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Introduction

I’m going to give you five passive income ideas that work in 2026. They work for beginners, and they’re going to continue working in the future. These are not going to be your typical get-rich-quick schemes or outdated advice. They’re real ways to build income that can keep coming in after the work is done. One of these ideas is the fastest to get up and running, and it’s the one I’m most confident about for being successful in 2026.

Background

I’m not a newbie here. By my own count, I’ve brokered more than a hundred million dollars of online businesses, and I’ve gone from bootstrapping to building my own businesses as a serial entrepreneur. I’ve built and scaled 100-person teams, and I’ve seen behind the scenes of what’s probably billions of dollars of successful and not-so-successful online businesses. So I have an unfair advantage, and I’m going to share those insights with you here today.

Idea Number One: Automatic Investing

Back when I was 18, I was day trading. I got lucky on a few stocks and thought I was brilliant. In the end, I mostly just ended up paying for my spring break to Las Vegas. Pretty much every trade since then has gone well, because I changed my approach from short-term to long-term thinking. That’s exactly what I suggest most people do with automatic investing. It’s simple: you do the research, figure out what percentage of your post-tax income you want to invest, and then you stick with that for the next year, the next quarter, or whatever interval works for you. I suggest reviewing it every quarter to see how the performance has been and making slight adjustments from there.

How It Works

Here’s what that looks like. Every week on Monday, you put a set amount of dollars into the S&P 500, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever investment class you want. What I suggest is setting an allocation, maybe 20% toward crypto, 80% toward stocks and bonds, and every Monday it automatically buys into your portfolio based on whatever fits your thesis.

This is something you research for a few weeks. You figure out the allocation you want to make, and then that’s it, you leave it running and track it every quarter and every year to see how it’s doing. You’ll likely want to add more funds to what’s working and redistribute away from what isn’t. But try to think a little longer term. One quarter usually isn’t enough time in the grand scheme of things. The best advice I can give is that it’s not about timing the market, it’s about time in the market. That’s what makes this the most passive way to earn money.

Idea Number Two: Affiliate Marketing

Idea number two, and this was the first way I actually made money online, is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is basically having a website, a blog, a YouTube channel, or Instagram, and on those channels you’re generating traffic and users. You recommend products, services, software, whatever, and whenever somebody follows your recommendation and buys it, you get a small commission.

Example: Software Recommendations

This could be something like a software product like ChatGPT. If I recommend ChatGPT Plus and you buy it through my link, I get a small commission. You pay the same price, but it’s a way to support the channel or the person you’re learning from. It’s more or less a win-win.

Example: Amazon Affiliates

One of the biggest affiliate networks out there is Amazon. You can find any product on Amazon and promote it on your YouTube channel, your blog, your website. The great thing about Amazon is that when somebody makes a purchase, it’s not just for that one item, it’s everything within a certain window. So if you recommend a book but they end up buying a TV after clicking your link within that window, you still get a commission on the whole purchase. Amazon affiliate marketing is one of the best passive ways to get up and running. You create a piece of content, link it to your affiliate account, and then sit back and collect money. I’d suggest figuring out how to drive traffic, whether through search engine optimization, ChatGPT optimization, or organic content like social media. Once you know how to drive traffic, you can funnel it into all these other ways to monetize it.

Sponsor Segment

I’m giving away my best-selling book for free. Inside is the same approach I’ve used to work abroad in more than 100 different countries. And it’s reportedly helped hundreds of thousands of people earn more, work less, and travel the world.

Idea Number Three: AI Automation

Idea number three, and if you’ve been paying attention to AI, you’ve probably seen the writing on the wall for a few years now. AI is set to create a lot of millionaires, billionaires, and maybe even trillionaires, given the potential of this industry and how much it’s shifting things. I’m not saying you need to become a billionaire or trillionaire, but if you want to make money, AI is going to speed up just about every one of these business ideas. Whether it’s for your own business or your work, it’s something worth learning.

Why AI Automation

AI automation is the industry I’m most bullish on for creating a lot of new millionaires. What this looks like is finding a business that isn’t as tech-savvy as you are. Most people aren’t using AI, and the ones who are usually aren’t using it to its full potential, more like a fifth grader browsing the internet than anything advanced. So you partner with businesses that skew a little older, think your parents’ generation or even your grandparents’, and help them use AI to save time, reduce staff needs, cut down on mistakes, or just make more money, since it can produce far more output than their team can on its own. A team member can only work 40 hours a week, but with AI automation you can push that output several times over and really help the business expand.

How to Implement It

What you do is find these businesses, then learn one or two things that are common pain points across most of them, whether that’s lead generation, calling through leads, or reaching out to past customers for new services. You set up the automations and help bring in more business for the company or person you’re working with. Once that’s done, you can charge an ongoing retainer to keep it running. That can be $500 to $5,000 a month depending on the size and scale of the business. If you know how to use AI and how to find these companies, you’ll end up doing it for your own business first, then helping others do the same. After all, if you can’t generate leads for yourself, how would someone else pay you to do it for them? Figure it out for your own business first, then take it to other companies.

Idea Number Four: Amazon KDP and Audible Publishing

One of the best passive income ideas I’ve personally used is my book, right here. I spent two years writing it. It was a lot of work, but once it was published, it’s been generating passive income ever since. I published it in 2018, and it’s still bringing in solid revenue for me. This is Amazon KDP, or Kindle Direct Publishing.

Turning Books Into Audiobooks

A lot of people talk about KDP, but I want to take it a step further: you can find published books that don’t have an audio version and help launch them on Amazon Audible. This is an even better way to build income. There are a few ways to approach it. You can write your own book from scratch, and once it’s popular and proven, create the Audible version. The great thing about Audible is the higher price point and better commissions for authors overall, so it compounds well once you find success there.

Suggested Process

What I’d suggest is picking a niche and publishing at least 5 to 10 books in it. Once one of those books takes off, create the Audible version and drive traffic to it. This can be a solid way to build passive income, and once you’ve got the process down, you can repeat it in other niches or even teach other authors how to do it.

Idea Number Five: Drop Servicing

Idea number five is a business model called drop servicing, which makes things a bit more passive. Basically, you outsource a service business or some part of one.

Example: Video Editing

The example I like to use is video editing. There are a lot of video editing agencies out there offering unlimited edits. All they really do is find the customers and hand the work off to a team of video editors. With drop servicing, you’re not the one editing, you’re outsourcing that to someone else. So think about the industry you know best. How could you bring on someone to handle the work while you just feed them jobs? Your role is landing marketing and sales clients, and once they come on board, you have someone else handling the delivery side of the business.

Why This Model Works

This is a similar service-based business structure, but it scales well. A lot of these businesses rely on outsourced labor, where you charge US prices but pay your overseas talent a rate that’s still higher than their local competition pays. It ends up being a win for everyone: your team gets a better salary, you can charge a competitive price, and the client gets a solid delivered product.

Closing

Now, there’s a lot of nuance that goes into each of these businesses, and working out the details is on you. But these five approaches, automatic investing, affiliate marketing, AI automation, publishing on Amazon KDP and Audible, and drop servicing, are the ones I keep coming back to for building real passive income that doesn’t rely on some quick trick or fad.