Work from home business ideas to create passive income in South Africa
A lot of people work hard every day but hardly ever get the time to enjoy their money because their income is directly tied to the time they spend working.
For example, a consultant’s income is tied to the number of clients they see. The moment they take a break, they stop earning.
Passive income is not correlated to time, it just keeps flowing, even when you’re sleeping. Having several passive income streams is probably the best way to create financial freedom that you can actually enjoy.
You can take vacations, spend time with your family, work from home instead of going to an office. The fact that you’re not working all the time does not mean that you’re not making money.
Passive income enables you to live your best life without affecting your cash flow. This article will go over 20 legit business ideas that can help you create passive income in SA.
Related: Growth Hacking Tools: How to get a free website, domain, hosting and business emails
Top 20 make money from home passive income ideas
1. Write an e-book
You can choose to either write the e-book yourself or hire a ghostwriter, and then take credit as the author. Many writers do that.
Once you publish it on platforms like the Amazon Kindle Store, you’ll keep earning money from its sales perpetually without much work.
2. Create an online course
Just like writing an e-book, selling an online course can be a fantastic passive income stream. You can create a course on almost anything you’re good at, whether it’s cooking, drawing or sewing clothes.
The majority of the work goes into putting together the course, but once it’s published on platforms like Teachable and Udemy, students who enroll get access to the resources you already created without any further work from you.
3. Car rental
Car rental can be a great source of passive income if you have a car you’re not using. You’ll first need to get a commercial insurance and a reliable tracking device for security. Similarly, you can employ a full-time driver and then put the car on Uber.
4. Rent out a room in your home in Airbnb
Airbnb is a marketplace for travelers looking for local places to stay. If you have a spare room in your home, you can furnish it and then post it on the platform. It’s a great way to make money from a room you’re not using while meeting people from all over the world.
5. Start a blog
If you happen to be a good writer, one of the best ways you can monetize your skills is by starting a blog.
The blog can be on literally any topic of your choosing, whether that’s health and fitness, finance, marketing, or even animal care. It doesn’t really matter what niche you select (well, as long as it has demand).
Blogs can be monetized in many ways, including ads and affiliate marketing. It’s one of the best ways to make passive income in South Africa.
6. Sell stock photos
If you have a decent smartphone camera, you can take photos of yourself posing in different scenarios, and then publish them on platforms like Shutterstock. Every time someone uses your photos, you get paid a commission.
If your photos are unique enough, you can keep earning from them forever without doing anything.
7. Get paid to unlock your phone for ads
You can use money making apps like Slidejoy to rent out your phone’s lock screen for ads to be displayed on.
8. Drop shipping
Drop shipping is a product fulfillment method where sellers don’t keep stock of the products they’re selling. They simply advertise them with a hiked price; whenever someone places an order, they simultaneously order the product from a supplier and then ship it directly to them.
The majority work that goes into setting up a drop shipping business is building an e-commerce store where customers can buy the products.
9. Sell outsourced services online
Selling outsourced services is similar to drop shipping in the sense that you are advertising services that you’re not going to fulfill yourself.
Whenever you get a client, you simply outsource the work to a freelancer, and keep the margin on top.
10. Get a savings account
This is probably the most passive of all the ideas discussed. All you need to do is open a saving account with a bank that offers high returns, and then deposit money.
11. Invest in stocks
Investing in stocks in many cases is a long-term strategy that can be very profitable if you have the patience. Some of the wealthiest people in the world like Warrant Buffet built their riches by investing in stocks.
12. Invest in cryptocurrency
Although the crypto market is typically not as stable as the stock market, you can dedicate a small portion of your investment capital to coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
13. Invest in crowd funded real estate projects
Crowd funded real estate projects are a great way to invest in real estate with a relatively small capital. Once the projects have been completed, you can either get shares or a commission from the income the property generates.
You can find crowd funded projects on platforms like and Fundrise and RealtyMogul.
14. Invest in a small business
Many small businesses could do with extra cash to scale their operations. You can become an angel investor for a small business that looks promising, and every month or quarter you get paid a commission from the business’ sales.
15. Lending
Peer-to-peer lending can be a great passive income opportunity if you set up the right structures that mitigate risks of defaulting. As the lender, you earn your income through the interests accrued on the loans.
16. Vending machines
Although vending machines are expensive to buy, they can be very profitable businesses if strategically placed in secure and high traffic locations such as malls.
17. Open a self-storage facility
A self-storage facility provides space that people can rent to store their personal and business belongings. The main requirement for such a business is reliable security (which you can also outsource to a third party company).
18. Become a social media influencer
Becoming a social media influencer is often easier said than done. You’ll first have to come up with a theme for your page, and then consistently post relatable content to grow your following. If your theme is fitness then most of your posts have to be related to fitness.
You can grow your page organically by posting consistently or by running paid ads. Once you have a decent number of followers, you can then start charging for sponsored posts.
19. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways of making money online. You can use your social media pages, blog or YouTube channel to promote the affiliate products and get paid any time someone makes a purchase using your link. Check out the top 20 affiliate programs in South Africa.
20. Buy a website that already has traffic from Flippa
Flippa is a marketplace for people looking to buy or sell websites. You can find some great deals on sites that are already getting decent traffic, and grow them further by adding more content.
High traffic websites can be monetized by through ads, writing sponsored content, affiliate marketing, and many other ways.
