Posted by The year is 2021 and people still do not know that they can make money without working. Let me say this again, they do not know that Passive Income streams exist… Those people just need to look around to realize that there are many services they use every day that are rewarding a passive income earner. Today I am going to talk about some of the top Passive Income earners in the world and hopefully give you some motivation to build your own passive income streams!
I will not rank the people below from highest passive income earner to lowest. I will also not include the top in the world because passive and active income can get confusing. You can easily find estimates of how much a celebrity earns but not how much of it is actually passive. Additionally, there is semi-passive income which is basically a mix of both passive and active… baffling the topic even more. This blog post was written purely for motivation! I hope at least some of you end up wanting to create passive income streams after reading it. In that case, I have also written 20 Interesting Passive Income Ideas anyone is able to start!
Arianna Grande
The popular singer is currently #1 on Spotify and she has an extremely interesting career. She became famous for acting on a Nickelodeon show named ‘Victorious’ and later moved on to singing. A move that I think was extremely wise as her singing career exploded! Even though I am not a fan of her songs I know about them from the radio and her being insanely successful and popular on all major Social Media Networks. As a result, even if I am not listening to her music I am definitely a fan of her bank account, slightly jealous too! Sure her job includes songwriting / recording and touring but a large part of it is Passive. Let me explain. Her music is streamed on various different platforms such as Youtube and Spotify. Those platforms share some revenue with the Artist.
Generally speaking, Spotify pays singers around 4 USD per 1000 streams, which may not sound like much but it definitely adds up in the long term. Sadly, I could not find her Spotify monthly listeners to estimate her earnings. The singer has many songs with 9 figures stream numbers… This can translate to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in passive income. Those are just some of her earnings as she is also making quite a lot passively from her youtube channel. According to SocialBlade, Arianna made anywhere from 50,000 USD to 850,000 USD this month. Not bad, right?
Friends Cast
We all know the popular TV Show named “Friends”. Even though it is a very old series, the show is still popular today. In fact, Warner Bros, who own the rights of the series made reportedly 1 Billion dollars from the show in 2020 alone. While I would consider these earnings passive I would like to talk about the cast. The 6 main actors made 2% each from royalties. That is 20 Million dollars per actor per year, assuming their earnings do not fluctuate. That is right, they make 8 figures per year without doing a single thing today. Now let me ask, have you seen them in any movies or series these last years? Apart from Jennifer Aniston, I haven’t. I feel that the cast is well paid and probably focusing on other things today. (I could be wrong!)
The Big Bang Theory Cast
Since I included the Friends Cast, I thought I should include the cast of one of the most iconic and personal favorite shows. Coincidentally, Big Bang Theory is also owned by Warner Bros. I should add a small disclaimer and explain that only the 4 scientists and Penny are the main cast. Bernadette and Amy were added later, resulting in lower earnings for them. According to Cinemablend: “at least some of the cast is on tap to receive around $10 million a year just from reruns once the show ends”. Now this explains why throughout the whole show, the scientists were called geniuses, right?
To conclude, I do not believe their numbers are typical and I do not think everyone can achieve them. I just acknowledge that there are people out there making millions of dollars per year passively. Additionally, I do not see why you shouldn’t or couldn’t aim for a couple of thousand dollars per month in passive income. Once again, if you do not know where to start reading 20 Interesting Passive Income Ideas anyone is able to start! may help you get a direction! Lastly, if you read this far comment on a top passive income earner that was not included.
