
Beginners in affiliate marketing often choose the Amazon Associates program, which allows them to promote all Amazon products by registering for an Amazon affiliate account. However, the commission rates for Amazon products are relatively low, so experienced affiliate marketers tend to choose more specialized affiliate networks, such as CJ, ShareASale, Awin, or Impact.
Step 2: Apply for affiliate programs and obtain your unique promotional links.
You can apply for the affiliate programs of the brands you want to promote through the affiliate network. Many brands also have their own direct affiliate programs on their websites, allowing you to apply and join directly.
Not all brands will approve your application; many will review your website or social media accounts to ensure you can effectively promote their products; otherwise, they may reject your application.
Step 3: Promote your affiliate links and earn commissions.
You can place your unique affiliate links within your blog posts or share them on your social media accounts, such as in Pinterest pins or in your YouTube video descriptions. Once users purchase products through your affiliate links, you will earn commission rewards.
If you want to learn more about making money with affiliate marketing, you can read: How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing.
3. Write an eBook
With the rapid development of the internet, more and more people are investing in online courses to improve themselves. I am a great example of this.
I spend over $3,000 annually on various eBooks and online courses. Over the past few years, I have invested in and learned about digital marketing, affiliate marketing, SEO, and Pinterest marketing. These courses have helped me achieve tremendous success in earning from my blog and on Pinterest.
After achieving great success on my blog and Pinterest, many readers came to me, hoping I would write an eBook to guide them. So, two years ago, I wrote several eBooks, including “Pinterest Traffic Masterclass” and “30-Day Blog Success Guide,” which received a lot of purchases and positive feedback. These eBooks have helped countless students achieve great success in earning from blogs and driving traffic through Pinterest.
If you have extensive experience in a particular field or in life, writing an eBook and selling it online is one of the best ways to make money while you sleep.
To make money through an eBook, you just need to complete two steps:
Step 1: Write the eBook.
While writing an eBook may require a lot of work initially, taking about 30 to over 100 hours for writing, editing, and re-editing, you won’t earn any income during this period. However, once you start promoting the eBook, you can earn income, and you can sell the eBook indefinitely without any additional costs.
The steps to writing an eBook are as follows:
1.Think of a topic: usually, it should be an area you are skilled in or have a rich interest and experience.
2.Create an outline: draft the main chapters and write an outline for the eBook.
3.Start writing the eBook: each main chapter can contain numerous sub-chapters, so create sub-chapters and write content while drafting each main chapter.
4.Edit, re-edit, and edit again: keep adding or modifying content and checking for errors until your eBook is completed.
5.Use a real publisher or a free self-publishing platform (like Gumroad).
Step 2: Promote and sell the eBook.
You can upload the eBook to platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, Smashwords, Kobo Writing Life, or Gumroad. These platforms have significant traffic, so once you upload your eBook, you may achieve good sales.
In addition to selling on eBook platforms, you should also promote it actively to boost sales. You can use email lists, social media, word-of-mouth, and influencers for promotion to achieve higher sales revenue.
If you have a blog, it is undoubtedly the best strategy for selling eBooks. You can sell the eBook on your blog, which can generate sales for you 24/7, earning you substantial profits.
4. Create a YouTube Channel
YouTube is another primary method for many freelancers to make money online aside from blogging. It can not only bring you substantial income but also help you achieve your goal of earning while you sleep.
Creating a YouTube channel is very simple, and countless people are looking to create channels and make money on YouTube. However, most people fail.
To succeed and earn money on your YouTube channel, choosing a niche that you are passionate about, with strong audience demand and profitability, is the critical first step. Many YouTube creators don’t even know what kind of video content they should produce or how to monetize their channels. They simply start a channel and give up after a while.
To succeed on YouTube, here are some key points to consider:
Point 1:
Take time to optimize your video titles, descriptions, and tags to make it easier for your target audience to find your videos. This will help you gain more views and subscribers, which is a crucial factor in achieving success on YouTube.
Point 2:
Promote your new videos through social media and relevant online forums, and interact with influential creators in your field to seek collaboration opportunities.
Point 3:
The key to success on YouTube lies in optimizing your video for search ranking, recommendations, and views—combined with strategic promotion, consistency, and patience. This will increase your chances of success on YouTube.
Although starting a YouTube channel and making money can be challenging, once your videos start gaining traction, more users will subscribe to your channel, making YouTube a great method for earning while you sleep.
5. Amazon FBA
FBA stands for Fulfillment by Amazon, which is a service provided by Amazon that allows individual sellers to find products they want to sell, ship them to Amazon, and have Amazon handle the sales and delivery to customers.
If you don’t have products to sell, you can find any items you wish to sell through Amazon FBA, without having to manage shipping yourself.
A friend of mine recently quit his full-time job because he earned over $35,000 selling used books through Amazon FBA in the past year, spending only a few hours each week searching for books.
6. Creating a Membership Community
Another way to make money online and earn passive income is by creating an online community and monetizing it through a membership subscription service.
If you already have a blog, setting up a membership community becomes easier; you just need to add a plugin like Membermouse to design and establish the membership system. Each time a new member joins, you can collect membership fees or renewals.
You can set up recurring payments at any interval, and as long as members find the content you provide valuable, most will continue to pay.
The key to successfully creating a membership community is to consistently provide valuable, fresh content and offer excellent service to each member.
7. Building an Email List
Selling products via email is one of the most successful online sales strategies. You only need to write a simple email and hit send, after which you can see your sales steadily increase and make significant profits.
Depending on the size of your email list, a single email can generate sales ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.
However, before you can earn a substantial amount, you need to invest considerable time in building your email list, learning how to write persuasive emails, and finding quality products or services to promote.
The steps to earn passive income through email marketing include:
1. Subscribe to an email service provider, such as MailChimp.
2. Design your unique email landing page.
3. Promote your email login page across your social media, blog, and community to gain a large number of subscribers and build a robust email list.
4. Write articles and send them to your subscribers via email to generate revenue.
5. Continuously expand your email list to earn higher profits.
8. Pinterest Content Creator
If you find creating a YouTube channel and achieving success very difficult because filming and editing videos is quite complex, especially for college students, stay-at-home moms, or employees who may not have enough time or skills to create high-quality videos, you can choose to become a Pinterest content creator.
By creating a business account on Pinterest and consistently posting pins, you can earn money easily, even while you sleep. Compared to the high difficulty of filming and producing videos, creating a pin may take only about five minutes, making it very simple and suitable for anyone looking to earn money online.
On Pinterest, you can find many ways to make money, such as adding your affiliate links when you post pins; when users shop through your links, you earn commission rewards.
However, based on my research experience on Pinterest, most content creators do not choose to earn directly through affiliate marketing but instead promote their blogs, using Pinterest primarily as a traffic source.
My own blog receives over 200,000 readers from Pinterest each month, allowing me to earn a lot of money through affiliate marketing and digital product sales.
If you want to become a social media content creator and achieve the goal of making money while you sleep, starting with Pinterest is a great strategy for beginners.
9. Creating and Selling Digital Products
Another great way to earn money while you sleep is by creating and selling digital products.
There are countless digital products you can create and sell, such as popular items like eBooks across various industries, business plan templates, social media calendars, resume templates, and more. Additionally, printable artwork, wedding and party templates, calendars and planners, fonts, graphic design elements, and social media templates are all highly sought after on platforms like Etsy.
While there are many digital products to create and sell, the specific choice depends on your skills or areas of interest. Creating valuable digital products around your expertise is one of the keys to success. Spend time producing high-quality digital products, focusing on topics you are passionate about, and ensure the format is suitable for delivery—like saving templates in optimized JPG format and using PNG for backgrounds and graphics.
Then, set up a digital store on platforms like Gumroad or Etsy to sell your digital products, allowing you to earn money even while you sleep. If you want to expand your sales and earn more, promote your digital products through social media marketing, email newsletters, search engine optimization, and strategic partnerships to create higher demand.
FAQ
What is make money while you sleep?
Earning money while you sleep typically refers to passive income, which differs from working a 9-to-5 job and waiting for a paycheck. Passive income allows you to continuously receive cash flow even without actively working. While passive income was once achievable primarily through investments, the rapid growth of the internet has made it easy to find many methods for earning passive income online. However, achieving passive income requires a significant time investment rather than hoping for a quick fortune.
Can you really make money while you sleep?
Yes, you can earn money while you sleep. There are many methods available online, such as creating a blog, starting a YouTube channel, and affiliate marketing. These are popular passive income methods chosen by many freelancers.
What is the best way to make money while you sleep?
There is no single best method, only the one that suits you best. You can find the most suitable approach for you among the nine methods discussed in this article to achieve your goal of earning money while you sleep.
