Passive income is money that can be earned without spending too much time or effort working. It’s one of the best income streams you can have since it won’t interfere with your day job as an engineer.
Passive income is a long-term investment that requires short-term sacrifices. You could make thousands if you are willing to put the time and effort into building the income stream.
It is not a magic money-making system that will make you rich overnight. However, it can give you decent returns and allow you to work less over time.
In this article, we shall be looking at 22 passive income side hustles that you can start as an engineer. Although the ideas are all outside of the engineering niche, they’re all fairly easy to start and manage – even if you have no prior experience.
22 Profitable Side Hustles for Engineers
1. Sell advertising space on your website
Do you have a website for your engineering practice? If so, then you can monetize it by placing ads using Google Adsense.
Once you sign up on Adsense, you’ll be required to insert some code on your website. Your developer can do that, it takes just a minute. The code enables Google to automatically place ads across your pages. Depending on how large your traffic is, you could be looking at thousands of dollars each month in passive income.
2. Peer-to-peer lending
Peer-to peer lending has seen a rise in popularity over the past few years. It can be a great way to make extra money if you have enough cash to get started with
P2P lending allows you to lend money to people who may not be eligible for traditional loans. You can charge interest until the loan is fully repaid, just like a bank.
It’s important to remember that P2P lending is a high-risk investment. The borrowers might not always be able to repay you. To help mitigate the risks, you can use P2P lending sites that screen loan seekers before allowing them to borrow, such as Prosper.
3. Invest in REITs
A real estate investment trust, also known as a REIT, is a great way to get into real estate with a relatively small capital.
These investments usually pay dividends from the income generated from a collection of properties. Once you invest your money, you just have to sit back and wait for your quarterly or annual checks. It doesn’t get any more passive than that.
4. Invest in dividend stocks
Investing in high-yield dividend stocks is another great way to make passive income as an engineer. You should consider hiring a broker if you aren‘t an expert on the stock market.
Stock investments are very risky and you can lose more than what you invested if you’re not careful. Make sure to get professional advice or take enough time to study the market.
5. Start an engineering blog
Blogs are a great way to make money quickly and with minimal effort. You can start a blog that covers topics in the engineering niche, and then hire freelancers to write your content. Once your blog starts getting traffic, you’ll be able to make passive income through ads and affiliate sales.
6. Write an e-book
Although publishing blog posts can be a great passive income strategy, writing an e-book is even better because you only have to do it once.
Kindle Direct Publishing makes it very easy to self-publish e-books and get access to millions of Amazon customers. Every time somebody buys your book, Amazon takes a small cut and then pays you the rest.
7. Get into affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a partnership with other companies in order to promote and showcase their products or services to your audience. You earn a commission every time someone clicks on your affiliate links and visits their sites.
This is a fantastic business idea for people with a medium-large following on social media or on a blog. You can sign up on affiliate networks like CJ Affiliate and Clickbank to find products to start promoting.
8. Become a silent partner in a business
You can become a silent partner in a business if you want to start your own business but lack the expertise or time. As a silent partner, you won’t be responsible for the day-to-day operations but will be expected to provide financial support.
After you invest, you will receive a portion of the profits each month. You’ll also get a percentage of ownership in the company. You can also use platforms like Mainvest to find small businesses that are looking to find investors.
9. Create an online course
This is another fantastic side hustle for engineers. You can create an online course on any topic you’re knowledgeable and passionate about. That could literally be anything, from cooking to public speaking.
Once the course is created and uploaded to platforms like Teachable, students will be able to enroll and access the content without any further work from you.
10. Sell stock photos
You don’t need to be a professional photographer to make money selling stock photos. As long as you know how to take a good photo, and have a smartphone with decent camera quality, then you’re good to go.
You can sign up on platforms like Adobe Stock, Shutterstock and Alamy to sell your work. Whenever someone licenses your photos, you get paid a small commission.
11. Pay someone to build you an app
Do you have an app idea that could be worth millions? Perhaps something that helps solve common challenges engineers frequently face?
If so, then you can either pay a freelancer to build the app for you or use no-code tools to build it yourself. Once your app is live, you’ll be able to make money by either charging a subscription fee, charging for downloads or placing ads.
12. Rent out your car
If you don’t plan on using your car for a while, or if you’ve got more than one car, you can rent them out on Turo, a platform that is like Airbnb for cars.
13. Rent out your driveway
Through Neighbour, you could also make passive income by renting out your garage or driveway. Parking spaces in big cities are expensive and people will pay a lot to have a safe place to park their cars.
14. Rent out unused storage space
Do you have a garage or spare room that you’re not using? Renting out your space to others could help you make some extra money. You could earn $100-$600 renting your garage on Neighbour.
15. Airbnb
It would be impossible to list passive income side hustles without mentioning Airbnb, the world-famous home-sharing platform. This idea is not for everyone, but if you have a spare bedroom, holiday home, or any other “residence”, you might be missing out on some amazing returns!
16. Sell advertising space on your car
Through platforms like Carverise, Wrapify, and Vugo, you can make up to $1,500 by simply selling advertising space on your car.
Although it might not be very fashionable to drive around in a moving billboard, this is one of the easiest and most passive ways to make money.
17. Dropshipping
Dropshipping allows you to easily set up an online store and make money selling products you don’t even own. It can be an incredibly profitable side hustle for engineers.
All you need to do is create an online store on Shopify, and then create listings for products you can source through cheap suppliers like AliExpress. Whenever somebody places an order, you then use their money to buy it from the supplier and then have it shipped directly to them.
18. Start a print-on-demand business
This idea also uses the dropshipping model in the sense that you don’t need to keep an inventory of the items you’re selling.
Many print-on-demand websites like Printify allow you to turn cool graphic designs into trendy t-shirts and other products like mugs and even smartphone cases. Whenever you sell any product, they handle the product fulfillment for you.
Your only job will be marketing to drive traffic to your website, however you can also outsource that to freelancers.
19. Use reward cards or cashback sites
A lot of credit cards offer a cashback program that allows you to get a return on everyday purchases. And if you’re a person that enjoys online shopping, you can sign up on Rakuten and get up to 8% cashback on your purchases from different vendors.
Although this idea might not necessarily be a side hustle, it is still a fantastic way to make money through activities you’re already doing anyway.
20. Start a vending machine business
This is a great small business idea that is easy to start and very profitable – although it can be capital intensive. You simply need to buy a vending machine and then place it in a busy location with good security. To keep the machine stocked, you can hire an attendant.
21. Start an engineering channel on YouTube
If you have an outgoing personality and are great in front of a camera, then YouTube is a potential source of passive income.
Although it may take some time to build enough viewers to monetize your YouTube channel’s content, ads and affiliate marketing can help you make substantial revenue.
YouTube’s earnings will depend on how many subscribers you have, how much engagement you get, and how many viewers you have. Most YouTubers earn $0.01 to $0.03 per ad view.
22. Actively grow your social media following and then charge for sponsored posts
Do you know that you can make money by simply having a strong social media presence? If you have anywhere between 1,000 and 5,000 followers, there are many brands that would pay you to promote their products/services to your audience.
