15 Recurring Revenue Business Ideas For Passive Income

Any business that generates a predictable and reliable income month after month is considered a recurring revenue business.

These businesses are great for making a steady income without much effort, which can help you achieve financial independence.

1. Storage Unit Facilities

These facilities typically consist of various sized storage units that are rented out on a monthly basis. The demand for storage units is driven by factors like downsizing, moving, or the need for temporary or long-term storage for personal or business items.

Running a storage facility can be relatively hands-off, especially if you implement automated systems for payments and security. Like with anything connected to real estate, location is the only thing that matters. You’d need the right location with high demand to attract and retain customers.

2. Rental Properties

Investing in rental properties involves purchasing residential or commercial real estate to lease to tenants. This can range from single-family homes and apartments to office spaces or retail locations.

Even renting out mobile homes can be profitable. Successful rental property management requires finding the right balance between maintaining the property and managing tenant relationships.

While it can provide a steady income, it also demands attention to property maintenance, tenant screening, and staying compliant with landlord-tenant laws.

Some investors choose to hire property management companies to handle day-to-day operations, making it a more passive investment.

3. Gym or Fitness Centers

Opening a gym or fitness center caters to the growing public interest in health and wellness. This business model revolves around membership fees, providing a regular income stream.

A successful gym offers a range of equipment, classes, and possibly additional services like personal training or wellness programs.

While it requires a significant initial investment in equipment and space, the operational aspects, like member management and scheduling, can often be automated.

4. Art Classes 

If you’re running a business selling portraits, you could offer an exclusive membership program to help people explore their artistic side. Apart from the art classes, you could also give art goods monthly, such as brushes or colors. 

5. Campgrounds or RV Parks

Running a campground or RV park means setting up a place where people can come to camp or park their RVs. These places are especially popular among those who love being outdoors.

To attract campers, you would need to have good spots for camping or parking RVs, and facilities like bathrooms and maybe a play area. Location is everything – being close to nature trails or scenic spots can draw more visitors.

The business can be quite busy during the camping season, but you can hire staff to help manage the day-to-day tasks.

6. RV and Boat Storage

This works well in areas where lots of people own RVs and boats but don’t have space at home to store them. Y

You’ll need a big enough area to store these large vehicles, and things like fences and cameras help keep everything safe. This business doesn’t need much daily attention, especially if you set up an easy way for customers to pay and book spaces online.

7. Vineyards or Orchard Rentals

Renting out land for vineyards or orchards is about letting farmers or wine makers use your land to grow grapes or other crops.

It’s a good option if you own land in an area where things like grapes grow well. If you don’t have land but have money to invest then you should check out these cheapest states to buy farmland.

You’ll make money by charging rent to the people who use your land. This doesn’t require much work on your part, but you should know a bit about farming to make sure your land stays good for growing crops.

8. Online Tutoring 

As an online tutor, you can offer an exclusive membership program that offers additional benefits to your lectures. These benefits could include tailored help, help with solving subject-related problems, or help with various assignments and tasks. 

9. Personal Coaching 

Personal coaching can be a great program for anyone wanting to improve their mindset, achieve their lifelong goals, and remove bad habits from their life.

Offering your coaching services via a membership program gives you a way to build long-term coach relations with your client, making it a profitable endeavor. 

10. Retainers 

In a retainer-based business model, clients agree to pay a set monthly fee for ongoing services. This structure is especially popular in advisory sectors like law firms, where clients keep the firm on retainer for continuous legal advice and support.

The client commits to a monthly payment for continuous access to necessary services, and the business benefits from a steady income as long as the retainer agreement remains active.

Digital marketing agencies are another example of this model. If an agency manages social media marketing for 10 companies, each of these companies would pay a regular monthly fee for their services.

With this arrangement, the agency can count on a predictable and reliable revenue stream, as they provide ongoing marketing assistance to their clients.

11. SaaS 

SaaS businesses are the ideal example of recurring revenue business ideas. A SaaS business often develops software that intends to make things easier for the customers. Nevertheless, the services offered by this software operate on a monthly fee model. 

A few examples of successful SaaS models include: 

• QuickBooks 
• Evernote
• Dropbox
• Zoom 

12. Online Courses

Your online courses don’t have to be a one-time sale. Instead, you could keep adding new things and sell access to your course on a monthly basis! 

This way, you can make more money and get to teach in a better way, paying more attention to each student. Also, by teaching things bit by bit, your students can learn at their own pace and will likely keep coming back to learn more.

13. ATM Ownership

If you put them in places where lots of people go, like shopping centers or busy streets you can earn regularly without too much hassle.

You can also consider ATM franchises for a more hands-off approach. With a franchise, you team up with a company that knows all about ATMs.

They usually handle the big jobs like setting the ATM up, keeping it running, and sometimes even finding the best spots to put them. In return, you share some of the earnings with them or pay a franchise fee. This can be an easier way to earn money, as the franchise company looks after the everyday stuff.

14. Subscription Boxes

There are tons of great subscription box business ideas. People pay every month to get a box filled with stuff, like makeup, snacks, books, stuff for pets, or workout gear. The trick is to find something people love and want to get regularly.

You can make boxes about certain themes, stuff that’s in season, or even based on what customers like. The goal is to build a group of regular customers who look forward to getting their box every month.

You can often get the items for your boxes cheaper by working with suppliers and make more money.

15. Royalties from Intellectual Property

Earning money from intellectual property (IP) royalties is another way to generate income, especially if you’ve created something unique that others want to use. This could be anything from a piece of music, a book, an invention, or even a video.

For example, our founder, Peter Koch, collects royalties from videos. He earns money every time someone uses that video, whether it’s played on TV, used in an advertisement, or featured in some other way. This way he gets paid repeatedly for work he did once, as long as people continue to use his video.

This can be replicated with any other creative work, like a song, book, or something more technical, like a patented invention. Once you have this kind of property, you can license it out and collect royalties, providing you with a stream of income that can last for years.