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How Do I Make Residual Income?

Alex Tree
Alex Tree

You can make residual income by gaining interest in savings or checking accounts, generating ad revenue, or selling products for an affiliate company. Many people are already making residual income without realizing it; their savings and checking accounts gain interest, which is technically passive income. Generating ad revenue is also a way to make residual income, which is best for people with little time to invest in making a website but who have the creativity and drive to entertain or inform. In addition, selling products for an affiliate company is a method of making residual income without having a product or service. Making passive income is not easy, but most people can do it with enough persistence and knowledge.

A common way to make residual income is to get a checking or savings account that generates interest. In general, smaller financial institutions tend to give better interest rates than large ones. Likewise, savings accounts give better rates than checking accounts. Shop around for a bank that offers interest checking and saving accounts and inquire about joining. Some banks allow you to fill out a few forms, and they will transfer all assets to the new account for you. Remember that the more money you keep in these accounts, the more you earn during the year.

Renting a property is one way to earn residual income.
Renting a property is one way to earn residual income.

Some Internet companies pay people to post articles or videos on their websites. These companies make money through ad revenue generated by the article or video. The ad revenue is shared with users like you, but the Internet company typically takes a good percentage of the profit. If you make residual income this way, you might be getting money for years to come if your content is popular and remains evergreen.

Some content websites pay their writers based on the amount of traffic an article generates, which can make for residual income.
Some content websites pay their writers based on the amount of traffic an article generates, which can make for residual income.

Affiliate programs are another way to make residual income on the Internet. Choose a company that sells a good product and has an affiliate program. Join the program and set up a website to sell that product and then set up advertising. When done properly, the website and advertising should take up little time per month. Meanwhile, you earn passive or residual income due to people buying the product from your website and then the affiliate company paying you.

Some internet companies pay people to post articles onto their websites.
Some internet companies pay people to post articles onto their websites.

Keep in mind that making passive income is hard. Most methods sound simple, and they can be if you have experience, but for novices the task may seem nearly impossible once you have started. Try to stay positive, research new methods, and try new things on a daily basis.

Discussion Comments

Ana1234

@croydon - There are other ways of making residual income online that I find much more satisfying. If you are an artist or photographer, there are a lot of places online now that will market your work, for t-shirts or prints or whatever. You can put writing up in Amazon and other places and sell e-books.

And then there's the big one, which is real estate. Of course, it's only residual income if you are earning but not having to put work into it, which generally seems to be very rare.

croydon

@clintflint - That's why I like working through websites that have their own affiliate program going, and just get writers to provide content for those programs. It doesn't quite pay as much, but you've got better web presence than doing it by yourself and you don't have to worry about losing the affiliate if you don't make a certain quota each month.

This kind of income used to be much more viable though and it's not something I'd recommend for people to get into while expecting big returns. There are just too many people out there trying to compete for attention for online advertising to be a big earner. You have to be having at least ens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of unique visitors each month in order to make any kind of income.

clintflint

One thing to watch for with affiliate programs is that often they will give you a certain time limit to start selling and then take you off their membership list, after which it's impossible to get back onto it. That's happened to me a couple of times when I was just warming up with getting people onto my website.

Generally you are going to want to be well established and already getting numbers onto your site before you apply to be an affiliate, particularly if you are applying to specific smaller companies rather than to a general group or a single large company like Amazon. They will be very picky about their image and won't want to sign you up if you aren't able to represent them well.

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    • Renting a property is one way to earn residual income.
      By: Lucian Milasan
      Renting a property is one way to earn residual income.
    • Some content websites pay their writers based on the amount of traffic an article generates, which can make for residual income.
      By: bloomua
      Some content websites pay their writers based on the amount of traffic an article generates, which can make for residual income.
    • Some internet companies pay people to post articles onto their websites.
      By: Monkey Business
      Some internet companies pay people to post articles onto their websites.