I’m not a big fan of the term passive income, because outside of stock dividends and interest bearing accounts, I don’t think the term is particularly accurate. Real estate needs to be managed, books require marketing to sell, businesses need work to grow, and websites that are never updated lose traffic as they’re surpassed by sites that are regularly updated.
That said, I do know that Tim Ferris’s controversial “4-Hour Work Week
I’m not talking about blogs, which come with the expectation of frequent updates, but simple article-based sites that may never have more than 50 or 100 pages.
About half of my income is from blogs, and half is from straight html sites that run Adsense and sometimes link to affiliate products. There aren’t any comments to moderate, communities to build, advertisers to deal with, or customers to placate. These article sites simply provide information, get traffic from the search engines, and make money from people clicking ads.
Once they’re built, I may only work on a site a few hours in a whole year (though if they show a lot of potential, I’ll probably attend them a couple times a month). I’ll add an article or two and maybe submit an article to ezinearticles in order to get some natural links. This small amount of work keeps them ranking in the search engines and bringing me in money, day after day, month after month. It’s not entirely passive income, but it’s a pretty good deal!
For those of you who may be interested in adding some article sites to your online empire, I’m going to do a little series that covers my strategies. As with building a blog, it takes time to start earning money (content needs to be built up, domains need to “age,” links need to be acquired, etc.), but once you have the initial site built, the time demand is very little for ongoing maintenance.
You can get started with 10 or 20 articles, so you could get a site up in a fairly short order, if you were so motivated. You may even want to start several, so that you can build one, and move on to the next and the next without obsessing over when that first one will make its first dollar.
Here’s a list of what this series will cover:
How to Build (mostly!) Passive Income with Article Sites Series
1 — Introduction (You’re Reading It!)
2 — Choosing a Profitable Niche and Scoping out the Competition
3 — A Keyword Rich Domain Name and Other on-Site SEO Considerations
4 — Using Keyword Research to Write Pinpoint Articles
5 — Link Building Techniques
6 — Adding Google Adsense
7 — Should You Consider Affiliate Programs?
8 — The Technical Side: Getting Your Article Site Online
20 responses so far ↓
1 Jade Craven // Dec 12, 2008 at 1:34 am
I’m very, very interested in this series!
Thank you for sharing your information. Apologies in advance if I pester you with too many questions in the upcoming posts 
- Jade
2 Lindsay // Dec 12, 2008 at 1:35 am
Pester away, Jade.
3 Pat with SPI // Dec 12, 2008 at 1:38 am
I definitely agree that writing articles is a fantastic way to build passive income, for the reasons you mentioned.
I have to respectfully disagree with you a little about your definition of a passive income in regards to real estate, selling books and whatnot.
Any way you can make money in your sleep, that’s what I call passive income. Working so you can get paid later on, instead of working X hours for X dollars, that’s a passive income. It’s an investment, in other words.
Marketing a book and doing keyword research for an article and writing it are one in the same, at least in my opinion.
Nonetheless, I definitely agree that writing articles is the best way to “set it and forget it”, as Ron Popeil would say, with very little to no maintenance. And, also that blogs aren’t passive income at all either.
Have you taken a look at my article about what truly defines passive income? Articles fit greatly in there too.
http://tinyurl.com/5lbkou
I’m excited for your series, by the way! Can’t wait for your next post =)
4 Lindsay // Dec 12, 2008 at 1:52 am
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Pat!
I definitely see where you’re coming from and have seen passive income defined that way. To me, though, passive income is money you earn from an investment that you’re not materially participating in. When you own the asset, I feel there’s always going to be a little more work than when you are collecting dividends or you’re a silent partner in a business or some such.
I generally just like to put it in terms of creating assets that pay you again and again, which may entirely fit other people’s definitions of passive income, but to me implies more ownership, more control, and probably more work than something “passive.”
I’m perfectly happy admitting I may just have a weird perception of the term.
5 Pat with SPI // Dec 12, 2008 at 1:57 am
No worries, Lindsay!
It’s just, the name of my blog is The Smart “Passive Income’ blog, so…when you say you’re not a big fan of the term, it makes me sad…lol. I’m just joshing =)
6 Lindsay // Dec 12, 2008 at 2:03 am
Awww, Pat, I love your blog.
You don’t use the term in the sleazy way I’ve so often seen by internet marketers promising you can earn money in your sleep if you just buy my $5,000 course in the next 27 seconds!
7 HowToMakeMyBlog.com // Dec 12, 2008 at 6:44 am
Very interesting, I am looking forward to this series already!
Niche article sites with carefully researched topic (good volume of searches, low competition, high cost per click on adsense) is something I am looking into at the moment.
8 Maria | Never the Same River Twice // Dec 12, 2008 at 7:12 am
I’m really looking forward to this series, Lindsy. It’s great to have one more tool in my multiple income streams bag!
9 Annette // Dec 12, 2008 at 8:02 am
Lindsay
I am looking forward to the series!
What will be the frequency of the posts?
Thanks
10 Fitz // Dec 12, 2008 at 8:50 am
Hi Lindsay, looks like a very interesting topic. I’m excited to learn about this in the coming weeks.
So what you’re basically saying here is something like a Made-For-Adsense website right? Keywords rich, search engine optimized, information portals.
Hmmm, nice indeed.
11 Will // Dec 12, 2008 at 9:27 am
I always look forward to reading new posts on this web site, but I am particularly excited about this series. You’ve got a very informative site, along with Pat’s at SPI and a handful of others it’s part of my daily routine.
12 Julie @ Write for eHow // Dec 12, 2008 at 10:29 am
I can’t wait for the series, Lindsay. Are you going to cover how to physically build a site?
I agree with your comments on passive income. (And I love Pat and his blog too!) I like the term ‘residual income’ much better.
13 Michele // Dec 12, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I love your site and I am so excited about this series.
I agree that the term ‘passive income’ can be confusing.
14 Jamie // Dec 12, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Now you’ve got me all twitterpated waiting for the next installment.
For those of us who write on ad-revenue sharing sites, growing your own site really seems like just a stone’s throw away. eHow can get writers some cash in the relatively short term due to its high page rank, but building your own site on the side would be a great long-term strategy.
15 Lindsay // Dec 12, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Thanks for all the comments, gang. I can see this is something there’s a lot of interest in, so I’ll try to make this a nice, meaty series!
I’m working on the next post now and will get that up this weekend. I’m shooting for a new post every couple of days, so this won’t drag on too long.
@Fitz — yup they get called MFA (Made for Adsense) sites, though these strategies could be used for building affiliate sites as well, and one need not limit oneself to Adsense. For example, on some of my well-ranked article sites, I get frequent requests from folks looking to pay directly for links.
@Julie — I might do another post (outside of the series) on buying hosting, a domain name, and setting up a site (since it applies to blogging too). As far as the backbone of an article site goes, you can find simple HTML templates and edit them in something like Frontpage or even Notepad, but it’s probably easier in this day and age to just use Wordpress. It’s free and flexible enough that you could set it up to work as an article site, and it’s a lot easier to make site-wide updates than if you have to go through and edit pages individually.
16 Genevieve // Dec 12, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Lindsay, I’m super-excited about this series. I just read about creating niche sites in IttyBiz’s Online Business School, and I’m really excited about the concept since it mirrors my learning style – I love to learn a lot about a single topic, then move on. Can’t wait for the next post.
17 Maria // Dec 13, 2008 at 7:28 am
YAY! Lindsay, I am so excited you are doing this series! I have several niche sites in various stages of completion and providing various levels of income. I have a feeling this information will be very helpful!
18 Larry // Dec 13, 2008 at 10:02 am
Already getting your newsletter Lindsay, Looking forward to The series! Keep up the good work
19 carla // Dec 14, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I’m looking forward to this series as well.
20 pfincome // Feb 6, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Lindsay – I would have to agree with Pat wSPI on the passive income term! I do agree with you about too many spammers on the internet talking about ‘passive income’ etc. Looking forward to reading through the rest of your series.
Leave a Comment