#ways to earn passive income as an entrepreneur

As some will say, "I worked a traditional 9 to 5 jobs for many years and eventually I got burnt out. I knew that I wanted more freedom and the idea of passive income became very appealing. I had heard of many people quitting and replacing their full-time job with passive income, but I had no idea where to start". You get to know what steps to take in this article.

What exactly is passive income?

Passive income is where you get paid over and over again for work that you did once. There are multiple income streams that are passive, many of which are mentioned below.

Online entrepreneurs

By choosing the right sources of passive income, you can invest your time and money the way that you want to instead of the way you have been spending it. Passive income is a way of buying back more time. There are so many opportunities out there to make residual income in network marketing, however, this is NOT one of those “things”. These are legit ways for you to make money while you sleep in something that fits your passion, experience, or skill-set.

1. Peer-to-Peer Lending

This is where you can lend other people money who don’t qualify for traditional financing with investment returns often in the 6-10% range. Additionally, investing money with a company can get you much higher income results than a typical savings or money market account.

2. Writing a book

Once the initial work of creating the book is done, and you’ve spent some time developing an effective marketing plan, selling books can be a great way to produce some serious residual income. You can get a 10% royalty for every book that gets sold. Once your book is available on a site like Amazon, you could receive a check each month for doing absolutely nothing. Obviously, the more time you spend marketing your books, the more money you’ll make.

3. Affiliate Marketing & Ads

Here are two basic ways to make money with your website. If you have a site already then this is a no-brainer. There are people that are making over $50,000 per month like Michelle who created "Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing". Affiliate marketing can be a great way to make passive income because when people click on the affiliate links on your site, you receive a commission at no additional cost to them when they purchase a product or service.
A second way you can make money is from advertisements that appear on your website. The most well-known way is through Google Adsense, however, MediaVine is the one that tends to pay a lot more money for views and clicks when compared to Adsense.

4. Create an Online Store with Drop Shipping

With the explosion of eCommerce, drop shipping has become very popular. Here’s how it works: you create an online store that offers products from certain manufacturers. A person visits your site, orders a product, and your system sends the order to the specific manufacturer. The manufacturer then completes the order by shipping it directly to the customer. One of the cool things about this type of business is that you do NOT need to order inventory. The customer pays for the product, you collect the profits, and the manufacturer stores and ships the products to the customer. It’s as simple as that.

If you’re interested in starting a drop shipping business, consider using a platform like Shopify to build your online store. They have twice as many templates as their competitors and they even have a 14-day free trial that you sign up for here.

5. Create an Online Course

Online courses can be a great source of passive income. Here’s how they work: you create a value-packed online course that helps solve a problem or fills a need. This course can include videos, e-books, and emails with pertinent information. Customers sign up to purchase the course and your system automatically emails them everything they need to access the materials. You get money for the price of the course that you created and automation does all the heavy lifting for you.

6. Start a Business and Have Someone Else Run it

Owning a business can be a good passive income source, provided you’ve got the right people running the business for you. Whether it be through the purchase of an existing business or opening a new business, your great business idea can be a viable source of passive income. For some creative small businesses that you can start for under 100 bucks, check out the $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau. These are all verified businesses that grew to over six figures per year and started with very little money up front.

7. Buying a Vending Machine Business

A successful vending machine business can be a great way to make passive income. The key is to find the right places to install your vending machines. Check with smaller brick and mortar businesses that have over 100 workers in the building on a daily basis, and see if they have a need for vending machines. Another key to vending machine success? Ask those workers what items they prefer to have in the vending machine and then stock accordingly. Once again, if you want to reduce the amount of time that you are involved, consider hiring someone to stock the machines for you.

8. License Your Photos

Have you ever wondered how you can make money taking pictures? Do you have an eye when it comes to taking good photographs? If so, check out a site like Shutterstock where you can send them your pictures and if approved, each time one of their clients downloads one of your photos you get paid a royalty.

9. Buy an Existing Online Business

The beauty of an online business is that most will allow you to work from anywhere. Starting one from scratch can take a lot of time and resources, so why not consider buying an already established online business? Web sites such as "Biz Buy Sell" have hundreds of online business listings that are for sale in varying prices ranges. Check to see if there is an online business for sale that is in line with your passions or hobbies. Because if you are going to be working, why not do something you actually enjoy doing.

10. Open a High-Yield Account

Looking for a low-risk way to make passive income? Then look at opening a high-yield checking, savings or money market account with an online bank that pays more than traditional banks. The yields are much higher than most local banks and still come with FDIC insurance. While this won’t make you filthy rich, it will be a safer way to make consistent income and not lose your money since they are FDIC insured.