Before diving into the topic, let us see what active and passive income means. To put it into simple words, active income is where you trade precious hours for money. On the other hand, passive income is where you make money while you sleep. Passive income sounds great, right? So let us see how we can save our precious time by building these passive income sources instead of trading our valuable time for money by freelancing.
How to Turn Freelance Income Into a Passive Income Stream
Sell your finished/unfinished work:
Often we create drafts of our work that do not make it to our final work. For example, if you are a freelance photographer, many of your photographs will not make it to your client's folder. You can sell those pictures on websites like Shutterstock. This will be a passive income, and you will earn money every time someone purchases that picture off of that website. Even music producers and videographers can gain passively using this method too.
Often when writing an article, we need to research the topic. While analyzing, you can open an Excel file and record the finding of your research there. Even these Excel files can be sold or still bring value to you if not sold. You can sell them to other freelancers and use them for yourself in future projects.
If you are good at digging up backlinks, you can record which websites provide backlinks and sell that list. Websites like Fiverr make it easier to sell these kinds of products.
Delegate work to other freelancers:
A successful freelancer who has been in the field for a long time and has an outstanding portfolio. You will get a lot of projects from a lot of different clients. Hardworking freelancers invest a lot of time doing all these projects and even stress themselves to meet the deadlines.
But as you may have the saying, "Don't work harder, work smarter." You may get a lot of projects, but you don't need to do all of them by yourselves. You can delegate a few of those projects to freelancers you trust and give them a part of the revenue for their work. But be careful who you choose to provide the project too because a lousy job will poorly reflect your profile.
Make digital products and put them up for sale:
If you specialize in making WordPress themes, you can generate the proper profit by selling them. Digital products include music tapes, photographs, videos, digital art, infographics, and much more. You can even sell images you photoshopped.
There are a lot of websites that make selling digital products very easy. They take commissions for selling through their websites, but they have a vast customer base. Which more than makes up for it. Selling digital products is an excellent way to earn passive income. Because once you put them up for sale, they will be up there for a lifetime, and multiple people can purchase and use them.
Make an online course and sell it:
If you are a freelancer, you are specialized in a specific field that earns you money. This means there will be many people wanting to specialize in that field too to make money also. You can capitalize on this by preparing an online course and putting it up for sale. Right now, selling online courses is a multi-million dollar business.
It may be pretty tough to formulate a course, but it will be worth your while. There are a lot of websites out there like skillshare that help you sell your course quickly. These websites have a vast customer base as well. An excellent online system usually markets itself, as people share it on social media and suggest it to other people.
Write a book and earn royalties from its sale:
Again, as a freelancer, you will specialize in a specific field, and there will be people wanting to know how it's done. After the invention of the eBooks and devices that Amazon Kindle, sales of books have been on the rise again. You can capitalize on this by writing a book about your craft and how you do it. Even if you don't want to share the secrets of your skill, you can always write fiction and non-fiction novels and sell them. There are a lot of writers out there that purely live off of the royalties they earn from the sales of their books.
Make YouTube videos:
Right now, YouTube holds the biggest audience on Earth. Well-informed and well-presented videos spread like wildfire on YouTube. If you have a good sense of humor, you can capitalize on that too on YouTube.
There are a lot of ways to earn through YouTube. The most basic method is to run ads on your video. Other than that, you can promote products through paid sponsorship's on your video.
You can also include affiliate links on the video description to generate commission. If you own an online course, you can put a trailer of that on YouTube and drive more traffic to your online system.
Make your blog and run AdSense ads:
There are a lot of ways you can earn through holding a blog. Most of what you write will be for either a blog or an affiliate site as a freelance writer. Imagine what you can earn by owning your blog if you make a lot by writing for blog websites.
Again, the most basic idea is, of course, to run ads on your blog. If your site gains good authority, you can sell backlinks from your site. If you own an online course, you can drive traffic there.
Make an affiliate website:
If you have written product reviews as a freelancer, you will know how this works. If you know how to do proper SEO, you can get training from an expert. You promote products from Amazon and other e-commerce stores on your website. You will earn a commission for any sale of those products through your affiliate link. Although this market is a bit competitive nowadays, it is still an excellent way to make passive income since e-commerce stores are rising.
Sell designs online
Sell designs online and make money. Professional designers make the designs, and you can sell them on different platforms. This is a great way to earn passive income. Have you ever wanted to design your t-shirts? Do you love making crafts? Then this is the perfect opportunity for you! You can create your t-shirts and sell them on sites like Teespring or Etsy. You don’t need any special skills to be able to do this. You just need to have a computer and some basic design skills.
Rent household items
You can rent out your old furniture, appliances, and other household items on the marketplace. This is a great way to make some extra money off of items that you are no longer using.
Start a home-based business
If you have experience as a personal trainer, yoga instructor, or massage therapist, then there might be a market for your services. Start up a home-based business that people can hire you to perform one-on-one sessions in their homes.
Sell old jewelry
If you have old jewelry lying around that you don’t want anymore, then you can sell it on the market. You can sell it on eBay or on Amazon.
Dollar-a-Day Method
This is a great way to earn money fast and efficiently. Just choose a dollar amount you would like to make each day and work on it. If you do not achieve the target amount in a day, you will get another chance to earn that day’s amount. If you want to make even more money, you can set up a recurring monthly income with this method.
Sponsored posts on social media
Sponsored posts are a great way to increase your social media following and reach new people. It's a win-win situation for both the business and the promotion person. Passive income is any income you do not need to work to receive. When you write a blog post and share it on social media sites, you are doing what is known as "passive sharing." This is a great way to make money because you do not have to do anything else to receive the income.
Passive income is not a bad thing. However, it is essential to understand the differences between active and passive income. Passive income is when you earn money without doing anything. For example, someone could start a blog and then put ads on their site and make money passively. In this case, the blogger did not do anything to earn money.