How to make money online to build a passive income

It seems to be what everyone is talking about and aiming for nowadays and why not? It's only natural to want as much money for the least amount of effort, freeing up time for actually enjoying life!

Passive income is in it's most simple terms just that, maximum profit, minimum effort. But more specifically it's regular, steady, repeated income from little (or no in some cases) initial input. The majority of people earn through active income~ directly trading hours and effort for payment.

I will use Charlotte and Sophia as examples:

• (active income) Charlotte makes one-of-a-kind jewellery and sells it online for a fair but not huge profit once selling fees, materials, time and packaging are taken into account. She designs and makes each piece by hand and when one sells she packages it and goes to the post office to send it. She does not have much time for herself as any time left over after making, packaging and posting is spent marketing, listing and networking.
• (passive income) Sophia also makes jewellery. She donates many pieces to charity auctions when her collection is too large. Otherwise she sells kits, patterns, tutorials, ebooks about jewellery making and sells photos of her work on stock photo websites. Sophia makes around the same profit per product on average as Charlotte but has many more sales as the number of products available to sell doesn't depend on Sophia making each one. She still spends a lot of time marketing and networking but once the ball got rolling she found she had more time for herself, low overheads and maximum profit.

I may as well mention the most obvious one first. You probably are on this site in the first place because HubPages is a place to make passive income! I personally like this way best as your income doesn't necessarily depend on getting people to buy anything~ although affiliate advertising is always worth adding if the products are relevant to the writing. It costs nothing to read an online article.

There are many ways to write and make a passive income...

• Article writing: Sites such as HP share a portion of the revenue made from adverts placed on users articles. This gives each article the chance to earn constantly as long as it remains published. OK it may only be pennies per article but they add up and if you know your SEO you could become a success story. Other similar sites include InfoBarrel and Triond. If you haven't tried HP before sign up now and give it a go!
• Blogs: Similar to article writing but it's all your own. You control the look, the ads, the widgets and you are TOTALLY responsible for getting the traffic.
• eBooks and eCourses: I'm just learning more about this myself and have just started writing an ebook. This differs from the above two in as much as you are creating a product which needs to be sold. BUT where paper and ink books need to be printed and posted, our digital equivalents don't. Write it once, sell it limitless times.

I'm not talking one off pieces~that's active income! One piece of art, no matter the format, has hundreds of possible uses...

• Print on demand Merchandise Shops: There are websites out there that let you set up your own shop where you upload your original artwork, design your own merchandise such as Tee-shirts and mugs and sell them. When an order is placed they print and post the customers order and you pocket the 'commission', they even handle the customer service. Sites that offer this include; Cafepress (US), Zazzle (US), Spreadshirts (US/Germany) and Streetshirts (UK). I mention the nationality as you do need to take into consideration currency conversion charges and import charges~ as I found out the hard way~ it can really cut into any profits.
• Stock images: perfect for digital artists and photographers in particular. There are literally billions of websites in the world and each one normally needs two things above all else...words and pictures. Many people don't have the time or simply don't want to create their own graphics and photos for their needs and so buy them from sites like iStockPhoto. Again the profits are shared but they do most of the leg work for you. It's popular to see on stock image sites images of people, banner and buttons for websites, background patterns etc.

This is a hugely popular choice for those looking for a passive income...personally I didn't get on with it but we all have different talents right?

Internet marketing is when you set up a website for a specific subject (or niche) and sell normally other people's products and you take a cut. The most common way to do this seems to be...

• Set up a web site and offer a free digital product, such as a webinar, ebook or audiobook
• Only give the said freebie out to those who sign up to your email list first
• Once you have their email address send regular emails promoting either your or someone elses (on commission of course) products, courses, webinars etc.

This of course can easily be combined with blogging for extra profit, but many set up web sites purely for 'funelling' potential customers to their email sign up form in the hope they will become a repeat customer.

I've already touched on this a little with the eBooks but I want to make an extra point of just how vast the possibilities are for downloadable products. Most people assume (correctly) that products to download are:

• Music
• eBooks
• Images for web sites

But there are SO many others, such as:

• Sounds for phones (ringtones and alerts)
• Sounds for games
• Sounds for cartoons/videos
• Wallpapers for phones and desktops
• Designs for stationery
• 'Printables' for crafts (paper crafts, colouring, t shirt prints etc.)
• PDF's for patterns, tutorials, templates
• Templates for websites, blogs, CMS
• Apps for tablets and smartphones
• Fonts
• Brushes and shapes for image software such as Photoshop

So you see there are digital products to suit all talents and everyone could produce something to sell for a passive income!

This is one I have to admit to having no experience in, but it's well worth a mention because people are making money from it!

Virtually everyone has access to some sort of video making equipment nowadays. From smartphones to flip cameras to webcams, but how can it make you passive income? Sites like YouTube have adverts on the videos and it's my understanding that if your views are high enough you can get a cut of the revenue and make money while you sleep.

If you know more about this topic please do let me know below as I for one am very interested in finding out more.

The above are just a few of the possibilities where you can not only make money but essentially create for yourself an online job doing part time work for a full time wage.

I wont lie, the only way to get there is to work hard and have patience...it will not happen overnight. BUT if you stick with it and constantly learn you will reap the rewards and find yourself with more time as you learn the tricks of your trade and have enough good quality content online and a good reputation to generate at least some of the traffic by itself.

Other ideas for passive income include:

• Game development
• Membership sites
• Subscription sites/products
• Podcasts

Think about what you love to do and in what way you can turn that into a virtual product. It can work for any subject/niche and maybe even think about outsourcing to free up even more of your time and open up your earning potential by including someone else's talents.

I hope this has helped. Please feel free to comment below and I'll see you soon!

~Kaz x