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Passive Income : online surveys

by passiveincome71
written by passiveincome71

In this article we look at taking online surveys as a method of earning passive income. This in my opinion is a slightly dubious way of earning passive income but I have seen it mentioned in many articles and eBooks that I thought I would look at here.

We try and be brutally honest on this site – we are not going to fob off and claim that every passive income opportunity is the greatest thing on earth that will make you rich – online surveys fall into this category

survey

Overview

Making money with survey site is extremely easy. The process begins with you signing up with the company, you fill in your individual details that enables surveys to be tailored for you, some surveys have age restrictions or are only applicable for parents or perhaps are aimed at women only – you should make certain that the information you fill in is accurate. You then login to the site and see what surveys are available , you complete the survey and you will get paid for filling it in. Some surveys only pay a small amount of money and others may pay in gift cards. The surveys are usually questionnaires about new products, services, and the very latest trends.

You should always check the surveys dashboard and look at email address from time to time as many companies will send survey requests via email only and I would recommend that you sign up with as many companies as possible. The rate of surveys can vary wildly and this is definitely not a consistent source of income, also the rate of pay can vary wildly per survey and company.

You should also do a bit of research, make sure the company is a known player in the market and not scam artist who will run away with your earnings. Luckily we have several companies listed below which are all reliable.

Survey Companies

There are lots of differing survey companies out there that you can join. Here is a selection to choose from

Click here to join SwagBucks.com
https://uk.toluna.com/
https://www.lifepointspanel.com/
https://www.globaltestmarket.com/
Pinecone research UK
Ampsurvey
SurveyJunkie
Zen Surveys
MyPoints
Get Paid to Read Emails, take surveys, Search the Web, $5 Signup Bonus.
Inbox Pounds UK

There are many more than this, a quick search on the net should produce some examples.

Some pay in cash via PayPal so I recommend you have a valid account to receive payments, some pay through bank transfer, and some companies through rewards which can be in the form of gift cards such as amazon or iTunes. There are other options as well – I have seen discounts being offered on products

 

Tips

Sign up with lots of survey companies to improve your chances of making money – the more companies you signup with and surveys you submit the more emails you will get

Fill out your profile thoroughly and accurately. A lot of surveys that will be available to you rely on the information that you have entered into your profile.

Do not use your main email address but use a legit secondary email address – check this email address regularly for new surveys.

Take your time when completing the surveys. Some surveys throw in similar questions and if your answers are inconsistent you may not be paid and may not get other surveys.

Fill out as many surveys as possible and as quickly as possible – a lot of surveys are limited with regards the amount of valid responses. If you are too slow or too picky then you may miss out.

Bear in mind that depending where you are located in the world will impact the amount of surveys and the money earned from them. Its a simple fact that companies want people who live in wealthier countries to answer the surveys.

Summary

A very easy way of making money online – in fact one of the simplest with many surveys being simple question like yes or no or true or false (not all of them though)

You should only treat online surveys as a complimentary source of income, it is not really passive other than the fact you signup with a site and surveys are available but it can take time to complete these surveys and fill in your profile. Some survey companies have referral schemes and if you can refer others then that would be a passive source – you either get a percentage of their earnings or a flat rate.

If you need an extra source of income it can be a reasonable source but the online survey space is way past being saturated now – there are hundreds of thousands of people doing this already and the days of doing this full time to earn a living is gone. Saying that if you need some money then its better than nothing

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Articles

Passive income : Reseller Web Hosting Business

by passiveincome71
written by passiveincome71

In this article we will look at Reseller web hosting as a passive income opportunity. This is a business that I have tried a couple of times and I also have many websites so I will explain the concept and some of the pitfalls and also the web designer or business thinking taht i personally have when it comes to hosting.

What you basically do is purchase a large reseller web hosting package from another host and split it into smaller packages and charge a monthly or yearly subscription fee. This is where the passive income comes in, the theory is that you can have a monthly or yearly recurring income. The company you deal with is effectively a wholesaler.

server

Drawbacks of web hosting reseller

As a business or a web deesigner I am looking for a trusted name in the field, I want to see reviews from others that recommend the hosting service and I want to make sure that my money will be spent well on a reliable service with many features. You have to be able to guarantee this.

Despite what other passive income articles and books say you do have to handle all customer support, this is a major source of time and effort. If a customer site goes down they expect a response and a fix promptly no matter what time of the day, this means that you may just be acting as a middle man keeping in contact with the company you are buying the services from but you still deal with your customers.

It is a very cutthroat market – there are a huge amount of people who do this. In fact just look at ebay and you will see people offering hosting packages – I do not recommend doing this personally, nothing in my opinion smacks of amateur as selling hosting on ebay.

You have to promote the hell out of your business – you need to get word out to as many people as possible. This means social media – maybe even paid advertising, I’ll say this a few times in this article its a very competitive market.

You need a domain name and a web site already with a hosting style theme, this can be doen in wordpress. Your site needs to look great and work perfectly – nothing puts off a customer in this market than an amateur looking business site.

Usually you have to put money down up front to buy the packages you will resell

Reseller hosting Ideas

Offer hosting packages to people you know, local businesses , free giveaway – basically try and build a portfolio of customers who can recommend you and you can use for positive quotes regarding your service – hopefully.

One of the main ways to sell hosting is to offer it as part of another service that you may sell – here are some ideas

You could incorporate the hosting as part of a niche website package that you sell
You could sell a domain name and offer the hosting as part of a package. Some customers might think that this makes their life easier having the domain name and hosting from the same source.

Find a niche in your packages – some of these maybe programming language support, control panels or the content that is allowed on your service. The last one is a topic you need to think about some resellers based in certain countries allow ‘controversial’ subject matter like pornography, warez and other possibly illegal subject matter. I would leave this to your own morals.

Reseller hosting Summary

Yes, this is passive income opportunity but there is more effort in this than many other passive income ideas – if you sell websites, domain names you can maybe offer this as an add-on but otherwise for beginners I would not recommend this there are far easier and less time consuming methods.

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Articles

Passive income : Price Comparison Website

by passiveincome71
written by passiveincome71

The next passive income opportunity we will look at is a price comparison website. When you think of price comparison websites depending on what country you live in you will have heard of popular sites that advertise and offer the consumer the chance to compare prices from a variety of sources so the consumer can get the best deal.

price-tag

Some Price Comparison website examples

Gocompare – is a site that offers comparison of many insurance products and advertises heavily in the UK
Trivago – a site that allow you to search various hotels to find the best deal
moneysupermarket – a huge player that has credit cards, loans, insurance and much more

OK, that is some examples of popular price comparison sites but how do they make money – that is why you want to create one, right

These sites make money by offering a variety of products or services and the sites take a commission of the sales – so in many cases all of the listings they show will pay them. That is correct basically this is a form of affiltae website selling products but they do offer some content and guides as well to make the consumer make the best choice.

Now the sites I mentioned earlier are huge players, you could make a dent in the hotels, insurance, credit card markets but it is unlikely, what you need to do is find a niche with a decent amount of products and focus on it. Now, you need to create some useful content as well, maybe some articles, tutorials, how -tos and guides. You should also create multimedia like photos and videos to promote products if you can.

Lets look at an example, you may want to look at 3d printers as a niche – you could write an article on what to look for in a 3d printer, costs of 3d printers, 3d printer materials. You can then have a price comparison page of a 3d printer model.

You should have a comparison table which lists all the products and you should list the key features and rate these features so customers can see these side by side. the features could be cost, speed in fact it could be just about anything that a customer may be interested in with regards the products.

Now a site like this will take time to setup, you need to find a good modern design which should be clear and easy to navigate. If you have minimal money then wordpress and a price comparison theme or plugin would do for starters unless you are skilled at design or can afford a freelancer.

Traffic is key for a site like this – you should use all social media like Youtube, Facebook, twitter, pinterest and instagram. Lets take the 3d printer example, how about a video review pointing to your price comparison site on  youtube, tweet about the product on twitter or an article (even the video), pin an image to pinterest or instagram. The key to these sites is traffic – employ all the methods you can find to drive people to your site.

This site is a great passive income opportunity – better than an affiliate website but it takes more time to setup and long term you will spend more time on this than say a niche website

You should also keep an eye on trends – imagine you got in when home automation started becoming popular and put up the first comparison site

Summary

Pick a topic you know about – this will come across when the product features are rated and in the content you produce. Visitors will trust your opinion more as they will believe you know what you are talking about
Keep the products up to date – no-one really wants to look at a 10 year old product
Focus on keywords with low competition – dominate these and get the traffic in.

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Articles

Passive income – membership sites

by passiveincome71
written by passiveincome71

Lets take a look at membership sites in this article.

First of all, What exactly is a membership site?

A membership site as the name may suggest is a website where a visitor may go and pay a recurring membership fee to get access to content that is not available to others. You can think of this as an exclusive club that only a select few get access to.

Now for the owner of the membership site the passive income opportunity is fairly obvious, you get recurring revenue which may be weekly, monthly or yearly depending on the plan that the subscriber has chosen.

What can sell on your membership site?

As stated it has to be something fairly unique that people are willing to pay for (that is not freely available anywhere else).

Lets look at some examples in more detail.

PLR products – this was and is still one of the most common membership sites, you pay a fee and get access to products you can resell or use on your own sites. these are varied and can be ebooks, videos, images, infographics and a common example is article packages.

App development – there were a few sites that allowed to pay a fee and allowed tou to easily create apps based on generic templates, nice exampling of cashing in on the mobile phone boom.

Clickbank product launches – again there have been many product launches which have involved a membership fee. The most obvious one at the time of writing this article is https://www.clickfunnels.com, to get access to the service and tools you pay a set price. There are many examples of services and tools like this.

WordPress content – exclusive themes and plugins, maybe tutorials as well. Envato Elements is a great example of a membership site with stacks of content for a recurring fee

Photography or graphics – These could be unique photographs, infographics, vectors

How do I start a membership site?

The most obvious way is to go down the WordPress route, install wordpress on good hosting and then find a membership site theme or plugin. There are a few that should do the trick.

MemberPress – this is the big player in the plugins for creating a membership site

Paid Memberships Pro – another huge plugin for membership sites

MemberMouse – membership plugin that allows you to sell products, subscriptions and memberships easily

You may want to create the content yourself but for simple ebooks, reports, articles and images you would probably be best to outsource some of this work. Fiverr and Upwork are examples of sites where you can get content created, for a reasonable price.

Membership site gotchas

A membership site can take a lot of time to get started, you have to design the site, you need something to sell, you have to get word out there about your site and why people should visit.

Depending on the membership site, you may need to keep adding content regularly. In the earlier example where I mentioned PLR sites a subscriber expects to see updates, they want to see new content every so often. The content also has to be of a decent standard so people want to use it and pay for it, no-one will pay for rubbish.

If you host the membership site you will need very good hosting. Your subscribers may be downloading products, viewing videos, listening to podcasts – all of these require bandwidth and web space. You may go down the route of hosting the content on a site like amazon web services but thats an extra cost.

You have to provide support when and where required. People have paid to use your software, view your content or download it. If there any problems then you need to be able to answer them or at the versy least hire someone to do this for you.

Membership site tips

Research – look at other membership sites, what do they offer, what do they cost, research your niche – you don’t want a niche that is saturated but there again you want people who are actually interested in the niche you are selling memberships for.

Create a forum for members to interact and get a community feel. Make them feel they belong to the site.

Offer deals and discounts to your members, make them feel taht the membership fee they pay is giving them some real exclusive benefits.

Vary the content – the plr model as I said earlier relies on many types of content. Even if you offer video training, throw in a podcast or free ebooks every now again. Make your members again feel like they are getting a great deal.

Keep the content up to date – there is nothing worse than looking at the same article packs and ebooks that have been bouncing around for years on the internet. If your site focuses on subject matter that frequently updates then you have to keep up and make sure your content is up to date.

Offer some ‘teaser content’ – a few reports, articles, sample audio or video. Tease new visitors in and more of them will want to pay for a recurring fee if they can get sample of what you are offering them first.

Membership site summary

This can be a money earner but you need a reasonably large initial investment, there can be a lot of customer service and you need to keep adding to your member site. So this is not a true passive income source where you can put your feet up.

This would not be my first choice for earning passive income

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Articles

Passive income – domain flipping

by passiveincome71
written by passiveincome71

Domain flipping is the process of buying domain names or websites then trying to resell these for a profit.

Many people don’t want to spend time researching a domain name, setting up a website with content and all the work that is involved. They would rather buy a pre built website that is already up and running to save some time. Often these websites also have some traffic, a social media presence and may have ads already running or are already selling products.

The more ad revenue or product sales and the website will typically command a higher value.

Domain flipping methods

These are roughly the 3 methods you will find yourself in.

Buy an expired domain or a potential new valuable name and park it – then try and sell just the domain name on its own.

Buy an expired domain or a potential new valuable name and create a website on it then sell this for a profit

Buy an existing domain with website and try and sell that website for an increased sum of money. You may need to try and improve the site depending on the circumstances.

The next thing you need to consider is how long do you hold onto the website you are selling, if you simply create a site and sell it quickly then there is a good chance there will be no traffic or revenue generated whereas holding onto the site for 6 months may increase the value as the site can drive traffic to it,perhaps have some small ad revenue and maybe even a couple of affiliate sales.

Domain flipping resources

This is only a selection of resources fo buying and selling domains and websites

Flippa – this is the biggest domain name flipping site, I recommend looking at the sites for sale, the prices they are selling for, the niches these sites are in.

Sedo – the worlds largest domain name marketplace, again look for bargains and see what is selling and the niches for sale.

Afternic – this site seems to sell premium domains, you can search by category which is handy when looking at niches.

SnapNames – a large inventory of domain names for sale

Undeveloped – another good domain marketplace with many listings

Godaddy Auctions – as the name says an auction site for domain names, once again look at the niches, prices the domains are selling for and try and get a feel for what is popular

Domain Flipping Tips

Try and concentrate on a .com extension domain names, these are the most valuable and the most desired. You can also look at .net and .org next but I would ignore all of the new tlds such as .win, .bid, .events – in fact there are hundreds of these now.

Keep track of trends. This means looking at things that are currently popular and can also mean keeping an eye on events that occur on certain dates, you can cash in by registering domain names and creating websites. Examples of events would be sports like the World Cup, Superbowl, Royal Weddings, US Presidents being elected etc. You could look at new games, music trends, electronics releases like new iPhones, games consoles. Try and stay ahead of the competition.

Create some good content for the website, if you need to you can hire a writer to do this. A site with good content will command a far higher sale value than a generic cookie cutter website with duplicate content that can be found all over the internet. This is particularly key for people looking to buy blogs or sites they wish to monetize with adsense, good content is key here.

Install a good, reliable theme if you are using WordPress – make this site look appealing to a visitor, make them want to buy it. Once again a professional looking site that displays correctly without errors in the browser will command a higher sales value with more potential customers wanting to buy it. Would you buy a homemade site that looked like a throwback to geocities.

Create accounts with all major domain name registrars and then keep an eye out for any deals they may have. From time to time there are sales on the premium domain name extensions that you can cash in on. You should not tie yourself to one registrar.

Create a website, social media accounts and make this the home of your domain flipping business. The professional approach will make prospective buyers believe they are dealing with a real business of high standards. If your own business website becomes successful you can even use this to advertise and sell your domains on.

Promote your sites that you are selling via social media – get the word out don’t just rely on the domain marketplace website putting visitors in your direction. Twitter, facebook and if possible instagram and youtube are good sources.

Flipping domains summary

Once again you can make good money but you do still have some initial investment which may be in the form of purchasing domain names, hosting, themes or templates and then content. Always do research, get a feel for what is popular and niches people are interested in at the moment, todays hot trend can be dead in the water in an instant.

If you do this correctly you can make good money but its easy to lose money, domain flipping is a competitve marketplace, lots of people are into this as to be honest its not that technical a method.

 

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Articles

Passive income : online courses

by passiveincome71
written by passiveincome71

In this article we will look another popular method for creating passive income : online courses

The market for online courses is huge, there are always people to learn more about a topic and on just about any topic that you can imagine.

Basics of Online Course creation

Now there is a bit of work at the start, you need to do some planning on the content which may involve writing a list of topics and then writing a basic script that you read from, video recording, record your voice if required, and then putting this all together in a collection of videos. Once the hard work of creating the course has finished, there’s not much work left aside from promoting the course. There are various pieces of software that may be required if you need to edit your video like Screenflow, Camtasia , ShareX etc.

You may need a webcam or camera to record your face – a lot of popular courses have the computer screen with an embedded video of the instructor.

Of course you can record the video and then add your voice later.

Niche research

The online course market can be very competitive depending on your niche, again you should research your niche thoroughly for the demand (amount of potential customers) and also the popularity of the niche (how many people already have courses, how long is the course, what is the price of the course)

Analyse your niche and see if you can create a whole series of courses. If your first course is a success you will get a good name and customers will be enthusiastic about your new course. Some examples

You have a photoshop course – what about other adobe products like Illustrator or Premiere
You have created a bitcoin course – what about altcoins, forex investing, stock market and other investing
You have created a basic programming course – how about intermediate and advanced topics, other languages.

Most of the profits from selling your course are mostly passive in nature. Depending on the subject matter you may have to update the course and you will also be expected to be available to answer questions – remember you are the subject matter expert here and customers may ask you questions.

I mentioned updating the course depending on the content, if you chose a topic that can change for a reason then customers may expect updates, some examples. A new version of a piece of software, differences in social networks, changes to youtube, new electronics – this will vary depending on the course subject.

Some Online course ideas

These of course are just some ideas to get the creative juices flowing. There are literally thousands upon thousands.

Using Photoshop – record yourself using photoshop and guide people through the steps
Microsoft Windows – How to use Windows, record the screen and talk about it.
Programming – Do you know how to program, record the coding steps, explain it and then show the results. Lots of programming languages available, people are interested in ones that they can make money from
App development – iPad apps, Android apps, games
Social media – Are you good on social media, you can explain how to grow Youtube channels, create videos, craete pins for pinterest, instagram – in short basically anything
Web design – Can you create websites, wordpress themes, setup wordpress – record the process and talk in detail about this
Crafts – Wood turning, sewing – anything here
Cooking – show how to cook with detailed steps and instructions of the recipes
Fitness – big niche, can you do yoga, individual exercises with equipment.
Problem solving – people are always looking for answers to problems like working from home, making money and generally improving a skill

This is only some quick ideas that I brainstormed writing this article

Online Course Sites

Udemy – One of the big players, loads of courses on many topics. Look at what’s available and how the people structure courses. You earn money based on sales
Skillshare – Differs from Udemy in that people pay a subscription model which allows them access to many courses. You earn money based on the number of minutes students spend watching your courses.

There are many other sites to investigate which have their own pluses and minuses, here are some of these sites

Teachable
Thinkific
LearnWorlds
Click4Course
CourseCraft
Course Cats
Zippy Courses
Kajabi

These sites have all sorts of pricing and tools, you should investigate them and find the best one for you.

Online course promotion

There are lots of ways of promoting your online course, here are a few that I could think of

Social Media : send tweets via twitter, create a facebook page, capture a screenshot and pin it on Pinterest.
Youtube : Create a small sampler and link to the main course
Blogging : Create some articles and then link to your online courses on a blog
Email list : build an email list and promote your course

You can use paid ad promotion if you really want as well, facebook ads or adsense

Online Course tips

Make sure you genuinely are interested in the topic – if you get bored or aren’t really interested then you will struggle to create content
Research the niche to ensure that your course idea has a high market demand. If no-one is interested you will make little sales and very little money.
Structure your course correctly. The general rule is to start with the easiest lessons then slowly move to the more advanced lessons.
Use various media – videos, audios, images and documents like spreadsheets, word documents, source code if its a programming course
Research pricing for your course – do not get too greedy and price yourself out the market. The more expensive the course the more the customer will be expecting.
You do not need to use a hosted platform, you can set up your own membership site and host the course.

 

Summary

Does require some technical skills in the creation process, you will have to spend some time in planning and creation phase and you do have to supply after sales support and answer questions. Pick the correct niche and create a popular and quality course and you can earn very good money.

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Articles

Passive income : a look at REITs

by passiveincome71
written by passiveincome71

In this article we take a look at real estate investment trust (REIT). A REIT is basically a company that owns, and in many cases runs, income-producing real estate. REITs can own various types of commercial real estate these range from offices, apartment, hotels, shopping centers and warehouses. The rent generated from the properties is distributed to shareholders in the form of dividends.

So unlike normal real estate investing where you buy the property and then either sell or rent for profit, in theory this means the minimum investment is far lower than standard real estate investing

When you own stocks in a REIT, you basically own a small piece of the property, this similar to the stock market where you own a small amount of stocks in a company, so technically you own a small part of the company.

Think of a REIT as a mutual fund for real estate investing.

REITs are present in many countries around the world, most of these countries have their own rules and regulations, here are a few of the US rules for a company – there are others

Be managed by a board of directors or trustees
Otherwise be taxable as a domestic corporation
Be jointly owned by 100 persons or more
Have 95 percent of its income derived from dividends, interest, and property income
Pay dividends of at least 90% of the REIT’s taxable income
Have no more than 50% of the shares held by five or fewer individuals during the last half of each taxable year (5/50 rule)
Have at least 75% of its total assets invested in real estate
Derive at least 75% of its gross income from rents or mortgage interest
Have no more than 25% of its assets invested in taxable REIT subsidiaries

If you want to find out more for the US – The rules for federal income taxation of REITs are found primarily in Part II (sections 856 through 859) of Subchapter M of Chapter 1 of the Internal Revenue Code

There are 2 types of REITs that you should be aware of

Equity REITs

About 90% of REITs are equity REITs. Equity REITs buy, manage, build and sell real estate. The revenues from these REITs come mainly from rental income. The types of real estate properties include residential, retail, office, industrial and hotels.They must distribute at least 90% of the portfolio’s income to its shareholders in the form of dividends.

Mortgage REITs

Mortgage REITs only make up about 10% of REITs. A mortgage REIT lends money to real estate buyers or buys existing mortgages or mortgage-backed securities. The revenue from these REITs come from the interest paid on the mortgage loans.

You can typically earn upwards of 7% from REITs making this an appealing passive income opportunity

Some REIT companies (USA)

Fundrise: Fundrise allows you to invest in commercial real estate online through an eREIT. Their crowdsourcing model sets them apart from a traditional REIT allowing investors to participate in deals for as little as $500. They have a lot oif information to read on their website, I recommend you do.

Vanguard : Minimum investment of $3000 This fund invests in real estate investment trusts—companies that purchase office buildings, hotels, and other real estate property.

If you are looking for others the biggest ones in the US (and some are worldwide) are

American Tower (NYSE:AMT)
Simon Property Group (NYSE:SPG)
Crown Castle (NYSE:CCI)
Public Storage (NYSE:PSA)
Prologis (NYSE:PLD)

In fact wikipedia has a huge list of them at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Real_estate_investment_trusts_of_the_United_States

I would recommend checking out the minimum investment, looking at reviews of the sites and just taking a look at the site to see what you think. For a beginner Fundrise seems a very good safe option to get you started.

Some REIT companies (UK)

Bricklane : Invest from £100 in 2 funds. The Regional Capitals fund returned a total of 15.7% since September 2016, while the newer London fund has returned 10.4%. I invest in both of these since I am in the UK

The following companies are listed on the FTSE

Assura AGR FTSE 250
Big Yellow Group BYG FTSE 250
British Land Company BLND FTSE 100
Derwent London DLN FTSE 250
Great Portland Estates GPOR FTSE 250
Hammerson HMSO FTSE 250
Intu Properties INTU FTSE 250
Land Securities LAND FTSE 100
LondonMetric Property LMP FTSE 250
NewRiver Retail NRR FTSE 250
Primary Health Properties PHP FTSE 250
RDI REIT P.L.C. RDI FTSE 250
SEGRO SGRO FTSE 100
Safestore Holdings SAFE FTSE 250
Shaftesbury SHB FTSE 250
Tritax Big Box REIT BBOX FTSE 250
Unite Group UTG FTSE 250
Workspace Group WKP FTSE 250

British REITs have to distribute 90% of their income to investors. They must be a close-ended investment trust and be UK-resident and publicly listed on a stock exchange recognised by the Financial Services Authority.

My REIT Summary

I have always regretted not getting into property years ago, house prices rocketed in the UK and now I don’y have enough capital but REITs and crowdfunding real estate (which I’ll discuss in another artilce) offer real opportunities to earn some real passive income.

This is my basic point would you rather give £1000 to a bank, earn pitiful 1% interest if you are lucky or invest in something which can return at least 7% – I know which one I pick.

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Niche Sites

Niche sites : what you need to get started

by passiveincome71
written by passiveincome71

There are certain things you need for a niche site, sure you can use free hosting like wordpress, blogger and similar but you need to get started and here is what you need. Do not worry this isn’t too costly in the grand scheme of things

Domain name

There are several sites where you can buy domain names, it does not do any harm signing up multiple sites. You can watch out for special offers from these sites, quite often they will have sales and reduce their prices.

Here are some domain name sites I recommended

Namecheap : I use this site, you can bargains on some obscure tlds

iDotz : another site ith many offers

Godaddy : the huge godaddy, not everone’s cup of tea but a massive registrar, hosting site and other resources

123reg : This is a UK company where I live, I can get uk domains cheaper here

There are some tips I recommend, lets go

Try and keep the domain as short as possible.

No hyphens or numbers – I personally hate these especially hyphens. If I wanted a number I would spell it out like twodollarbooks rather than 2dollarbooks

You used to have to focus on an exact name for a niche site like paleodietrecipeforbeginners.com, now you could go for paleodiets.com or paleodietrecipes.com – if they were available.

It used to be that you would not be able to misspell a name but nowadays think fiverr and flickr and you will realise that is not exactly true

Do not tried and get hold of a brand name thinking you can make money from that, the courts will side with the big companies and businesses every time and you will lose the site.

Check out the history of the doman name, has it been registered before, did it host a dodgy site then that can destroy the niche site at the start as it will be more than likely be blacklisted.

Hosting

For your niche site you will need to purchase web hosting but it is a myth that at first you need some sort of top of the range dedicated server or managed server. You can quite easily get buy with standard shared hosting to begin with and if and when your site starts getting large traffic you can upgrade. To be honest at that stage you will be making money back as we would probably be talking around 30000 page views or more a month.

Also do not buy hosting from unreliable sources such as ebay – in my experience these will be individual people reselling. The issue is that the customer support can be terrible, they sell hosting packages but are not set up to deal with the inevitable questions that may occur. Its better to stick with established hosts.

Dont fall for unlimited everything claims – trust me you wont get unlimited webspace or bandwidth, it doesn’t exist. If your storage increases until it look slike your mega.nz or your bandwidth looks like twitters then you will quickly get a call from the hosting company. Unlimited is a sales term – the companies know that most users will not even approach high usage.

After all that there are several very good hosts out there that are recommended, here are a few to pick from

Hostgator : a huge hosting company, package start at under $3.99 per month

Glowhost : shared hosting but you can upgrade to premium servers if you need to

Wpengine : This is the premium host for wordpress sites, this is as good as it gets but a bit pricey

bluehost : another top notch host thats highly recommended

WordPress theme

Again the most common cms is wordpress, you can get buy with the free themes that are are present by default and if you trawl through the theme directory there are many respectable ones there but to stand out you should really invest in a decent theme. There are several reasons for this.

Support – usually the theme will come with support for a period of time
Testing – The theme will be tested with latest version of wordpress and various plugins.
Features – The theme will usually have extra features which are not available on free themes, these can include easily imported demo sites, page builders, complete customization and even some premium plugins to enhance the functionality

What I look for in a theme is one that can be easily customized and is able to create several different looking sites, I dont want cookie cutter type sites that all look the same.

Here are some top quality themes

studiopress : many themes here including the classic Genesis theme

Themeforest : X theme, Newspaper, Avada and many others. this site uses Newspaper

Thesis : the classic thesis theme which is used on many sites

The top selling items under wordpress themes on Themeforest is usually a good starting point for research. Once there look at all the themes, look at the features that they have and visit the demo site.

You can get a good theme for $60 or less, not a huge sum of money in the long run but its still yours. You dont want to get in the habit of buying random ones and spending a fortune.

Summary

A theme may cost $60, you can get a domain name for $12 and hosting for $50 or less. So the total outlay is about $120.

You can save money on this but this is a rough cost, I would recommend all of these for a niche site

If you plan to do several sites look at packages that will allow you to host multiple sites or reseller hosting,

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Articles

Passive income : wordpress development

by passiveincome71
written by passiveincome71

Do you have excellent programming skills, if you do then WordPress theme and plugin development can be an excellent source of passive income. WordPress is the most common CMS and is used on millions of blogs, there are many free themes available but to make your blog stand out a top quality wordpress theme can give the impression of a professional site rather than some amateur site. This can be particularly relevant if you have an authority site, store, selling a product or a portfolio. The more professional looking, the better.

You will need to be a fairly proficient coder or web designer, if not then you will have to purchase training to learn your trade. There are many courses available which could help you eat but these can be costly – we will assume you are a reasonable proficient developer in this article.

How much could I make

OK, visit https://themeforest.net/popular_item/by_category?category=wordpress – this is the most popular themes for wordpress. Lets look at one of them.

Avada – this is priced at $60 and it has made 454,202 sales as I write this article – that is correct $60 x 454,202 = $27252120 in sales in total. Yes you saw that number correctly. There are many themes on themeforest with huge sales and the typical pricing of the big, popular themes is around $59.

You need to work out the commission you recieve from themeforest but this theme has still probably earned over $1 million. Some authors have multiple products – remember if someone releases a top selling theme then their customers will be interested in any new products – more sales opportunities.

Plugin and theme Research

Visit codecanyon and look at the top selling plugins , if there is a live preview or demo take note of the features listed, look at the demo. This is what is attracting customers to the plugin.

For wordpress themes visit themeforest and again take note of the features, look at the preview, visit the demo site, go through the various features. The features listed are what people are looking for, this is generally customization , page builders and also demo sites that can easily be installed that can be used for portfolios, stores or niche sites. People want a theme that can be used for various different types of sites, they may have multiple sites and want them to all look slightly different.

Many themes have bundled plugins which add in extra functionality like speeding up page load, mobile support and social media bookmarks

WordPress development other sites

Codecanyon and themeforest are the big players but there are other sites. You can check them out, create an account, look at the themes already listed, work out the commission you recieve per sale. Just get a feel for the websites, you have nothing to really lose registering on multiple sites but be aware that it can affect your commission level on codecanyon and themeforest.

https://www.appthemes.com/
https://wpeden.com/
http://www.mojo-themes.com/
https://www.mojomarketplace.com/
https://creativemarket.com/
http://themesnap.com/

Home

WordPress development twist

Once you get your name out there with some theme sales or plugin sales you could set up a membership site or a subscription site. You could charge users a monthly / yearly free and they get access to your products.

You could also thrown in web hosting or installation services as an add-on.

Product promotion

Codecanyon and other sites are perfect platforms as there is a captive audience looking at the latest themes, this will generate traffic to your theme/plugin.

You can also promote via social media like tweets via twitter, facebook post or a page and even youtube promotional video. There are other methods, you can have a website with a coupon code, conduct a prize contest with the theme as a prize – you could gather user emails.

WordPress development tips and advice

You will have to support the products you make, so in my opinion its only really semi-passive income as this can be quite time consuming.

The best wordpress themes usually have new features added regularly. So a theme is rarely just a case of building it and then forgetting, you need to keep adding in new functionality and fix any bugs as soon as possible. Very few products have no bugs.

You need to make sure the theme and plugin works with the latest version of wordpress and you need to be aware of wordpress change their coding standards which sometimes happens, so you need to make sure your theme/plugin follows these at all times. Always keep technologies up to date, some common examples are jQuery, Bootstrap and PHP – make sure they are updated, you dont want an obsolete version of some script in your theme or plugin.

Theme development – make sure the most popular plugins on the wordpress site work with your theme. You can see the most popular plugins if you visit https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/browse/popular/ . Woocommerce, All in one SEO, Jetpack, Wp Super Cache and Contact Form 7 are all good examples.

Create a test installation for your theme or plugin and showcase the features, if your plugin has a backend create a test login so users can test the backend. A good demo is worth many sales.

Make sure your theme works on mobile devices or have that as an add-on. More and more people visit websites using a mobile device, there is nothing worse than visiting a site which is broken or is hard to navigate on a mobile device.

Create top notch documentation, explain all the features thoroughly in as simple steps as possible, screenshots are important here. Not everyone is an expert in WordPress.

It is possible to outsource development – this will not be cheap. Also remember its OK paying for a developer to completely create a theme but you still need to know how it works. A freelancer on upwork can charge more than $50 an hour

Summary

Ther eare big bucks to be made if you have the development skills, there are platforms online which do all the work for you but you need to deal with customer support issues and there will also be an expectation for new features. So its not 100% passive.

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