Are you a college student that wants to make money online and not lose your entire time? No college degree or lengthy experience is required for earning passive income Some of the most profitable online money-makers, in fact, started as teenagers dabbling with side hustles. Based on personal experience, I’ve taken a handful of ideas that turned into millions of dollars of semi-passive income — money that continues to flow long after the work has been completed. In this post, I’m going to give you seven of the best passive income streams you can start today (these are for students, but for anyone, really)!
1. Posting Incognito Video Content on YouTube
Imagine owning a YouTube channel that earns millions of views while never revealing your face. “Faceless” YouTube channels are a gold mine and over the past 3 years I’ve run over 12 of them based on content marketing strategy and I’ve earned tens of thousands a month from ads alone. Choose a niche such as travel, finance, fitness, and so on—they are evergreen topics with high demand and above-average earnings per view. Study the best channels in your niche, write videos that deliver value (with ChatGPT, or hire writers from Upwork) and edit in free programs (like Open Shot or iMovie). Add an ElevenLabs AI voiceover, optimize it with VidIQ, and bam, once you have around 4000 watch hours and 1000 subscribers, join the YouTube Partner Program to get ad revenue.
2. Running Non-Personified Instagram Accounts
Forget the influencer lifestyle of constant selfies. Non-personified Instagram accounts center around a niche — think pets, business, etc. — and grow by posting curated or original content. Then use these tools like Snappa, post it, get reposted, typically you can adapt popular(page) with this guide and boost your followers. Brands also pay for shoutouts when you get a few thousand followers—advertising posts that could earn you some serious cash at milestones like 10,000 or 100,000 followers.
3. Orchestrating Anonymous TikTok Accounts
No longer just for dancing, TikTok is now also about reading. Faceless theme pages do well here, with vertical videos typically less than a few minutes long. The process is similar to YouTube and Instagram: choose a niche, make edits with basic tools and rehash/create content. After you build a following, you can make money in affiliate links by listing products in your bio.
4. Collaborative Commission Marketing
This method takes affiliate marketing, and adds a little spin — find the top paying products for platforms like DigiStore24. Market these on your YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok. One YouTube video (with 10k views) selling a $1,000 product (50% commission) could make you $500 per sale. The consistency of this traffic then makes it a passive goldmine.
5. YouTube Associate Marketing
For ongoing returns anytime someone views this content — pair a YouTube channel with some affiliate software, VidIQ, ElevenLabs, etc. Make videos that demonstrate tools like “Best AI Video Editors,” with affiliate links. If you promote a software that has lifetime recurring payouts, when someone signs up, you get paid monthly as long as they continue to use it.
6. Theme Pages with Affiliate Marketing
Start theme pages on IG or TikTok and repurpose short-form video content across Youtube Shorts, IG Reels. In your bio, link to affiliate items Other programs (like Tube Mastery) even share NO-cost shorts to repost—talk about a win-win.
7. Digital Journaling Commission Marketing
Consider this blogging with a focus. Create a WordPress site and host it with WPX, write content based around your niche with idea generation tools like Answer The Public. Promote high-payout affiliate products, get ad revenue through Google AdSense or Ezoic. Turn your YouTube scripts into unique blog posts for added traffic.
Conclusion
The dream of passive income is not something that needs to be out of reach. By following these seven streams (that are derived from my own journey as a high school side-hustler turned multi-million earner), you can start to build wealth today. Choose one, act upon it, then enjoy the dividends for years to come.