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This episode of the personal finance podcast 20 Unconventional Passive Income Ideas. What's up everybody and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of Master Money Co, and today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be diving into 20 unconventional passive income Ideas. If you guys have any questions, make sure you hit us up on the Master Money newsletter. By going to Master Money Co newsletter, you can send your question in there to any of those newsletter issues that come out every single week. And don't forget to follow us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast player you love. Listening to this podcast on and if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating in review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast player. Now today, what we're going to do is we're going to dive into 20 unconventional passive income ideas. Now this episode is going to be an idea generating episode, meaning when we do these, a lot of times what I want to do is talk through all the possibilities that are out there so that you can start to get your mind going to see if there are some ways that you would be interested in making more money. And so with these passive income ideas, my goal with these is for you to not have to spend so much time working on these businesses. So a lot of these are businesses, but they're businesses you don't have to spend as much time as you normally would for maybe some of those side hustles that can turn into a full time business that we talk about on a lot of our other episodes. So this is going to be more so passive income where you set it up and you just have to maintain it every single month. And so if you're someone out there who is making sure that you're hitting your retirement goals and you have extra cash coming in, these are some great ideas that you can start to increase your income over time and start to build out wealth flywheels. And we have an episode coming out explaining wealth flywheels. But basically what I want you to do is take additional cash flow from some of these businesses and start to invest it into either more of the same exact thing that you're doing that's working and, or other businesses. And there's a way to do this where all of a sudden your money is going to start to snowball and it's going to start to compound and it's going to start to grow over time and you will be able to build a tremendous amount of wealth just by making some of these small decisions. So today what we're going to do is I'm going to talk through first each of these 20 passive income ideas. We're going to talk about how to start them, we're going to talk about how to market them, we're going to talk about how to grow them and what they actually are. And then if you guys have any questions or suggestions or anything that you want me to talk about on the show in terms of passive income ideas that you are doing and or you know, side hustles that are working for you, let me know. And we could talk about it on a future episode as well. So really, really pumped about this. I love doing these podcast episodes. I know you guys love them as well as looking for additional ways to make income and grow your income over time. So without further ado, let's get into it. All right, number one is, and these are, in no particular order, is ice machines. Now, ice machines are something that have been around for a very long time, and if you don't know what they are, they are the ice machines that you put into the middle of a grocery store parking lot or you try to find a gas station that will accept your ice machine and people go up to that ice machine and when they need ice, they can fill up their ice. And this is really good in high traffic areas. But specifically, if you want to set up an ice machine business, this is something that can be pretty low cost to start and test out and see if it actually works. Now, there's two ways to do this. Number one is you can go to a bunch of different ice machine companies that are out there that manufacture the machines and they will help you through the process and you'll be able to a go through them to buy the machine. They will help you through finding locations that you can put the ice machine. But then in addition, they're also just going to give you some of their business plans and ways that some of their other customers have been successful. Their entire goal is to make you successful because if they do, you will buy more ice machines from them, so they actually help you through that process. But a second way is to look for someone who already has existing ice machines that is willing to sell them. So for example, I just did a quick Google search recently looking for these for sale. And you can find them on Biz, Buy, Sell, but in addition, you can find them on places like Facebook Marketplace, for example, where people have these existing ice machines and they're willing to sell them because A, they don't want to do the maintenance anymore or B, they're retiring. And so there's a number of different reasons why they may want to do it. You just want to make sure you get the financials and all those different things. So the goal is pretty much most of your marketing and most of the money that you're going to make is all in the research in the buy process, meaning you're going to go out and buy the ice machine and then where you put that ice machine in the specific location is really going to determine your success. So making sure that you put it in a location that makes a ton of sense is going to be really really powerful. So what locations make sense? Well, a is blue collar neighborhoods because a lot of blue collar workers need to get ice every single day before they go to work. And so these ice mach can do very well in blue collar neighborhoods. Also beach towns or areas near a beach and or camping grounds, areas near parks or camping, those types of things. So as long as you can find these high traffic locations, if you can leverage some partnerships maybe with some of the landowners of where you're going to put some of these locations, or if you can put them in gas stations, or you can get chains of gas stations to actually accept you, that's a very big deal. And I think it could be very powerful for a lot of people. And then also when you're marketing, make sure that you're using signage, Google Maps, all those different things to find your ice machine. So there's companies like Everest, there's companies like Kohler, there's a bunch out there that can help you through this process where you can buy these machines. And there's people making from $20,000 per year all the way up to $70,000 per year passively just with frozen water. So ice machines are number one. Number two is one that I've been looking at a long time and it's one that's become very, very popular. So this is starting to become a competitive market. But it is laundromats. Now laundromats are obviously somewhat passive because they're usually coin operated or cash operated or some of them you could put credit card machines on there now so you don't have to have someone in there at all times unless you're operating like a wash, dry and fold business or something like that. And so laundromats are a very interesting business because they can be passive, where you have to go in there every two or three days, collect the money and make sure the machines are running properly. But outside of that, it is not a full time job for one single laundromat to be in there. Now if you start to own multiple laundromats and you're going to a different laundromat every single day to collect the money and or making sure machines are operating properly, that can start to become a full time job. But having one, maybe two laundromats is going to be something that you can do passively on the side and not have to spend a ton of time on this. Now we had Cody Sanchez on this podcast and she talked through some of the laundromats that she had and how to make a Successful laundromat. But I really, really like the thought process of owning a laundromat. Now. One thing I love is that there are people now taking over laundromats that are maybe in lower income areas that have been run down for a very long period of time. They're purchasing those laundromats and upgrading them, making them much nicer so that people can actually enjoy their time in the laundromats. Maybe you can do things like add TVs, maybe you can just upgrade the paint and refresh it and make it look nicer. Maybe you can have a little section with toys for kids as they're waiting for their parents to wash their clothes. A lot of cool things that you can do inside of these to kind of make it branded and make it your own and you can make it a really cool community thing. So I've seen some really, really interesting stuff. There's a lot of content out there on how to run how to buy a laundromat. So I think that's something if you're interested, you can do very well. Now, how much do these cost? They usually cost anywhere from one to five times revenue depending on where they are. And it could be even higher in some locations. If you want to look for them, you go to Biz Buy Sell and you can see them on there. There are other websites for laundromat specific businesses, but I think it's a very, very interesting passive income choice because you always got to wash your clothes. You're always going to need to wash your clothes. Obviously again, blue collar neighborhoods are going to be more so where you want to have those. Location is very important. You need a location where people don't have washing machines. Also cities, those things where, you know, maybe they have small apartments or just don't have room for washers and dryers is another big option. Now number three is one that I really like because it is a real estate play in addition to a passive income play and it is renting out farmland. Now you may be thinking to yourself, what am I going to go, I'm going to go buy a bunch of farmland in the middle of Iowa and I'm going to rent out that farmland to random farmers. No, that's not what I'm talking about. In this situation, renting out farmland is purchasing or leasing farmland in urban areas that have a high demand for local produce and. Or you can partner with farmers or solar wind companies or a bunch of different things that you could do with this. Now here's an example where I live in Tampa. There are areas in Tampa that are still rural, but they're in the middle of a city. And because of this, all the residents in that area are trying to protect this farmland. So one thing you can do is you could buy an acre, you could buy two acres, you could even buy a half acre, but you could buy some sort of acreage that makes sense. And you got to run the numbers on this. You can partner with a local organic farmer, you can partner with, you know, solar companies. There's a lot of different things that you can do here to really make this interesting. And because farmland is a play where you have to pay cash for it, it is something where, A, you could always get out by selling that farmland, especially in an urban area, if you're in an okay location, B, you can keep the land for a longer period of time and let it appreciate. But C, making some cash flow on this farmland by leasing it out to someone else is going to be really, really powerful. You don't have to fix toilets, you don't have to fix roofs, you don't have to fix air conditioners. You don't have to worry about is the tenant having, you know, other residents here, do they have pets? In my location, you know, all that stuff doesn't matter. It's just raw land. And then the farmers are farming that land, able to utilize that land for local produce, things like that. And so I think this is actually a really interesting passive income idea if you can get the numbers to work based on your area specifically. I like it. In these small plots, you can have a diversified portfolio of farmland in different areas where maybe it's an acre, maybe it's 2 acres, maybe it's 5 or 10 acres if you have a lower price per acre. In my area, for example, it's 100,000 per acre. So maybe you're buying just a couple of acres at a time, but then you build up this portfolio of farmland that has cash flow every single year. Maybe farmers are paying you 20, 30 grand per year just to rent out this farmland. Well, that could be a very, very lucrative passive income idea for a lot of people. So really cool stuff here. And I think if, you know, say, for example, you bought farmland for $150,000 and you're getting $30,000 per year, that is a great ROI that has a lot more than a rental property would get you. So really thinking through this, I think it's a very powerful strategy and doesn't require you any maintenance or repairs or anything like that. So it's a much higher ROI than possibly a rental property could be. Number four is if you don't have a lot of money. This is an interesting one, which is vending machines. There's a lot of people out there that are doing some really creative stuff with vending machines. Sure, you got the traditional vending machine where you try to find high traffic locations that you can place your vending machine. There's a lot of sales to landlords and owners of those locations so that you can actually place your vending machines in apartment complexes and or office buildings, things like that. But there are also creative ways to utilize vending machines. I've seen people create, you know, cold brew coffee vending machines. I've seen people create little snack bars where it's a touchless pay vending area. In apartment complexes. I've seen people do some really, really cool stuff. So just kind of thinking about vending in general is there's a lot of ways to partner with different people. Offices, schools, malls. But really, I think apartment complexes are a great spot to think about this. If you can think about, for example, the little snack area when you go to a hotel or something like that. If you think about the little snack or little mini convenience store. If you can build out some of those and build out a way to make it enticing where it's touchless or cashless, that is a form of a vending machine. And you can kind of get creative on how this can actually operate. You could do profit sharing agreements with some of these businesses and complexes and saying, hey, I'll run this whole thing, I'll restock it, I'll make sure everything is running smoothly and you can get a percentage of profits to make that run smoothly. There's a lot of different things that you can do. You can do drinks, you can do snacks, you can do hygiene products. This is what I love about vending now is there's so much more technology coming into play that you can really get creative. So the reason why I'm talking about this and the reason why I'm talking about the creative ideas is you've probably heard about, you know, normal traditional vending machines. I am less bullish on those. Unless you can get them in places like laundromats or schools or offices or you have connections to do something like that. And I am more bullish on the creative vending machines. There's a guy on social media, and I've seen him on X or Twitter named Quinn Miller, who is a really good follow if you're interested in this kind of stuff. And he does creative vending options and does some of this touchless stuff too. So if you're interested in that, I would check him out. I think it's a really, really interesting business that you can run pretty passively. Number five is billboard rentals. Now, there's not a lot of people out there that are trying to get into the billboard industry. I think it's more so a monopolized industry. And so this is something that you can definitely do where you can start to purchase and or lease land in a highly visible area, obtain the necessary permits, and go ahead and put a billboard up. Now, not every city or county is going to want you to start putting brand new billboards up, but if you can do so, this is a great option for some passive income. And if you already own land, for example, on a busy highway or something like that, that is something where you can start to market and approach local businesses. You can also grow this with digital billboards, where you can sell a lot more space on these digital billboards. The price is going to go up for the initial investment, but this is also something that you can do in some of these higher traffic, different areas. Number six is ATMs. Now, ATMs are one that we had Paul Alex on this podcast talking through, you know, his ATM business and how he started to grow it. And he does this in a number of different ways as he goes to barbershops or coffee shops or different, you know, gas stations, different areas like that sells the owner to see if he can put his ATM machine in there and then goes about and actually has, you know, X amount of ATM machines. So what he did was he backtracked his thought process and said, how many ATM machines do I need in order to make enough cash flow to be able to have financial freedom? And he was a SWAT team police officer. Really interesting episode. If you haven't heard that one, go back and search the personal finance podcast Paul Alex. And in that episode he talks through his entire story. He's also very bullish on like bitcoin ATM machines that he puts in airports and places like that as well. And then he also does POS systems, so systems for local businesses that help accept payments and payment processors, things like that. And so he creates a lot of his cash flow and passive income based on that. He's got a really big social following talking through this process. But when he came in this podcast, it is interesting. Now, the one downside to ATM machines is you got to have a lot of them. To really get some cash flow going. Some of them only make like 2, 300 bucks a month. And so for me, it's a lot more work than some of these other ones. But still, I think you can make cash flow on them. And it's a really low startup cost. You can get an ATM done for seven grand or less. And so you can start to see this as a wealth flywheel as well, where the cash flow, you can start to reinvest and buy one ATM every year, and then two, and then three, and then kind of start to accelerate it that way. So it is definitely one that you can start to try to achieve financial freedom even if you wanted to with. But as we start to go more cashless, it is one that you can kind of look at POS systems and some of those bitcoin options as well. So I like how Alex is actually diversifying some of that stuff. Number seven is self storage units. So self storage units is a big one that you can look at if you have higher cash in addition to having some knowledge. And where with all about self storage, if you're not educated on self storage and you're interested in that industry, I would definitely get educated first. But secondly, I think this is something where you can purchase, lease and or develop self storage units in areas that definitely need them. So Nick Huber came on this podcast and that's what he does. He owns over a hundred million dollars of self storage units. And he came on this podcast and kind of talked through his strategies of exactly how he did this, how he got started in it. And I think it's a really, really interesting industry if you can get it to a point where you're not having to manage it. Instead, you know, you got keyless entry, for example, so customers can go in and out without having to, you know, talk to a manager or have a gate raise, anything like that, and making sure that they can kind of sign up as new customers online. There's a lot of different things like that. So this is closer to maybe a little more sweat equity in this business, but it still can be passive. And then the way that Nick kind of does it is very passive. And he has a manager in place for most of those locations. Number eight is RV parks and campgrounds. So this is kind of another real estate play. But RV parks and campgrounds are extremely profitable if you can get them right. So if you can find RV parks or campgrounds near areas that are desirable to go hiking or fishing, or areas that are desirable to do outdoor activities, this can Be something that can be really, really great for your income to increase. Now one thing I would do is I would take some of the cash flow and I'd make sure you have a manager in place managing that campground. Or if it's just a smaller version of this, maybe you don't have to do that. They can book online and have that available as well. But these are great for people parking their RVs and or larger vehicles in this location. Number nine is car washes. Now I'm not talking about the automatic car washes, which this is really a business that's getting more and more competitive as time goes on. But if you're in a more rural area and you don't have those automatic $20 a month car washes coming into your area, or $10 a month, whatever they are now, they're all competing with each other to fight to the bottom here. There is way too many of those out there. So I would not get in that business whatsoever. But if you're in a more rural area and you can see some of those wand car washes, one of the coin operated ones, where you get the washing wand and the brush and you kind of do it yourself, those can be very profitable if there's not a ton of the automatic car wash competition around. Now they can still be very profitable for a lot of people because there are people that prefer those. A, because they don't scratch your car if you don't use the brush. It only used a wand. But B, you can also do some different things with them. You can use your specific soaps and all that kind of stuff too. You don't have to worry about any issues with your car. And so some people still do prefer those. So if you see a busy one, I would approach the owner and see if you can work out some sort of deal, maybe a seller financing deal or something like that. Because I am very interested in those businesses for sure. It's just finding the right location is the key where there's not a bunch of those automatic car washes coming in. The automatic car wash business is a race to the bottom, I think for sure. So that's not something I'm interested in.