Earning ‘passive’ income
I talk about passive income every now and again on my blog, so I thought I’d talk about what it means to me.
What is passive income?
Passive income is money I ‘earn’ without the need to specifically do anything to get it. That is, income that just drops straight into my bank or PayPal account without having to intervene or work or any other unpleasant and/or boring activity.
Why do you need passive income?
As I’m now (mostly) self-employed again, I don’t have the stability of a guaranteed monthly salary to depend on. Passive income is important to me because it allows me to build an emergency pot — while I’m busy doing actual, billable work — to fall back on should I be unable to work for any reason, e.g. kids, health (physical or mental); it also means that if an unexpected bill or the like comes in I have something to draw from. Eventually when this ‘pot’ is big enough it will be used to pay a lump sum off my mortgage as part of my goal to be mortgage free in five years. At the moment, all passive income goes straight into this ‘pot’ (it’s an ISA, not a literal pot).
How do you earn passive income?
I have two sources of passive income at the moment:
- Income from my premium mail form sales
- Income from adsense advertising
(I earn dribs and drabs from affiliate marketing which many see as passive income too, but more often than not the effort required to get to this point far outweighs the pennies I get back.)
Of these two sources, advertising is obviously the easiest. I dropped the provided code from Google into my blog sidebar, mail form site, WAHMweb etc and watch the pennies trickle in. Making money from my mail form is rather different; although I generally don’t do anything month to month to drive those sales, obviously I had to write the form in the first place. I also occasionally have to drum up sales, which I’m not particularly great at (because of laziness, not necessarily lack of skill). The required initial effort and occasional shameless plug are not “passive” but in terms of overall work I don’t do a significant amount month on month.
How much do you get?
It’s taken me a year to earn £60.10 through adsense so it’s hardly lucrative, but £60 is better than nothing.
The mail form makes the most money out of the two (although still not making me rich): I’ve had 12 completed sales since it launched in February, totalling £228. After subtracting fees (£11.63) and ‘software’ costs (£107.32) there’s a total ‘profit’ of £109.05.
Clearly I’m not going to be retiring off the back of this passive income any time soon, but it’s income I otherwise wouldn’t get.
Are you going to do more?
My grand plan is to open up a member’s only section on my mail form site, which will give users more customisation options and the ability to generate custom forms and add more/better functionality. This requires effort and energy and at the minute I’m struggling to drum up either, because I’m about as low as the time I cried into my wine.
I also have a couple of other content-focused sites which I may or may not choose to work on over the course of the next year which should bring up my income from advertising.
In an ideal world, by the end of 2015 I’d like to be making at least £100 per month in passive income so that I can increase my mortgage overpayment by that amount. I have a lot of work to do to get there…
Kya said:
On 11 Sep at 9:34 am
It’s good that you are able to earn something. I can understand that with the script it would have more work involved. Especially if there is also updates to do and support to follow up with as well.
I do hope that you are able to reach the point that you want too and I am sure you can! :D
Adam said:
On 16 Dec at 8:29 pm
Hey Jem, this is a clear, concise guide to earning passive income.
I have to ask… as there’s only a couple of weeks left in 2015, how did you get on meeting your £100 aim? :D
Jem said:
On 17 Dec at 8:48 am
I’m now overpaying my mortgage by a further £100 but it’s not entirely passive income – so sort of met my goal.