Most things that sound too good to be true are; however, a passive income is not as long as you know what to expect. You just need to realize before starting that you might be working longer and harder in the beginning before the “passive” part kicks off. This is an initial investment of your time in order to reap the rewards over and over again later.
So, with that in mind, here’s how to make money while you sleep:
Get into the drop shipping industry
Perhaps you’ve tried selling items on eBay before, but it’s not bringing in the income you’d hope to see. Or maybe you’re out of merchandise to sell. Drop shipping is another way to sell physical goods without actually keeping anything in stock. Instead, you purchase items from a warehouse or third party who then directly ship the products to the customer. In this retail model, items are only purchased as needed instead of maintaining an inventory. You can learn more about the process from the eCommerce platform Shopify, which can be used to start your own drop shipping business.
Blogging and Affiliate Marketing
Starting a blog is fairly cheap to get started. You just need to pay for web hosting and your domain name, then you are ready to go. Plus, blogging is one of the best ways to make a passive income online. This is not a “set it up and the money will come” thing though. You do need to spend weekly attention to it for a while before it can really start making you money. The good news is that there are multiple ways to make money through a blog once you have built a following. Here are just a few:
- Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is where you promote other people’s products on your site and receive commission if people click the link. You’ll want to choose products or services relevant to your site for best results. See if the company who created a certain product or service you already use for your blog or business has an affiliate program in place. Sites like ClickBank will also provide you with a link to use on your site from a variety of industries. A general rule of thumb is to pick categories you are most familiar with to make the process genuine and simpler for you.
- Advertising: When your blog does have enough traffic, you can start selling ad space to potential advertisers that want to reach your audience. Again, using advertisers relevant to your blog’s niche to improve the quality of your site. Advertising revenue will start off small, but it will eventually grow in numbers in time as your visitors grow and clicks to the ads do as well.
- Find a Site Sponsor: Another option would be to have someone pay you a set amount to have an embedded banner, sponsored content or their logo permanantly placed somewhere on your site. You’ll have more leverage to do this once you have the following, so focus on growing your blog first.
Put together a membership site
Creating a membership community is a great way to make a little extra cash by providing exclusive information to members. For example, let’s say your blog is up and running. You can develop a membership portion of your site where individuals pay to receive high-quality free materials or information not provided to your general audience.
Have a middle-man or arbitrage services
Basically, this is where you do all the negotiating but hire out the labor to execute. Choose markets or services that people or businesses are willing to pay a lot of money and connect them to the person that performs the work. So, to sum it up, you are paid to be the middle man. You outsource and market the services, making a profit from doing so.
Peer-to-peer lending
Peer-to-peer lending basically makes you a human form of a bank. Certain sites will match you with someone who was have a difficult time receiving a loan. Because this is giving strangers money over the internet, this is much riskier. Despite the fact that you can have high interest rates on the loans you provide, this will be one passive income resource that you will want to do your homework on before signing up.
Before you get started…
Now that you have a few ideas of your options, you need to develop a plan of action. Before you officially start, determine the following:
- What skills or services can I offer?
- What is my niche?
- Who is my audience?
- What is my competition?
Make sure to then research the passive income route you plan to take prior to diving in. If none of the above sound like they fit you, you can also invest in the stock market and become a stakeholder.
If you’ve been wondering how to make money while you sleep, hopefully we’ve answered that for you here today. Do you plan on trying any of the above or have you seen success already? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.