[Business Insider] After getting laid off from my full-time job in 2015, I decided I'd do whatever it took to be my own boss. While that meant growing my side hustle into a business and taking on more freelance gigs, it also meant finding ways to make passive income every single month.At the time, and even now, the idea of owning a rental property was out of the question, though it was one of the top ways I'd heard of to earn passive income. I didn't have the cash to invest in buying a home, and I didn't have the time to manage a rental property. I knew I had to find other ways to make the idea of passive income come true.
The thing about passive income is that it fluctuates. Some months I make more money in passive income than I do from my business or freelance jobs. Other months, I hardly make enough to cover my grocery bills. Because of that, passive income has to be just one of the many ways I make money every month.
Over the years, I've found a handful of ways to bring in anywhere from a few hundred dollars to over $1,000 in passive income every month. Here are the five ways I'm doing that.