Today, I will discuss several passive income ideas that don’t require any investment or minimum investment. As you read this post, you can start quickly with some of them, even now. The best part of starting a side hustle or passive income is getting financial stability. You never know; it can be your main income hustle as well. 

I am suggesting Etsy here because it’s a marketplace. Based on 2023, it has around 500 million visitors per month. Starting a side hustle by opening a shop here will easily expose a vast user base.

Digital Paper, Art, and Graphic: You can sell Digital Paper, Art, and Graphics Downloaded in the Etsy marketplace. Your digital content could be patterns, paper textures, clip art, cards, scrapbooks and journal graphics in JPEG or PDF format. You can easily get, on average, 1k sales within 3/4 months. For example, if the price is 3$, then you can generate $4 * 1000= 4k monthly revenue. You can make this digital content by AI. If you have a little bit of knowledge on it, then that’s a plus. 

Apparel: Apparel is another idea for starting on Etsy without any investment. Initially, you might think this niche is already saturated or there is too much competition. However, in reality, this is the most popular category on Etsy. A fraction will bring a huge money. You need to upload the digital design for this type of apparel shop. You can design it yourself, buy it from soneone else or generate it AI. The drop shipping model here is Print-on-Demand. Printify and Printful are already integrated with the Etsy. You just create the designs. It could be simple texts or artistic design. Then, upload them to your Etsy store. Etsy will take care of payment processing, printing, and shipping to your customers. 

You can easily get 1k to 2k sell within 6 months, even more with $2~$3 net profits.

Sticker: After the Appreal idea, another easy idea is designing and selling stickers. You can sell the digital download or use the Print-on-Demand model, which means you can print the sticker and ship it to your customers through Printify or Printful. 

Planner: The next Etsy shop idea is selling planners. You will design different kinds of planners, such as Notary Journals, Small Business Planners, Autism Planners, Financial Planners, Meal Planners, Medical Planners, caregiver planners, and Trading log printables. Again, follow the same print-on-demand business model.

Coffee Mug: My last Etsy idea is almost the same as the previous one. It’s selling custom Mugs on Etsy. You will use AI-generated art, images or custom designs, print through the service Printify or Printful and ship them to the customer. 

Here are a few tips on achieving success in the long run…

• Regardless of the idea you picked from above, I suggest spending time on the niche.
• There is no shortcut. You have to be consistent and keep uploading products. It could be just one listing or two to three listings per week. Whatever it is, just stay consistent so that Etsy algorithm pushes your shop to more customers. It might take time to get your first sale, but if you maintain consistency, success will not take that long.
• A few tools can help you analyze your competitor shops. For example, Everbee. The free version of Everbee allows you to check up to ten shops.
• You can use AI, Midjourney and Leonardo to generate the images, arts or graphics. Canva could be a useful handy tool as well. There is a free online Photoshop alternative: Photopea. If you don’t do design at all by yourself, you could hire a designer from Fiverr,.
• Spend some time on SEO to list the products, including their titles, tags, feature images, and prices. These make a significant impact on your store.  
• Do some social marketing on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Reddit. Reach your friends and family. Publish various product-based events throughout the years, such as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, etc.