Passive income, sometimes referred to as recurring income, is regularly received income which requires little effort on behalf of the marketer to maintain it. In the business of internet marketing such income will often come from digital products or membership sites. The products can be automatically downloaded to the customer via an autoresponder on receipt of a regular payment; the membership site will remain accessible to the customer via a secure login so long as the regular payment is maintained. Physical products can also be used in a passive income strategy as in a ‘DVD of the month’ arrangement. This does require the sending out of the discs but this can be handled by a fulfilment house if preferred.
Passive income plays a substantial part in any internet business. Some of the ventures run by a marketer will be initially one-off sales, although, once on an opt-in list, the customer will be nurtured with follow up emails, newsletters, items of interest, etc. When a new offer becomes available the marketer’s list will be informed. Selling to an opt-in list is much more productive than cold selling all the time. This approach to online marketing is probably the ‘norm’ but having passive income projects running alongside these other projects is obviously beneficial as such products effectively run on auto-pilot.
In the world of the creative arts, to write a play or a piece of music takes skill, training and concentration but once the task is completed and published, the work is over and the income starts. The author or composer will receive a passive income from sales and performance of their work for many years afterwards. If the work remains in print after the death of the author/composer, their estate will continue to receive the royalty payments for up to 70 years, at which point the copyright will expire and the work will pass into the public domain.
E-books and manuals are ideal products for generating passive income. Being digital, there is no physical product to pack and post so once the sales page is set up and running it will go on taking orders and sending them out for as long as required. I have some music e-books which I made available about 9 years ago which are still going strong. Since setting up the sales pages, plus the payment and distribution systems all those years ago, I have never even looked at them since. The sales just pop up in my Clickbank account.
There are many ways to create streams of passive income in an internet marketing business. If you would like to know more about these diverse opportunities I would suggest that you visit this webpage, http://www.passiveincomestrategy.co.uk, for much more in-depth information.