I’ve spent hours upon hours listening to podcasts and thinking up residual income ideas.
There have been courses brainstormed and ebooks I’ve outlined. Review websites I’ve built and a host of suppliers I’ve contacted.
With each new podcast about someone making money from a business, I’d run off down a tangent of what’s possible. The whole time, all I wanted was a list to look at.
Something that I could scan to see what is possible and then choose whichever one seemed the best.
I’d find a few here or there, but nothing much.
Well, because I couldn’t find it on the internet, I decided to create it myself.
Here is every residual income idea I’ve ever come across or thought of.
1. Invest in Dividend Stocks
This is a favorite of mine, Warren Buffett’s and a lot of other investors or anyone seeking to make passive income.
Here you’re making residual income from an initial investment of cash. You buy a stock and then on a quarterly or monthly basis a “check” get’s sent to you.
That’s it. No more time or money need to be spent. It’s like a little ‘thank you’ from the stock issuer. Read more.
2. Invest in Closed-End Municipal Funds
Another one like stocks but the investment vehicle is different.
Someone takes a bunch of safe municipal bonds and bundles them into a fund. That fund pays out a high yield dividend each month as residual income.
The beauty of closed-end municipal funds is that the dividends are tax-free on a federal level. Sometimes even state tax-free depending on the fund. They typically have a much higher yield than stocks, too. Read more.
3. Write an eBook
Got some knowledge in your head that people keep asking you about? Tired of telling everyone you know how to get free flights? Stop telling them and write an ebook.
There are bestselling ebooks on Amazon that are 20 pages long. With ebooks, because it’s not sitting on a shelf, no one is deciding whether it’s good or not based on the length.
An ebook will sell well if the material is good.
Write down whatever it is you know, put it into a book, and post it on Amazon. Read more.
4. Invest in a Rental Property
Lots of people have made fortunes off rental properties.
Think how much you have or have had to pay in rent. Now think about if you were receiving a check for that amount from someone else each month? Pretty great, huh?
There are a lot of concerns that come with owning rental property. Maintenance, bad tenants, empty units, but the returns are huge if you’re willing to take on some risk.
5. Virtually Invest in a Rental Property
You can also get around a majority of those rental property risks and by crowdfunding rental properties. No need for a big down payment either.
The rental check you get each month will be smaller, but so will the headaches.
Join hundreds or thousands of other people on an investment and then split the rent check each month. It’s that simple. I like RealtyShares for investments like this.
6. Invest in Office Space
This is the same as investing in a rental property (virtually or actually).
Instead of people living there, you’re finding office space to rent out. A new trend with this idea is to find an old building and renovate it.
Renovated office space is the biggest trend here in Portland. Everyone wants to work in the cool old brick building with huge, open spaces inside.
Again, this one can be a major headache trying to find tenants. Worse than finding renters. It also requires more upfront cash.
Good thing you can invest in office space virtually.
7. Create an App
Apple and Google are trying to make it as simple as possible to make an app.
There are even programs out there that build an app like you’re building a PowerPoint presentation. Drag and drop.
If you come up with an idea that’s too complex, hop on Freelancer to hire a developer with more experience.
Post it on the App Store or Google Play (or both) and watch the payments roll in.
8. Create Software
Like building a phone app but it’s online or something a person downloads.
Typically these are more in-depth than an app and need a bit of development on the front end. If you don’t have any programming experience, definitely go to Freelancer for this one.
Call around to brick and mortar business owners and see what problems they’re having.
Say you call around to the dry cleaners in your area and they all have the same problem. Come up with a software idea that solves that problem.
Call back those same individuals and tell them they get a discount on your software with an upfront payment. Take that cash to a developer and get the program built.
Now start selling it to every dry cleaner in the country. Passive residual income with every sale.
This is one of the easier places to earn business income. There is a host of people out there who started software like this to earn residual income. After the software took off, their businesses were purchased…for a lot.
9. Rent a Spare Room
Airbnb has made this one super simple.
If you’ve got an extra room in your apartment or house, start renting out that extra room. Sure, you may have it filled with some junk, but clear out some space for another bed.
Then let people rent it out for a few nights at a time. Space is there, why not take advantage of it?
Go through a service like Airbnb.
You have to be comfortable with meeting new people every so often, but this one doesn’t take a lot of extra work on your part.
10. Make an Online Course
I’ve talked about taking your knowledge and putting it into a blog or an ebook. Making an online course is the third option.
Making a course means you create a blog, an ebook, and a YouTube channel all at once.
The nice thing about an online course, though, is that the timeline is finite. You’re usually working on each of those things for a few months and that’s it. You spend the rest of your time selling.
Teachable makes it easy to build a self-hosted course with all the material and tools you’d need.
11. Peer to Peer Lending
With peer to peer lending, you become a bank.
There are a lot of people out there in need of a loan. They may be looking to pay off a credit card or need the money for a home improvement project.
A peer to peer lending site, like LendingClub, pools the money of various ‘investors’ and then loans the money out. Like a RealtyShares.
Like a bank, you earn monthly residual income from the interest payments the borrower is making.
12. Use Cash Back Rewards Cards
We’ve all seen the commercials, but cash back reward cards are one of the easiest residual income idea to start. As long as you’re smart about it.
I like the Chase Freedom Unlimited because you earn 1.5% cash back on every purchase and it doesn’t come with any annual fees.
But, this method of earning residual income only works if you pay off your credit card bill every month. In full.
If you’re not able to do that, the interest payments are going to kill any residual income you may have been making.
That means, if you’re disciplined on spending, you should be making all your purchases with a cash back reward card.
13. Shop through Cashback Sites
If you do any online shopping, go through a cash back portal like Ebates. This might be the second easiest residual income idea.
Ebates looks a little bit like a Google for stores. Say you want to buy something online from Nordstrom. You’ll go to Ebates, search for Nordstrom, and then click the link taking you to Nordstrom’s website. Make your purchase and you’re all done.
You’re not actually buying anything from Ebates but, instead, using it as a gateway. Ebates tracks where you go, what purchases you made, and then gives you a certain percentage cash back.
Combine Ebates with a cash back reward card and that’s a nice little chunk of change coming back for shopping you were already going to do.
14. Build a CD Ladder
Certificates of deposit, or CDs, are a safe way to earn a little higher interest rate on your savings. Especially when compared to bank savings accounts.
The problem is locking your money into that CD for the duration and it’s not accessible.
Building a CD ladder solves that problem. With a CD ladder, you split your money up and invest it in CDs of varying length. That way you’ve always got some of your savings available for an emergency.
This is a poor method for earning income to start an income snowball. It is a decent way to increase your income snowball, though.
15. Install the SwagBucks Extension / Search through SwagBucks
SwagBucks is a bit like a cashback site, but with a twist. Unlike cash back sites where it’s a shopping portal, SwagBucks wants to replace your search engine.
As you do your normal day to day internet searches through SwagBucks, you’ll earn points that you redeem for gift cards or cash.
You’ll also have the opportunity to earn more points by taking surveys or watching videos.
16. Buy and Distribute Candy/Vending Machines
It’s going to take a little legwork and up-front cash, but this can turn into a pretty passive residual income stream.
There isn’t much to it besides buying a candy machine and some bulk candy.
Once you’ve got both of those, start looking around your neighborhood for businesses. Ones that wouldn’t mind having a little quarter candy machine by the door of their office. It helps if kids frequent the building, too.
Ask the owner if they’d mind you setting up a candy machine if you give them a small cut of the profits.
Come back every once in a while to refill the candy and collect your bucket of quarters.
17. Start a YouTube Channel
Kind of like building a blog but with a lot more freedom. Blogs that teach or inform people perform better when it comes to creating residual income.
YouTube videos can be about pretty much anything and still bring in money.
If you’ve spent any time on YouTube, you know there are videos for everything imaginable.
Take whatever hobby you have and start making videos about it. Click a little checkbox allowing advertising on your channel and then get paid while people watch.
18. Make Money on Twitch
Are you good at video games or enjoy playing? Why not make some money while you’re at it?
Twitch is like YouTube for video games. People upload videos of themselves playing and, like YouTube, Twitch sells advertising on the videos.
If you get people watching your videos, you’re going to start earning a share of that advertising income.
This is a residual income idea that completely piggybacks on your hobby.
19. Sell Your Photo Prints
If you’re a photographer or think your iPhone pictures are awesome, considering selling your prints.
Set up a Shopify store and install an app like Printful. Upload your photos, set the price and let your customers shop.
Shopify and Printful handle all the hard work. When a sale comes in, Printful creates and ships the poster without you having to do any extra work.
20. Start a T-Shirt Business
Pretty much the same as selling photo prints. Printful will also make T-shirts, mugs, leggings, pillows…you name it.
All you need to do is set up the store, create the design, and find the customers. Printful will take care of the rest.
This can turn into a pure passive income business too. If you set the store up and get some good designs, there isn’t a whole lot of work to do.
Wait for people to find your site and hopefully purchase a shirt. Each new sale will be a nice surprise!
21. Sign-Up at Banks
This isn’t a long term money maker, but it will generate some easy money and it’s something you could do for a while.
Banks offer a sign-up bonus new savings account or checking account holders.
There are some hoops you have to jump through, like depositing a certain amount, leaving it in for a length of time, having automatic deposits.
If you’re not afraid of doing a small amount of work to meet all the necessary requirements, this is a great way to make some residual income.
And there are a lot of banks that offer up these bonuses.
22. Create a Comparison Site
I don’t know about you, but when I’m trying to decide between two products to use, the first thing I do is a comparison search.
Take a router for example. If I’ve narrowed my choices to the Netgear Nighthawk X4S and the D-Link AC3200, the first thing I’m going to do is Google: Netgear Nighthawk X4S vs. D-Link AC3200.
And there is your website.
Niche down your topic to something you’re interested in. Find all the best products and then start writing blog posts comparing pairs of them.
Put ads on the site and direct them to Amazon with affiliate links.
23. Create a Top 10 Site
Like the Comparison Site but now you’re creating a top 10 list of products. This is what I’m looking for before doing a comparison.
Research a product category and then make a list of the top 10 products.
List out the pros and cons of each and why they’re ranked the way they are.
24. Build a Dropship eCommerce Store
Drop shipping is a program where your supplier takes care of the shipping and handling of your product. You’re responsible for customer service, marketing, etc…
As this becomes popular, there are more and more suppliers willing to offer drop shipping.
Try to niche down on a product category that isn’t too large but is a bit underserved.
Search for a supplier that sells those products and also offers drop shipping. Set up a Shopify store and start attracting customers.
Some suppliers will allow you to send them an invoice straight from Shopify. This means less work for you, but others might need a bit more work.
Either way, it’s all done from a computer so the opportunities for near passive residual income are huge.
25. Build and Maintain a Website for Real World Stores
If you’ve ever created a website, whether it’s WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace, you already know a whole lot more than other people out there.
In today’s world, every business needs a website. I get skeptical if a place DOESN’T have a website.
Start searching for local stores online and find a list of ones that don’t have a website. Or, better yet, ones that have a terrible website.
Approach them about making one and, for a small monthly fee, maintaining it.
If you’re able to attract the right businesses, there won’t be a whole lot of maintenance work on the backend. You’ll have income checks rolling in each month for very little work. This could practically be a passive residual income idea.
26. Create a Niche Stock Photo Site and Get Royalties
Websites are always in need of great stock photos. The more visual a site is, with professional looking photos, the more traffic it’s going to generate.
Not every website creator can take amazing photos and this is where stock photos come in. There are sites where you can go pay a small fee to download and use great-looking photos.
That market is saturated, but you can put a new twist on it. Niche the stock photos down to a smaller category.
If you like snowboarding, start taking a ton of great pictures of you and your friends snowboarding. Then create a snowboarding stock photo site.
The big stock photo places only have a limited number of pics from individual categories. If you dominate your category, every person looking for snowboarding pictures will come to you.
27. Write for Publishing Platforms
If you enjoy writing A LOT, you can make money writing for publishing platforms.
Publishing platforms give you some of the benefits of a blog but without having to build the site and traffic yourself.
You’ll write a high-quality article for a site like Hubpages. They’ll post your article, along with some ads.
Like people clicking ads on your own blog, you’ll get a share of the advertising clicks that occur on Hubpages.
Hubpages will take a share of that revenue, but the reason you publish on there is to make use of the traffic they already have. It’s like selling on Amazon instead of creating your own online store.
28. Build a Book Review Site
People always want the skinny on a book before spending the hours to read it. Some will look at the star rating on Amazon, but others want a more in depth review.
Give the people what they want and start a book review site. That is if you like to read a lot.
One cool tool I’ve found to speed up the reading process, which you can use for this site, is an app called Blinkist.
It takes entire books and breaks them down into 15 minute reads.
Read the 15-minute “blink” and then write a review.
29. Build a Fake Online Store and Redirect to Amazon
You’re creating a blog with this one, but the layout is more like an online store.
Each product will have its own page with pictures, descriptions, and reviews. If you convince someone to click the “Buy” button it will redirect to the Amazon product page and you’ll get a cut of the sale.
How this would work is if you became the best resource on a product category.
As Pat Flynn says, the riches are in the niches. Find something underserved and create the best resource for it.
30. Photo Booth Operator
I’ve been talking about online or digital work with this list so far, but here is our first physical product.
With a camera, a tablet, and a little handy work, you can create an ultra-portable photo booth that you rent out for weddings and events.
Even if you’re not a carpenter, I imagine you can hire the construction out to someone who is for a few hundred bucks.
Then you need to market it to events, drop it off, pick it up, and you’ve got a pretty simple residual income stream flowing in.
31. License Music
This is for all those musicians out there.
While it might not be a dream, licensing music out is a great way for musicians to make residual income. There is the obvious route of trying to get a commercial to pick it up, but that’s a tough sell unless you’re a major artist on a major label. Plus, they usually come looking for you.
Instead, you could use a site like Audiosocket to upload some music for licensing. Audiosocket is a marketplace for music licensing. People search for audio that they’re looking to add to a video, website, you name it.
Another choice is to join Freelancer and work with people directly. They’ll have more input on the “sound” they’re looking for but you would earn more too.
Audiosocket is definitely a passive residual income idea. Working with Freelancer is a higher paying source of residual income with a bigger time commitment.
32. Network Marketing (Avon, Pampered Chef, Advocare)
If you’ve heard of a pyramid scheme then you’ve heard of Network Marketing.
That’s not fair because network marketing is legal while pyramid schemes are illegal.
With network marketing, you join a company like Pampered Chef to start selling their products. Usually, you sell product by leveraging your network.
Where the big money comes in, and passive residual income, is by recruiting other people to sell for you. If you recruit someone, you start earning a slice of their sales. Then if they recruit someone, you’re earning a slice of BOTH their sales.
On and on it goes. I’ll caution that you THOROUGHLY research the market you’re joining. Some of them, while not quite illegal are major scams.
Be careful.
33. Own Storage Rentals
People have a TON of stuff.
We’re great at buying, but not so great at getting rid of. If you walk around an average neighborhood, people are parking in the driveway because the garage is full of stuff.
That’s why self-storage is a multi-billion dollar industry. If you’re able to get some money to buy a piece of land and build a few storage sheds on it, you’ll be able to tap into that market.
At the very least, if you have a backyard, build a shed and start marketing it to people in your neighborhood. I’m sure you’ll be able to find someone in need of storage space.
34. Airline Miles Credit Card
I love this one residual income idea.
Airline miles are the often overlooked goldmine. The sign-up bonuses are amazing and it’s an incredibly easy way to get free travel.
Most people shy away because of the annual fees, but you can credit card churn and avoid that. There is a whole trick to it, but just know that applying for a lot of credit cards doesn’t hurt your credit score.
What hurts your score is late payments, no payments, and racking up interest. That last one won’t hurt your score, but it’ll hurt your income snowball.
There are some cards out there that offer 150,000 point sign-up bonuses. That 150k can turn into $1,500. Not a bad source of residual income.
You’ve got to be smart with your money and be able to pay off a credit card every month, but this is a fantastic way to earn residual income.
35. Take Surveys
Companies are always looking for ways to get in the heads of consumers. They have a hard time doing it.
To get more feedback, they offer payment to people willing to take surveys.
We’ve already talked about Swagbucks offering points for the surveys you take there, but My Survey is also a good option. Like Swagbucks, you take surveys and earn points.
With those points, you can get gift cards or PayPal cards that can turn into cash.
36. Sell Garage Sale/Goodwill Stuff on eBay
Garage sale hunters are onto something.
Garage sales are a treasure trove of discount merchandise. It’s not surprising. Most people hosting a garage sale are looking to get rid of stuff and make a few bucks. The #1 goal, though, is to clean house.
If you’ve got an eye, you can snag something for cheap and turn it around on eBay for a healthy profit.
Gary Vaynerchuck is a huge proponent of this residual income idea.
It takes a little bit of skill to determine what you can re-sell and what is junk, but it’s not a tough skill to learn.
37. Party Chair and Table Rental
Weddings cost a fortune. And people are willing to pay a fortune for their wedding.
Part of that cost is renting tables and chairs for the ceremony and reception. If you’ve got some storage space around your house, buy yourself a nice set of both.
Take a few pictures of them and start marketing. If you’re able to undercut the major distributors, you could have a goldmine on your hands.
People are always looking to cut costs and these two items are a perfect opportunity to offer that. Most of the time they get covered up with linens anyways.
Take some time to research what to buy, though. Some fancy looking chairs will cost more up-front, but it may get more business. You can sell the renter on not having to rent chair covers which are another savings. It’s all about the savings.
You may also need to own a truck for delivery and pick-up. Or leave that to the renter, it’s your choice.
38. Franchise a Business
Have you ever seen The Blind Side? The story of that wealthy family in Tennessee who took in a homeless kid and raised him. Well, they got all their money from franchising.
Franchising fast food joints to be precise. Fast food isn’t the only option, though. There are even moving companies that offer franchising opportunities.
Do a little research and see which one you’d be most interested in.
Some need a high franchising fee and quite a bit of management, while others don’t.
It’ll take quite a bit of work to get up and running, but the residual income can be great.
39. Start a Fitness Gym
This doesn’t have to be anything fancy like a 24 Hour Fitness or LA Fitness. You don’t need 30 treadmills and 40 ellipticals.
Look for available space near your neighborhood. It could even be office space. I know of a gym that used to be an accountant’s office.
Buy a set of free weights, a treadmill, and a stationary bicycle to start. Then find some customers.
When it comes to gyms, most people are looking for convenience over amenities. If I can save myself a 10-minute drive to the gym, I’m ecstatic.
If you start getting more customers, you can start buying more equipment and expand. Don’t think you have to have the gym fully stocked to begin with.
Something close, simple, and convenient will attract a lot of people.
40. Own a Duplex
Owning a duplex gives you a place to live and a rental for residual income.
If you’ve got the money for a downpayment on a house, look for a duplex instead. Your mortgage payment would be about the same and you’d have rental income coming in every month to help with the mortgage. Or pay for it entirely.
It might not be your dream home, but the money you’ll get from renting out the other half will help you get to that dream home faster. Plus, when you move out, you’ll be able to rent both halves for even more income.
41. Sell Crafts on Etsy
If you’ve do any kind of crafting as a hobby, start making money for it on Etsy.
I have a friend who makes custom designed cornhole boards and sells them on Etsy. My wife ordered half the decor for our wedding from various people on Etsy.
Don’t worry about the fear of people’s interest in what you’re making. If you’re interested in it, there’s a very good chance that other people are too.
Take a few pictures of what you’ve already made and create a store. You’ll be surprised with what happens next.
42. Start a Blog
Like writing an ebook or building an online course, but this one can take a lot more time to be successful. Or, you could start earning money quick, depending on what niche you choose.
With a blog, you create a website and then start sharing content. The content could be informative, it could teach something, it could be entertaining, or news related.
The opportunities are endless.
On your blog, you have the ability to offer up advertising space and promote products. Selling advertising space and affiliate marketing is the easiest way to earn residual income on a blog.
A blog also allows you to create and sell your own products.
With a successful site, you could sell an ebook or course directly from the blog.
Getting traffic to your blog is difficult at first, but the possibilities are endless.
43. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is typically done on a blog that you own.
You’ll write about or mention a product and insert a link back to that product. It could be on Amazon or somewhere else.
If the customer makes a sale after using your link, you’ll earn commission on the sale.
Like I said, this is typically done through your own site, but you could write on other sites like Medium and insert affiliate links there.
Pinterest also allows affiliate marketing so you could build up a following and direct people through your pins and boards.
44. SEO Consulting for Local Businesses
People only go places in the real world after searching for it in the digital world.
If you’re looking for a frame store, a paint store, a cobbler, or a barber, you’re going to search for them online first.
You’re going to try to find reviews or something that will make one stand out from the other. Something that will make deciding where to go easier.
Local businesses need help standing out. The higher you can rank for a local search, the more business you’re going to get.
If you know anything about SEO or have a desire to learn, this is a great opportunity.
You don’t need to know everything, just more than store owners. Sell them on what you can do and then help them increase their local rankings.
45. Niche Website Portfolio
Kind of like building a blog, but here you’re creating a series of small and very niche websites.
Pat Flynn has a niche website called Food Truckr that helps people start and grow their food truck business. The audience isn’t massive but there are a lot of people out there interested in the topic.
Because small niches aren’t popular, there isn’t much competition when it comes to ranking. This makes it easy to get a lot of traffic quick.
Now, because the niche is small, the income potential for one site isn’t that big. But money is money and we’ll take it.
If you get good at this, you can start building a portfolio of niche sites. Each one bringing in small amounts each month.
46. Party Hall Rental
Wedding venue rentals is a competitive business…for the people getting married.
Couples are having to find their venue and book them months, even years in advance. The venue owner has to get the word out and wait for people to start calling.
Like renting office space, this one takes even less maintenance.
Imagine yourself getting married. Think about your ideal spot or where you think it’d be fun to host an awesome party.
Now start looking for places for sale that match your imagination.
Some of them might need a little work, but after your initial investment, everything is passive residual income.
47. Sell Resume Templates
Every year, thousands upon thousands of people are sending out resumes. People need jobs and in order to get one, you have to send a resume.
People are constantly looking to update their resume or create one for the first time. And they always need help.
Formatting one from scratch is a difficult process that people don’t want to deal with. It’s complicated enough writing the thing.
Create a series of templates and sell them through a site like Gumroad.
Make sure you offer a variety of styles as well as templates for different word processors. Not everyone uses Microsoft Word.
48. Drive for Uber/Lyft
Another dead simple residual income idea.
This is an easy one as long as you own a car and a driver’s license.
Sign up and put the time in. That’s it.
49. Build a Social Media Following
Making money from your social media account may sound like a dream to a lot of people. The only question a few of you may have is how exactly to do it.
Shay Carl, from YouTube fame, has joined with a few other creators to build Social Blue Book.
You enter how many followers you have on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc…and Social Blue Book will tell you how much accounts are worth.
Essentially, how much a company will pay you to promote one of their products to your following.
They’ll even help you set up the deal with an advertiser.
All you have to do is generate a large enough following for it to be a significant amount of money.
Making residual income from hanging out Instagram all day sounds pretty good to me.
50. White Label a Product and Sell Online
White Labeling a product means that someone else has created the product and you’re putting branding on it.
One common version of this is white labeling vitamins and supplements. Go through a place like Nutricap Labs and order vitamin C, or fish oil, or any other kind of supplement.
It’ll be their pill formula, but you’ll be able to market and brand it however you like. If you didn’t know, marketing is the great differentiator.
Find an underserved product and white label it. Or find a product that is missing out on a key demographic and start marketing to them.
One example could be multivitamins to teenagers and 20 somethings. Most of them don’t even consider taking a multivitamin every day. But what if you could create a marketing strategy that appealed to them.
Create a site on Shopify and start selling.
51. White Label a Product and Sell on Amazon
Take the exact same process from number 50 and sell on Amazon.
You won’t have quite as much control over the branding, but you’ll already have a built in marketplace with millions of shoppers.
52. Organize Public Domain Information
Think of this as a phonebook for the internet age.
If you google ‘accountant Portland’ you’re going to get a map of Portland with some accountant locations on it. The next result will be a Yelp site. Then Angie’s List.
But none of these are very helpful when it comes to finding an accountant.
Find all the accountants for Portland and list them all on one page. Break them up into categories so it’s not one long list. Give a little bit of info about each one along with their phone number and address.
Then have Portland accountants buy ad space on your site about Portland accountants.
53. Lead Capture for Real World
Even with a resource like the static guide, choosing an accountant can still be difficult.
Why not let accountants bid on people’s business?
Create a website with an email capture of people looking for an accountant. As a trade-off, they’ll get a short guide on how to choose an accountant. What to look for when deciding on one.
You take those email leads and sell them to accountants. Those emails are gold.
These are warm leads. People that are already looking for an accountant. That’s worth a lot of money.
54. Make a Real World Service and Outsource the Work
The other day, my dad was going through old home movies of ours. Some of the tapes went to camcorders that don’t work anymore so there is no way to watch them.
Other videos were on VHS tapes and who has one of those lying around?
Make a real world service that takes those tapes and rips them into digital form. Only, you don’t do any of the work.
Use Freelancer to find someone with all the camera equipment and pay them to convert the tapes to digital. Put all the video on a USB drive and send it back.
Find a service in the real world that people need and then pay someone else a small fee to do it. You’re just the one in the middle handling logistics.
55. Rent Out Expensive Equipment
I was in Hawaii for my cousin’s wedding and got to talking to the photographer.
Somehow we got on the topic of their camera equipment and how they didn’t ship it over from the mainland.
It would have been too expensive.
Instead, they rented it from a camera shop right on the island.
Find equipment that people need sometimes but don’t want to buy. Then start renting it out.
Cameras are always good. So is video and audio equipment. Tools would be another great option.
56. Become a Digital Publisher
If you like the idea of owning a blog but hate writing, digital publishing could be the way to go.
The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Inc.com, all these are digital publishers.
There are thousands of people looking to write guest posts on popular sites around a topic. Digital Publishers give them the opportunity.
They don’t hire many writers, but take submissions from other people and, in return, give them a little by-line with a link back to their website.
The writer gets some traffic to their site and the digital publisher gets free content.
The digital publisher also gets to sell advertising and put affiliate links on their site too.
57. Build a Static Guide and Sell Ad Space
Like writing an ebook, but creating a static site with all the info people need to finish a goal.
Take starting a successful blog. There are hundreds of chapters you could write.
Chapters on setting up a domain, installing WordPress, template design, posting schedule, marketing, SEO, advertisings, etc, etc. etc….
Instead of making that into a blog or selling an ebook, make one static page with a table of contents at the top that links to the various sections.
Choose a topic that has a decent amount of search traffic and you’ll reach #1 on Google if the guide is awesome.
Then sell advertising space.
58. Buy in Bulk from Overseas and Sell Online
A company like Alibaba will set you up with a manufacturer in China.
If there’s a product you think is massively overpriced, use Alibaba to find someone manufacturing it in China and order it in bulk. I guarantee there is someone in China making whatever you’re looking for.
Have the products sent to Amazon so they handle all the shipping and handling when an order comes in.
Mark the price of your product lower than your competitor.
People might see you as the cheap knockoff, but who cares as long as you’re bringing in some residual income.
59. Create a Deals Site for Your Niche
AppSumo does this for apps that entrepreneurs would find useful.
StackSocial does the same for online courses.
They find a product and negotiate a massive discount. That discount gets passed to the customer and they split the profits.
It works well for the creator of the product because the deal sites usually have massive followings. People that may or may not have heard of the product before.
Most of the time it’s digital products so there isn’t a concern with the cost of goods. It’s all digital so even though it’s a huge discount, all the money is profit.
Choose a niche you’re interested in. Say photography.
Find all the classes, ebooks, photo apps, and software. Start negotiating with them to sell their product at a deep discount.
Build a website or Shopify store and start selling.
After a while, you’ll start building a bigger mailing list and be able to take a larger part of each sale.
60. Build a Niche Specific Jobs Board
Sites like Monster, Indeed, LinkedIn are helpful in finding a job, but what if you’re looking for something more specific?
Business owners want to target qualified individuals interested in their industry.
Why not give them a place to post their jobs and people with the skills a place to look?
Niche specific job boards give both groups the opportunity to find the perfect match.
Say you’re into programming with Ruby. Create a specific job board for Ruby programmers.
Then have employers looking for people with Ruby skills pay you to list their openings on your site.
They’re willing to do it as long as they’re getting qualified candidates.
61. Create an Extension for Chrome
Chrome extensions don’t get nearly the attention as Android or iPhone apps, but they should.
Right now I’ve got 19(!) extensions running on my Chrome browser.
There are millions of people using Chrome and are always looking for cool and helpful tools. Just like people are looking for them on their phone.
Come up with a great idea and hire someone on Freelancer to create it.
Sell it on the Chrome Web Store and watch the money come in.
62. Repackage Content Into a Guide
If you’ve got a popular blog, this one is dead simple.
Take a dozen or so of your most popular posts around a topic, package them together and sell it as a guide.
The material is already written. To call it a guide, you just have to compile it into an order that makes sense.
Sell it on your site or through Amazon.
63. Create a Niche Podcast
If you hate writing and feel really uncomfortable about being on camera, starting a podcast may be for you.
Besides a mic and some simple editing software, there isn’t much to it.
Pick a topic you think you could talk about, week in and week out, and start recording.
Get friends to come on your show and talk about it with you.
Once you grow the audience, you can start selling advertising space like an over-the-air radio program.
64. Buy Keyword Rich Domains
Buying domains is a tough game to master but the payoffs can be HUGE. Like hitting the lottery type of money.
Noah Kagan of AppSumo and SumoMe fame just spent over $1 million dollars buying the domain sumo.com.
There is a bit of luck involved. Hoping that somebody comes along willing to spend that type of money to buy a domain. But it does happen.
65. Sell Digital Creations
If you’re creative and enjoy making digital products, start selling them online.
There are marketplaces for fonts, icons, website templates, graphics, and on and on.
You could do this on your own website, but I recommended going through a place like Creative Market.
Sure, they’ll take a cut, but it’s a marketplace with traffic and customers already built in. Start there and then maybe branch out to your own site.
And there you have it, 65 residual income ideas. Hopefully, there was something in there to help you get started making a little extra money to build your income snowball.
If that list seems daunting, sign-up for the mailing list and I’ll fill you in on 3 residual income ideas that you can start tomorrow. They don’t cost anything and require little to no time at all.
Disclosure: All investments entail risks. There is no guarantee that investment strategies with RealtyShares will achieve the desired results under all market conditions and each investor should evaluate its ability to invest for a long term especially during periods of a market downturn. No representation is being made that any account, product, or strategy will or is likely to achieve profits, losses, or results similar to those discussed, if any.