Mar 06 2009
Passive aggressive income
I’ve written more about “deals” here so far than about the other side of the equation: Bringing money in to your household. (It’s just too easy to fall into the exciting deals out there!) From here on out, though, look for more balance, and more info on making money from home.
Up today: Passive income.
I ran across this interesting blog recently on “Why a little passive income from a side project is more useful than you think.” What’s passive income? It’s income that continues to come in on a project, even when you are now putting little or no work into it. (People often talk about money from ads on blogs as passive income, but this isn’t quite right — if you don’t continue to write/work on the blog, that will dry up pretty quickly!) However, if it’s a project you’re doing anyway — like this blog, like my career site for librarians — putting some not-too-annoying Google ads on there generates bits of income without extra work.
I do find it fascinating to encounter people who think I must be “getting rich quickly on the Internet!” because I blog here, run a website there. Here’s a little secret: I have the Google ads you see on the sidebar to the right also running on several other sites, and combined, they currently bring in about $1.00/day. Yup, that is $1.00/day I didn’t have before — or about $365/year — but that works out to less than it costs me in postage, for example, to send books to reviewers for the computer book review publication I run elsewhere. And, I have to pay taxes on it 
. Better than nothing? Sure. Road to riches? Not so much. (Although, think about how many weeks of groceries $365 buys when combined with the deal part of the equation!)
Passive streams of income can also include things like royalties from book projects (which tend only to trickle in after a certain point) and interest you earn on savings/investments. So, do any of you bring in passive income from your own projects? Share your thoughts here!
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I read that blog post about passive income too and it’s the best kind in my opinion. With the Internet so much a part of our lives, it is easier than you think to expand into significant levels and once in a while, it can even grow beyond your dreams. Once you perfect the skills, you can do it over and over.