16 Easy Ways to Make Money While You Sleep

Earn a High Yield and Pay No Monthly Maintenance Fees With Axos One

• Available: Sign up here
• Platforms: Web, mobile (iOS, Android)

Axos Bank is an online-only bank that offers a potent high-yield checking and high-yield savings account bundle called Axos ONE. The competitive APYs on both accounts, when combined with the zero monthly maintenance fees, make this account pairing a highly desirable combination to hold your cash.

Additionally, the bank has access to over 95,000 ATMs nationwide with withdrawal fee-reimbursement, no overdraft fees, and no minimum account balances.

Check out the Axos ONE checking and savings bundle to earn more, for less, on your money.

Axos ONE | High-Yield Checking and Savings Bundle

4.4

Free (no monthly maintenance fees).

• Axos ONE is a bundled high-yield checking and savings product offering early paydays and competitive APY rates
• Savings Account: 4.86% APY*
• Checking Account: 0.51% APY*
• Age requirement: 18 or older
• Minimum deposit: None
• Minimum balance required: None
• Fee-free ATM Network: 95,000+ locations

Pros:

• No monthly fees
• High APY for checking
• Mobile app
• Online bill pay
• Spend tracking
• Unlimited ATM reimbursements

* In your Axos ONE Checking account, must receive qualifying monthly direct deposits of at least $1,500 in total and maintain an average daily balance of $1,500.

A second option to consider comes from Bread Savings:

Save + Earn a High Yield With Bread Savings

Bread Financial (formerly Comenity) is a financial tech platform offering spending, lending, and savings solutions, including the Bread Savings High-Yield Savings Account.

Bread Savings’ HYSA is a free, FDIC-insured account that offers an extremely competitive APY that currently beats the national average by a decent margin. You’ll also get to save a lot more of your money thanks to Bread’s wallet-friendly fee policies. Bread doesn’t charge a fee for monthly maintenance, online statements, ACH transfers, or incoming wire transfers. You can also make unlimited ACH and mobile check deposits.

Because Bread Savings is a tech service, not a bank, you won’t have access to brick-and-mortar locations. Instead, you access your account via the web or its mobile app, which is available on both iOS and Android. Bread also offers live-chat customer service seven days a week.

Bread Savings requires a $100 minimum deposit. Put your money to work with Bread via our link.

Bread Savings | High-Yield Savings Account

4.1

• Bread Savings High-Yield Savings Accounts are free, take just minutes to open, and carry highly competitive rates (currently 4.40% APY).
• Get started with this FDIC-insured account for as little as $100.
• Interest accrues and compounds daily, and is credited monthly.

4. Fine Wine

Fine wine as an investment has performed admirably over the last twenty years, outpacing even the S&P 500 during an equivalent period while seeing less overall volatility. Tapping into fine wine investing might prove a challenge if you don’t have the necessary capital and infrastructure to source, store and sell fine wine over long periods of time. One alternative is investing through a company like Vint.

Vint is an SEC-qualified fine wine and rare spirits investing platform that makes diversified investing accessible to all investors. Vint offers fractional ownership of investment-grade collections sourced by a team of experienced wine and investment professionals. Vint’s low minimums, sourcing, and securitized offerings make them unique in the alternative investment space.

The company allows you to invest as little (get started for around $50) or as much as you want in collections curated by a team of wine industry experts. When you invest, you own a piece of the collection, giving you unique diversified exposure to many labels and not just one or two bottles.

The company makes it a point to put transparency first, providing regular updates on their collections and sharing investment theses with all investors so they have full control around their investment decisions. The company is on a mission to bring wine and spirits to every portfolio.

If you think adding fine wine to your investment portfolio makes a sound decision after learning about Vint, consider joining now and funding an account with as low as $50.

Best for Securitized, Fractional Wine Investing

Vint | Securitized Fine Wine Investing

Minimum investment: $2,500. Fees: One-time sourcing fee (between 0%-35%, varies by collection, averages ~10%).

• Vint is a fine wine and spirits investment platform that allows accredited investors to buy SEC-qualified shares of elite alcoholic beverages from around the world.
• Vint takes care of everything—sourcing, transportation, storing, insurance, and selling.

Pros:

• Vint invests alongside shareholders
• Simple user interface

Cons:

• Potentially very high fees
• Accredited investors only
• Extremely illiquid investment (1- to 7-year holding periods, no secondary market for shares)

Related: Best Wine Investing Apps and Platforms

Also Consider These Other Top Investments for a Broadly-Diversified Portfolio

In addition to investing in index funds and individual stocks, you might also consider investing in non-traditional investments outside of the stock market. These types of investments allow you to tap into assets which might not directly correlate with the stock market, diversifying your portfolio beyond just equities.

Some of these investing platforms also offer access to equities, but others allow you to buy into less travelled markets. Consider reviewing these investing opportunities for whether they make sense for your investment objectives and goals.

Stock Trading App for Beginners	Online Real Estate Investing	Blue-Chip Art Investing Platform
Commission-free trading. Robinhood Gold: Free 30-day trial, then $5/mo.	Most funds: 0.85% annual fee. Fundrise Innovation Fund: 1.85% annual fee.	Minimum investment: $1,000

Stock Trading App for Beginners

Commission-free trading. Robinhood Gold: Free 30-day trial, then $5/mo.

Online Real Estate Investing

Most funds: 0.85% annual fee. Fundrise Innovation Fund: 1.85% annual fee.

Blue-Chip Art Investing Platform

Minimum investment: $1,000

5. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)

Some people consider real estate investment trusts (REITs) to be the mutual funds of real estate. REITs are a collection of properties operated by a company that uses money investors give them to buy and develop real estate. You can choose to invest in trusts that build condos, apartment buildings, business complexes, or other facilities.

REITs pay you dividends. These are a fitting income-producing asset for people who want an easy way to get involved with real estate investing without having to purchase property themselves.

6. Start a YouTube Channel

If you would rather create videos that aren’t live and not of you sleeping, consider starting a YouTube channel. This method doesn’t earn money on day one and it takes a lot of initial work to get started. Plus, the amount of money people make varies widely. However, if you create quality content, you can earn money through ad revenue, sponsorships, and by creating your own products (such as swag or courses).

When you have enough subscribers and people consistently watching your videos, you can take breaks and still earn money. You might be sleeping, but others are watching your videos and sending ad revenue your way.

7. Turn Yourself into a Product

Perhaps you’ve found personal success—or you are firmly on the road to it—and have seen many promising opportunities to promote yourself as a brand. When you position yourself as the authority in your target market, you can develop products and services to leverage this trust while simultaneously helping those people with problems you can uniquely solve.

If you have an inspiring story or successful secrets to share, you could turn your experience into a video series, a blog, or write a book to make money while you sleep.

In any of these examples, you put the hard work in upfront, develop a marketing mix with the 4 Ps and then you simply collect proceeds while you move on to your next project. In addition to generating income directly from one of these products, you’ll also discover these products can dramatically improve the visibility of your personal brand, thereby boosting sales for your company.

In the end, you will not only yield a profit for yourself through creating a new revenue stream, but you will also have improved an existing stream through any business ventures you currently have.

8. Live-Stream Yourself Sleeping (Seriously)

A new TikTok trend has users stream themselves sleeping (or even just their room as they sleep). One 18-year-old made about $10 as people watched him sleep. A 24-year-old man live-streamed his Tesla “sleeping” overnight and made $50. On Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese counterpart, 18.5 million viewers tuned in to watch a man sleep. He earned over $4,000 while he slept.

Viewers don’t just enjoy watching people sleep, but chatting with other people watching as well. Want to generate money while you sleep? Stream it.

9. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing doesn’t just have to be done on a blog. If you have an email, this is a great option. Instagram is also a popular platform for affiliate marketing. People who have high followings, with engaged followers, can put affiliate links in their profile and call attention to the links. Whenever somebody clicks that link and buys a product, the influencer gets a kickback.

10. Online Courses and Webinars

Webinars are often live, which won’t make you money in your sleep, but you can create automated webinars people can watch at any time. While a webinar typically stands alone, online courses provide more in-depth knowledge and might have several sections.

You can create online courses on platforms such as Udemy or Teachable. It takes time to create your course, but once it’s up, very little maintenance is required.

11. Sell Stock Content

Do you enjoy photography, taking short video clips, creating music, or designing? Your creative hobby can become a passive income. Go through your old photoshoots, unused music clips, and extra film footage. Find a stock content site to sell it on. Just make sure to ask permission from anyone in your photos or videos.

For photography, some of the most popular stock sites are Shutterstock, Getty Images, and Pixabay. Upload your content, choose a price, and let it sell as you sleep.

12. Build an App to Make Money While You Sleep

If you have any coding knowledge, you can create a basic app to sell on app stores. It might even be considered one of the best financial apps or best productivity apps! Alternatively, you can find a coder and designer to hire to do the work for you. Some people will work in return for a profit share, but others will require payment upfront.

If your app does well, you’ll be making sales at all times of the day and anything past what it costs to get started is profit. Remember that apps have different payment models. Sometimes you can make more money with a “freemium” model where parts of the app are free than by charging for initial access to the app.

You can also learn how to choose the right finance app to make by considering what opportunities exist in the market.

13. Sell on Amazon FBA

Much like Shopify, you can sell your products and services on other ecommerce platforms as well.  A popular alternative is Amazon FBA, or Fulfillment by Amazon. This service lets individual sellers find products they want to sell and then have Amazon handle the business and logistics part of the equation. Amazon will host the product on their site, facilitate the transaction with the customer, and deliver the product.

Some of the more popular options people sell through Amazon FBA include:

When you consider that Amazon handles listing, selling, shipping, collecting and sending payment, and any customer service needs, you can see how it’s pretty passive income. It certainly qualifies as an avenue for making money while you sleep once you find what you want to sell.

14. Rent a Room in Your House or Apartment

By renting out space in your home (or your entire home), you can make money both while you sleep and while others sleep. Airbnb is one of the most popular ways to rent out space to visitors. On average, Airbnb hosts make around $924 a month. This number can vary drastically depending on what city you live in, if you’re renting a room or entire home, and how often your space is available to rent.

You need to arrange cleaners after guests and be available to answer visitor’s questions (consider creating a guide book), but you can still be raking in cash while you sleep. Alternatively, rather than hosting guests, you could also just rent out a room as a storage unit instead. It’s an extremely hands-off way to make money off of any extra space you might have around your house, condo or apartment.

15. Sell Print-on-Demand Products

You can easily sell physical objects as well. Have a cool graphic design or photo that would look good on a t-shirt, backpack, hat, or anything else? You don’t need to print it on those items and then try to sell it. You can wait until you have orders ready to fill.

A popular marketplace for this is CafePress, which sells almost anything a design could be printed on. You can even list other people’s products for a referral fee.

16. Dropshipping

With dropshipping, you also never physically touch the products. You don’t even have to design them -you just pick them out. The items you want are in a warehouse, labeled, and shipped with your name, so you don’t incur overhead feels. You just put in an order (after people order from you), pay a fee, and then ship it where appropriate.

However, you should note that most dropshipping involves ordering goods from other countries, particularly China. Since you never physically interact with the items, there may be quality control issues and you don’t know the conditions your items were made under. If you choose to dropship, make sure to find a reputable company.

How to Make Money While You Sleep

Working around the clock isn’t feasible long-term, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be earning money around the clock. With a combination of passive income streams and making your current saved money work for you, you can see firsthand how to build wealth significantly.

Despite the laundry list of ways to make money while you sleep above, I won’t pretend that it’s easy to wake up richer than you were the day before. There is no denying that business startup costs – both financial and emotional – can be grueling to bear.

What I will highlight, however, is the silver lining to the storm cloud. Once you’ve seen your business grow to a certain point and find it to have become successful and thriving, you can branch out to find ways to make money while you sleep. While it takes time to create passive income sources or set up financial plans with an advisor, the time investment pays off later when you’re not working, but still making money.

Invest in yourself now to make money while you sleep later.