Residual income: What is it and how do I get some?
There are many avenues available for earning a residual income, maybe even several residual income streams. The one I’m going to mention here today is how to earn residual income online, and the best way to do that is with an online business.
What Is A Residual Income?
Residual income is a form of passive income, and it could come in the form of royalties, commissions, bonuses, profit share or dividends. Some examples of activities or things that could bring in a residual income include:
- Book sales
- Music sales
- Dividends from shares
- Trailing commissions from brokering loans
- Sales of software
These are just a few of the many possibilities.
Residual income essentially means you create a product once that can be duplicated and sold over and over again with you only having to do the initial work one time. Unlike something like building and selling a cabinet, where you have to keep making new cabinets for each sale, something like music sales means writing and recording one song and selling that same song multiple times.
The Plusses Of Residual Income Streams
Residual income can lead to much greater earning potential. If you have to work for a set period of time to earn every dollar – as in working for wages on an hourly rate – then your income potential gets capped. There are only so many hours in a week and so many hours you can work. Residual income, on the other hand, is basically doing the work for you. If you have a product in the marketplace that can be replicated without having to create it all over again – like an eBook for example – and that product is being found by potential customers, then you can make multiple sales of that same product. This frees up your time to create even more products or invest in more stocks that can then, in turn, increase your levels of residual income.
If you are bringing in enough residual income then you create lifestyle freedom, where you have both money and time. This enables you to pretty much do whatever you want when you want. Travel, take it easy down the beach, hang out in your favourite cafe.
Imagine having both the time and money to do whatever you want. To many that sounds like a dream. But it’s not really. It’s highly achievable.
Setting Up Residual Income Streams Takes Work, Initially
There’s no magic button to press that starts off a continual stream of residual income. There is always work to do in the set up phase. There’s just no avoiding that. But once you have them set up and earning a steady income, it is merely a matter of monitoring them and occasionally doing some maintenance to ensure your income streams don’t run dry.
Residual Income At Home – Achieve It With An Online Business
I currently make residual income from 2 sources:
- Writing and selling books online
- Affiliate marketing
If you’re a writer, or fancy yourself as one, then you can write novels, nonfiction books, short stories and self-publish on platforms like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. I’ve been making a residual income from this source since 2008.
Affiliate marketing is something I’ve more recently added to my portfolio, and I learnt how to do this through the training and support I receive at a place called Wealthy Affiliate. You can find information throughout the web on affiliate marketing and how to do it, but it’s much easier if everything you need to know, plus the ongoing encouragement and support, can be found conveniently all in the one place.
Not only does Wealthy Affiliate train you the right way in setting up an online business from home, you even get to build and host your websites there. Best of all, it’s free to join and begin the first phase of the training. There is a paid upgrade option if you decide this kind of business is for you and want to both finish the training and access all that Wealthy Affiliate has to offer, but that’s optional. All you need to sign up and have a look around is just your name, email address and a username. No credit card or any other details are required to create an account as a Starter Member.
It’s well worth looking into if you would like to set up a business from home online and work towards earning a residual income stream or two. If you want a better lifestyle for yourself and your family, then Wealthy Affiliate will definitely show you how.
Darren Burton
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Having enough residual income flowing in sounds like a dream come true, Just think of the possibilities.
Unfortunately, many people don’t realise that there is no magic bullet, and you have to do a lot of work initially to get this residual income to start flowing. But for anyone not afraid of a little hard word, this can become a reality.
That’s exactly right, there is work to be done in the beginning – usually unpaid work – to get those residual income streams set up, but once set up they pretty much run themselves if done right.