I don't really think there are easy ways to make money, because eventually you really need to put some efforts in other to earn, PoS, Masternode, Trading, Signature campaigns Mining, Faucets e.t.c all required one effort or another to make it achievable,
Running a MN or PoS requires you to have certain amount of the coin, need a pc and a constant electricity supply,
Trading requires experience to be able to trade and make profit otherwise you'll lose,
Mining needs better mining tools plus electricity supply to be able to mine,
Signature also have its own requirements that if you could not meet up with you won't receive any reward or get paid,
Faucets needs lots of patient because the amount you are given at a scheduled time won't amount to anything within a short period, so you gats to work hard and longer to earn a meaningful amount with faucets, and so applies to other aspects,
So in my opinion there is to easy way only chose what you can handle.
Giving you a merit because you pretty much summed it up pretty well. Basically there is no free lunch in crypto anymore.
To add to your Masternode idea, you need to realise that you get paid in the current alt-coin. And unless you can margin trade that alt-coin and short it to hedge then the value of the coin can fall and usually does with respect to BTC. Hedging BTC is not a concern because there are tons of ways to hedge that but many of the Masternode coins you can't margin trade and hedge. So you might get gauranteed coins by running a node but the value of those coins can fall and you will lose BTC value or fiat value.
You actually don't need a PC or electricity for a masternode, you can simply rent a AWS server and run it from there. Will actually be more secure than your own home server if you don't understand security very well.
. 
