10+ Ways YOU Can Make Passive Income With No Money

A few years ago Alston Godbolt was in the same spot most people start from. He wanted to make money online, felt the pull of what the internet could do, and had absolutely nothing to spend to get there. No advertising budget. No fancy gear. No paid software. What he found was that the barrier was not money at all. It was not knowing which door to walk through first.

In this video, Alston walks through 10 of the 13 passive income paths he tested personally or researched deeply before filming. Every method in this list requires time and real effort, but zero dollars upfront. His honest note throughout is that once income starts coming in, you should reinvest it right back into whatever you are building. Whether that means buying a domain name, upgrading your recording setup, or taking a paid course, that reinvestment is what turns a side income into something serious.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A breakdown of 10 tested passive income methods that cost nothing to start
The specific dollar numbers behind the service arbitrage play (charge $500, subcontract for $100, pocket $400)
Which platform Alston used to build AWS courses two years ago that still generate monthly checks today
The exact YouTube thresholds you must hit before Google pays you ad revenue
Where to list your existing photos so they sell as stock repeatedly without extra work
Why affiliate content keeps earning long after you stop touching it
How to find which of these methods matches your current skills at finder.platformproof.com

Way 1: Write an E-Book

The e-book market is large and the entry cost is zero. You pick a topic you already know, research it further if you need to, and write. Once the finished product exists, it can live on multiple platforms at the same time. Amazon Kindle gives you access to one of the biggest reading audiences in the world from the moment you publish. You can also release your e-book as PLR content, which stands for private label rights. With the PLR model, you write the book once, list it on a site, and buyers get the rights to purchase it and resell it in different formats. You collect money on every sale while the buyer handles the downstream distribution and marketing.

The topic does not need to be anything exotic. Alston’s point is that you can write 200 pages on almost any subject you already understand. If you have library access or internet access, you can do some basic research, combine it with what you already know, and package it in a format readers can follow. Once the e-book is live, the only ongoing task is promotion. That can happen through social media, through a free blog, through a YouTube channel, or through whatever audience you already have. None of those promotional methods require spending money.

Way 2: Sell Your Photos Online

If you take photos of landscapes, cities, travel spots, food, or everyday scenes, you likely have sellable inventory sitting on your phone or hard drive right now. Stock photo platforms let you upload your images, tag them, and list them for purchase. Bloggers, marketers, and content creators browse these platforms constantly looking for images that match their message. Alston mentions that he personally buys stock photos when he finds ones that fit his blog content. When someone downloads your image, you earn money. When someone else downloads it later, you earn again. The same photo can generate income indefinitely with no additional work from you after the initial upload.

Setting this up takes a few hours at most. You create accounts on stock photo platforms, upload your strongest shots with accurate tags and descriptions, and let the marketplace do the work. You do not need professional camera equipment to get started. Many stock sites accept high-quality smartphone photos. The subjects with the broadest commercial appeal tend to be nature, architecture, food, people in work settings, and everyday objects that businesses might need for presentations or websites. The strategy is to upload consistently and let your portfolio grow over time.

Way 3: Web Design, Web Hosting, and Service Arbitrage

Web design was the specific skill that first started generating online income for Alston. While design work itself is active, it opens a path to something much more passive: web hosting revenue. When you build a site for a client, you bundle hosting into the package. You set up their account, charge a recurring fee monthly or annually, and the client stays on your plan for years. Alston makes the point that most website owners will not switch hosting providers unless they are genuinely angry about the service. Land the client once, provide solid uptime and responsive support, and that hosting fee keeps arriving month after month with no additional work on your part.

The more immediate money-maker in this space is service arbitrage, and the numbers in the video are concrete. You find a client who needs a website or a logo. You quote them $500, which is a reasonable and competitive rate for most small businesses. Then you post the project on Fiverr, Thumbtack, or Upwork, and hire a freelancer to do the actual work for $100. You review the deliverable, hand it off to the client, and pocket $400 for roughly one to two hours of your time managing the project. Logo design works exactly the same way. You do not need any design skill yourself. You need to know how to find clients who need design work and how to post a clear brief on a freelance platform so a skilled designer can fulfill it.

The passive element is the hosting recurring revenue. The arbitrage itself is active work, but it is high hourly value work. Once your hosting clients are established and running smoothly, that income runs in the background every month while you pursue other projects or other arbitrage deals. The two components, active arbitrage and passive hosting, work well together as a business model.

Way 4: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the model Alston returns to most consistently in the video, and the mechanics are worth understanding fully. A person has a problem. They search for a solution on Google or YouTube or Facebook. They land on your content. They click your affiliate link and buy the product or service you recommended. You earn a commission. You never held inventory, never shipped anything, never handled a return, and never dealt with a customer complaint. The seller manages all of that. Your job was to create content that matched the right searcher with the right solution at the right moment.

What makes affiliate marketing genuinely passive is the permanence of the content. A blog post you write today will appear in search results months and years from now. A YouTube video you publish this week will keep accumulating views and generating link clicks long after you have moved on to creating other content. Each piece of content is an asset that earns without requiring your ongoing attention. Those assets compound. Every new piece you add increases the total number of entry points bringing people into your affiliate links.

The largest affiliate program available is Amazon Associates, which connects you to the Amazon product catalog. Because Amazon sells practically everything, there is a relevant product to recommend in almost every niche imaginable. Alston makes a deliberate point in the video: no niche is too small. He uses underwater basket-weaving as a joking example, but the logic is real. If a group of people searches for something consistently, there is affiliate income potential there. Even a tiny audience of committed buyers in a narrow niche can generate steady commissions from a small set of well-targeted content pieces.

Way 5: Video Marketing

Video marketing is what Alston is actively doing in the video itself. You create content on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, or any platform that accepts video uploads, and you build an audience around a specific topic. Inside the video and in the description, you can embed affiliate links, promote your own services, recommend products, or point viewers toward a course you sell. Each video you post becomes a searchable, shareable asset. An old video that continues to rank in YouTube search or get shared in Facebook groups keeps sending new viewers to your affiliate links and offers without any additional work from you.

YouTube adds a separate income layer through Google AdSense. To qualify for the YouTube Partner Program and start earning ad revenue, you need to reach 1,000 subscribers and accumulate 4,000 watch hours. Those are the thresholds Alston cites in the video. Once you cross them and get accepted into the program, YouTube inserts ads into your videos and pays you a share of the revenue those ads generate. That ad revenue is passive in the truest sense: it runs on old videos, new videos, and videos you filmed and forgot about, as long as people keep watching them.

Not sure which passive income method fits your actual skills and schedule?

Take the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com and get a specific recommendation in under two minutes.

Way 6: Start a Blog

Blogging is free to start if you use a free platform. Alston specifically recommends WordPress.com as the starting point, with Wix as an alternative. Both give you a real, indexable website that search engines can discover and rank. Once you have content published and early traffic arriving, you can embed affiliate links inside your posts and earn commissions when readers click and buy. The posts you write today will continue generating clicks and commissions for years, particularly if they rank well for their target search terms.

When you eventually move to self-hosted blogging, you gain access to a broader range of monetization options. You can place banner ads through Google AdSense or other ad networks directly on your site, and those ads generate income from every visitor without requiring any specific action from the reader beyond showing up. Self-hosted blogging requires a domain and a paid hosting plan, but the practice is to start free, build an audience, and only make the switch once you have traffic and income that justify the cost. The free platform posts you write now do not disappear when you upgrade later. They become the foundation of the larger site.

Way 7: Create an Online Course

Online course creation is where Alston speaks from the most direct personal experience in the entire video. He built several courses on Amazon Web Services on Udemy, a platform that hosts courses in practically every subject and handles its own search and recommendation. He recorded that content almost two years before filming this video. At the time of recording, he had not logged into those courses or updated them in months. Yet Udemy still sent him a monthly check for new student enrollments. He created the work once. It continues to sell without any ongoing effort from him.

The model works because Udemy’s internal search engine does the distribution. When someone searches for “Amazon Web Services beginner course,” they may find Alston’s course, enroll, and pay. He gets a cut of every enrollment without doing anything beyond the original recording. You can update the course if the material becomes outdated, which is good practice for technical topics, but a course on a stable subject can sell for years with no changes at all.

Alston is direct about the knowledge barrier: you do not need to be an expert. You need to know more than a beginner on the topic and be able to explain it clearly enough that a beginner can follow along and make progress. The information he used for his AWS courses came from publicly available resources he researched and learned himself. No advanced degree. No industry certification required before recording. Udemy and Skillshare are both free to list on. Self-hosted course platforms exist as well if you want full pricing and branding control, though some of those do involve a monthly fee once you are generating meaningful revenue.

Way 8: Launch a Podcast

Podcasting has a practical advantage over both blogging and video content: listeners can consume it while doing something else entirely. Someone commuting to work, cooking dinner, running, or cleaning the house can listen to your podcast. That portability makes podcast listeners among the most consistent and loyal audiences in any medium. Once your show is established and your episode library grows, listeners who find one episode will typically go back and listen to older ones as well. That back catalog keeps generating plays and ad impressions without any work from you on those older episodes.

Monetization on a podcast runs through two main channels. Ad sponsorships pay you a flat fee or a per-listener rate to mention a brand in your episodes. That income scales with your audience size and does not require your listeners to take any action beyond hearing the ad. Affiliate marketing woven into episodes is the second channel: you recommend a product or service in the audio, drop a custom link in the show notes, and earn a commission when listeners buy. Both revenue streams can run simultaneously on the same podcast. The barrier to entry is genuinely low. A smartphone, a free recording app, and a quiet room are enough to produce a listenable first episode.

Way 9: Voiceovers

If you have a clear, warm, or distinctive voice, there is consistent market demand for it. Audible, the Amazon audiobook platform, contracts voice talent to narrate books. Payment comes in one of two forms: royalties per sale or a flat lump sum upfront. Royalties are the more passive option. You record the book once and collect a percentage of every sale for as long as the title remains listed. A lump sum pays immediately and ends there. For a book with staying power, royalties can generate significantly more total income over time. Choosing between the two depends on how long you expect the book to sell and how much you need the immediate payout.

Beyond Audible, freelance platforms like Fiverr, Thumbtack, and Upwork all carry steady demand for voiceover work. Script readings, corporate narration, explainer video voiceovers, and YouTube video narration all appear as recurring gigs. As you build your profile and portfolio on those platforms, clients begin approaching you directly rather than the other way around. Alston’s framing here is that a good voice is a compounding asset. Each recording job adds to your portfolio, adds reviews and ratings to your profile, and makes you more discoverable to the next potential client. The first few gigs take the most effort to land. Subsequent ones arrive with less friction as your reputation builds.

Way 10: Craigslist Buy-and-Sell

Craigslist is a free marketplace where people list products and services they want to buy or sell. In the United States, and in many other countries where the platform operates, it covers a wide range of categories from furniture and electronics to freelance services and vehicles. The opportunity is direct: find underpriced items for sale, purchase them, and relist them at a higher price. Or list a service you can provide, complete the job when clients respond, and repeat. There is no listing fee and no platform commission taken the way eBay or Amazon would charge. The entire transaction margin goes to you.

This method is less passive than most others on this list, but it requires no upfront platform fees and can generate real income within the first week of trying. It is also a valuable training ground for the skills that transfer to more scalable selling later. Reading what people actually want to buy, pricing items accurately, writing descriptions that attract buyers, and handling negotiation effectively are all skills that apply directly to selling on Amazon, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, or your own online store. Craigslist is where you practice all of that with zero risk because you are not paying to list and you are not locked into anything.

Honest Drawbacks to Know Before You Start

None of these methods produce overnight income. Every single one requires consistent effort upfront before the passive element actually kicks in. An e-book needs to be written and then promoted. A course needs to be built and indexed by a platform’s search engine. A blog needs months of published posts before organic search traffic arrives. A podcast needs an episode library before a sponsor will take your pitch seriously. People who quit after two or three weeks of low results never find out what months four and five would have looked like.

The second drawback is that several of these methods scale slowly unless you are producing volume. Selling stock photos generates small amounts per download. That adds up over time, but slowly unless your portfolio contains hundreds of images. Service arbitrage generates solid per-project margins but is not a retirement plan unless you are running multiple projects in parallel. The methods with slower early income often have higher long-term ceilings, but you have to stay patient through the early period when the income feels small relative to the effort you are putting in.

The third drawback is platform dependency. Udemy can adjust its revenue share. YouTube can change its monetization policies. Amazon has already changed its affiliate commission rates more than once. Any platform-dependent income stream carries that risk. Alston’s advice throughout the video is to treat reinvestment seriously once money starts coming in. Build an email list. Buy your own domain. Create assets you control. Platform income is real and worth pursuing, but building something you own alongside it gives you a stable floor that does not disappear when a platform rewrites its rules.

Find Your X

Ten methods is ten decisions. If you are not sure which one fits your current skills, your actual schedule, and the kind of work you can sustain doing, the fastest way to narrow it down is to take the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com. It asks a few targeted questions about what you already know, how you prefer to work, and what kind of income timeline you are working toward, and it points you toward the path most likely to produce results for your specific situation rather than someone else’s.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it actually take to earn the first dollar from these methods?

It depends on the method. Craigslist buy-and-sell can generate income in the first week. Service arbitrage can produce a paycheck within the first month if you land one client. Blogging and course creation typically take three to six months before meaningful income appears because both depend on organic search traffic that builds gradually. The methods with the longest ramp tend to have the highest income ceilings once they are established.

Do I need any technical knowledge to start?

No. Selling photos, writing an e-book, doing voiceovers, and flipping items on Craigslist require no technical background. Web hosting arbitrage requires a basic understanding of how hosting accounts work, which you can learn in a weekend through free tutorials. Affiliate marketing, blogging, and course creation all have extensive free guides online. The methods that require more skill to start are also the ones where that initial learning continues paying off for the longest time.

Can I run more than one of these income streams at the same time?

Yes, and many people do. A natural combination is affiliate marketing through a blog alongside a YouTube channel, since you can repurpose the same research into both formats. Web design arbitrage pairs well with web hosting recurring revenue since you land a client once and keep charging for hosting every month. The practical approach is to get one method generating consistent income before launching a second. Trying to start five methods at once usually means five underdeveloped attempts rather than one solid income stream.

Can I genuinely start all of these with zero money?

For most of them, yes. WordPress.com, Wix, Udemy, Fiverr, and Craigslist all have free tiers or no fees at all. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing costs nothing to list a book. Stock photo platforms are free to join. The one area where zero-cost gets complicated is web hosting arbitrage, where you may need a small amount of money to set up a reseller hosting account depending on which provider you use. Everything else on this list can be started without spending anything at all.

What happened to Alston’s Udemy courses two years later?

They kept selling on their own. Alston says in the video that he has not logged into those Amazon Web Services courses in months at the time of filming but that Udemy still sends him a monthly check for new enrollments. He created the courses nearly two years before recording this video and has not done meaningful updates or promotional work since. That is what passive income actually looks like once the upfront creation work is done and the platform’s search engine takes over distribution.

How does service arbitrage work if I have no design skills?

You act as the project manager, not the designer. You find a client who needs a website or logo, agree on a price, and then post the project on Fiverr, Thumbtack, or Upwork and hire a skilled freelancer to complete the work at a lower rate. The numbers from the video: charge $500, hire a freelancer for $100, pocket $400. You handle client communication and quality review. The designer handles the creative work. You need no design ability at all, only the ability to write a clear project brief and manage the back-and-forth between client and freelancer.

What are the exact YouTube thresholds to start earning ad revenue?

At the time of the video, the YouTube Partner Program requires 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours within the past 12 months. Once you hit both thresholds, you apply and YouTube reviews your channel against their content guidelines. If approved, ads run on your videos and you earn a share of the revenue those ads generate. That ad income applies to old videos as well as new ones. A video you filmed three months ago keeps earning as long as people keep watching it.

Should I reinvest early income or hold onto it?

Alston’s recommendation in the video is to reinvest early income back into the business. His specific examples include buying your own domain, upgrading your camera, or improving your audio recording gear. Reinvesting accelerates the growth of whatever income stream you are building because better tools and more professional output attract more buyers, more subscribers, and more clients. Most people cover their basic personal needs first and reinvest whatever is left over, even if that amount is small in the early months. The compounding effect of consistent reinvestment shows up over time.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “10+ Ways YOU Can Make Passive Income With No Money,” YouTube, https://youtu.be/E6xbapXDsEI
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing: kdp.amazon.com
Udemy course hosting platform: udemy.com
Amazon Associates affiliate program: affiliate-program.amazon.com
YouTube Partner Program requirements: support.google.com/youtube
Freelance platforms for service arbitrage: fiverr.com, thumbtack.com, upwork.com
Audible ACX for audiobook narration royalties: acx.com