Bloggers who earn a passive income are like the unicorns of the internet. Everybody’s heard of them, nobody’s really convinced they exist and where do they get their passive income ideas from!

And yet they do – and they do it using methods that you can start using yourself, at home, right now. We’re about to give you five passive income ideas that could change your life.

You may be wondering what passive income is, so we’ll tell you. Simply put, it’s a cash flow that you receive, regularly, with little to no effort or involvement from you.

Rental income is one kind of passive income – somebody buys a property and lets it out. The tenant pays the rent, and the landlord makes money without having to do anything additional to earn it.

But blogging can also provide you with a passive income. If your blog directly offers – or even links to – products or services that readers can buy, then you can earn a commission from that.

And you get it by doing nothing more than writing the blog, and waiting for somebody to read it and click on the links. So long as you can write, you can earn. Sound good to you? If so, read on.

Five Great Passive Income Ideas

 

1.Promote And Sell Other People’s Products

This is the easiest and most obvious way to earn an income from your blog. If you run a blog, it’s probably related to a topic or interest that’s important to you.

If you have regular readers, chances are they’re interested in the same things. That’s why they subscribe to you in the first place!

Niche hobbies and interests come hand in hand with products and services. You probably even use a few yourself.

Beauty bloggers often sell fashion products, for example. Fashion bloggers sell clothes.

This method is known as “affiliate marketing” and the key is to be subtle. Include hyperlinks within your blog, as part of conversational text, so they don’t feel forced.

If you make reference to a product you use or are interested in, link to somewhere the reader can buy it, and you can be paid commission for the referral. Passive income ideas don’t have to be complicated!

2.Offer Subscription Services

What do your readers come to you for? Inspiration? Motivation? Entertainment? Whatever they’re after, offer them more of it.

Been on a diet recently? Note down what you did, break it into steps, and sell it! Got any great travel tips? Give them one a day!

You can sell anything above and beyond your basic service. Some bloggers provide access to a daily video along with their blog, for example.

Typically, people break down whatever they’re selling into thirty daily emails. That can be thirty motivational quotes.

It can be thirty diet tips. It can be thirty of anything you can think of! Offer it to your readers at a dollar a day, take payment for the month upfront via Paypal, and schedule the emails to go out.

Passive income ideas aren’t revolutionary. They’re just great ideas you haven’t had before.

3.Teach Them To Do What You Do

Depending on the type of blog you write, you might be able to offer your readers the knowledge and skills they need to do exactly what you do.

Solid passive income ideas come from taking something you already do anyway, and making money from it. If you run a photography blog, you can probably teach someone how to take a great photo.

If you run a fashion blog, you could definitely improve a reader’s dress sense. You could design a course that’s completely your own, and charge for it.

Even easier, you could partner up with a website that offers online learning courses, and receive a commission for anyone who signs up to a course that you promote.

Online education as an industry is worth over $100bn a year. Isn’t it about time you started taking a slice of that?

4.Publish An E-Book

We’re going to go out on a limb here, and say that if you’re a blogger, you know how to write. And if you have readers, people enjoy your writing.

You’re far closer than you realize to being a published author. And you know the best thing about writing an e-book?

Once it’s written, you can sell it again and again without having to do any more work on it. So think about what you write about, and how it could be turned into a book.

Anyone with a diet blog can write a fitness guide. If you’ve been blogging because you’re a new parent, how about writing your own personal guide to parenthood?

Or if people just seem to love hearing stories about your life, why not just give them the whole story and write an autobiography?

There are many websites you can partner with online to retail your e-book. If a new book comes out by your favourite author, you’re going to go out and buy it. Why would the readers of your blog be any different?

5.Offer Sponsored Content

Why do companies pay the big bucks for adverts during the breaks of popular TV shows? Because that’s when everybody’s watching.

When you write a new blog, you’re probably thinking about how it’s coming across to your readers. Stop thinking of them as readers, and start thinking of them as viewers.

If you have a strong, regular audience who come to read every post you make, and value the things you say, then you’re an advertiser’s dream.

The right word from you could open their products up to all of your readers and viewers.

Approach a company who operate within the interest area of your blog, tell them how many regular readers you have, and ask them if they’d be interested in advertising through you.

You might be surprised how many positive responses you get. Just always remember to make it clear when you’re posting sponsored content.

So there you have it. So we didn’t reinvent the wheel. We didn’t try to talk you through rocket science.

We just gave you five solid passive income ideas that could turn your blogging from a hobby into a new career. If it sounds easy, it’s because it is. So why not give it a try?