5 Passive Income Opportunities for Freelancers
When it comes to increasing our income, freelancers face a challenge. We’re used to trading our time for money — even if we charge a per project rate, rather than work for an hourly rate, we don’t get paid until we’ve put in a certain amount of time. But there are ways to make money without that direct connection between the number of hours we work and the amount we get paid. That sort of approach to making money is known as passive income — although passive income is a bit of a misnomer. It does take work to bring in money that way, although there is definitely potential to increase the ration of money to your time.
1. Sell Stock Work
There are marketplaces for just about every kind of creative work that a buyer can customize for their own uses. Stock photography, content and web designs are all sources of income, but you can focus even more specifically on one target niche. Maybe you can create a WordPress theme in minimal time — putting together several such themes and posting them to a marketplace like ThemeForest can bring in a small but steady side income. An alternative is selling those themes through your own website: DIYThemes, for instance, has successfully sold thousands of copies of the Thesis theme.
2. Create Niche Resources
If you’ve chosen to work with a particular niche, you have the opportunity to create resources for that niche based on your own work. Maybe you’ve built a template for websites for a particular niche — offering your template for sale to businesses that want to build their own websites but don’t know where to start can bring in sales. So can informational resources, such as a guide to writing content for such websites or an ebook on how to market such a business online.
3. Develop Merchandise
The number of online t-shirt shops is a bit overwhelming, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t sell merchandise. There are plenty of other options for a good design — stationary, coffee mugs and posters can all be starting points. It’s generally more practical for a freelancer to work with a company like CafePress simply because many of us just don’t have the time or capital to devote to ordering and mailing out large quantities of merchandise. Etsy and similar sites can also be an option if you’ve got the resources to make limited runs of your merchandise.
4. Sell Subscriptions
An online application can be a good opportunity to sell ongoing subscriptions, but you can use the same business model to sell access to a membership site or a monthly newsletter, depending on where your talents lie. This approach can be one of the least passive options, in that you do need to make sure that there’s new content or maintain an application on a consistent basis, but it can also have one of the highest opportunities for growth.
5. Offer Side Items to Your Current Clients
It’s not uncommon for website designers to resell hosting, but that’s not the only way to add passive income opportunities by selling to your existing clients. You can create a set of training videos for using the CMS the client’s site is based on or maintain a custom application for them. The key to finding such side items is looking for what services or products make your clients’ lives easier, without requiring constant work from you.
Acting on Passive Income Opportunities
Many freelancers have hills and valleys in the amount of work they have at any given time. Those valleys can make ideal times to start exploring passive income opportunities, and even just one or two projects for yourself can make those valleys a little easier to bear. Starting when you’re in a valley can be particularly important because it can take some time and experimentation to see which approaches will work for you. These passive income opportunities aren’t automatic businesses: to make sure that you bring in some income off of them will require marketing and significant development time. That time can translate into income — not necessarily a full-time income, but enough to supplement your freelance earnings year-round.
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Great Advices, I was just wondering what to do now that I’m waiting that my clients take a decisions on projects that means for me some free time…
Brilliant post! Thanks for sharing.
Good post, I always wanted to try to sell stock items during down time but some reason I never get around to it, I usually find myself re doing or fixing up my portfolio, but one of these days hopefully I can get around to it.
“the ration of money to your time.”? I think you mean “ratio”.
-G
Nice list….I believe that this is up to the creativity of a freelancer that how much effort he puts into “product development”. I always come across individuals who are a mumble jumble when it comes to packages or bulk deals….I think point No.5 should really get us going on keen product developement and advance planning.
Regards,
Amy Dyslex
Very nice list. I think having a side-resource for passive income is more and more important, especially for people who are looking to be location independent.
Thank you for the list.
Just a fair warning to those interested in selling stock photos, to those who are not professional photographers… when submitting your images to the stock photo sites, just know they are VERY picky! And it’s not always where composition and lighting are concerned – they’re picky about JPEG artifacts.
I purchased a decent 10 megapixel camera a couple months ago with the idea of just running around, snapping various photos and submitting them to the various stock image sites out there (I have a good eye where composition is concerned – still got to get the lighting thing down).
The problem is the camera I have will only format images in JPEG format instead of RAW… and thus I end up getting a lot of my submissions rejected because of JPEG artifacts (even when I look at an image closely and *I* think there’s no artifacts, they’ll still throw it back at me for that reason).
Frustrating, for sure – but then I realize, I’m just an amateur and have a lot to learn yet where photography is concerned.
Hmmm… never thought of reselling hosting, good call!
Offtopic.. maybe are some topic anywhere about corporative gifts for clients ( think to buy flash in ebay and give to clients with all site files inside ).
Nice post! Normally I spend my free time to improve my skills and learning new stuff about web-development and web standards. However I will be exploring more about passive income opportunities. Thanks for giving a new direction and the motivaton.
Great article. I am just getting my toes wet in the Freelance game and I am ready to put some of your ideas into practice. Thanks!
Great topic! Passive income is something I am constantly investigating but haven’t got around to actually doing.
Can anyone share their own experiences with regard to earning a passive income and what has or hasn’t worked for them in the past?
Do people have good (or bad) experiences with things like CafePress or Zazzle. It seems like there’s such a load of kitsch stuff that sells. Is there a market for high quality designs, or is it all about appealing to pet owners and religious zealots?
Daniel – Zazzle is great, and always getting better. Original products, excellent interface, and customizability on the fly – I’ve had a store up for over a year, and it’s doing better all the time. Customizable business cards to really well for me. There are all kinds of products up there – not just the lame ones you’ve seen – accurate keyword tagging and categorizing is absolutely key, though.
CafePress is the big kid on the block, but they’re about to begin a quick decline due to changes they made in the way they pay their sellers. I’d recommend setting up a solid shop with quality designs, take your time researching similar products to what you’re selling, and adjust your keywords accordingly.
Also, keep your royalties high – yes, high. People don’t go to POD sites looking for bargains – they’re loooking for unique items they can’t get anywhere else, and a few dollars’ difference is typically not a dealbreaker. I’ve raised my royalties twice, and I’ve made more sales when I’ve done so. Crazy, but true.
Simple but great Tips .Thanks!
I like the post, but I got dejavu. It felt like I had allready read the exact same post earlier in FreelanceSwitch….
I would also have liked som links to #1. Links to those stock-sites you refer to… For instance: is there a stocksite for selling logos, that I could join with all those logos, that the Client “tos away”?
I know about iStock. My top goal is still to be accepted as an illustrator-contributer… The keep writing to me, that my vectorshapes arent closed, and with my detailed work, I don’t have the energy to check it… So it’s been a year now. Perhaps my illustration is woth taking that thorugh look at again and just leep on trying!!! (There is not a program for illustrator, that can close gaps automaticly, is there???)
At first I send some illustrations to iStock, and they told me to sharpen up my style, the didn’t need the simple materiale I was sending them… And in the end all the complained about was the open shapes in my Illusrations… So I’m nearly there… . o O (Don’t give up now!)
I’ve also started a shop in CafePress, but It felt so hopeless, that I gave up after having “redecorated” the store…. But now I’m thinking: “Don’t sell throug CaféPress, and hope for people to find you store there…. Introduce your products on your own site along with the illustrations…” Perhaps I’ll try that sometime…
But thanks for the motivation. I had hoped, there would be more tips in the comments though…
I agree with you 100% on all the problem we face as freelancers it not like working
for a weekly or monthly pay check and it takes a lot time and money if you do not
choose your program wisely many people jump from program to program not just staying
with one program excample i had a google ad running in adword i knew i had good keyword
but one friday all my key word were Idle because the guru start biding high for the key word so i raised my bid still no hits to my site. i did not lower my bid back to where i was on thursday when i was getting quailty hit and check my account and google had already eatten up my daily budget
and i end up getting 78 hit for $15 dollar when on thursday i got 186 for the same fifteen dollars.
find something that work stick with it when you have you down day work on promoting your
business there is a light at the end if you stay the Course
Nice blog i rate your blog as my Blog of the Day
Ervin
Seconding the request for stock material sites, photos and otherwise!
All good except for the reference to Cafepress, whose management is currently gutting the incomes of their hardworking designers. There is a mass exodus going on there, to other POD companies like Zazzle or Printfection or others. Cafepress just became the worst deal on the internet, and everybody is up in arms over there; most are reporting an 60-80% reduction in income and all that money goes straight to corporate.
Reselling hosting and the monthly payment for the ads on my sites works pretty well in my case!
I like the idea on “Selling Subscriptions”. Hmm. Going to rally a couple of friends who are good in their niche and do just that.
I like this article. I might try out selling subscriptions for my clients.
My gut feeling is that if I can’t live with the rules on one of these digital download sites in getting accepted — I just beat them at their own game and bring up my own site with less stringent rules.
This is a good blog, thanks the information.