Make $500 A Week In Passive Income

Make $500 a week? Really? Yes! If you looking for:

• A way to start making money online
• Extra cash for a vacation or gifts or to pay down debt
• Or maybe you just want a way to create reliable cash in a scary economy

There are so many creative ways to earn extra income, but my list contains a few gems to help you create steady passive income.

What is passive income? It is a revenue stream that you set up once and let run on auto-pilot. If you do it right, meaning creating evergreen, or always relevant, content, it will pay you back for years.

This post was originally published November 6th, 2018 and has been updated to be current with new information. This post may contain affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Full disclosure is here.

Welcome to Fearless Affiliate.

My name is Irma and I help new bloggers to learn the ropes. There is a lot to take in that first year of blogging, from choosing a niche to changing your mindset from worker bee mentality to that of successful entrepreneur.

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Five proven ideas to help you make $500 a week of passive income.

Go ahead and bookmark this page so that you can refer back to it. And be sure to share this post with others.

1. Buy And Flip Physical Products

With this strategy, you want to find low-cost products to buy and quickly flip them for a profit. This is a strategy that you can get better at over time. Once you know where to look for deals, you will see them everywhere.

Here are common ways to find these products:

• Look for local store closings, overstock sales and similar events where prices are slashed drastically.
• Visit local secondhand thrift stores to find deals.
• Browse local flea markets, yard sales and estate sales for good deals
• Check CraigsList or Kijiji for private owners selling antiques, collectibles, etc. Be sure to also check the “free” section of CraigsList, as sometimes people giveaway good merchandise that you can sell for a profit.
• Place ads on CraigsList.org saying that you buy specific types of antiques, collectibles and other products.
• Search eBay for merchandise lots/bulk items. When people sell something in bulk, you get a good deal – which in turn means you can sell the pieces individually for a profit.
• Snap up new and popular items or gadgets around the holidays that are likely to be in high-demand, as desperate Christmas shoppers will pay top dollar for a “must have” gadget, toy or other item. You can also go to door-busting Black Friday sales and buy merchandise for a steep discount and sell for a profit later.

For example…

Let’s imagine you buy a bulk lot of 200 collectible knives from someone who is going out of business. All you have to do is mark them up to collect a $10 profit per piece (after all your payment fees and other expenses), and you’ll make $2000 in profit if you sell them in one month.

You can sell them online at eBay or even CraigsList.org.

TIP: At a low markup of $10, you might even be able to sell them in smaller lots. This means less packing and shipping for you and less time managing your auction or ads.

Or you can raise your markup to $20 a piece, so you only need to sell 100 knives in a month to meet the $500 weekly goal.

2. Sell Info Products In a Sales Funnel

You probably won’t get rich selling just one product, but it can create extra income for you.

However, the true value of learning how to create sales funnels is that the process can be replicated as many times as you want.

This is the most popular way to make reliable money online by far.

You can create several  products for one funnel, or create several single-product funnels, for steady passive income.

Related Post: Create A Sales Funnel 

A sales funnel is basically a buyers journey.

• You offer some quality free education on the topic of your choice (aka a lead magnet)
• Then offer an upgrade to more detailed education as a low-cost paid option for people who need that.

If you understand what your audience needs from you, you can create these products in just a couple of days using a free design app called Canva.

Related Post: A Simple Branding Tutorial. Learn to use Canva to make your lead magnets.

This type of sales funnel is pretty basic, but an excellent starting point for people new to selling online.

Depending on the price that you sell your low cost offer for, you can figure out how many units you need to sell to make $2K a month. So for a $25 product, you need to sell:

• 80 per month or
• 20 per week or
• 4 per day.

When you break it down like that, you just need to figure out how to get more traffic to your website and then encourage people to click through to a sale.

Let’s imagine you bring people into your sales funnel with an enticing free lead magnet.

From within this lead magnet and within your follow up emails you pitch a tripwire.

This is a low-cost, high-value offer that is a limited time offer. You usually see tripwire products with a countdown timer that gives you 15 or 20 minutes to decide. When the timer runs out, the page reverts to the same offer but at a higher price.

You have probably seen tripwires when you have purchased digital download products.

Let’s see how this looks in different scenarios:

You offer a free item in exchange for an email address.

You now have a potential customer and you just need to nurture the relationship.

You offer a free item > then you offer a low cost paid item  (regular price: $7 to $49)  = sale.

You can give a discount coupon to your subscribers as well as offering the item at full price for new visitors to your website. This encourages subscribers to stay subscribed in order to get future deals on your higher priced products.

Alternatively, you offer the paid items as a tripwire at a discounted price (regular price: $47; discounted price $25)

The #1 benefit of the tripwire is that it adds urgency to the sale. If the customer wants the deal price, they must act right away.

Another benefit of tripwires is that by getting your visitor to purchase something, they are more likely to purchase again in the future if they found value in your product.

Either way, you get them on your email list and can nurture from there.

You offer a free item > then you offer a mid-range priced item (think $97).

On your sales page you give people the option to grab a lower priced product ($17) if they are not sure they want to pay you for a $97 product (they don’t trust you quite that much yet) = sale.

You offer a free item > then you offer the upsell to a low cost product > then you offer a higher priced product in your emails > and then you offer a high priced product for special pricing several times a year = sale.

You can make sales in all these different scenarios

I opted to get Russell Brunson’s book “Traffic Secrets”, which he offers free…you just pay shipping.

Normally I would not buy something like this because the “just pay shipping’ concept is a rip-off, but I wanted to see his process. I was surprised by the sheer volume of up-, down-, and cross-sells that came from a free book.

FYI Russell says in his book that he makes the most money from the first up-sell, which I saw was is in the $37 range.

It’s easier to get an existing customer to purchase another product from you rather than always seeking out new customers to purchase your offers. If you have a steady stream of email subscribers, you will always have people who are in different stages of the buyers journey.

A person new to your website is at the beginning of the buyers journey, so offering them free help is the way to go.

As they get to know and trust you, you then have a better chance of selling them a higher priced product.

So while you most definitely should be seeking out new customers, don’t forget that the real money in your business lays hidden in the backend, and you can tap it by selling to repeat customers.

3. Create An Online Shop

Instead of finding other people’s products to sell, the idea here is to set up a shop online for selling physical products. This might be a Shopify store, where you can sell a variety of shirts, tote bags, bumper stickers and more. Or you might handcraft something and sell it in an Etsy shop.

You can do this as a standalone idea, or you can add it to your existing website as a new revenue stream (see below).

For example, let’s suppose you have a dog-related site…

You can quickly and easily go to a platform like CafePress and start designing dog-related t-shirts, mugs, and other merchandise.

Choose something with a message that people will want to share with others. An example is “Adopt, Don’t Shop” or “I Love My Poodle.” Or you can go for something humorous such as, “My Dog Is Smarter Than A Fifth Grader.”

Alternatively, maybe you design and craft handmade dog jewelry, such as bracelets. In that case, you’d set up an Etsy shop.

Here are the advantages of setting up these sorts of shops:

• You can design merchandise easily on platforms like CafePress and Zazzle.
• The platform takes care of order processing. In the case of shops like CafePress and Zazzle, they also take care of fulfillment and delivery (no inventory for you!)
• You set your own prices. The platform is going to take a commission, OR they’re going to set the wholesale price. Any amount you charge above the wholesale price is profit for you.

So let’s take an example. Let’s imagine that you’re selling a variety of products that come with a variety of profits for you.

Specifically:

• You sell 20 t-shirts per week with a $5 profit, which is $100 for you.
• You sell 25 tote bags per week for a $3 profit, which is $75.
• You sell 50 mugs with a $5 profit per week, which adds up to $250.
• You sell 100 bumper stickers for a $1 profit, for $100 per week.

The total for this example is $525, so you surpass the weekly goal.

That’s just one example. You might set low prices to generate high conversions for a lot of sales.

Or you might sell higher-priced items to fewer people.

Here’s a hint: people will pay premium prices for personalized products. So let’s stick with this dog example, and let’s imagine that you have the skill to quickly paint or draw personal dog portraits. You can sell these for $125, $150, $200 or more.

Imagine… you’d only need to sell three per week at $200 to meet the weekly goal of $500 (after deducting supplies and platform commissions). If you can do them fast – in a day or less – then you make a nice chunk of money, while having the rest of the week free to do as you please.

4. Set Up A Fixed Term Membership Site

A fixed-term membership site is one that only runs for a set amount of time, such as three months, six months or even a year. Here are two of the big benefits of this site:

• Higher retention rates versus ongoing membership sites, since people who start something usually want to finish it. A fixed term site has a definite end date.
• You can run it on autopilot. Just upload all your content to an auto-responder and have it dripped out to members for the duration of the site.

Now take note: your frontend income is just a fraction of what you’ll likely make on the backend.

For example, you may find that 25% to 50% of your income comes through selling memberships, with the rest of your income coming in through the product and service recommendations that you pitch on the backend of your site. Aka affiliate products.

So let’s take a look at a couple examples…

Let’s imagine you’re selling memberships for $10 per month. If you have 100 members paying you $10 per month, that’s $1000 monthly (or $250 weekly).

Now imagine your frontend profits are 50% of your income. You can make an additional $250 per week just pitching products to your list on the backend.

You can also sell your own products as noted in #2 above.

For instance, maybe you sell a high-ticket coaching offer on the backend for $500. You only need to sell two of these per month. Add this $1000 to your $1000 in membership fees, and you’re pocketing $2000 per month.

Or, remembering point #3 above, you can sell specialized apparel to your members, such as hats and T-shirts, from your online store! Give them a members discount if they purchase two or more items.

Here’s another example…

Let’s suppose you raise the prices on your membership site to $20 per month. If you still have 100 members, then you’re making $2000 monthly. You’ve already cleared your goal of making $500 per week, so everything you generate on the backend is just gravy!

And the final idea…

5. Offer A Service

Here’s a time-tested way to make at least $500 per week:

Use your skills and talents to provide a service for others. This is the concept behind all the freelance house cleaners.

If you have a skill that others need, you can freelance it and the start up costs are low.

The benefit of this particular idea is that you can get up and running nearly instantly.

For instance, while having a website is useful to help land clients, you don’t need one to get started. Instead, you can bid on projects on freelancing sites such as UpWork.com (they took over elance.com),  Fiverr.com, or Freelancer.com.

Or if you want to do it up old school, you can cold call (calling people who do not know you) local businesses to offer your services.

But either way, you can start landing clients as soon as today.

You just need to find the kind of people who can use your skill set.

If you are good at math, you can tutor.

I already mentioned house cleaners, but his applies to lawn mowing, car washing or detailing, and even creating custom art. Just bring photos of your work to show potential customers.

TIP: If you’re offering certain skills such as writing or design, it’s a good idea to set up a portfolio of samples.

You can create a few samples specifically for the purpose of creating your portfolio. You can also offer steep discounts to your initial clients in exchange for being able to use the work in your portfolio and/or getting testimonials.

So what kind of skills can you offer?

Your best bet is to go to a site like UpWork.com to see what sort of projects people are posting. However, here’s a short list to give you an idea:

• Freelance write: blog posts, emails, reports, sales copy, social media content, website content (such as an “About Me” page) and more.
• Web design and/or development. This can be as simple as installing and customizing platforms such as WordPress, or you might offer full-blown web design and development.
• Create virtual covers, online or offline ads, and more, blog graphics and pins for Pinterest boards.
• Software development. This includes server-side software, desktop software and mobile apps.
• Customer service. Some companies hire remote staff to help with the customer service desk.
• Virtual assistant. This covers a wide variety of jobs, from tasks such as data entry to market and product research. There is a huge market for VA’s right now!

Again, this is just a sampling. Take stock of your own skills, and then head to a freelancing site to see what kinds of projects you can bid on.

Conclusion

Would an extra $500 a week make a difference to your lifestyle? Of course it would!

And that’s why you’ll want to try out one of the five ideas you just learned for making money online. If implemented the right way, any one of these ideas could put $500 (or more) in your pocket each and every week.

The key to earning an extra $500 a week is to think ‘outside the box’

Figure out what you are already good at or what already interests you, and finding a way to promote it to others who are willing to pay for the service.

The world is moving more and more online which makes it much easier for people to find you if you are actively promoting yourself.

Another great way to earn income online is with affiliate product promotion – where you promote other people’s products for a commission. Click the image below to get a free guide to help you understand this.

Until next time, happy blogging and follow me on Pinterest!

-Irma 🙂