In a previous article (What is Passive Income?) we defined passive income for our purposes to be self-sustaining online income that doesn’t require a real-time presence. And we are only interested in passive income strategies that do not require significant up-front capital investment so we are ruling out things like stock market investing, property rental, peer to peer lending etc, as they require substantial capital. Worth saying that this exclusion is about where you’re starting, not where you’ll end up — once the methods below have produced some capital, that door opens, and a plain starting point for managing your own money is over on my investing newsletter. Now we’re going to look at some methods of achieving this. Passive income opportunities Although there are lots of different ways to earn a passive income, to meet our requirements they broadly break down into 4 main methods: Selling digital products of your own (ebook, training course, membership site etc.) Selling your own (or somebody else’s) physical products Promoting Affiliate Offers Earning revenue from advertising on your website or blog

Passive income is money that still comes in when you are not actively working. It offers the promise of being able to leave a conventional job, where you trade time for money, and enjoy a life of freedom to work when, and where you choose. Sounds pretty good, huh? Taken to the ultimate, you can potentially spend your time doing whatever you want, whilst your income still rolls in. Whether that’s sipping cocktails on a tropical beach whilst working from your laptop, travelling around the world crossing off items on your bucket list, or simply raising your kids as a stay-at-home parent. Whatever you want. It may just mean the freedom to work for yourself, when and where you choose. One thing it is not, is easy money. Not in the context that we’re talking about here anyway. Building a passive income stream takes a lot of work upfront. A lot of work. But what it then gives you is the ability to de-couple your income from your time. It could perhaps more accurately be called residual income. In a conventional job, you have to put time in to get money out. The moment you stop working, your income also stops. So to maintain your lifestyle you have to keep working. If you love your job, that’s great. But most people don’t. There are probably a thousand things they would rather be doing instead, but they have to work to pay the bills. That leads to the sad situation where most people spend all their time doing a job they hate, just to be able to afford a life where they keep on doing exactly that. And then, after 45 years, they can stop and do what they want for a bit. If they get there. Hopefully, they aren’t too […]

So you’ve decided that you want to build a passive income. You’ve looked at a few different passive income strategies, or ways of earning a passive income, and you’ve seen a few ideas that look promising.

But how do you choose what to do — how do you choose your niche?