Have you ever wondered if it was possible to make money while you sleep? aka earn passive income in Kenya?
Well, I don’t know about you, but for me its like music to my ears.
After committing to my bucketlist about two years ago, I started for all legitimate ways and means of making passive income even as a Kenyan living in Kenya because kicking items from the list mostly require being away for a period at a time. And working a regular 8 to 5 job does not offer such luxuries.
Besides, to make extra money, the only other option would be to get a part-time job.
But just the thought of getting stuck in Nairobi traffic gives me nausea.
I was therefore left with few options, most plausible of which being looking for some passive income ideas — methods to make money while doing nothing (nearly) at least in the later periods.
Following a list of 101 passive income ideas you can try to make money in Kenya, depending on your current personal situation.
What's Covered in This Article
Make YouTube videos.
This is a passive income idea that is growing by the day.
The only effort you will need is at the outset when coming up with a video script or idea, shooting the video, then promoting it. Once its done and it goes viral, it becomes a completely passive source of income.
As long as your video is informative or entertaining, you can monetize them on YouTube. Shoot, upload, and embed Google AdSense to the videos.
When people watch the videos or click on the links with ads, Google will pay you.
In Kenya, for 1,000 views of your video on YouTube, you could get paid about KES 100 (i.e. 1$). This however increases as your viewers increase.
If you can get decent traffic, viewers, and clicks to your videos, then there is also possibility of getting kick backs for product or service mentions.
Don’t believe that making money on YouTube Kenya is possible?
Or wondering how Kenyan YouTubers make money?
It sure is possible.
But, and I mean a huge BUT, like all passive income ideas, it takes time and effort before you earn your first coin making YouTube videos in Kenya or anywhere else for that matter.
Not many Kenyans for example have unlimited internet bundles to afford the luxury of streaming YouTube videos. Therefore, as you think of getting into a niche for your YouTube channel, make sure to choose your demographic and topics wisely. For two main reasons:
You require at least 1,000 subscribers to your YouTube channel and a total of at least 4,000 view hours before you can even qualify to get paid for Google adsense.
Secondly, in Kenya, politics, sex, gossip, and sports sells really well. So if you’d rather be discussing other topics outside of these to make money of YouTube in Kenya, then you better brace yourself up for a HELL LOT A CREATIVITY.
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Try affiliate marketing and earn a commission.
Affiliate marketing is a passive income method that may work best if you maintain an active blog or website.
Like with any legitimate making money online schemes, you’re gonna first need to create what I usually call your tribe.
Your tribe are your fans.
Your tribe are your potential buyers.
So to earn a commission from affiliate marketing, you either go for a ready-made tribe (like what you find on freelancing websites such as UpWork, Fiverr, etc) or create your own tribe from ground up (like the readers on EvaMtalii website).
It’s really up to you.
Whichever way you decide to go, to start up with affiliate income, you will need to sign up with the affiliate companies so you can start promoting their products and services.
There are thousands of vendors looking for affiliate marketers who you can approach directly, or through affiliate programs such as MaxBounty, CJ affiliate, ClickBank, AWIN, ShareaSale, etc.
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Let your photography skills make money for you.
Are you great with pictures? With photos? With your camera? If you are, then you could let your photography skills make money for you.
A quick glance at stock photography websites will reveal to you the lack of people of color doing regular stuff such as doing work on a mac, taking a coffee, addressing a business meeting, or out on safari!
There’s definitely a gap in the market for People Of Color pictures and royalty-free images on stock photography websites.
Personally, I have struggled with finding a representative look for my blog that features people of color.
It’s had enough even finding a photo of Kenyans that is not a Maasai.
Well, you could start off converting your photography into a passive income source by listing beautiful, high-quality, high-resolution images of brown and black people doing everyday things. You can start with Kenyans!
People of color photography websites such as CreateHER Stock, Colorstock, Nappy.co, etc, are a great place to start.
Some of these sites charge for picture downloads, some are completely free for users.
But even listing for free could create some visibility for you.
Are you conversant with a particular subject, topic or issue more than the average person on the street?
Well, you could make money selling e-books.
Of course developing an e-book comes with a lot of upfront investment in terms of time and/or money but once you have your book out there, it will all be worth the passive income potential for years to come.
A little marketing here and there is all you will need once the book is ready.
I suggest for starting off, use popular free social media websites such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram etc, to make sure marketing doesn’t eat up all your profits.
You can either write the ebook yourself or hire an e-book writer from Fiverr or Upwork or any of the freelancing sites.
I have also lined up here in this post an entire list of 100+ e-book ideas topics on high demand in Kenya.
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Sell your own products online.
What better way to make passive income in Kenya than by selling your own products online.
And believe you me, the options are endless.
You can sell pretty much anything legal on the internet. From homemade peanut better, honey, mtush, fish, backpacking bags, whatever.
And here in Kenya, there are so many websites where you can sell your products online like Etsy, Jumia, OLX, are just a few of them.
You can even open your own Shopify shop and they even give you a month free!
My favorite of course is Etsy where I have an online store whereby I sell African Maasai jewelry and handwoven sisal bags.
But you don’t have to sell only physical products.
You can also sell your services.
For instance, I offer travel coaching services, I am a Nairobi Based Freelance Writer, and I also offer cheap and affordable Business Plan Writing Services.
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Register and sell domain names.
Another way of earning money while you sleep is by registering catchy domain names and then re-selling them for a premium.
If you want to even make more money, you can buy the domain name, host it on a platform such as BlueHost, rank it on Google, and then re-sell it.
Typically, blogs re-sell sell for 24 times their monthly income.
So if say you succeed in monetizing your blog or website to the extent that you’re earning an average of KES 10,000 per month from it,you can sell it for KES 240,000 clean money.
There are various platforms and marketplaces whereby you can list your domain names, websites or blogs such as Flippa.
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Create an online course.
Like e-books, you just need to be better at any one thing than the average person on the street and you can make passive income delivering your expertise as an online course.
These could be skills or expertise acquired through formal training or stuff you’ve learned from experience over the years.
And there are several platforms whereby you can host your online courses such as Udemy, etc.
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Rent out a spare room in your house.
Do you have a house with extra rooms that you don’t currently use?
You could earn passive income listing spare rooms in your house for short term rental on platforms such as Booking.com or AirBnB.com
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Design and sell t-shirts online without investment or inventory
This passive income method basically involves selling t-shirts designs for free online through websites such as TeeSpring, ViralStyle. or Merch by Amazon.
The advantage with these print of demand platforms is that you make money with ZERO upfront cost, without the need for any inventory.
The print on demand platform such as TeeSpring or ViralStyle or Merch by Amazon does all the printing, shipping, and customer service on your behalf.
All you have to do is just design the items, and promote them through various campaigns, and make money online without any investment or inventory selling t-shirts.
Once somebody buys your design on a t-shirt, mug, or hoodie, the company makes it, ships it to the customer, and you get paid via Payoneer whatever price you had set up for the item.
Click here to sign up for a free Payoneer account.
Different platforms have different policies and requirements. Please read them up before you get started.
