The allure of a passive income is undeniable. You just set up this money-making machine and sit back while the cash rolls in. Right? Well, not really.
Even the most passive systems still always involved some effort. But, for a few years, thanks to the internet, there have been several types of businesses that don’t require trading your time for money.
Things like affiliate marketing websites, dropshipping and even Fulfillment By Amazon to name a few.
Do these types of businesses still work? Well, we know they can make money, but can they make you passive income? Let’s take a look at some ideas that may or may not still work to make you passive money.
Investing
One of the real and true ways to make money in a passive way is investing. You don’t need to start a business or have any kind of specialized knowledge to make money as an investor.
There are even much easier ways to invest like apps that can do the investing for you. Often called robo brokers, they do things like take your spare change from purchases and put it into a fund without you doing anything. When they work, it is truly passive investing.
The problem with investing is that you can also lose your money if you pick the wrong stocks or funds.
Dropshipping
Dropshipping was in its heyday back in the early 2000’s as people found out that they could run an ecommerce site without needing to actually have any inventory. The way it works is that you have a website with some software that automatically places an order with a factory or warehouse as soon as somebody makes a purchase.
Then, it ships the item to the person who ordered it. Sounds very passive. After all, you aren’t putting in the order yourself and you never actually need to touch the product.
The problem is that it is very inefficient. Amazon can have just about anything delivered in 2 days and often your order will have them waiting for weeks for it to arrive. Not many people will wait that long so for most products, dropshipping is not worth the effort to set up or the ads you pay for.
Related: How to Earn Money (FAST) as a Student in India
Fulfillment By Amazon
This works in sort of the same ways that dropshipping does in the sense that you never need to actually handle the product to make money. The difference is that you will be carrying some stock to make it work.
In this case, you will order products from a factory and then send them to an Amazon warehouse. Then you have Amazon list the product so that when somebody searches for it, they find yours, order it and then Amazon ships it for you.
You make money by pricing it so there is some profit after their fees are taken. The problem with this now is how high the fees are that Amazon charges. It is very hard to compete with Chinese factories that list their products directly on Amazon. Is it passive? Sure. Does it make money? Sometimes.
Looking for some direction, then we have an article over, How to Start an Amazon Business in 2020? That assists you in how to do business on Amazon, the right way.
