Real Passive Income Ideas For Quick Results With No Budget & No Tech Skills

There are tons of ways to build passive income, but if you have no budget and no tech skills, most of them are, sadly, off the table. So, out of the ones you can actually do, which one’s worth your time?

You’ve got to be smart about it. Choosing the right type of passive income is 90% of your success. And I’m not even exaggerating. Sometimes business involves a little luck and risk, but most of the time? It’s all about logic.

That’s why I’m here to walk you through all possible passive income ideas and break down the pros and cons of each. I will show you which one, in my opinion, is best for someone like you – a beginner with no budget and no tech skills.

But I don’t want you to take my word for it. I want you to fully get the pros and cons of each option so you can see exactly why I’m recommending what I am. By the end, I’m pretty sure you’ll be nodding along to my logic.

And just so we’re clear—no, I don’t have some magical secret or some hyped-up, hard-to-understand thing like NFTs. I’m giving you a straightforward idea with real logic behind it. You don’t need miracles to start building your passive income.

Now let’s take a look at your options:

Passive Income Ideas That Require a Big Investment

So, you’ve got no budget to invest in passive income. Unfortunately, that rules out a lot of options. You can’t buy rental properties, you can’t invest in stocks, you can’t purchase a profitable business to collect returns. You can’t even resell luxury items like Hermès bags—because, well, you need money to buy them first.

This is exactly why rich people keep getting richer—the first $100K is the hardest to make. I know, it sucks, and it’s totally unfair. But that’s why you’re here. Stick with me, and hopefully, soon you’ll be in that category too.

BOTTOM LINE: maybe one day…

Passive Income Ideas That Require Tech Skills

Building software

Building software, like mobile apps, is an amazing way to make money—and it’s actually pretty cheap. You can publish an Android app for just $25 a year and an iPhone app for $99 a year. And if you know how to code, that’s basically your only upfront cost. Apps are especially great as a form of passive income—once they’re out there, they just keep making money.

I just had to mention this because, girl, if you’ve ever thought about learning to code—do it. Trust me, it’s not as hard as people make it seem. I had zero programming skills when I decided to try it out. And in just six months, I built my first app from scratch and started making money. Six months!

Honestly, I wish I had started sooner. It took me 30 years to finally muster the courage to sit down and learn because I was always told coding was a “guy thing” and that I wouldn’t be good at it. Total nonsense. So if this even slightly interests you, don’t wait like I did—just go for it. You’re more than capable.

Okay time to get back to our main topic. Building software requires actual tech skills, so it’s not the idea we’re looking for here.

Moving on!

Bottom Line: requires tech skills

Selling music

Selling music is definitely an option for passive income, but it does require some skills and tools. First, you actually need to make the music, which means learning how to produce, mix, and master tracks. That’s a skill on its own, and it takes good couple of months to get to the level that allows you to make your own music that actually sounds like music should.

Then, there’s the software. And it’s not cheap. Even if you want to make the music on your laptop and use ready sounds rather than real instruments. You’ll need a program like Ableton, which can cost anywhere from $79 to $600.

Once you have your music, you can sell it in different ways. One option is Spotify, and other streaming platforms. You upload your songs through a distributor like DistroKid (2$/month), and you get paid per stream.

Sounds great, right? Well, here’s the catch—Spotify pays around $0.003 to $0.005 per stream. So unless your song goes viral, or you already have a big fan club, you won’t be making much.

A better option might be selling your music for commercial use. For example to businesses that want to use your music in their advertisement, or to YouTubers who want to use it in their videos.

You can upload your music to websites like AudioJungle and instead of getting less than a cent per stream, you can make $1 to $100+ per sale, depending on the license type.

I’ve personally never tried selling music on Spotify or sites like AudioJungle, so I can’t say how hard it is to actually make a sale. And for someone with no budget and no tech skills, this isn’t the best passive income source anyway.

We need to keep looking.

bottom line: requires tech skills & initial investment

Selling photos

Selling photography is another passive income option, and compared to making music, it’s definitely easier to learn. You don’t need years of training—just a good eye and some practice. But what you do need is a decent camera. Sure, smartphone cameras are great these days, but if you want to make photos that can actually make money, quality matters. I don’t know much about photography gear, so I won’t be guessing the price here.

Once you have solid photos, you can upload them to stock photo sites like Shutterstock. Every time someone downloads your image, you get paid—usually a few cents to a few dollars per sale, depending on license type. Interestingly, the more you sell, the higher the commission per sale you can earn. If your photos get downloaded thousands of times, it could add up.

All in all, selling stock photos is not a bad way to make passive income, but if you’re starting with zero budget, no professional camera, and no photography skills, there are better ways.

bottom line: requires tech skills & initial investment

Passive Income Ideas That Are Not Scalable

There are some ideas that can be a great source of passive income, require no money, and bring in instant earnings. But sadly, they’re not scalable. This means you can only earn a certain amount per year, and there’s nothing you can do to earn more.

Placing banners and car stickers

One of those non-scalable but easy-to-implement passive income ideas is placing banners on your car or fence. Yup, if you own a car and or a garden/wall you can get paid just for having an ad on display.

Carvertise, for example, will pay you to wrap your car with ads. They will put and remove the stickers on your car for free. And they will pay you monthly (around 100$) for simply driving your car. You will need to install an app that tracks your location, so they can see how much you drive each month. That’s it. If this or a similar option is available in your area, I would definitely recommend it. There is no easier money. Unfortunately, there is only so much you can make with one car.

Fences are another option. You can try approaching local businesses to ask if they are interested in renting out your space. This can bring in about $50 to $200 per month, depending on where you live and how visible your fence is to high-traffic areas. It’s super low effort, but again, the income you make is fixed.

These ideas can be a quick way to earn a little extra, and I totally recommend them, but they’re not going to make you rich.

bottom line: great, but with limited income

Selling your data

Selling data through platforms like Datacoup can be a way to make a little passive income by sharing your data. You give them access to your social media accounts and financial transactions, and they simply pay you for it. But here’s the thing: the payouts are tiny. You’re usually looking at less than $10 a month.

I’m a little uncertain about this option. On one hand, I get it—social media and Google are already selling our data without our consent, and they’re making billions off it while we get nothing at all. So, sharing your data through platforms like Datacoup, where you’re at least getting paid for it, feels like reclaiming a tiny bit of control.

But on the other hand, I’m also quite wary of letting yet another platform track my every move online. Who else is accessing that data, and what are they doing with it? Is it worth the tiny payout? I’ll let you decide for yourself…

bottom line: well, there are better options…

Passive Income Ideas That Require a Big Traffic (a.k.a. Money or Time)

Social media

Social media is NOT passive income. It’s beyond my understanding why most people, and sadly, especially women, choose Instagram when trying to start a business. Girls, how is that supposed to work? Suddenly you go viral and then money falls from the sky?

Influencing is A LOT of work.

To actually make any money—whether through collaborations or affiliate links—you need a huge following. And that doesn’t happen overnight. It will take you years of hard work, constant content creation, and hustling to build a solid audience. Plus, it’s probably one of the hardest ways to build traffic because the algorithm keeps demanding fresh content. If you don’t keep feeding it, it’ll forget about you, and your chances of reaching new followers go down the drain.

And that’s not all. Even if you do manage to grow your following and have thousands of followers, you still make no passive income.

See, if you are an influencer, the money is tied to your face. Are you ready to never go on holidays again? Because in order to earn, you need to create new content. And you can’t even hire anyone to do that for you.

Important: Purchase intent

Social media is not a place where people go to buy things. Think about it: when was the last time you actually bought something through Instagram? Maybe never? On the other hand, how many times have you Googled something you wanted to buy, found a product or shop, and then made a purchase?

This is called purchase intent. People go to Google because they’re actively looking to buy something—they know what they want, and they’re ready to buy.

That’s why selling anything on Instagram is simply extremely hard, even if you do have a decent following. People aren’t there to shop—they’re there to scroll and relax. And I can guarantee they’re not about to stand up from the couch and grab their credit card just to buy something from your post.

I salute all the girls who’ve built successful social media channels without spending a fortune on ads. That’s a lot of hard work!

All in all, if you love social media and dream of being famous, go ahead and have fun—I won’t stop you. And hey, maybe, just maybe, you’ll actually get rich.

Personally, I’m too lazy for that grind. I’d rather find a quick and reliable way to build passive income instead. No hustle, no endless content creation—just smart work and steady income. Are you with me?

Bottom Line: please just don’t

Writing a blog

Google has always had a high purchase intent. As we said before, people search with a clear goal in mind, often to buy something. Because of this, writing a blog used to be a great way to create passive income from scratch.

Unfortunately, those days are gone. Getting visitors from Google is very competitive, and its future is quite uncertain. But let’s break it down step by step:

Imagine you want to make money by writing a blog. You have two main options—placing ads on your blog or using affiliate links. In case you’re not familiar with affiliate links, they’re links to someone else’s product that you place on your site. When someone clicks and makes a purchase, you earn a commission.

Earning with ads on your blog

The most popular way to place ads on your blog is by using Google AdSense. You sign up for AdSense, and get paid either based on CPM (which means cost per thousand impressions/views) or based on CPC (cost per click).

The earnings depend on many factors, such as your location or the category your blog is in, but it’s normally somewhere between 1$ to 5$ per 1,000 visitors.

Another option is Mediavine, which works similarly to AdSense, but puts more effort into matching your blog with the right advertisers. Because of that the ads are usually more efficient (people buy more), and that allows Mediavine to pay higher rates (between $10 to $25 per 1,000 visitors). But (of course there’s a but), in order to qualify to join their program, you need at least 50,000 monthly visits to your blog.

Earning with affiliate links on your blog

Let’s start with how affiliate links actually work. The whole idea is that you promote someone else’s product, and when you make a sale, you get paid. In order to do that, you get a special link to place on your blog. Then it’s your job to find visitors and encourage them to click and buy (for example by writing product review). Thanks to the unique link, the seller knows that the sale came from you, and pays you a commission.

The biggest affiliate program is Amazon Associates, where you promote products available for sale on Amazon. The commission you receive depends on the category of the product (for example 3% for toys or 4.5% for physical books). ShareASale is similar, but the products are available in the shop of the main seller.

Signing up for affiliate programs is usually completely free. So even if you don’t make any sales, you also don’t have any costs.

Getting traffic to your blog

Both ads and affiliate links are a great solution. Easy to set up, no technical knowledge required, no cost, and they start working immediately. If you are getting a lot of visitors to your blog, this is a viable way to create a passive income. The only problem is just that – getting a lot of visitors to your blog.

Earlier on I said that Google used to be great for blogs, but not anymore. What changed?

Introducing – Featured Snippets.

Did you notice that sometimes when you search for some information on Google, you get the answer right there, without the need to click on any website?

When I Google “how to save a word document as a PDF” I immediately see – If the file is unsaved, select File > Save As. Select Browse to choose the location on your computer where you want to save the file. In the drop-down list, select PDF. Select Save.

This piece of text is a featured snippets. I get my information, and then I leave. No websites visited. A great feature for users, a horrible one for bloggers.

Introducing – AI.

If you are writing a blog in 2025, the competition is fierce. Everyone and their cat has a blog. Big companies have entire teams responsible for blogging. But you are competing not only with fellow humans, but also with Artificial Intelligence. AI is amazing in writing texts. And by the time you finish writing one post, it can create thousands. It’s not exactly a fair competition.

Also, more and more people use ChatGPT and similar AI solutions to “google” their questions. So the overall traffic to Google is also decreasing. Its future doesn’t look bright.

Introducing – SEO.

I’m sure you’ve heard about Search Engine Optimization. The idea behind it is that you can fine-tune your website to make it easier to be found and shown by Google. The ultimate goal of SEO is for your blog to be shown as often as possible, and as close to the 1st position in search results as possible.

As the blogging sphere becomes more competitive, SEO techniques become more advanced. Years ago it was enough to write a long, good quality post, and after some time people would stumble upon it on Google. Now, apart from that, you also need to make sure you use optimized keywords, create backlinks to your website, add a good meta description, include internal links, external links, transition words… ugh.

You get the idea.

What I’m trying to say with all that is – it’s very very hard to bring traffic to your blog or website. You need good SEO knowledge (which is basically a tech skill), a lot of money to show your website through ads, or a lot of time and hard work to try and position your website organically (meaning – without paying for it). And these are precisely all the things we’re trying to avoid here, right?

bottom line: requires money, time and tech skills

Dropshipping

Okay, we talked about blogs, but what about online shops? Well, selling physical products isn’t exactly passive income. You have to deal with packing, shipping, customer service, and those lovely return requests. Plus, you usually need money upfront to buy or produce the products. So that’s a no-go for us.

But what if you could have an online shop without dealing with any of that? That’s called dropshipping.

I’m sure you’ve heard about it. It’s all the hype now.

Dropshipping is when you sell products online, but you don’t actually keep any inventory. Instead, when someone buys something from your shop, you simply order it from a supplier who ships it directly to the customer. You never touch the product, and you don’t need to worry about storage or shipping.

In theory, dropshipping sounds amazing. Just a sweet online shop making sales while you sleep. Unfortunately, the very same rules we discussed a minute ago also apply here—you need traffic to make sales. And getting that traffic? Well, it either takes money for ads or a whole lot of time and effort.

Also, what people promoting dropshipping usually don’t mention, is that big brands don’t participate in dropshipping programs. So you are left with trying to sell no-name products from China. What that means is that you can’t charge a lot for the products, and the commission you can earn is also limited.

On top of that, you’ll need some tech skills to create a well-designed, fast, and trustworthy online store. Sure, it’s not rocket science, but it does require a bit of knowledge to make your site look good and run smoothly. And since the goal here is to find passive income ideas that don’t require any tech skills, dropshipping isn’t quite the perfect fit for us.

Next one please.

bottom line: requires money, time and even more tech skills

Passive Income Ideas That Require Initial Time Investment and Basic Tech Skills

YouTube channel

While YouTube technically is a social media platform, when it comes to creating passive income it’s in a different category than Instagram or TikTok.

Why? Because YouTube lets people search for exactly what they’re looking for. As a result, people come to YouTube with a search intent (remember purchase intent?). And that’s extremely powerful.

Search intent

For example, let’s say your channel is all about recipes, and you post a few vegan potato recipes. On YouTube, users that feel like eating potatoes today, can search for “vegan potato recipes”. And since your video matches exactly this search term, there’s a high chance that it will be suggested to the user.

On Instagram? Your only hope to get discovered is if the user searches for #potato and somehow spots your post in the sea of others. Or, if they’ve been in a potato mood for a while and the algorithm picks up on it, you might get lucky and show up in their feed.

Big difference.

It’s easier to get found on YouTube than on Instagram, and it’s also easier than on Google. Think about it: when you search for something on Google, you get the answer right away (featured snippets), or you click on the first few links, and that’s basically it.

Google isn’t coming back to you tomorrow like, “Hey, check out these other articles too.” No, once the search is over, it’s over. If you weren’t on the top of the first page, that’s too bad.

But YouTube? YouTube actually does it. It keeps suggesting the user more videos on that topic. So even if you weren’t the first choice, you still have a shot at getting noticed.

Earning from ads on YouTube

A reliable way to make money from your YouTube channel is by enabling ads. YouTube will play ads during your videos, and you’ll get a cut of the earnings. But to join the YouTube Partner Program, you first need to grow your channel a bit.

You’ll need at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours (that means people need to spend 4,000 hours watching your content).

It might sound like a lot, but I was actually really surprised at how not-that-difficult it is to get there. I started a YouTube channel where I just posted short samples of a language course I sell. I uploaded about 60 quick videos and… forgot about it.

But the channel grew, and now around 20% of my total sales come from people who found me on YouTube. They watch a sample, then head over to my website to buy. It took me about 1.5 years to qualify for the Partner Program, and when I did, I made $40 in the first month. The money has been coming every month since, and it’s slowly growing.

It’s not a fortune, but think about it—I haven’t even created any content specifically for YouTube. I just posted samples of my product. My product is niche, so I don’t have a lot of competition. And thanks to search intent, people find me easily, I generate sales, and on top of that, I get a little extra every month.

Now, imagine if I actually put more effort into it. The more videos, the shorter the time to qualify, and the bigger the potential earnings.

YouTube cares about you

Not literally, no. But they care about their profit and YOU are their profit.

To see what I mean, let’s follow the money—YouTube makes money by showing ads on your videos. Google, on the other hand, doesn’t. Unless you yourself pay for ads, Google doesn’t make money by showing your blog to people. So Google has no incentive to promote your blog.

But YouTube? They have a huge incentive. They want to recommend your channel, keep you happy, and get you to post more content. The more people watch your videos, the more money YouTube makes. And as long as your content is engaging, there’s no difference for YouTube whether the ad plays on a huge channel or your small one. That’s why you have a chance to be discovered.

So yes, YouTube can be a solid way to earn passive income, but it does have its limitations.

If you don’t want to show your face, you can absolutely create a faceless channel—and they can work just as well (mine is faceless, for example). However, creating videos beyond just recording yourself can require some tech skills. You might also need a better camera or microphone. Plus, as you saw in my example, the results aren’t instant. It takes time before you can start earning.

So while it’s definitely a good way to make money, it’s still not the perfect fit for what we’re looking for here.

bottom line: good option, but not instant

Podcast

Podcasts can totally be a passive income option—if you are smart about it.

Here’s what I mean: you can make money with ads, but in order to earn any significant income, you’ll need thousands of listeners. And that, again, takes time and effort.

But the cool thing about Spotify is that they let you set up subscriptions. That means your listeners need to pay a monthly fee in order to access all your episodes. Which in turn means you can earn even if you’ve only got a couple hundred loyal fans who can’t get enough of your voice. But at that point, you’re basically selling your own product—more on that later.

Now, if you want to keep your subscribers happy, you’ll have to keep putting out fresh content. But here’s where the “being smart about it” happens: if you’re creating evergreen content (a.k.a. content that doesn’t get outdated, unlike talking about current political events), you can pre-record many episodes and then schedule them to go live at a specific date.

This way, you don’t need to be tied to your mic every week and your business is growing passively. Lovely.

Plus, just like YouTube, Spotify and other podcast platforms have strong search intent. People are actively looking for exactly what they want to listen to, which makes it much easier for your podcast to be discovered.

Just like on YouTube, I also posted samples of my course on Spotify—only 20 short episodes. I didn’t prepare any special content, just uploaded a sneak peek into my course. I published it, and never touched it again.

Now, two years later, my podcast has 17,000 followers, and new listeners keep finding me every day. I really didn’t expect such great results.

But still—it’s not perfect. The same struggles you face with YouTube appear here too. First, you’ll definitely need a good microphone (but that can be fixed with a $50 bill). Second, a horrible voice won’t do (that disqualifies me from ever hosting a podcast). Third, you’ll also need to know how to record and edit audio, but comparing to making videos that’s very easy. And you can do it all in a free program, for example Audacity.

And finally, you’ll need to invest quite a lot of time at first to get everything set up and record the episodes. But, if you can push through all that, podcasts really are a pretty solid way to build passive income.

So, can it get any better than this? You just wait and see, girl.

bottom line: a very good option, actually

Passive Income Ideas That Require No Traffic, No Budget, No Tech Skills, and Bring Results Quickly… Phew!

Alright, it’s time to reveal our winner (drumroll, please).

Let’s go through everything we learned so far, step by step. Like I promised at the very beginning, we’re not looking for magic here—we’re just following logic.

First things first, you want to make money without relying on huge traffic because, as we’ve seen, building big traffic either takes time or money. So far so good?

So, what you really want is a way to make money from each customer, not just a fraction of a cent per click. Instead of earning $0.0001 per person from ads, why not aim for 10$ per customer? To make that happen, you can’t rely on ads or affiliate links that pay a small commission.

You need your own PRODUCT.

You don’t want to spend any money on creating or producing it, so physical products are a no-go. What you need is a DIGITAL PRODUCT. This means something you can create right on your laptop, and the customer can download it.

Whether you sell one or a thousand, there’s no cost for you. Plus, no packing or shipping required. Selling digital products can be very easily automated, and once you publish it, you never have to touch it again. Digital products are the golden ticket for passive income. (And yep, a podcast subscription is nothing but a digital product – that’s why it works).

Okay so we know what to sell. So far nothing groundbreaking. But here’s where the magic (ekhm, logic) happens – the most important part is WHERE to sell.

Because even though digital products are awesome, trying to sell them on Instagram is pretty much a recipe for failure. We need to be smart about it.

You want to sell your product where:
a) people are actually planning to spend their money (that good old purchase intent), and
b) people can search for what they are looking for, so your product can be found.

Girl, – you might say – that sounds a lot like an online shop. Didn’t we just agree that having your own online shop is a bad bad idea? You need the traffic, and the tech skills and the…

Yes!

But what if there was an online shop that’s already up and running, and with huge traffic?

Anything rings a bell? Amazon, maybe? eBay? Etsy?

What you need is a MARKETPLACE.

Applause.

It might not be particularly sexy, but it works

Yes, it’s that easy. A digital product sold on a marketplace. That’s how you build a successful passive income, if you are looking for:

• Zero investment – you can create and publish digital products for $0. No monthly fees either.
• No tech skills needed – if you can open a Word document and start writing, you have the tech skills needed to publish your first e-book. You don’t even need a website.
• One-time effort – once you publish your product on a marketplace there’s nothing else left for you to do, other than waiting for the money. And that’s what I call a passive income.
• Low time investment – you can create a digital product from scratch in just 30 days and keep making money forever. Say goodbye to daily Instagram posts.
• Quick results – your product is ready for purchase within hours of publishing.
• No marketing headache – people will find you through search, not the other way around.
• High purchase intent – when someone finds your product, you’re likely to get a sale, and not just another like.
• Scalability (potential to grow) – if your product is good, the sales will grow. More sales = more reviews = more sales. Plus, once you know the drill, you can create a whole portfolio of products in no time. Your potential is unlimited.

I hope we’re on the same page now. I’ve shown you my way of thinking, and I bet you can agree that the most logical and successful path is selling digital products on marketplaces.

I know it’s not groundbreaking. I know it’s not sexy (though I find logic super sexy). But girl, does it work.

Love,

The Business B.

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