Passive Income Ideas that Have Worked for Me

First of all I’d like to qualify the whole concept of passive income. There is indeed such a thing as truly passive income. It’s what comes from investing in an asset and then having someone else manage that asset for you. Whether you own rental real estate or a complex investment portfolio, if you make a profit from any asset – after you’ve paid all the necessary fees to whoever manages that asset – you’re looking at actual passive income.

You don’t have to be a financial genius to work out that to generate this kind of (truly) passive income, you have to have capital to invest. So what about the other kinds of passive income? The kind you can create from scratch, using your skills, rather than money you already have.

This kind of passive income only becomes passive after you’ve been through the active set-up phase. But from then on you can indeed rake in the revenue without having to do much in the way of actively working. Here are some of the passive income ideas that have worked for me, as a freelancer whose main skills are in the area of copywriting and content creation.

Royalties

Royalties is the term I use to refer to passive income from my ebooks, but also from the digital products I’ve created, such as my success kits. These are 100% virtual products that I created once but can sell, in their digital versions, over and over again. I sell ebooks via Amazon, and other digital products via platforms such as Gumroad. Both will promote my products for me (to a certain extent) and both will only take a commission when I sell a product (meaning no upfront fees for me).

I also include in this category any recurring revenue from my writing. As a copywriter I’m occasionally able to negotiate a contract where I get paid an upfront fee plus royalties on sales generated by my copy. I also get a royalty-like payment from sites where my writing sits behind a paywall and generates income for the site, and I get a cut of that revenue. The main platform that pays me in this way is Medium, but there are many others.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is something I still work on for several hours each month, but some of the affiliate income I generate in any given month is always a result of affiliate links that are out there just doing their thing, on the internet, in my ebooks, in reports I give away, or in the various digital products that I sell online or provide free for my subscribers (via my resource library, for example).

If I desperately wanted (for some unspecified, possibly tax-related reason) to stop earning money via affiliate sales tomorrow, it would be almost impossible. I’d have to track down thousands of links, not just all over the internet (on blogs, in articles, in social media streams, etc.) but also in digital products and ebooks that people have on the hard drive of their devices, and old emails (in thousands of different inboxes).

I quite literally wouldn’t be able to access many of these links. Which means I couldn’t suddenly stop earning from affiliate sales, even if I wanted to. It took a ton of work to get all those links out there, of course, but now the revenue from some of them really is 100% passive, recurring, completely hands-off income.

Digital Real Estate

I’m talking about things like blogs and websites here. Owning your own little slice of digital real estate is considerably more affordable than owning actual real estate, and it can be lucrative. A blog or website you own can generate a lot of revenue, even if you don’t post new content on it that often.

What’s more, once it is up and running successfully, this type of asset very much falls under the same category as rental real estate or an investment portfolio in that you can – if you choose – employ someone else to manage it for you, therefore turning it into almost completely passive income.

Digital real estate can be an asset similar to traditional brick-and-mortar real estate, in that it can not only provide revenue while you own it, but also be sold for a profit. While selling blogs an websites isn’t always easy, it can be done. There are bloggers who have started from scratch and sold for six figures. If this is your plan you might want to think about selling as an exit strategy while setting up and building your blog.

Creating passive income from scratch pretty much always requires an active set-up phase, but do it right and eventually the passive phase will set in. It’s worth thinking ahead and planning for it.

Karen Banes is a freelance writer specializing in entrepreneurship, parenting and lifestyle. She writes articles, website content, ebooks and the occasional award winning short story. Her work has appeared in a range of publications both online and off, including The Washington Post, Life Info Magazine, Transitions Abroad, Brave New Traveler, Natural Parenting Group, and Copia Magazine. Learn More About Karen