So today we're going to talk about five ways that you can make a passive income.

And for each of them, we're going to go over how difficult it is to start, how difficult it is to make $100 per week, and how difficult it is to maintain once it's up and running.

And we're going to see a good amount of variation among these categories as we cover the five.

So let's dive in.

So what do I mean by passive income?

Put simply, it's money that is not directly tied to your time.

You put the time and or money investment in once in the beginning, and then you put it out into the world for it to generate income without it needing more of your effort.

An example, you write a cookbook with all of your recipes once, and then it can be sold repeatedly forever with little to no additional work from you.

Now, I think it's important to clarify that passive income is not this rosy, magical, get rich quick while you sleep thing.

That literally doesn't exist.

You need to provide some type of value in order to make any income.

I also think we often associate passive income with hustle culture, you know, starting multiple businesses on the side, Gary Vee, David Goggins.

I actually think about it pretty much exactly the opposite because passive income plus diversification allows you more freedom and time to focus on other aspects of your life without the stress of relying on one sole source of income.

So as with all income streams, even passive ones require your time and or money upfront to get it started.

So here is to getting them started and let's kick it off with the king of all passive income streams, investing, with a focus on dividend stocks for this video.

So this is one of the most straightforward passive income strategies out there and I'm excited to talk to you about it.

So if you're new to investing, dividends are shares of a company that pay you out a portion of their profits on a regular basis, usually every quarter.

And that is cash being paid out directly to you without the need to sell the stock, which is truly passive.

As with any investment though, the key to making any money doing this is to choose the right stock.

So when it comes to dividends, I would start by familiarizing yourself with stocks that are known as dividend kings.

So these are a select group of companies in the stock market that have increased their dividend payouts for 50 or more consecutive years, which is really saying something by the way.

That means that even during economic downturns like COVID, dot-com bubble, the great recession, when these companies likely had lower earnings, lower market cap, they still maintained their commitment to increase their dividend payouts to their investors, which I think just shows solid management of cashflow and reserves and a company's ability to withstand tough economic cycles.

So after dividend kings comes dividend aristocrats.

No, I'm not making these names up, I wish I was.

And these are stocks that have increased their dividend payouts for at least 25 consecutive years.

So besides the obvious reasons of why dividend kings and aristocrats would be a good place to start because they're consistent and reliable, it's worth noting that there are a lot of companies out there, a lot of young companies that might draw you in by offering really high dividend payouts.

I would be cautious of these because it's just tough, kind of impossible to know which companies will maintain that commitment without a long track record to show for it.

Now, our evaluation metrics.

How difficult is this to start?

It is so easy, one out of five.

We're using my dog Willie instead of stars, so one Willie.

All you have to do to start investing is download an investing app, deposit some money and buy the stocks.

My personal experience, I started investing when I was 14, just little bits of birthday money here and there.

And then more and more in high school as I started to make an income.

And then after my internships in college and now I invest a majority of my income.

So point is, it is not hard to start even at a young age and good golly, will you thank yourself in 50 years if you do start at a young age, but no matter how old you are, the saying is the best time to start investing is yesterday, the second best time is today, so, and it's easy.

Okay, difficulty to make $100 per week doing this.

This is where things get a little interesting.

Let's do some quick maths.

So companies' dividend yields are calculated on an annual basis.

So let's start by annualizing our $100 per week.

That's $5,200 per year.

Now let's take Target, one of our well-known dividend kings and their current annual dividend yield is 3.05%.

So to make $5,200 per year or $100 per week just from dividend income with Target, you would need to invest, wait for it, $170,491.

So I would give this category five willies.

The capital investment needed to make a significant income from dividend payouts alone is quite high.

Even still, any money is better than none and you can kind of think of it as a tree that grows really, really slowly, but steadily.

And finally, difficulty to maintain.

I would give this zero willies if I could.

We'll give it half a willie because you might wanna check it on your stocks to see how they're doing every now and then.

But even then, the long game is the best way to go for almost all investors.

So dividend stocks are certified passive.

Final note on dividend stocks because I like to insert my little personal opinion here.

I personally elect for all of my dividends to be automatically reinvested because I'd rather just have that money stay in the market and work for me for longer since I'm young and I can have a lot of years for it to grow.

I would probably recommend doing the same if you're young and you have all that time.

But at the same time, if you do have enough income invested for your dividend payouts to earn you a significant income, I can also see that being a really nice cashflow to have.

So whatever works for you, that's just what I do.

And none of that was financial advice, I think I have to say.

All right, let's jump into our second passive income stream.

And this one leans a lot more on the fun and creative side.

So I'm excited to talk about this one.

And it is print-on-demand.

So what is print-on-demand?

Basically, it's a way to create custom merch like T-shirts, posters, mugs, totes, you name it, without needing to hold inventory because the product is printed and shipped only after the order is placed.

It's kind of like drop shipping for custom merch.

Whereas with typical merch fulfillment, the products are created before the orders come in in anticipation for the demand.

So it's a really great option for entrepreneurs and creators and side hustlers who want to sell custom merch without having to estimate demand or hold inventory.

And for me personally, merch is something I've wanted to do for a long time, but there are two things that have just kind of made me put it on the back burner forever.

And that is, one, finding a good fulfillment and production partner seemed like a really daunting task, and so I just never did it.

And two, I literally don't have space to hold inventory in my New York City apartment in the event that I did any of the fulfillment myself.

But print-on-demand solves those problems.

So I can show you exactly how to do this, and I'm very lucky to have the world's largest print-on-demand network with over 140 production hubs in 32 countries, Gelato, sponsoring this portion of today's video.

So I'm gonna use their platform to walk you through this process, and it's gonna be awesome.

Anyone can do this.

You don't have to be a creator with a big following.

There are people making thousands per month on Etsy by selling custom pet merch and lots of other things, which Gelato fulfills for them.

So if we browse through their product catalog, you can see there are lots of different categories.

I'm gonna do mug because I like to drink copious amounts of coffee.

Just gonna drop in a picture of the love of my life.

This is how it would look.

Absolutely perfect.

And that's it.

Super quick, easy example.

Plus, you can see that you get 50% off your first order.

So if you're ordering a sample to quality check, 50% off makes it pretty reasonable.

Now, this is just an item that I would love for myself.

I like to think everyone loves Willie as much as I do, but if I wanted to sell custom merch, here's what I could do.

So I just made three really quick custom pet templates.

I used Willie, obviously, but I put your pet's name here so people can visualize what theirs would look like.

And because Gelato integrates seamlessly with so many providers like Etsy, Shopify, a ton more, I could post these three things for sale on my Etsy shop directly from here.

And one of the things that makes your life so much easier is that when the orders come in on Etsy, they're fulfilled directly, automatically through Gelato.

They do the printing and shipping for you literally while you sleep, once those orders come in.

So a thought that I had that you might also have is with the print-on-demand model, does that mean that shipping times and lead times are a lot longer since you don't already have the item ready to go when the order comes in?

Well, it turns out 90% of Gelato orders arrive within five days of ordering, and 90% are produced locally because they have so many global print providers, which kind of blew me away.

Let's say your Etsy customer lives in Australia.

Gelato will find its nearest print partner in Australia to produce and then ship locally that item.

So to bring print-on-demand back into the context of passive income, let's run it through our evaluation metrics.

So difficulty to start, I would give two willies.

Of course, there's gonna be some time and creativity involved upfront because you've gotta make the designs and you have to make them good, otherwise they won't sell.

But with such sophisticated platforms like Gelato with a ton of customization and functionality, it's honestly easier than ever to get a shop up and running without even having to make a financial investment, besides probably ordering a sample for the thing that you wanna sell just to check for quality, you know?

So it's very low risk with this model to start.

You don't even need a proof of concept.

Okay, difficulty to make $100 per week.

I've been doing a lot of research on this, and here are some interesting facts.

So merchants with 10 to 50 products have an average of 7.5 times the revenue compared to merchants with less than 10 products.

So it behooves you to have a lot of things up for sale, which you can do using this method with no additional cost.

So combining the low risk nature of starting this and the ability to scale it globally, my research deems it very doable to make $100 per week doing this if you have a creative design.

So let's give this category two and a half willies.

And finally, difficulty to maintain.

I would give this two willies because you're probably gonna wanna post more items for sale as time goes on and monitor your sales, which is some time investment.

But for the most part, once the designs are created and up for sale, it is quite passive.

So if you're interested in trying this for yourself, you can try Gelato for free and get 50% off your first order if it's placed within 72 hours of creating your account using my link in the description below.

And thank you to Gelato for enlightening me on print-on-demand.

All right, jumping into our third passive income stream, I'm also excited to talk about this one.

Kind of excited to talk about all of them.

And it's to create a digital product.

So this is something that you create once like a budgeting template or an ebook or an online course or a video scripting template, you name it.

But before talking about a brainstorming exercise that you could do to figure out what you should make, let's talk about a few of the reasons why digital products are such a great business model for passive income.

The first is really low overhead costs.

So similar to print-on-demand where you're not holding inventory, a digital product is something that exists on the interwebs.

So there's no production or shipping costs or any other logistic constraints that you typically have with a physical product.

And with those low overhead costs and no physical inventory comes a really great ability to scale globally.

It can be sold repeatedly without additional ongoing costs, which also typically means a higher profit margin because your cost is basically zero besides the time and effort put into making the thing.

And finally, it is easy to update.

So let's say you have a bonus chapter for your ebook or a bonus module that you wanna add later.

You can do that with a digital product, which is pretty cool.

Okay, so those are some reasons that I'm such a proponent of digital products, but the hard part is making something that people will actually buy.

The key is to create something valuable that your audience actually needs, whether it's sharing your expertise or a tool.

Same with YouTube videos.

So for example, let's say you're a content creator that focuses on personal finance and entrepreneurship.

Maybe there's a budgeting template that you made and show in your videos that your audience asks you for.

Or if you're a cook and you wanna share all of your recipes in one place, a downloadable ebook could be a great option.

Or an online course is a really great business model for people who have expertise in one particular subject and wanna consolidate all of their knowledge in one place via typically video modules.

But what if you're not a creator that's already in a specific niche and you're trying to figure out what digital product to make?

Again, going back to providing value, whether it's your expertise or a tool, think about what you specifically could provide value on.

What is your competitive advantage?

That's where I would start.

How you can transform something that you are extra good at into a tool that someone else could use.

So, difficulty to start.

I would give this one and a half willies.

Really anyone with a phone or a laptop could do this.

That's the beauty of it being digital.

The hard part is what comes next.

And that is actually making something that's worth buying and making sales.

So without focusing on the $100 metric just for a second, let's talk broadly about how difficult it is to make any money at all doing this.

The reality is for you to be successful with a digital product, it has to be genuinely very good because it is such a competitive space.

There are just so many digital products out there, a lot of which are free.

So yours has to stand out in some way for it to actually move.

And as I think about market entry, I usually think about something being first, different, or better.

Obviously those are not mutually exclusive categories, but let's say your digital product is first.

It's the first of its kind on your market.

You have a first mover advantage there.