5 Passive Income Ideas for Bloggers

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When I first started blogging back in 2009 (gosh I feel old just writing that haha), I didn’t even know that making money from a blog was possible. Of course, things were a lot different back then – the blogging scene has changed a lot! – but even if monetisation options were as they are now, I wouldn’t have started a blog with the idea of making money from it.

These days, there are lots of ways to make some extra dollars, so I thought I’d share some passive income ideas for bloggers, in the hopes that it at least gets you thinking a little bit about the possibilities and options you have.

These are passive income ideas, meaning that you can set them up and let them be – mostly. No money-making endeavour is ever truly passive. You’ll need to update things, make sure they’re still working, create content … but on the whole, the ideas listed below are largely passive.

👉🏻 Psst keep scrolling to see some less-than-passive ideas, too!

5 Passive Income Ideas for Blogging

1. Affiliate Marketing
2. Digital Products
3. Online Courses or Workshops
4. Ad Revenue
5. Stock photography

Affiliate Marketing

A quick and easy way to start making a passive income for blogging is through affiliate marketing. This is when you have a unique link and you promote a product that you haven’t made or aren’t selling yourself, and if you make a sale with that link, you receive a commission.

It’s a great way to quickly get set up, though you do have to be approved for many affiliate programmes. It can take time to build up the traffic you need to your blog in order for people to click those links and you to make sales/commission, but if you start straight away then you’ll have the most time possible as you begin to grow your blog.

Just remember to apply for programmes that actually suit your niche, and that you can link to a lot in your posts and pages.

Some affiliate marketing programmes to check out: 

• Amazon Associates
• Canva Affiliate
• Creator programmes (for example, I’m an affiliate for Antia Dkystra’s Passive Profit with Pinterest)
• Tailwind for Pinterest scheduling
• Affiliate websites like Awin or Impact

Digital products

Doesn’t matter what niche you’re in, a digital product is likely to work for you. Create it once, pop it on your website or on somewhere like Etsy, and you can pretty much leave it. You’ll need to drive traffic to the links, but you don’t have to create the product every time. And that’s how it’s passive.

💡 Check out my Etsy store for blogging guides, tools and resources!

Online courses

If you want to take your digital products to the next level, why not look into creating a course? You’ll need to know a lot about your subject (but hey, you have a blog on it, right?), and a way to either film videos or display written material (I recommend doing both if you can).

The beauty of an online course is that you can create it once, like a digital product, then just check over it every year or so, topic-dependant of course, to see if it needs updates. Make sure you break up your modules or sections into small-ish chunks so that people can digest them easily and aren’t overwhelmed by the content.

💡 Check out ThriveCart Learn if you’re looking for a pay-once tool for selling courses and digital products.

Ad Revenue

Ads are a funny one. I’ve never had ads on my blog until the end of 2024 when I decided to give them a go. I don’t love having ads on my site, but I was interested in seeing what the revenue would be like if I turned them on. It’s slow but steady.

Most sites will have ads on these days, and it is a really popular way of making money online. This one really is passive, but you do need to sign up to an ad agency. I’m with Mediavine but there are a bunch of different ones you could try.

Most will have a minimum traffic requirement, meaning you need to have at least X-number of visitors to your blog every month in order to apply. Check out Journey by Mediavine if you have around 10,000 monthly sessions; they launched this small version of Mediavine in 2024 to accommodate smaller blogs (the usual Medavine is 50,000 monthly sessions).

🔥 Hot Tip: Focus on creating high-quality blog posts that are evergreen so you’re driving traffic to them all year round.

Stock photography

If you love photography, then stock photography is something you could get into. You’re taking the photos once and then packaging them on your website for sale (or on Etsy or similar). People need photos for their sites and socials, but they often don’t have the time or ability to take their own. Or not all the time anyway.

This would work well if you’re a particular niche. So maybe you’re in business, so you create flat lay desk photographs, or you’re a travel blogger with a focus on cities, or you’re a beauty blogger taking photos for your fellow beauty bloggers or websites. Take them once, drive traffic, sell them.

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Bonus: 4 ideas for making money that are less passive

Of course, there are other ways to make money blogging, and they’re not all passive. These ones require some work at your end, more so that than the ones listed above.

1. Membership Sites
2. Stock Photography
3. Subscriptions for Exclusive Content
4. Sponsored Content/Brand Deals

Start a membership

Want to take that course to the next level? Why not start a membership? This is definitely not passive but is a really fun way to stay creative every month or quarter, build community, and help those in your niche who need some support.

👉🏻 Check out The Blogging Room membership if you’re struggling to grow and maintain a successful blog!

Subscriptions for exclusive content

Another way to make some money online with your blog is to set up either a mailing list or something like a Patreon to offer readers additional blog content that they wouldn’t otherwise get. Make sure you deliver what you promise, and have an easy way for people to sign up.

Sponsored Content/Brand Deals

Sponsored content is when a business or company or brand will sponsor you (read: pay you) for your to either put a link on your blog post, or review a product/talk about a product on your blog. Paying for links like this is frowned upon/Google doesn’t like it, so be careful when you’re doing this. A brand might pay you for reviewing a product, or give you a link that means you get a commission.

You need to ensure you have tagged any sponsored links with <sponsored> within the link either way.

 

So what do you think? Do any of these passive income ideas for bloggers take your fancy? What about the ones that are less passive? I’d love to hear from you and how you make some money with your blog! Drop a comment below and let’s chat about it.