Photo courtesy of Sanja Gjenero (sxc.hu)
Residual income, sometimes referred to as passive income, is money that is paid to you over and again for the work you perform only once. There are numerous ways to build your own residual income stream from home, and it can eventually supplement or even replace your current salary. However, it takes hard work and time to build up a steady and reliable stream of money.
The good news is that just about anyone can begin the passive income journey, from work at home moms to the full time corporate employee. My personal residual income endeavors began as a simple hobby to generate a few extra bucks, but continues growing every day and eventually, I plan to rely on it solely. Here’s how you can do the same by becoming a content publisher.
Earning Residual Income through Content Publishing
Online advertisers need a place to display their ads. They will even pay for the privilege, which means there is opportunity for you to earn money residually by creating content and displaying ads next to that content. In the golden days of the internet, this could have been a very difficult process for the layman, but today it’s easier than ever to publish content without the struggle of maintaining your own website.
In fact, numerous large and established websites will pay you a portion of the ad revenue that your content generates. This content is typically in the form of written text, from simple how-to articles to in-depth magazine-style articles, but could also include videos or photographs. If you can write a well researched article or create an informative video, you can build residual income online.
Finding a Platform for Your Content
The first step on your journey is to find a suitable platform for your content. A popular method of publishing is via a personal website or blog. However, it can take months or even years to get enough traffic to make a significant amount of money. This is the most laborious way to publish content, although it does offer more freedom than other choices.
If you aren’t familiar with website development or blogging, don’t let this discourage you from becoming a content publisher. These days, you don’t even need a website to make money through revenue sharing. Websites such as eHow.com, HubPages.com, and Infobarrel.com will allow you to publish articles on their site and your content will be instantly accessible to thousands of viewers.
The price you pay for publishing on such strong sites is to give up a portion of the revenue your articles generate. However, in the scheme of things, you can still build a large amount of residual income without worrying too much about the technical aspects of maintaining a website/blog, or the promotion of said website. It’s a good idea to check out reviews of numerous different online publishing sites to see which one offers the best features for your situation before making a decision.
How Residual Income is Earned
Each revenue sharing website, including those mentioned above, has a different payment structure and different benefits for its publishers. However, there are two primary types of sites that you’ll run across – those that pay based on ad clicks and those that pay a set amount per unique page view to your article. Either way, once a piece of content is published, you can continue earning money from it for life.
Pay based on ad clicks means that when a web surfer clicks one of the ads displayed with your content, you are paid a percentage of the money from that click. This is almost exclusively done in partnership with Google Adsense when it comes to using online content sites. Advertisers pay Google a certain amount of money (anywhere from $0.05 to more than $20.00) each time a surfer clicks on one of their ads. Google then takes their share, and gives a share to the publisher.
EHow.com pays it’s writers an unknown percentage of ad revenue based upon their proprietary algorithm. In spite of this unrevealed information, eHow continues to be one of the highest paying revenue share sites for publishers on the internet. Other sites, such as HubPages.com and InfoBarrel.com will pay a known percentage. HubPages pays you 50 percent of the money they earn from each click, and InfoBarrel pays you 75 percent.
Sites such as Associated Content and Bukisa will pay you a certain amount of money per every 1,000 page views your content receives, but this could be much less than your articles are actually earning via ad revenue. Pay via page view sites are good for publishing content that attracts high traffic but doesn’t align well with ads, such as recipes and celebrity or pop-culture pieces.
How to Create Successful Content for the Web
Once you’ve chosen a suitable platform, the next step on the path to building residual income online is to begin creating your content. Keep in mind that it’s not as simple as writing a few articles on subjects of your interest. Instead, you’ll need to learn how to write on topics that other people are seeking. Building traffic by creating optimized content is the key to building residual income online.
Before you begin, read and study all you can about proper web writing, keyword research, and search engine optimization (SEO). These concepts will allow you to make the most money possible, but should be used responsibly. When it comes down to it, creating high quality content is more important than all other aspects of content creation, and will boost your residual income to new levels.
For more info: Visit The Freelance Home Writer, a blog dedicated to web writing and residual income, eHow.com, HubPages.com, Infobarrel.com, AssociatedContent.com, and Bukisa.com.
Comments
Great article...peaked my interest since I was just talking about this with a friend the other day.
Personally, I've used Hubpages, Squidoo and Qassia quite extensively. I've got thoughts on each but don't have enough space here to elaborate on them.
In any case, I thought I'd point out a mistake in your article re: hubpages payout. They don't take 50% of ad revenue. They insert your google adsense code to 60% of the article views and 40% of the time it's their adsense code.
Put more simply, 6 out of 10 times your article is viewed, you earn 100% of ad revenue. 4 out of 10 times your article is viewed, hubpages earns 100% of income.
Evidence:
www.hubpages.com/_1hub/tour/hubpages
Hubpages is, hands down, of my favorite residual income/content sharing website.
Apart from that minor detail, great article.
Hi, Pete. Thanks for your comment and thanks for the correction regarding HubPages. I write for them occasionally but due to many other projects have not been able to devote as much time there as I would like.
However, as far as revenue share sites go, I definitely agree that they are one of the best. My seven hubs have made a nice amount of money there in the past months.
Thanks again for the correction!
I came back today hoping to engage in a meaningful dialogue with a colleague. What I found was that my post had been deleted.
I'm really sorry that my post didn't survive. I really was trying to give an alternative point of view, as someone who had "been there; done that". At no point did I attack the Examiner or any other poster; I simply expressed my point of view.
I dunno'. I'm just left with a feeling of sadness for what could have been. I guess I just expected more. :-(
Hi, Leslie. I apologize that your comment was deleted. It was in no way offensive, but I recently experienced a barrage of spam and yours must have been deleted in the fray.
I understand where you were coming from. There are numerous sites which don't pay writers what they are worth and also accept bad writers.
However, if I were to turn down every site which also employed bad writers, I'd be a very hungry girl. We can't judge the worth of our own work based upon what our neighbors are writing. Good writing is good no matter where it's published.
There was a time in my life when I needed the money AC could provide me. I'm not embarrassed about this, as we all have to start somewhere. I often advise newbies to test the waters on sites like these and then move on to bigger and better things once they've learned the ropes.
I appreciate your comment, and feel free to respond without fear of deletion. :)
I like ehow and associated.com
i think its the best way to make money online by freelance writing. I vote you content 10 of 10 (10/10).
you can visit my blog for know freelance writing experience. http://goo.gl/bthkJ
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!