Designing Your Life of Freedom: Internet Passive Income

There are multiple types of income. The kind that you are probably intimately familiar with is “active income.” Active income is income for which you have performed a service that required your physical presence. In other words, active income involves trading your time for money. It includes income from wages, tips, or salaries from a job or business.

What is passive and residual income?

Income that does not require trading time for money is often called “passive” or “residual” income. The concept has be around for hundreds of years, but perhaps because of the recent publication of Rich Dad Poor Dad, The Four Hour Work Week and other books it is getting more and more attention these days.

Although there are differences between passive and residual income, there is one strong commonality that both have: They describe income that is automatic and comes to you on a regular basis without requiring your time or presence. It’s probably a good idea to know the difference between passive and residual income before you read further. Although from the Web Whisperers’ perspective the “automatic” part is what we are primarily interested in.

A quick search of any internet search engine will quickly show you many opportunities to earn passive income - probably too many. But what is the best passive income opportunity for you? Are you a stay-at-home mother or father? Can you work full-time to create your passive income or (more likely) do you only have a few hours per day or week? Also consider the fact that you will often want multiple ways of earning passive income, often called a “source” or “stream” and this too will effect the time and energy that you put into the initial set-up.

The Web Whisperers, Bill O’Hanlon and Ryan Nagy, specialize in creating passive income online, although Bill makes a considerable amount through royalties from his books, and there are many offline ways of making passive income. As you can probably guess, online passive income is income that you can set-up and manage anywhere that you have internet access - home, office or anywere else.