Having an autopilot passive income isn’t as straight forward as it may seem. If you’re in an industry already such as the TV industry or you’re a writer, royalties are a form of passive income. But if you’re in a normal job or career, finding a suitable passive income stream can be more difficult.
Buying houses and investing in property to rent is also something out of the reach of many. This kind of income source is semi-passive but you’ve also got a massive outlay usually in order to purchase property. Even buy to rent property isn’t completely passive either. You still have to pay your mortgage rates and get an tenant. Or you can buy a property with an interest only mortgage and get a tenant, that’s pretty passive. But what’s a good answer for the average person to generate some kind of autopilot passive income; someone who perhaps can’t get a mortgage or doesn’t own their own home even?
Autopilot Passive Income
Well one answer is affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing you can sell other people’s products over the internet and earn up to 50% commission on your sale. In the first instance this can take some time and you need to learn the skill of online selling. But with the automation of the internet, and by using digital products, anyone can benefit from this business model. Digital products work well to generate an autopilot passive income because you can sell a product over the internet and automate the sale. This means you don’t have to talk to customers or even handle products personally.
If you also choose to sell recurring income affiliate programs, you can earn a passive income from every customer you make for as long as they remain a customer. These are usually programs which offer some kind of lifetime value to a customer. Software products such as website hosting or email marketing are two such examples. There’s many people who rely on these kinds of online software for their businesses. Getting on the other side of the transaction when they purchase puts you in a great position to earn a passive income from their subscription or membership products.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a business model which lets anyone promote and sell other people’s products over the internet. By selling a product, the affiliate earns a percentage of revenue generated by the sale. With some products, like those you would find on Amazon, for example, you can make from 3-10% commission on a sale. But with certain digital products you can make much more – up to 50% commission in certain cases. Why can you make so much as an affiliate? Partly this is because with digital products there are no manufacturing costs, postage or handling costs. Software can be downloaded from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. This also make the sale of digital products very scalable.
How To Create A Passive Income From Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketers can automate the sale of various products and services online. This automation allows an affiliate to make a passive income of sorts by selling products they don’t personally own. Some affiliate marketers use blogging, and others use paid marketing or video marketing to promote and sell products online.
The ability to automate the sale of products combined with the ability to scale up to a global audience makes affiliate marketing a great model for a passive income. Particularly when combined with recurring income products and products which offer multiple earning strategies. (Access video series on this site for more information).
Depending on your particular circumstances and time scale for building a business online you can take a number of different directions. If you need to escape a job fast, you should probably concentrate on using paid marketing strategies to build an online business. If you don’t have the capital to do this, you can build up slowly by creating videos and/or blogging.
As an example, a blog I started several years ago now brings in leads and sales through organic traffic. Content I wrote months or years ago still brings in customers through my website. Having an internet business that runs on autopilot is one of the best ways for anyone to earn on “autopilot” once everything starts working. But how long does this take?
How Long Does It Take To “Autopilot” An Online Business?
To gain traction with an online business can take anywhere from 6 months to several years. It really depends on how you go about it. The fastest way is to use a good range of products within a ready made sales funnel. Then use paid marketing to test and measure and eventually scale up.
A slower (but cheaper) alternative is through organic marketing. This can take considerably longer. Blogging and video creation are two strategies which are free to do, but time consuming. You can also build a social media presence through any of the online social media platforms to gain a following.
See also how long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing.