In an unsteady job market, passive income has become a financial goal for many individuals. This is especially true for busy business owners who want to earn more money without overextending themselves.

Setting up recurring revenue streams that generate cash with little to no management or oversight is an effective way to maximize your financial gains. However, finding and launching the right passive income stream for your business can be harder than it looks.

To help, 15 members of Forbes Business Council shared some smart and practical strategies for generating passive business income without a ton of time and effort.

Forbes Business Council members share ways businesses can generate passive income.

Photos courtesy of the individual members.

1. Share Your Internal Resources As Paid Content

Find ways to make internal tools and resources public so you can retrieve an additional passive income for work you are already doing. This, for example, could be setting up internal training you have on sites like Coursera or Udemy, or making your API publicly available to use with a subscription. – Ada Liu, ShareCreators

2. Invest In Perennial And Unfading Industries

I choose to define passive income as prudent investments and rational savings. I believe every entrepreneur is born with the “Wise Investor” tag, so be sure to invest in perennial and unfading industries or sectors like healthcare. It generates a recurring revenue stream, and all it takes is your portion of savings as an investment. – Saikiran Chandha, Typeset

3. Ensure Your Brand Is Marketable

The first step is to ensure both your offer and brand are very marketable. You have to have a great product or service and communicate the value of your offer to the right audience. Even in a digital world, I cannot underscore enough the value of networking, speaking and reaching out to prospects directly to share your message and offer. – Hanna Fitz, Cultured Life Global

4. Launch A Partnership Strategy

Launching a partnership strategy is a great way to generate passive referral income without taking too much time and effort away from your core business. Your sales and marketing leaders can lead, and once at scale, a partnerships manager can scale up further. Partnerships are a great way to extend your marketing efforts as well as create long-term business ambassadors with like-market businesses. – Jen Root, Manifest Commerce

5. Consult For Other Startups

Personally, I have been consulting for other startups and it generates good income. It is not as passive as many other types of businesses are, but with the proper structure, it can be quite passive. Whatever stage of entrepreneur you are, you must always have some skills that are needed by the other stage entrepreneurs like a seed-stage startup founder consulting a pre-seed stage startup. – Bhaskar Ahuja , Originscale Corp

6. Inherit Passive Income

There is no such thing as truly passive income unless it has been inherited. If one is receiving income today on a regular basis for a service or a product that one designed, developed and executed, then one is only bearing fruits of the time and effort that was invested in doing so maybe years ago. – Nikhil Ra, X8

7. Look To Affiliate Marketing, Cryptocurrency And More

Off the top of my head, a few ways entrepreneurs can generate passive income include through real estate, investments, cryptocurrency, affiliate marketing, digital advertising, partnerships or sponsorships, opening high yield savings accounts for their business and more. – Veronica H. Speck, VHS Ventures

8. Invest In Commercial Real Estate

Passive investments in commercial real estate are an excellent way to achieve risk-adjusted, tax-efficient and inflation-hedging returns while avoiding the headaches or the expertise required for day-to-day management—especially using a solo 401(k) to invest retirement funds. Cash flowing real estate in strong U.S. markets stands the test of time for investors.  – Mark Adair-Rios, ProsperityCRE

9. Make Syndicated Investments

Syndicated investments can provide entrepreneurs with passive income with relative ease. In today’s market, entrepreneurs or professionals have a large selection of different investments available to them, each with varying rates of return or risk. Syndicated investments also allow you the option of building a tax strategy that can benefit your full-time business. – Anthony Morena, Mortar Group

10. Start A Professional Blog

One of the best ways I have found that gives a stable passive income is to run a professional blog. If you are passionate about writing, then this can change your life. I have been doing this and found that it has enough potential to grow and expand, too. Usually, passive income from blogs can be between $5000 to $12000 a month with programmatic advertising. – Jonathan Gary, i-Kare Treatment Center

11. Repurpose Your Programs And Services

One of the best ways to generate passive income in your business is to take one of your programs or your service offerings and turn a small portion of that into a digital download, masterclass or workshop that can be purchased at a fraction of the cost. Sell at a price point that gives people skin in the game to work with you on a larger level moving forward. – Jessica Marx, Jessica Marx Coaching Corporation

12. Automate Some Of Your Tasks

An interesting way to think of passive income would be increasing efficiency. Chipping away at unsolved inefficiencies would essentially yield the same results as passive income. Automation is a great example. If you can automate tasks that previously took time and cost money, you have then generated passive income by investing in your own business’ efficiency rather than someone else’s. – Gareth Parkin, GoPromotional

13. Invest In The Stock Market

We have a record-high stock market, low-interest rates and only so many good real estate deals available. I speak daily with people across the country who are looking to invest a portion of their portfolio in small business ownership. They see the benefits of cash flow, asset building and tax write-offs. I let them know that nothing is easy, but semi-absentee income is achievable. – Jon Ostenson, FranBridge Consulting and Capital

14. Invest In Real Estate Syndications

Investing in real estate syndications is definitely one way to generate passive income while taking advantage of the tax benefits. This form of investing is truly hands-off once you have vetted the sponsor team and the business plan. By investing in this tangible asset with relatively low risks and above-average returns, you can sit back and enjoy the cash flow, profits and tax benefits. – Julius Oni, XSITE Capital Investment

15. Sell Your Business Tools As Services

When things are especially slow, sell not only your services, but your tools as well. For example, we don’t just sell our design work, we also sell 3D printing services. 3D printing capabilities are necessary for a design firm to have in-house, so using it to make a small profit when possible is a way to maximize income from an expensive tool that would otherwise not be in use. – Jackson Hedden, Jackson Hedden .LLC

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