A woman wrote two books, spent seventy five dollars on ads, and in one year those books paid her ninety seven thousand dollars. She has not touched them since. A mechanic filmed car tips he already knew and reportedly turned it into twenty four million dollars. Neither one is a guru. They each built one honest asset that keeps paying long after the work is done, and that is the entire idea behind passive income. What changed in 2026 is that Claude just killed the hardest part of every one of these plays: the making of the asset itself.
We build and document these businesses at IdeasRepay, so here is the honest frame before we start. Every dollar figure below is a reported number tied to a real, named person, not a promise of what you will make. Nobody can promise you an income. What we can do is show you five plays that genuinely work, the pattern hiding underneath all of them, and the exact prompts that turn Claude into the part-time ghostwriter, researcher, and scriptwriter behind each one.
In the video we show each idea with the real person behind it and their reported numbers. This written version stands on its own and adds a copy-ready Claude prompt for every play, so you can start building an asset the moment you finish reading.
1. KDP books: the royalty
Self-publishing books on Amazon, known as KDP, is the cleanest version of passive income there is. You write a book one time. Amazon prints it, ships it, handles the customers, and mails you royalty checks forever. It is the same deal as a hit song. Dolly Parton wrote "I Will Always Love You" once, in 1973, and fifty years later every single play still pays her. A book works the exact same way.
Rachel Richards self-published two finance books, about twenty five thousand copies each, spent seventy five dollars on ads, and made ninety seven thousand dollars in royalties in one year. She retired at twenty seven. Writing a book used to take six months or a thirty thousand dollar ghostwriter. Now Claude writes the outline, the draft, and the edits, and you add your voice and fact-check it. The move is to publish one a quarter and niche down hard. Not "productivity." Productivity for nurses.
I want to self-publish a short, genuinely useful non-fiction book on
Amazon KDP for a specific niche audience: [describe the exact reader,
e.g. "night-shift nurses who want to get organized"].
First, give me 10 book angles narrow enough that this reader feels the
title was written just for them. For my favorite, produce:
1. A chapter-by-chapter outline (8 to 12 chapters).
2. A first-draft of chapter one in a warm, plain, spoken voice.
3. A list of every claim in that chapter I must fact-check before publishing.
Ask me anything you need about the reader before you start.
2. Affiliate niche blog: the vending machine
Picture a vending machine. You stock it once with honest articles, and it dispenses commissions while you sleep. Someone lands from Google, clicks your link, buys, and you keep a cut. Michelle Schroeder-Gardner started a finance blog tracking her student loans. One old post about stay-at-home jobs still pulls tens of thousands of readers a month. She makes about forty thousand dollars a month, and once ran it from a cruise ship for four months.
Articles that took a professional days to research, Claude can outline, draft, and structure for search in minutes. You add your real opinions, drop your links, and hit publish.
Write a genuinely helpful, honest blog article for people searching:
"[the exact thing a buyer would type into Google, e.g. best budgeting
apps for couples]".
Requirements:
- Lead with a direct, useful answer, not a long intro.
- Structure it with clear H2 headings a skimmer can follow.
- Include an honest comparison of 3 to 5 real options, with real pros
and cons, and mark where I should insert my affiliate links: [LINK].
- Add a short "who should pick what" section at the end.
Flag anything you are not certain about so I can verify it before posting.
The hidden system every one of these shares
Stop and notice what all of these have in common. A passive asset, plus a traffic source you borrow (Amazon, Google, YouTube), plus a social layer that spreads it. Claude builds the asset. The platform brings the people. That is the entire game. Once you see it, the next three plays are just the same move on a different platform.
3. Affiliate YouTube: the toll booth
The same move as the blog, but on YouTube. Call it a toll booth. People are already driving toward a purchase, and you just put a booth in the middle and take a small fee. YouTube also pays you per view from ads, on top of any commission. Review channels for things people are already about to buy, like courses, tools, and gadgets, reportedly clear five figures a month. Claude does the research and scripts the comparison. You just bring the honest take.
I make review and comparison videos for buyers who are close to
purchasing [product category].
Research and script a comparison video for: "[X vs Y]" or
"best [category] in 2026".
Give me:
- A hook that names the decision the viewer is trying to make.
- A fair, specific comparison of the real options on the criteria that
actually matter to a buyer.
- A clear verdict with "pick X if..., pick Y if...".
- Spots marked [LINK] where I drop affiliate links.
List every spec or price you used so I can confirm it is current.
4. Evergreen answer videos: the oil well
This one is an oil well. You drill it once, and it pumps for years. Answer a question people will always ask: a math problem the night before the test, a tax question in April. The Organic Chemistry Tutor is just a guy solving problems on a tablet with rough audio and no editing, and he reportedly makes seventy nine thousand dollars a month from ads alone, posting once every few months. You are not chasing viral. You are drilling wells that pay for years.
My topic is [subject you can teach, e.g. high-school algebra / small
business taxes / Excel].
Find me 20 evergreen questions in this topic that people will still be
searching in five years (the "night before the test" or "it's April"
kind of question, not trends).
For the 5 with the steadiest, timeless demand, draft a clear, calm
step-by-step answer I could film in one take on a tablet.
5. Document your job: you already own it
The easiest of all. Whatever you already do forty hours a week, just record it. You already own the asset. The boring, obvious thing to you is exactly what someone else is desperate to learn. Scotty Kilmer filmed car tips for years and reportedly made more in a single month on YouTube than he saved in forty years as a mechanic, for a reported total of twenty four million dollars, from stuff he already knew. Claude turns your workday, the things you already tell clients and coworkers, into titles, scripts, and a posting plan.
My job is [your job], and here are the things I explain over and over to
clients, customers, or new coworkers: [list 5 to 10 of them].
Turn what I already know into a content plan:
- 30 video or post titles from these explanations, written the way
someone would actually search for them.
- For the 5 strongest, a simple talk-to-camera script I can film without
a studio.
- A realistic once-or-twice-a-week posting schedule I can keep.
The pattern, and where to start
Here is the pattern under all five. You do not need a new skill, an audience, or luck. You need one honest asset, and Claude to build it, and the best one is probably something you already know. Notice too that none of these is "get rich quick." Every real number here belongs to someone who put in the reps for months before the asset started paying, which is exactly why most people never get there. The asset is easy now. The staying is the moat.
If you are brand new to Claude, the honest first step is not launching a whole channel, it is getting fluent enough to make the prompts above sing on your own topic, which is what the free Claude prompting course is for. From there, if you want the fuller menu of ways to earn, we lay out the honest versions in 5 Proven Ways to Make Money With AI and 7 Claude AI Side Hustles That Actually Pay. Pick one play, close the other tabs, and build the first asset today. IdeasRepay finds where the money is already moving and hands you the walkthrough to build on it.