Three Weird Ways to Make Passive Income
Want a few extra Benjamins per month? What if you could make that dough without having to lift a finger? (Well, okay, you’ll have to lift a few fingers once in a while for some of these income streams—but it’s mostly passive income.)
And no, these aren’t your boomer parents’ boring passive money-making schemes—we’re not talking about dividend stock ETFs, cash-flowing real estate, or corporate bond coupon clipping here.
Not at all. We’re here instead to talk about some unique, amusing, and downright weird ways to make some passive income on the side. In this article, we’ll share three of the strangest ways to earn extra money—and why you should seriously consider them.
Want to make money without doing anything? Passive income makes that possible.
Active income versus passive income
Passive income is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, especially by personal finance gurus and the talking heads on financial news platforms. It’s often described in nebulous terms—characterized as a way to “earn money in your sleep” or to “let your money make money”. Pundits proclaim that passive income buys you “freedom” from work, framing it as a cure-all to the drudgery of modern life.
But what is passive income—in more concrete and non-mystical terms—and why is it so great to have?
Simply put, it’s income you earn by putting your assets (stuff you own) to use—and then collecting from them interest, dividends, royalties, or rent.
For example, if you own a house, you can lease it out to tenants for rent. If you own a bond—someone else’s debt—they have the obligation to pay you interest on the money they borrowed from you. Holding a company’s stock makes you a part-owner of the firm, and means you may receive a cut of the company’s profits in the form of dividends. Owning intellectual property—such as a patent, book, song, or a piece of art—offers you access to a stream of royalty payments, paid by others to you in exchange for a temporary right to use your work.
But these are not the only kinds of assets in existence, which means that there are a whole host of other types of passive income out there as well. Here are a few less-mainstream ways to get money out of the things you already own.
Passive income investments include stocks, bonds, real estate, intellectual property—and many other kinds of assets.
Turn your car into a moving billboard
Cars are freaking expensive
Owning a car isn’t cheap. Even if you bought your car in cash and don’t have an auto loan to pay off, you’re still responsible for the cost of gas, maintenance, insurance, and maybe even parking.
For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the average consumer spent about $2,100 on gas in 2019—that’s about $175 a month. Car insurance premiums, on the other hand, totaled another $130 a month in 2021 for a driver with good credit and a spotless record.
Make your car make money
Luckily, you can offset some of these costs by advertising using your car. Companies such as Wrapify or Carvertise will pay you to wrap your car in ads—and will offer you anywhere between $300 to $1,500 per campaign to do so.
While the exact payout will depend on the number of miles you drive, along with the size and length of the advertisement campaign, you can usually expect to take home about $200 to $350 per month—which is enough to completely offset the cost of fuel (and perhaps even insurance) for the month!
Best of all, it won’t cost you a penny to get started, since car-wrapping companies will wrap and unwrap your car for free. All you have to do is apply, wait to be approved, get your car wrapped—and then use your vehicle as you normally do—to begin raking in ad money using your car!
You can even layer this income stream on top of another car-related side hustle—like driving for Uber or delivering for DoorDash—to supercharge the amount of money you make at once.
How efficient!
Wrap your car in ads and turn it into a moving billboard. It’ll make you money—plus it can look good, too.
Rent out your pool or backyard
Yards are great—but only if you use them
A big yard and a backyard pool are the quintessential markers of suburban living. They’re the perfect venue for neighborhood parties and kids’ playdates, especially during the summertime. Yards and pools also give you the freedom to do outdoorsy things without having to wander too far off the beaten path—you can plant a garden, build a treehouse, or hang a hammock in the shade, all from the comfort of (the back of) your own home.
On the other hand, you probably don’t use your backyard or pool every day. After all, the ceaseless demands of daily life take up most of your time, and you’re likely cooped up behind your desk and monitor or out of the house running errands more often than you’d like to be.
Your yard and pool, meanwhile, fall into disuse. Ugly weeds overtake the once-lush field of grass, and leaves and dead insects dot the surface of your pool. Now it’s totally unappealing, but you don’t want to bother cleaning your backyard up, since it’s such a pain to deal with.
Ugh, how frustrating!
If your backyard falls into disuse, it can become unsightly. You might as well rent it out instead.
Turn an idle backyard into an income stream
To prevent your yard from going bad, keep it occupied, even if you’re not going to use it personally. Apps like Swimply let urbanites rent local private pools—and yours can be one of them. Hosts charge pool users an hourly rate, usually $35 to $50 an hour.
And those earnings add up fast. Asher Weinberger, COO and co-founder of Swimply, claims that hosts earn on average an incredible $5,000 to $10,000 a month. One Oregon couple, for example, earned $111,000 in pool rental income in 2020.
Though we suspect that the median Swimply host earns significantly less in a month than the range quoted by Weinberger, these figures nonetheless hint at just how profitable a weird way to make money can be.
Rent out your pool so that others can have some fun! Plus, you’ll make some money too!
Share your media consumption habits
My privacy isn’t for sale!
Okay, okay, we get it—privacy this, anonymity that, you don’t want the feds busting down your door, etc., etc.
Look, we don’t want the FBI on our tail either. But if you don’t have anything to hide, and just query Google for the weather, laugh at memes on Twitter, and use your phone for ordinary work-related stuff, then why not earn some extra cash on the side?
If you don’t mind telling Nielsen the shows you watch, you could be in for a (monthly) payday.
A possible exception?
Reputable, leading companies like Nielsen, a data collection and market measuring firm, will pay you to learn about your media preferences, ratings, and content consumption habits—everything from the shows you watch and the length of time you spend on a TV channel, to the amount of time you spend browsing the web per day and the digital platform you use most often.
They sell this data to content producers, so they can know how a show is being rated by watchers or whether or not they should cancel or continue filming the next season.
To get started, you have to be selected as a Nielsen family. You are then sent a Portable People Meter, a device that detects subtle audio tones unique to certain stations, channels, or shows—and then records them.
Notably, the device can’t pick up on human conversations, so you won’t be entirely robbed of your privacy. After all, you have nothing anything to worry about—marketers truly couldn’t care less about about how much you hate your boss or why you didn’t get enough sleep last night.
Plus, by sharing your media watching habits, you get to play an important role in rating shows—which can determine which shows stay and which get axed. So, if you want to see your favorite TV show live on for another season, becoming a Nielsen family might be a good bet.
As for the earnings? While they vary significantly, depending on your demographic factors and the time you spend consuming media, you can usually stand to earn an extra few hundred dollars per month.
Even a little bit of passive income over time can make a big difference in your financial situation.
Tying things together
So, there you have it—three of the most unusual ways to earn passive income. From selling ad space on your car, to listing your backyard or pool for rent, to sharing your TV show preferences, there are a whole bunch of strange (but totally legit) ways to make money out there—many of which you may have never even considered before. Best of all, you don’t have to do much, or even anything at all, to incorporate these unique streams of income into your life.
But before you quit your job and go on an online shopping spree, let’s be clear—these strange money-making ventures, even when combined together, aren’t going to make you rich. However, a few hundred dollars here and there does have the potential to supplement your primary stream of income rather handsomely.
Maybe it means you can offset your car’s gas bill, afford a babysitter and a weekly date night, or save up for a new TV. Perhaps it means that you can save for retirement, plan your next vacation, or even afford to take a slight pay cut.
Ultimately, no matter how much (or how little) these strange income streams net you, they all have the potential to improve your financial situation—all while humming along in the background.
And at the end of the day, that is the real benefit of passive income.
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