Work work work. If you’re done with handing over your hours in the day in exchange for some bits of paper, you’ve probably wondered how else you can make money. The answer might just be residual income.
What is a residual income I hear you ask?
A passive, or residual income is something that pays you a dividend or income, without needing much input from you.
Typically, residual income comes from high value assets such as:
- Property rentals
- Publishing rights
- Intellectual property
- Stocks, crypto or other investments
- Business ownership
If this sounds like the way rich people do things, you’d be right. You don’t see many billionaires running a 9 to 5 do you?
OK, the truth is, getting to a level of enjoying a regular passive income does take some effort to start with. It’s rare that you’ll create or pick up and asset first time and see if pay you regularly.
But, if you’re wondering how to get started with building your assets, read on. We’ll even score them out of ten for difficulty (ten being most difficult).
1. Self publishing
First up is creating your own content and publishing it on a platform such as Amazon KDP. This might be a novel, a guide to something you understand well, a kids book… Whatever you can think of to publish online. There is even a world of books that have little to no content such as journals, picture books or inspirational reading.
Bear in mind that with Kindle Direct Publishing, you can create on-demand print books too. So it’s not just ebooks.
I spoke to Chris who started her own erotica books business back in 2016, “I heard that erotica was selling well, off the back of 50 Shades of Grey, so I decided to try it myself. I wrote a few stories which sold a few copies, then decided to outsource it and got about 10 stories of between 5000-10000 words. Today I make about £500 per month from these. If I promoted them more I could even make more.”
Difficulty score: 5. It takes some creativity to put the books together, and you do need to format them and upload them correctly.
2. Courses
You might have noticed that a lot of content creators offer courses. Why is that? Because setting up a course is a very effective way to generate a passive income.
Ideally, to build a course, you need to be successful at what you do. So it’s no good creating a course for people learning marketing if you’re not really experienced at marketing.
There are many platforms to use to create your course, from Udemy or Kajabi to Teachable (and loads more in between). If you’re serious about building a course to earn a residual income, then you’ll need to structure it well, have a good audience already and probably build an email list too.
Difficulty score: 7. It’s harder than it looks and you do need to have a good level of experience already.
3. Holding crypto currencies
Now, here at Playboy Cartel, we’re all about crypto – as you know. So how does holding your crypto earn you a residual income?
You will need to be holding a semi-substantial amount of crypto. We’re talking multiple thousand dollars worth here. From here you can either generate income by setting sell limits at staggered points, or invest your crypto in staking rewards.
There are several platforms that offer staking rewards, including the most popular exchange Binance. These rewards can be anything from 0.5% up to 15-25% for some crypto coins.
Like all products and investments related to crypto, remember that your investment can easily go down as well as up.
Difficulty score: 4. Holding crypto for the long term is a no-brainer (for us at least) but staking is where clever investors put their money.
4. Sell a digital product
So we mentioned self-publishing at the top of this list. And that is a great (and relatively easy) way to make a residual income. But selling a digital product is a different form of this, and can even mean you sell it on your own platform.
What counts as a digital product?
This can be anything from a simple software program or an app, to a downloadable guide, WordPress template or images.
You might need to create a platform to sell your digital product, or you could use sites such as Etsy or Kajabi.
These guys will, of course, take a cut. But can make getting your product out there nice and easy.
Difficulty score: 5. Depending on the product, you can generate a good residual income from an established platform.
5. Buy or sell NFTs
It’s currently August 2021, at time of writing. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are big business right now and the craze doesn’t look to be slowing down. From crypto punks to crypto whales, people are splashing their ETH on collectable jpegs, and some people are getting rich.
Could that be you?
The trick with making a residual income with these collectable NFTs is to make them collectable and meme-worthy. The current crop of boom NFTs are deceptively simple artworks that have unique features that make them collectable. 8 bit ducks, whale portraits and digital food and what people seem to be happy to pay for at the moment.
To buy NFTs, simply go to one of the popular platforms such as OpenSea and find your meme worthy purchase.
Buy and sell your NFT on OpenSea or Binance.
Difficulty score: 8. There is more to making money from NFTs than just creating a range of pixelated animals. You’ll also need to build a buzz and upload them too.
6. Blogging
It’s been around for a while, but the truth is that blogging can be a relatively lucrative industry. The trick is to pick a niche that you’re passionate about and start building your following.
The work that goes into building a blog shouldn’t be underestimated though. Yes, you can make a good residual income from blogging. But you will need to create engaging and useful content that ranks well in search engines, or is widely shared on social media.
It’s also an approach that takes time, but can actually be one of the easiest things to get started with.
With a good traffic flow you can then monetise your site with ads and affiliate links. Just like us!
Difficulty score: 4. It’s more the time commitment and understanding SEO that is difficult with blogging.
7. Property
Ok, we can’t all be property tycoons. But actually, you don’t need that much to get started building your property empire.
Property is easily one of the best ways to make residual income. And there are plenty of markets where a relatively small outlay can net you a potentially lucrative patch of land.
Italy is one of the most ridiculously cheap places to buy property, with regular initiatives for €1 homes popping up regularly. Beyond Italy, you can also buy cheap property in Bulgaria, Romania, Colombia, Ghana, Nigeria, Brazil, Ecuador and some parts of Portugal too.
You’ll need to do your research of course. And hidden fees can quickly inflate the list price, so bear this in mind. But if you want a solid investment for the future, property is always a wise move.
Difficulty score: 8. Buying property overseas is not easy, and can also be costly. But the rewards can be worth the hassle.
8. Sell your images or art
We mentioned NFTs earlier, which are a very 21st century art platform. But you can also sell your photos or art works on a number of platforms for a great residual income.
Shutterstock is probably the best known platform for photographers to sell their work. But you can also sell original artwork, or prints, on sites like Etsy or Zazzle. Once you’ve got a good design up, you can generate a regular passive income. Although you will need to promote your work too.
Difficulty score: 4. Again, generating a buzz or traffic to your platform is key to successful residual income.
The bottom line
There are a lot of options out there for creating multiple revenue streams and generating a passive income. Remember that even making a residual income will involve some hard work to get to the point where you don’t need to work on it any more.
Time is our biggest investment we can make, so start working on your residual income today and who knows where you’ll be in a year or two…