- Blogging
Blogging is perhaps one of the most continuously labor-intensive ideas on this list, but you can still create and manage a blog on a part-time schedule. The best blogs for passive income provide information that’s not only compelling but also highly sought-after. Blogs that provide information have various monetization options, which include:
– Sponsorships
– Selling Your Own Digital Products
– Affiliate Marketing (Selling Other People’s Product to earn a Commission)
– Selling Ad Space Directly
– Contextual Ad Feeds such as Google AdSense
The key to success in blogging, besides posting quality content regularly, is marketing to grow readership. For the most passive efforts, use SEO so that traffic is delivered to your blog by search engines. Still, you should have various other marketing options, many of which may involve systems along with automation such as social media and email marketing.
- Email List
Every business blog or website needs to have an email list, but not all email lists require a large blog or website. In fact, it is possible to build passive income using an email list even if you have just a squeeze or landing page.
Your email newsletter should provide helpful tips or information just like a blog, because people don’t subscribe to be marketed to. Still, along with your tips and articles, you can promote your own products, affiliate products, sell ad space, or even get a sponsor.
Using an auto-responder or a campaign can be an effective way to make the email list even more hands-off. You spend the time in advance writing and setting up the emails and the listing service does the actual work of sending the emails to your subscribers 24/7.
The auto-responder works best with evergreen content and not trending news and ideas. For instance, you can set up a 1-year (52 week) email newsletter about fitness over 50 or gluten-free cooking. Just pre-write and set up the emails in the auto-responder or campaign and your subscribers will automatically get the information each week.
Like blogging, your ongoing work will be marketing your email newsletter to get additional subscribers so sit back in your La-Z-boy and relax and make some money.
- Information Products
One of the best ways to make money while you sleep is creating digital content such as online courses, eBooks, etc. While they might take time to create, once you make them and set up the system for selling them (i.e. Amazon or website), all you need to do is marketing.
Just as is the case with an email list, the system does everything automatically. The system takes orders, processes payments, and delivers the digital product. You can even create an affiliate program, so that you can have a team of people selling for you, duplicating your efforts, and growing your marketing reach exponentially. If you use a service like ClickBank to manage your affiliate program, you don’t even need to cut the affiliate checks since ClickBank will do it for you.
Still, like all income options, success in making information products only comes by having a product need or want coupled with marketing to get sales.
- Dropship
Selling a tangible product wouldn’t seem like a passive income source, but it can be with a dropshipping business. Drop shippers supply everything; the product, its packaging, and shipping, including using your business label.
All you need to do is market the product. You can use one of several ways to market a drop ship product, including via your website, through eBay, an e-commerce website, or Amazon’s fulfillment program or promote it via social media sites such as Instagram.
Additional drop ship options now include print on-demand, which means that you can design mugs, t-shirts, and other customizable items, and use dropship methods to sell them.
The downside to dropshipping, however, is ensuring inventory, product quality, and occasionally, high wholesale rates. That said, if you don’t want to hassle with shipping or inventory, dropshipping can be an excellent option.
- Royalties
Typically associated with music and books, royalties are basically earned percentages of sales. For instance, if you write a book, a publisher can offer to publish it and pay you royalties (percentage of the sale) for each book sold.
Off all passive income options on this list, this one is particularly elusive. First, it is tough to get a publisher or another company to buy and sell your creative work. Second, the amount earned per sale is usually quite low; perhaps just a few cents off a $10 sale. Finally, at least in book publishing, royalties are typically paid only every 6 months and only after out-earning any advance received. An advance is like a loan that must be paid back first before you get paid.
Self-publishing is another option, in which you are the publisher. Royalty rates for self-publishing an eBook via a store like Amazon are usually higher (30 to 70 percent) and are paid on a monthly basis. You won’t receive any advance and you will likely have to spend money on editing and other book prep services, but in the end, you may end up earning more.