Hello I'd love to dedicate some time each day/week to creating passive income projects. But where to start? I just feel overwhelmed sometimes. lol What suggestions do other writers have about passive income projects. I already have a cache of articles at AC - and am less interested in writing articles for a site to build up an income like that. I'd be interested in other types of projects. Also - how do you pick a project? Expertise? A passion? A hobby? Go with the market? What passive income projects have people done or are you doing that have been successful? Abby
I should add this...I've been thinking about doing some PLR packs, but I just can't gage how popular they are with IMs anymore. Do people still like these? I remember when PLR was so hot! I'd be happy to write some PLR. I guess my big thing about creating passive income is I am concerned about wasting my time with something that DOESN'T make money. How can I move past that? How do you just push yourself to take a chance?
Regarding PLR, it's all about how you position it. I see a lot of writers making nice money with PLR. They write high quality in demand topics, and limit the number of packs sold. It's all in how you package and present it. About wasting time with something that doesn't make money, what's the worst that can happen? You don't sell, so build a website on the topic you wrote about. Invest in some SEO, or submit some articles to Ezine, drive traffic, there's your passive income. If you don't take chances there's a very good chance you'll be doing the same thing you're doing now next year. -Scott
For true passive income, take whatever it is you are passionate about, make a website about it and on each page, provide some products for sale through affiliate programs. I'm not talking clickbank but sites like Amazon, eBay, etc.. You could have a review section for products you have used related to your passion or hobby and provide places to get them. You could have your own shopping area if you wanted. The hard part is setting the site up but if you even do 1 page each day with interesting content, your site will be much better than half the worthless crap out there right now. You'll shoot to the top of google in no time unless your passion happens to be very generic like "Video Games". You'll have to narrow the niche down a bit. This is an investment though. You'll have to get a domain name (related to your hobby/passion) and pay for hosting. I recommend paying a year in advance so you don't forget to pay and get charged all kinds of fees.
PLRs were tolerable, but income-wise they just didn't compare to e-books. I'd go that route. I'm terribly slow at putting mine together, but once they are, the income starts rolling in, even with minimal marketing (but I have a significant built-in audience - if you don't in the niche you're writing about, you'll need to market more aggressively). Blogs and content sites can also work well. I have two niches where my Adsense clicks average around $2 per click - even with really modest traffic, they do well income-wise. Not going to hand out the niches for obvious reasons, but honestly it was just about being passionate about the subject matter. In neither case does even basic keyword research suggest ppc would be as good as it's been, so write about what you love, in an area that's hopefully not over-saturated, and you may just stumble upon a profitable niche of your own.
I too vote for the content sites. If nothing else, they may come in handy as writing samples. Additionally, the sites can end up positioning you as an expert in a new area. The wake up call for me was the Content Creation section of this site. If so many folks were spending money on weak essay-style content, they must be making money from that content. I knew I could write better pieces and make much more in the long run than I would from selling individual articles. Do keep in mind, passive income article sites need some promotion and the site might take a while to rank well and make money.
this is actually one of my goals for this year, but never got around planning about it during the 1st quarter. a few ideas are coming up and i'm doing my research. it's not really related to writing, but it's something i'd like to explore.
I agree with Jenn - ebooks are doing really well these days. You have to offer something "more" in your ebook, though. Also, why not build a list?
EspressoChick, the best two passive forms of income I've had any success with are high-value membership sites and software. eBooks are ok. Video products are ok too. But membership sites and software have been what's worked best at least for me. As far as membership sites go, I wish I could claim ownership of this idea but it came from one of my mentors... setup a 12 month membership site, create and preload all 12 months of materials BEFORE launching the membership program, and then sit back and collect income for a year. Or years. I think is kinda sleezy to do it that way, especially if the material is dependent on current events. But for 'evergreen' topics it should be ok. Software you outsource to others to create, but toss up your sales content, autoresponder content, articles, seo stuffs, etc etc yourself can bring passive income too. I've owned a few software products over the years under my name and a pen name. Is good passive money. For some people it becomes million dollar enterprises. I'm not there yet... but am working on it for my next launch Hope that gives some ideas. Andre
I'd go with writing ebooks and creating valued membership sites. If you're passionate about a particular niche, create a membership site around it, and you could even throw in some PLR for your members as a bonus. Try it...it might just work!
Even if you tire of a web site or find that it is no longer fun to write for, if it has traffic and is in a good niche you can sell it.
I use ebooks to generate a very healthy residual income each month. I have 6 available and I'm very happy with the sales each month. I also have three blogs with Adsense ads on them. I keep each post targeted to the keywords I want to focus on. I do very well with revenue generated from these. I don't agree with 'revenue-share' sites at all.
Great question, and you're getting so many helpful responses. I agree: The ebook route is a smart one, depending how much set-up effort you're willing to take on. My ebook on ebook writing and sales copy does nicely from my own site, as a passive income generator. But I've taken on the new task of trying to get affiliate marketers behind it... a whole new learning curve to conquer & sweat equity come. That said, I also like Constant-Content.com as a passive income possibility. I tweaked and uploaded a bunch of old blog posts there and viola! People are buying the usage rights to post those articles, even many months after I posted them. I keep seeing these nice little 'surprises' in my PayPal because various people are buying those old, repurposed blog articles. As someone else wrote, just be sure you do something with all of this positive energy. Why not try this 'exercise' . . . Let's say you can drop EVERYTHING you're supposed to be doing right now; you have an hour to do anything under the sun that you like. What would you choose to do? Whatever you envision would bring you joy just may be the key to your best next step. Keep us posted on what you decide.
Well I do have a blog that I am not using to monetize or anything, but my blog's name happen to echo another popular .com and I get lots of traffic. The majority of content on my blog is PLR with the few exceptions that were written by me. It used to have a Pagerank 3 and now it has retained a pagerank 2 for the last 8 months or so. I really do believe pagerank has to do with the amount of visitors you get. Google doesn't seem to mind that I have plr on my site either. On yahoo my website is listed no.1 and in google it's nowhere to be found. Weird huh? So writing PLR and limiting it to 5 copies would be a good start. But if you are competing in general niches like everyone else, then I do not know. I would say go for something that is in demand but also doesn't have every Tom, Dick and Harry claiming they can write articles for as little as $2 for that niche.
Pagerank doesn't have anything to do with visitors. It's just a reflection of the backlinks you have (how many, and the quality of those links in the eyes of Google). I had a PR6 blog with all natural backlinks (top notch ones at that). Google didn't like an advertising model on the site, so they dropped it to PR0, and it's been there ever since. I refuse to change a business model that works just because Google doesn't like it, so I embrace that 0. Not only does the lower pagerank not cause a decrease in traffic, but traffic has risen steadily over the months since that 6 point drop (which is a heck of a drop as far as pagerank goes). The pagerank also doesn't have to do with you having PLR on your site - again, it's only about links to it. However, that PLR stuff is probably "duplicate content" to them (something else entirely), and that will affect your Google rankings in actual search results (why you might not be showing up in Google, but could still be #1 in Yahoo).
With regards to finding time to start a sideline income, there’s a great expression I always think of. “I’m to busy earning a living to make moneyâ€