Passive Income Opportunities

Passive income is the holy grail of automated income and lifestyle design. If what you are truly seeking is time freedom so that you can enjoy your time spent here (instead of working) then what you really want is a way to make passive income.

What are some examples of passive income? Well many people argue that there is no such thing, that in order for you to make money then real wealth must be generated in the form of work or labor at some point. While this might be true, we can still put things on a continuum of passive income on one end, and active work on the other end.

For example, earning interest on a big pile of savings is pretty much 100 percent passive. Likewise, if you own a business and you pay someone a salary to manage and handle all aspects of that business, then the money earned from that business is pretty much passive. The only thing you have to do is "manage the manager." It's entirely hands off for you and for the most part you don't have to lift a finger.

And of course there is the other end of the spectrum where you are slaving away for 40 hours plus each week at your day job, trading away the hours of your life for dollars so that you can continue to live in comfort. That is the ugly end of the spectrum, the one that all of you probably know too well.

So how can we shift towards more passive income? How can we get off the slave labor merry-go-round?

What are some of these coveted passive income opportunities?

In order to uncover those and pursue them, you will have to do some upfront work. Yes this goes against the idea of "passive" but essentially we want to build a money making system that continues to pay us over and over again.

One way to do that is with vending machines. Buy some vending machines, fill them with stock, secure a location for them, and let the money roll in. Yes there are some steps involved there, as well as some up front investment, but there are people out there who make a good living with this. There is also maintenance involved as you either have to stock the machines and collect the money yourself or pay someone else to do it. But it's an idea; a system that can be scaled out to generate alternate income.

The internet provides systems like this that are ripe for passive income. Anyone can start a blog for free and then monetize it with advertisements. If you can build traffic to such a website then you can make money from the advertising. The beauty of a system like this is that there is almost infinite scale and an infinite amount of topics with which to target. Not only that but you can certainly learn how to do all this for free simply by browsing the web.

It is true that such a system is not passive but it is quite a ways down the scale towards being passive. If you can build up a network of money making websites then eventually you can pay someone else to manage them for you and the income will be truly passive at that point. As it is now I have a very respectable part time income coming in from only three and half hours of work per week using these ideas.