Making money on the side via a passive income stream sounds appealing to many people.That said, some people don’t have an idea for setting up a side business.
All passive income strategies do require you to invest some degree of time and effort at first. You may wonder if you have any talents that can be translated into passive income projects. If you have a sense of humor, you just might.
You don’t have to be funny to make passive income (there are other ways to earn passive income if making people laugh isn’t your strongest talent). However, humor can offer you one path to passive income. Just consider the following options.
Sell Shirts
Plenty of young people (and those who are young at heart) enjoy sporting t-shirts with funny designs and slogans. Of course, someone has to come up with those funny ideas.
That person could be you. People like Glen Zubia have turned their sense of humor into profit by designing such apparel with Adobe Illustrator or similar programs, then uploading the designs to Amazon.
Merchby Amazon is one of several print-on-demand services that allows people to sell apparel without investing in the initial cost of the garments. When someone places an order, the service will print the item, taking some of the profits and the cost of the item. The seller pockets the rest.
Again, like other passive income streams, this does involve putting in some work at first to build up a decent catalog. However, once you do have enough items for sale, you can start to see major earnings. Zubia himself earned $120,000 from his first sales.
Years later, he still makes thousands of dollars each month from orders. This is all passive income, as he no longer works much on creating new designs or even promoting his shop. You could do the same.
Or Posters
Funny posters also sell well. Every year, students move into college dorms, decorating them with humorous designs. This is a market that never goes away. Thus, you’ll always have the chance to tap into it.
Poster creation and sales is very similar to t-shirt creation and sales. Just create your designs and use a print-on-demand service to make the posters. This way, you can avoid having to purchase inventory and equipment up front.
As with the example above, the poster only gets printed when someone places an order. This significantly reduces the financial risk involved in selling items like posters.
Try Bumper Stickers
It’s no secret that funny bumper stickers can also be extremely popular. Services like CafePress also let you sell your designs via the internet. That said, with any of these strategies, it’s best to research your options when choosing a service to print and market your items. You want to find the one that lets your each the most potential customers at the lowest possible cost. These are merely examples to consider.
An online shop offering humorous bumper stickers could earn you a decent amount of passive income. That said, if you enjoy the process of marketing these items and are willing to put in some more work, you could also reach out to shops in your area that you think would carry your bumper stickers. This involves more effort, but it also gives you the opportunity to sell more items at once, instead of waiting for online shoppers to find your store and making sales one at a time.
Make Greeting Cards
There are many different ways to sell greeting cards online. You can use a print-on-demand option like Zazzle to limit your initial investment. If you’re craftier, and want to exercise greater control over the kinds of materials the cards are made from, you can handcraft them and sell them through Etsy, Amazon,or other marketplaces.
You can offset the additional cost and effort involved in producing hand crafted cards by charging a higher price. Customers will typically be willing to spend more money on an item if it was handcrafted by the artist.
While your greeting cards don’t have to be funny, incorporating humor into them is a smart way to elicit a reaction from a potential customer. They’ll be more likely to take notice of your product (and make a purchase) if you can make them laugh.
Again, all of these strategies are simple ways to turn your sense of humor into a source of passive income. You don’t need to be a professional comedian to earn money from jokes. You just need to decide the best way to translate your humor into a product idea.