Ideas for Getting Paid With Residual Income

Network, or multi-level, marketing is a type of direct sales in which entrepreneurs earn money both by selling products in return for a commission, and by recruiting other salespeople. The recruits form a "downline" for the entrepreneur that establishes his residual income. The recruits sponsor their own downlines. The entrepreneur earns a certain commission on the sales of each "level" of recruits in his downline. Eventually, the entrepreneur's primary source of income is the passive, residual income the downline generates, rather than his own retail commission. Promoting your network online gives you the widest possible pool of customers and potential recruits.

The Internet spurred the development of a "pay-for-performance" advertising model by which advertisers place ads for companies' products and services and earn commissions from the sales that advertising generates. Many affiliate marketers focus on building residual income by creating websites and blogs with information that's relevant to the product or service they're marketing. Visitors to their site click through ads to the product and service provider's website to make their purchases. Tracking software tells the providers from which affiliate's ad the customers came. If the customers perform the intended task --- make a purchase or sign up for a newsletter, or example --- the affiliate earns the commission. Once the affiliate's website or blog has been established, it needs only routine maintenance to keep generating residual income by sending visitors to the provider's site.

Infopreneurs are publishers who create business around information products they create. Examples of information products include e-books, special reports and email newsletters. Infopreneurs market their products on narrowly targeted websites optimized to rank high in search engine results. They also pay affiliates to market the products for them. Once an infopreneur has published a product, created a site for it and invited affiliates to advertise it, the product can generate residual income for years to come with very little additional work.

Earning enough residual pay to replace full-time employment often requires multiple streams of income. The additional streams can all come from the same category of business, or they can combine categories in a way that expands the opportunities each generates. For example, an information product might contain affiliate links to products published by other infopreneurs. A blog that serves as a hub for affiliate marketing can launch infopreneurial products like podcasts or seminars.