How I Made Almost $10k Passive Income Online in 2021

by Vivian Yeung | Business Tips, Make More Money, Passive Income Ideas

How to Make $10k from Home Beginner Passive Income Online

“It will be better next year”, they say. “2021 will be our year”, they say.

After a massive year in 2020, probably like you, I seriously thought things can’t get any worse. Well, they did… The year started off alright in 2021 but it quickly went downhill after a few months. It was definitely very disheartening to look at my site traffic continuing to drop and it dropped A LOT! It was almost like dejavu except it was WORSE than when covid first hit the world.

BUT I’m happy to say that my passive income massively exceeded last year’s revenue! In fact, I almost doubled it. It was just over $5k in 2020 and this time I was a few hundred dollars away from $10k. Man, that was so close! I really wanted to hit that $10k but I know I’ll get there 😉 Despite everything, I’m super proud of what I’ve achieved and I’d love to share a few things I’ve learned along the way!

FTC disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through my links.

Without further ado, here’s a breakdown of my passive income in 2021.

1, Selling Art on Print-on-demand Websites ($45.72)

No new products have been added to my Society6 store in 2021 so I’m pretty happy with this passive income. The only thing I’ve started doing this year was to make a record of which products are the most popular and I added a “Shop Popular Products” section to showcase the products from Society6. This year’s earnings have more than doubled so it may have been the result of that.

You’re probably thinking this is not much money at all… Yes, but this is $40+ I didn’t have last year and just think about the amount of chicken nuggets you could get with that extra cash 😉

Society6 Income Earnings

Another print-on-demand website I received some passive income from in 2021 was Redbubble. I don’t remember the last time I updated my designs and apparently I sold something in December which was a nice surprise. YAY for $2 here and there!

Redbubble Income Earnings

2, Affiliate Marketing ($1624.83)

As much as I love affiliate marketing, I wish I could find products that are more evergreen. I started off with a lot of products that get sold out very quickly so the links sometimes don’t go to the right place. That means I always need to check and update them if I want to get the most out of it. The goal is for me to have to do zero work after it’s been set up lol I need to find more evergreen products but until then I’m happy with the extra income from affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing just means you’re getting a kickback for every product/service you recommend to people. You probably already do that with your friends and family on a daily basis so why not actually get paid for it!? This is one of my favourite ways of generating passive income with my website because all I do is suggest a product I already love to my readers and there’s no obligation for people to buy unless they love it too! It’s a win-win situation for sure!

3, Displaying Ads on Your Website ($8029.61)

Joining Ezoic late 2019 was one of the best things I’ve ever done and this company has been a huge part of my passive income journey. Not to say that it has been easy since my site traffic started declining again which means ad revenue went down too.

However, Ezoic launched their video ad player and I wish I had done it sooner! By implementing the video ads at the end of April, my overall site traffic and ad revenue started going up again!

Besides the addition of video ads, I reviewed my most viewed blog posts and added more ad placeholders. By doing those things, I saw an increase in search ranking results, site traffic and ad revenue. I did that for a few weekends until I couldn’t find any more things to do lol As you can see in the month of July, my ad income actually went up more than tripled the previous months. That’s so crazy! I couldn’t believe it!!

Ezoic Income Earnings

It gets me super pumped looking at these numbers because if you look at my passive income report from 2020, you’d see a massive revenue increase and I’m seriously SO excited to see what my site can do in the next years to come!

If you’re looking for a way to make money with your website, click here to try Ezoic now!

Passive Income Breakdown for 2021

Well, there you have it! That’s how I made almost $10k last year and I’m believing to hit even more goals in 2022!

P.S. At the time of writing this blog post, my Pepperjam income in January alone has already exceeded the entire last year’s revenue which is so freaking exciting! Can’t wait to share my passive income report with you all then!