Creating a Strong Passive Income Stream

The thing about creating substantial passive income stream is that it’s a lot like riding a bike up a really steep hill. It’s slow and painful, but once you get to the top the hard work is in the past and you can just enjoy the ride and coast on all your prior efforts.

The work is where I lose most people. They want something they can throw money into that’s going to spit money back out at them. That makes sense, it called investing, but the problem is that if you don’t already have a lot of money, you’re probably not going to find an investment that’s going to pay out a substantial monthly income.

So, we’re back to square one — work. There is a beauty in compound interest that makes the rich richer, and passive income is like compound interest for your efforts. For example, let’s say you earn $20 per hour at your job, and you get the chance to work one hour of overtime and you take it so that you can use that money to invest in passive income. So, you earn $35 from that hour of extra effort — let’s pretend for simplicity’s sake that taxes don’t exist, and you invest the whole $35 in some EFT like SPLV which pays dividends. Assuming average appreciation and continued dividends then you would have earned $3.43 in passive income the first year which is equivalent to a little more than 10 minutes worth of your hourly pay rate. Assuming you reinvest your earnings then next year those earnings are a little bit higher.

Now that’s something, but there are other avenues that may require more work but also have the potential for much larger streams of income for the effort. There are many ways to go about that such as writing an ebook, starting a blog, some affiliate marketing programs, designing products, and creating online courses. There are many other ways to create robust time dividends in the way of passive income, but for now this article is going to focus on these.

Write an eBook

The market is saturated in physical and ebooks, but the good thing is that there is an enormous market out there. Most people read, in fact you’re reading right now, and you probably have a variety of topics that interest you. People who like to read or just like to learn don’t stop at one book and never read again, they accumulate the knowledge and adventures inside the pages and it inspires them to continue reading. What I’m saying is, though the market is full of books and the barriers to entry have never been lower, there is still a lot of earning potential in content creation.

That being said you will likely need to put in some research to determine the best means to advertise your content and drive sales and the best methods may vary depending on what you’re writing about and who you’re writing for. Earning potential is truly unlimited here, but I wouldn’t expect to become a multi-millionaire from writing one ebook and calling it quits. The more you work the greater the dividends here so keep pushing out content, keep your audience engaged and I believe you will earn a substantial and growing passive income stream and the less you have to work in the long run.

Starting a Blog

If you have a passion for something but don’t think writing a book is for you, or maybe you want to write content in addition to your book to create a larger audience or build awareness, then starting a blog may be a good idea. There are various ways to generate income through blogging such as affiliate links, selling ad space, or selling products/services. WordPress is always a good option if you want to do a combination of things or want some good customizability. Medium and Vocal do provide better returns on ads if you allow them to monetize your content. Building a following can be difficult and time consuming, but as long as you’re passionate about your topic, post regularly, and post content that adds some sort of value then you have everything you need to build a significant passive income.

Affiliate Marketing

There are tons of affiliate marketing opportunities out there. The most well-known is Amazon Affiliate. How it works is, you advertise their products through some form of media, someone buys through your link and then you earn a commission. What I believe to be the best and easiest way to find affiliate opportunities is through Partner Stack. With most affiliate marketing products its essential to build an audience and consistently post or share content that adds some sort of value to their lives and builds trust. This is especially easy if you really care about what you’re “selling”. Its not fair to your audience to push products you’ve never tried or don’t care about and its not fair to the business either. If you do that then your affiliate success will be short lived if at all in most cases. Social media is probably among the easiest ways to get started with affiliate marketing. In addition to my love for business, I’m also a fitness enthusiast, so I’ve become an ambassador for FNX which is a fitness nutrition company. I like the products, they taste good, do what they claim and they’re reasonably priced so its not very hard to talk about them and give them my support. If I never tried a single product then I would struggle to find anything to say about them and when I did I wouldd have to hope I’m right and don’t get called out as a liar.

Design Products

If you’re the creative type or even just good at coming up with catchy phrases then you may find success in print on demand products. There are plenty of venues such as Redbubble, Teespring, and Zazzle that allow you to design products and list them for sale. You get paid a commission when your product sales. I have accounts with each one to maximize my exposure, but so far Zazzle is the winner by far in terms of sales generation. You don’t have to get too complex with your work to make sales either. My top seller is surprisingly enough just a simple deck of playing cards with a white back that says “I’m Cheating” in black letters. Depending on the sales promos going on I usually earn between $0.20 and $0.32 on each deck sold and all I did was type “I’m Cheating” add a few tags and a description about 4 years ago. Now if you really want to push for all the sales you can get then you may want to advertise or at least create some social media sites for your store.

Create Online Courses

Full disclosure here, this is one I am preparing to start by drafting up lessons, but I have not utilized this one myself. I thought it was worth including since its one that I am going to do and once I have a deeper insight I will review it a little deeper. There are several platforms to choose from and right now I believe that picking one and sticking with it is the best way to start so as to not divide your traffic or your focus. Some of your best simple options are Udemy, Skillshare, Teachable, Thinkific, and LearnWorlds. It seems like Udemy is the best option for starting out and keeping it simple.

Takeaway

There are numerous ways to create passive income, but the best of them require an upfront investment of either capital or effort. In the long run its worth the input and can pay out very good dividends. Most of these content platforms also compound in the form of followers. You may start out making very little income, but over time as you create more and more works or posts your audience will grow and sequential posts will garner greater attention.

Let me know if there are any other topics you would like to hear about or if you would like a more in depth post on any topics!