Passive Income, Making Money While You Sleep. Is It For You?

Yesterday, I said I would talk a little about passive income opportunities today, and here we are.  Passive income is sometimes referred to as "smart money," where as by selecting the right opportunity or product will bring long-term profits.  Passive income is the income that continues to be generated long after the initial effort or work.  You get paid over and over for work done once.  Think of your favorite fruit tree.  You take the time to select a good one, plant it, and care for it as it begins to grow.  However, once you have coaxed it to bear fruit, it will continue to bear fruit season after season with relatively little or no additional work from you besides the occasional pruning.

Passive income is product based, you can not usually perform a service that then performs itself time and time again for residual income down the road, you usually must do the service each time to get paid for it.  You don't always have to create the product yourself however.  The internet has created opportunities to let you put up sites, or links that sell "other" peoples products, and they will in turn give you a small commission for leading the sales opportunity to them.  The most popular ways of this  are google ads, banner ads, and affiliate marketing programs.  Be sure to do your homework on the product that you are going to direct traffic to.  If it is not something you believe in, or the selling site does not take care of the their customers, you would be wise to pick another company and not let your reputation as a referrer go down with that particular product or company.  To start with, check out some affiliate programs that have been around for more than just a couple of years.  'Clickbank', 'Commission Junction', and 'Linkshare', are three that come to mind.  Of course Google Adsense and Adwords are good first steps to revenue, but the key to all of these, especially Google, is to have a site that generates a good deal of traffic.  

The road to faster passive income generation comes when you create your own product.  Everyone has some information to share about some subject.  Put it down in a pamphlet, an e-book, or make a video of it.  The trick now is to find someone else to sell it for you either on their website or storefront, or to create your own site that you can drive traffic to.   You might also find a company that can dropship products that they have that are sold through your website.  Mr. Cunningham, Tom Bosley of Happy Days fame, has been advertising this type of business for years on television.  SMC is a company that can offer passive income by letting you guide traffic to their site and dropshipping the products to customers you find.   There are also non-web opportunities to create passive income.  If done correctly, rental property is a good example.  I will touch more on passive income opportunities and stories in the future.  For now, just take away that there are ways to increase your income with a little up-front work, for some long term benefits.  Good luck..........Scott