Active Income Ideas

There absolutely there is income ideas and practical opportunities – if you do. And that’s the dirty little secret of income: most of it doesn’t work right off the bat. You have to do some work to get things started, then you have to do some work now and maintain a source of income once you get things off the ground.

(If you want something completely do nothing, you’ll have to stick to things that meet the IRS definition, which is “trade or business activities in which you do not materially participate.” Basically, you own a rental property outside become a real estate professional, or buy or invest in a business that you do not make decisions about or work in.)

But if you’re willing to put some work in front, and do a little maintenance along the way, there are several ideas that might work for you.

Some of the more common income ideas include:

• Writing essays for money
• Doing article marketing or promoting affiliate links
• Writing a book and selling a lot of copies, or getting profits from a traditional book
• Creating a monthly membership site, program, or course
• Create an online course and sell it
• Host a one-time webinar that directs people to the products you sell or make a commission on, then replay the webinar on demand or periodically later.
• Selling stock photos
• Creating and selling an app
• Owning a vending machine business

Things to remember

When choosing an idea, keep your skills and the amount of time available in mind. Some income ideas require very little work to get started, but others require a lot of time and effort up front.

For example, you can easily write one or two articles a month on various topics in your spare time, and slowly build up articles that earn you money – but your income may be very small for a long time.

At the other end of the scale, creating an online course that attracts many students will likely require in-depth knowledge of the subject, significant marketing efforts, and at least a small amount of money to get started with a website.

Some things don’t go as smoothly as they might seem, like my Pay Off Debt app which requires regular time to check for updates, and time spent marketing the app and answering customer emails.

Those ideas can still be a lot of fun, and they’re not functional in the sense that they’re not a full dollar-for-hours trade like a 9-5 job would be. Sometimes you can literally wake up and make money overnight. It’s just that you have to work sometimes to create and market a product that will do that.

Benefits

No matter what you choose, remember that you probably won’t get rich with income ideas overnight, if at all. But don’t sell yourself short. Given time, you can make a steadily increasing income while the amount of work you have to do to maintain that income either decreases or stays the same. And that’s great.