In today’s digital age, the traditional office job holds limited growth potential for anyone who’s even just a little bit computer savvy.
The growing lure of remote employment often leaves one feeling dissatisfied with the prospect of wasting away behind a desk. You might feel this especially when your high-school friends boast of raking in thousands of dollars making website templates while sitting on a balcony in some tropical location across the ocean.
Is it really possible for the average person to set up a business platform that allows them to backpack across the globe while still turning in dollars in residual income?
Multiple case studies show that it’s actually easier than you might think. We’ve highlighted here four ways to make money online while you’re sleeping — and there’s no need for massive starting capital, either!
1. Start blogging!
You’ve probably heard this more times than you care to count.
However, for someone hoping to start a business that doesn’t come with the usual time constraints and responsibilities (e.g., hiring, managing, and compensating staff), a blog presents unique possibilities especially if you can carve out a niche for yourself.
It literally takes minutes to set up a blog, and you’re off. The next step is to create amazing evergreen content that engages audiences and triggers massive shares across social platforms.
As an example, you can start a travel blog to help people in planning their own trips or you can create an invoicing blog to help customers learn everything about invoicing. The possibilities are actually endless!
The big question, however, is how do you monetize your blog? Here are some ways:
Set up an affiliate program. It’s pretty simple; just find products that relate to your blog and sell other people’s products or services on your website. For instance, an invoicing blog may be a great platform to sell invoicing software.
Include paid advertising. For websites that boast high traffic, it makes sense to incorporate both affiliate marketing and paid advertising. Start off small — perhaps $20 per ad — and as your website grows, you will be able to charge more.
However, this depends entirely on the quality and value of your website, so strive to grow your audience by providing useful content.
Find advertisers to put in your website. It might be a permanent logo that you embed in your footer or a one-off piece of sponsored content that you cover on your website.
2. Sell products online
Ebooks and training tutorials are just some of the many products you can sell on your blog and they don’t require massive investment.
The marketing aspect may require some level of input but when you build a subscription list, the next part is to create quality products and that depends on your expertise.
Again, it helps if you are skilled at creating the type of products you choose to sell on your blog or website.
You can also blog about other people’s products if they relate to your blog, and collect some of the proceeds.
3. Set up a membership community
When you establish yourself as an authority on a particular niche, it allows you certain privileges; you can, for example, create a membership community for which you charge members a monthly fee to receive expert advice or tips that are not available to non-members.
Expert marketers and traders earn thousands of dollars every month through passive income by charging a membership community for articles that discuss ways to earn money by blogging or trading penny stocks.
It all starts small but once you have a decent number of audience members, it makes sense to charge for insider knowledge. The best part is you get to use all sorts of automated tools such as auto-responders, which means you can create content and set it to upload to your subscribers at the stipulated time, leaving you plenty of free time.
4. Build and sell websites
You can also invest time, money, and other resources into building and selling websites, provided you have a decent amount of traffic.
There are tons of platforms that allow you to sell websites (e.g., Flippa) and it doesn’t take a lot of coaxing or bargaining to sell a website when it has a lot of traffic.
Just find a buyer that is starting a particular type of niche and offer them an established website.
Conversely, you can also purchase a website if you don’t prefer to build it from scratch. It may call for a significant amount of money but the returns are worth it.
So the next time your old friend who’s jetsetting around the world and living off the proceeds of his website templates posts something in social media about how wonderful his life is, you won’t need to feel envious or jealous of him.
With a little bit of effort, you too can live the life you want and make money even while you’re sleeping.
Ready to take action with what you have learned today? Create a Free Website with Bookmark!
Originally published at www.bookmark.com on November 10, 2016.
