When people see the term “passive” income, they often think “hey, I can make money without even doing any work!” Not true. The fact is, it does require work for you to earn passive income. However, the passive income business model has an added bonus that a single time payment models does not… you do the work once, and then you keep getting paid for it into the future.
This is different from service-based work, for example, where you must do the work each time to produce income. With passive income you create something today that keeps earning money later.
Examples of Passive Income
Some examples of passive income that you may be aware of are financial or real estate investments, recurring payment programs (like selling auto insurance), and royalties on copyrights you may own; all of these enable you to spend either time or money once, and keep earning income on an ongoing basis. And, of course, you can also earn passive income online today. Some examples are information products, membership websites, eCourses, and eBook sales.
The Benefits of Passive Income
People who want to earn money from passive income understand how trading hours for dollars can be limiting. They want to put their time and money to use one time and keep earning from those efforts. It's the way insurance sales people have made money for years. They earn a little commission from each person that buys and keeps paying for insurance; then the more people they sell the insurance to, the bigger and bigger their monthly income becomes. It might take a lot of work to get there, but eventually through momentum it seems like everything becomes a lot easier.
The Two Major Types of Online Passive Income
If you would like to earn an income using the passive income model, there are several ways to do so online. However, mostly you can break it down to two different ways.
Promote Other People's Products
This is one of the fastest ways to get started. Figure out who you want to sell to, know the audience well, and then find products and solutions for them to promote. There are even membership websites where you can promote to them so that you can earn a monthly residual income that grows.
This can be digital product subscriptions, of course, but it can also be promotion of other business' services. For example, through online automation, you can drive leads to insurance or moving companies (among other businesses) as well as promote all kinds of “of-the-month” subscriptions, including anything from makeup to clothing to wine or beer.
Create Your Own Products
This is another way that you can get involved with making passive income online. At first, creating the product is a lot of work, but once you get a number of affiliates promoting the product, the income will grow exponentially, month after month and year after year. For more information on product creation, have a look at my training on 5 steps to creating profitable digital products.
How To Start Adding Passive Income To Your Business
The main question now is who your audience is, and which way you'll go. Most people actually choose both methods. They sell other people's products, and they create their own. Most people start with selling other people's products, then eventually create their own after they get some experience with building a list and other marketing methods.
When I first started down the path of exploring passive income opportunities, I was still working as a marketing professional in the wine industry. I wanted to find a way to grow my audience around the subject of wine, and the natural path, it seemed at the time, was to write a book. And that's just what I did.
I created a Kindle book that, upon release, reached bestseller status on Amazon. Since then, it's been continuously generating passive income for me (curiously a lot of sales have been made on Amazon's Japanese website). I've also published several courses on the website Udemy, which deposits money into my PapPal account every month. And I have countless affiliate products which I recommend in my online content, paying me every time someone clicks on one of my links and buys.
Of course, I didn't know how to do all of this when I first got started. But through some trial and error, I found a resource I trusted to guide me through it all, in the form of David Perdew and his NAMS organization.
Here's an interview that David and I did back in 2015, all about passive income and how it's made a difference in his business and that of so many others.