This is the third part in a series on securing your finances by adding new income streams. If you haven’t yet read the previous parts yet, check out the first and second part as well.
We have talked about the importance of creating new income streams, and created a set of criteria for determining whether a business idea qualifies or not.
Now it’s time to get to the real thing.
Today I’m presenting you a list of seven inspiring income generator ideas that provide a good passive income. Here we go:
1. Blogging
Lately blogging seems to have become one of the world’s favorite means for earning passive income, probably because of the money people like Darren Rowse and John Chow are making through it. However a word of caution is in place: Don’t start a blog if it is just for earning money.
First of all, maintaining a successful blog requires daily work (so it’s not really passive income after all): writing quality posts one after other, maintaining relations to other bloggers, always keeping an eye open for new ideas in your niche. But what’s great is that as a blogger you are a part of an interesting, lively social network consisting of people from all around the world. One more thing to mention is that it usually takes about 6-12 months (or longer) before you start seeing any money at all, not to mention the huge numbers that some profilic bloggers are making.
Blogs are usually monetized by selling advertisement (if you want to buy some from me, head over to my text link ads page), but there are some other ways as well: William Prophet is selling his book through his blog, Scott Ginsberg uses his blog to keep people talking about him so that they will then book him to speak at their events. John Chow does paid reviews and asks people to buy him a beer. Just as long as your content is useful to the reader and your blog is popular enough there are tons of different ways to make money. If you love writing, meeting people and have a patient mind, blogging might be the thing for you.
2. Videos
With YouTube, Vimeo and all the new video sites being started almost daily video has really invaded the Internet. If you have a camera and some skills in making short movies that are either useful or funny to other people than yourself, this might be worth a try.Next time you are about to post a video to YouTube, send it to Metacafe or Megavideo and earn money from it.
At Metacafe, if you submit your video to their Producer Rewards program they pay you $5 for every 1,000 views your video gets. The catch is that before you get any money your video needs to be seen by 20,000 people, so be sure to make your video a good one. The good part here is that once your video is done, you don’t have to do anything else, just wait for the money to come to you. And if you want more money, make more videos. The top earners have already made about $50,000 this way so it’s definitely possible.
If movies are your thing, I suggest you give this option a try.
3. Web based software
For software developers building your own web service is a great thing to try. It takes quite a while to create a great piece of software that would be interesting to many people. But when your service is live, you don’t have to do additional work for it, just maintain the software to keep users happy and let the software handle the rest. So, if blogging cannot be considered passive income, software qualifies perfectly.
Monetizing web software is very similar to blogs. Web software gathers a wide range of people so you can use advertisement and affiliate marketing in your software as well as in blogs (AllConsuming.net has a nice example on embedding Amazon affiliate links to the service). If advertisement doesn’t sound like your thing, you can also try selling subscriptions like 37signals are doing with their product line.
So, if you are a programmer, pick up Ruby on Rails and start making money!
4. Stock Photography
Most of the images seen at this blog are stock photography bought from iStockPhoto. So, with each post I am actually supporting someone who is making a part of their income by selling photos online. The great part about sites like iStockPhoto is that once you register, you get to sell your photos through their system without any advance payment.
Once again, they are running a business as well so they take a piece of the cake, but what you receive is still quite good. After all, if your pictures are good, and many people buy rights to use them, all you need to do is to upload the photo and you’re making money.
5. Stock Flash, sounds and fonts
If you don’t consider yourself a photographer, luckily photography isn’t the only thing you can sell online. Flash Den provides a market place for selling Flash animations, sounds and fonts. So, if those are more of your thing, go check it out.
6. Books
Publishing your own book has never been easier than today. With services like Lulu you can sell your writings in the form of a real, printed book with no additional costs: You write the content, Lulu prints and delivers it to the customer, and pays you your deal of the price. Lulu of course takes their own commission, but the money you receive is still decent and well worth the effort.
If you want to keep all the money, you can also do it all by yourself and sell e-books for example using PayPal as payment method.
The downside in writing a book is that writing a good book takes a lot of time and effort. It’s not something you can do overnight. But when you get your book out in the open and do some good old marketing to support it (a blog is a pretty good marketing channel), the results can be really good.
If you enjoy writing and dream of writing a book, this is something worth considering.
7. Sell merchandise
When Pluto lost its planetary status some people came up with a great idea: they created a huge collection of different Pluto related T-shirt models and started selling them online claiming that we should preserve Pluto. The word spread quickly and they made a nice amount of money. Lessons learned: Follow world events and act on them when they give you good ideas.
That list should get you started, but I’m always interested in hearing new ideas. So if you have a tip that I didn’t mention, or experiences in applying any of these ideas, share your thoughts in the comments.
Tomorrow, the story continues as we look at things that you should not do when building additional income. Until then, let’s keep the discussion flowing.
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Yep – capitalize on a hobby.
If you think your hobby is wacky, visit eBay and check out all the crazy things people are selling and buying.
One smart thing to do, besides earning the extra money by working for yourself, is to put your exsisting money to do the work for you by investing it.
If you are afraid of losing money by doing bad investments you can always consult professionals who are usually very willing to help you. There are also some good services like eqBank (in Finnish) to start with easy and low risk investments. Sorry the link is in Finnish but that’s the only service I know to recommend.
Hey Lauri, that’s a great tip! Have you used eqBank yourself, and what kind of experiences do you have from it?
And is there a minimum amount of money you need to have in order to get started with investing?
Lauri brought up a good point. Unfortunately those way generally require some initial capital and might involve significant risks if you strive for too ambitious gains.
May I introduce myself? I am the next blogging sensation, please, stand up. And Jarkko, watch out. :D ;)
It’s all about the content, even if you’re writing about an elephants in Africa and do that pretty well, you can expect appreciation.
All the best, just try not to think about money, but for doing a noble things. People will recognize you.
Well said, Nedzad! Well said.
If you write about something with authority, passion, and write well (interesting text, interesting topics) people will be interested in reading what you have to say.
Good luck with your blog (you’ll get at least one loyal reader from Vantaa, Finland right from the moment it opens up :)
Jarkko, thanks. Actually, I’m learning from you. :)
Great post Jarkko. Very well written, excellent take on making income on the side.
My favorite – the “Preserve Pluto” Tee’s. A great example of a couple who have made an incredible amount of money following worldly events is http://www.backwardsbush.com/ – It’s amazing how people can come up with something so simple, but make so much money out of it
Rashid: Thanks for the Backwards Bush link, hadn’t seen it before. That’s a great example of how you should act on your ideas (even if they seem a bit crazy) because they might be successes. If you don’t try you’ll never know.
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As an (almost) unrelated sidenote, have you guys read The Raw Shark Texts?
I got a free demo of it from the local book store (32 pages of the book given for free), read it yesterday and now I really need to get the book…
The (almost) related part here is that they took the idea from software / internet and brought the free demos to books – and it sure works. :)
Great article. Finding a market for your talent or hobby is the main challenge. Once you have a target audience it’s much easier to start making money on the side.
Someone’s willing to pay you to do something you enjoy, all you have to do is find them!
Thanks, Ravi!
I checked out your blog and absolutely loved it! Keep up the good work, and thanks for stopping by.
My top pick for the best 21st century business skill to develop is the following: Internet Marketing.
Me and my pals have been investing serious time into this skill recently. The main justification for this is that if you have the ability to create quality internet traffic you can monetize it any way that is most effective. If what you’re selling (software, other merchant’s products, shoes, bacon, etc.) isn’t working you can fix it.
Sounds good! Are you selling your own products or affiliate products created by others?
Good luck in making money online!
I would agree that passive should be removed from blog income and just say that bloggers can earn income. I guess some people do have success with a niche site, but that’s not an active blog. I enjoy reading success stores like Problogger and Chow, but what about the average bloggers. Do they earn $20 on average per month or less?