passive income tips – Online Marketing – Websites

I’ve been playing with the new “Niche Refinery” tool inside of The Keyword Academy and found some new keywords for this blog – I shouldn’t have to tell you which one I am targeting today. Its not worth a million dollars or anything – but the current top ranking posts for “passive income ideas” – all leave a whole lot to be desired. As usual content really doesn’t matter that much – its all about using the keywords in the right place and domain authority in the Case of the current top ranker’s – so I figure with a bit content – and some backlinks I too may get to page #1 and provide some useful information.

What is Passive Income ?

Passive income is income you receive which is not related to how you spent you day – well that’s my definition of it anyway! I might have spent the last week doing this (I wish!)

Snorkeling, Turquoise Bay, Exmouth, Western Australia

but meanwhile I made over NZ$2000 – passive income. That income happened with no discernable activity on my part – I don’t think I made any decisions to with last week – but the invoices paying me showed up today – being the first of the month and all.

Passive Income Ideas – Its the Business Model That Matters

Many people will ask how did I make that passive income last week – the answer is property investment. Now not all property investors have themselves a passive income business – we do – we hire professional property managers and have never met any of our current tenants – none of whom know that we spent the last 3 years out of the country. Now it doesn’t make us a fortune – there are a few mortgages involved – but we have had a good capital gain – more than can be said for the stuff in the share market!

The point is -you will find endless arguments of whether an asset class is a passive income or not – the question should be – do you want it to be? Neither my partner nor I enjoy fixing plumbing or dealing with tenants – so our residential property is set up so we don’t have to, we chose to do it that way. Alternatively I know people who have created themselves a full-time job looking after their tenants and their property – neither approach is wrong just different.

Top 5 Passive Income Ideas – If You Do It Right

Property investment – its been my top earner to date so I have to put it #1. In New Zealand its tax efficient and low risk. The downside of course is that its only low risk if you have 50% or more equity. Its only passive if you pay someone to manage and maintain properties for you.
Bank Deposits. Yeah really – I can earn over 6% on New Zealand bank deposits and over 5% on call in Australia. I pay no advisor fees, I do pay tax – its the best cash rates in the world (well anywhere in the world that you have good chance of getting your money back)- anyone around here who pays advisers to put them into a money market “product” is nuts. Overseas investors should think about it – obviously you will carry an exchange risk (which is far from trivial) – but banks in this part of the world do not fail.
Stocks/Shares/Managed Funds/ whatever you call them. Primarily I use these for capital gain rather than passive income – but I know this works differently overseas. Again if you chose to be a day trader this will be far from passive income – if you chose the right advisor long term stock picks- should work for you.
Develop a business which doesn’t require you to work all the hours of the day to make you money. Tim Ferris’s Four Work Week is the ultimate guide to this approach. Most entrepreneurs desperately need to work IN their businesses – Tim points out how you can arrange the business so it pays you without you doing much work at all. You still need to set the business up – but potentially it can cost a lot less than using the first 3 approaches to passive income
Marry a rich partner – well there is some work up front but … – unfortunately no personal experience on this one! Fundamentally if you have enough capital you should never have to work for an income again – money doesn’t fix your life – but it does give you choices.

Those are pretty much the only ways of generating passive income – but as I said above you can still get it wrong – and end up working full-time on a so-called passive income stream .Which brings me to irony of this post – I write about developing passive income online here – I am trying to develop niche sites which will pay me passive income on a regular basis. Its definitely possible – but I haven’t got it to the scale that I relax yet. Passive income is about timing sometimes -working hard for a few years so you can take the rest of your life off…. And please no one tell me that freelance writing is a great way to make passive income – tips like that are worth what you paid for them!

Backlinks are key in this business – I hope most of you know that already! I could go on and on about backlinks – particular backlinks for DIY sites which make lots of passive income with Adsense. But I won’t – mainly because my mate Allyn is on and on about it – he seems to have morphed from the stroppy beer-drinking persona – to a nice non-fluff teaching bloke without a budget to afford a chair in his new fancy videos – and I do find the black background pretty dull compared to his DIY kitchen.

Waitangi Park, and Te Papa, Wellington, NZ

Anyway he has this post up which is all about backlinks – and if you understand nothing else about making a passive income online – backlinks are the #1, important thing to focus on – yes more important than the number of twitter followers you have, more important than the number of stumbles you have and more important than the content on your site. Good content is quite useful – in fact the only reason I linking to Allyn is because he has put together the definitive post about everything you need to know about backlinks So now every time I get asked about what is a backlink I can just point to this post – handy eh?

In fact iwas a little sore at Allyn calling me “missy” so I was sorely tempted to link to him with a click here but I thought if I gave him a good link – he might build some links to my post too. That’s something that Allyn doesn’t mention – but is worth pointing out I think – that apart from backlinks the 0ther thing that is helpful in this business is having friends. I suspect that a lot of people who are trying to make money online are quite solitary by nature – but the reality is that having friends online is a lot easier than having them offline – you just start linking out to people you genuinely like (pssh want to see a cool picture of Ur’s Ziggurat?) or even that you think may eliminate some confusion from your readers (online cash and info domains) .

So headon over and listen to Allyn’s rant about backlinks and think about what my link from here is worth to Allyn Am I Donald Trump or just some Kiwi Missy with a Website? Am I Bob Villa or Jane Doe (you will have to watch his videos to figure it out!) And Allyn WTF is a green screen – are you going to be doing Avatar 2 next ? And dude you need a chair – or more comfortable pants I reckon!

Meanwhile back with me – January has been complete crap – its a bit better now that I figured out what was wrong. I was on a big downer about being home again. It happens every time I come “home” – I get as closed to depressed as my normally fairly bouncy personality can manage. Whatever the opposite of being a homebody is – I am it! This time I didn’t even really want to come home (crises in my partner’s family) – so its been worse.

And running your own business and being pissed with life is not a good a combination – even my improved version of time management hasn’t helped. This has though – More Time Now – I don’t know the author or his blog – I found the link while aimlessly surfing the web (no TV at the moment so surfing online instead of channel surfing) – and its quite a useful – I think – well it gave me something to think on anyways – which is unusual for my cynical self -its free -no affiliate links that I can see – worth a read if you struggle with time management