Make Money in Your Sleep With Deferred Income
By: Martin Andersson Aaberge
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Work, Side Hustle, Business, Passive Income

Passive income

I was in a room at Clubhouse the other day, and the topic was “passive- vs. active income.” Most people I have discussed passive income with agree that passive is a misleading word.

One of the speakers re-phrased passive income to deferred income. This term sums it up perfectly. If you put 100 hours into a project and an hour is worth $100, you need to make $10.000 before you start making money.

When the project earns $10.000, your investment in time is reached. Anything you make from that point is profit.

The speaker also mentioned that your ultimate goal is to own assets. When you own assets, they generate value for you. From now on, I will refer to passive income as deferred income with asset potential.

There are several deferred income streams you can try.

Selling courses

Do you know something other people don’t? Don’t bother answering that question because it is always yes. Are you able to teach it to others?

If you are, you have the potential to reach thousands of people using any of the different online platforms out there.

Making a course will require a lot of work. When you have reached your invested hours in income, that course will be an asset that lives forever and potentially earns you money in the future.

Ali Abdaal is a YouTuber who quit his day job in the UK as a doctor after discovering that being a YouTuber pays much (much!) more. One of Ali’s main income streams is selling courses, and it made him over $480.000 in 2020.

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Dropshipping

Dropshipping has been around for a while, but now it is also part of the digital era. The concept is that a company takes care of handling and shipping the item while you focus on making the design and getting sales.

When someone places an order, the company creates the item and ships it to the customer. They keep a cut and share the revenue with you. A t-shirt or a mug will sell itself while you sleep.

There are several services out there that can accompany your next “Super Soccer Mom” t-shirt, but they operate a bit differently. While some services let you set up the whole online store and make your prints, others require you to do all the frontend work.

Which service works for you is based on what you already have and what you need.

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Etsy (not a dropshipping service, but a storefront)

Redbubble

Teespring

Shopify

Printify

Printful

Content

Content is king. Always have been, always will be. The human race is consuming content in various ways, and forcing everyone in front of a computer made it more relevant than ever before.

If you have a question or a problem, you go online and search for a solution. The results will present you with various options — some are text-based while others are video- or audio-based.

Today, the platforms for creating content are outstanding. Anyone can start a YouTube channel. To get monetized, you need 4.000 watched hours and 1.000 followers. YouTube wants committed creators to stick around and let the other ones vanish without being monetized.

Since content is king, it doesn’t matter if you have fancy equipment or not. If you have a camera and a message, you are ready to go.

This certainly does not feel passive at all, as making content requires a lot of work. If YouTube accepts you into their Partner Program, you will make money on ads. However, you have to keep your channel rolling if you want to keep the momentum and the viewership.

You’re reading content right now. A wide range of writing platforms also allows you to make money writing.

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Affiliate links

I signed up for two affiliate programs in 2020, Partnerstack (for Miro) and Amazon Associates.

When you sign up for an affiliate program, you can generate affiliate links. If someone uses those links to either purchase something directly or purchase another item within a given timeframe after they clicked your link, you make a cut of the purchase.

You will get paid if they buy the product you are linking to, but if they decide to buy some gloves or dog food later, you get a commission on that as well.

I made $0 on Partnerstack, and a single article made me $7.10 on Amazon.

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