Passive income is not something that was invented with the advent of internet. But, what the advent of internet has done is to increase the opportunities to make it. Each day more and more people are switching over to generating passive income online. These people are not just idle homemakers looking to make some extra buck in their free time, but, are dedicated professionals like doctors and lawyers who are looking for ways to supplement their income. So, how can you generate passive income online? There are many ways to do it and it is beyond the scope of this article to explain them all. Let us just look at the three most lucrative fields - self-publishing, affiliate marketing, websites.

Even with all this talk of information overload, people are still hungry for information. Information is needed on a lot of topics. It can be related to your professional life, personal life or even your hobby. You can self-publish to give out thins information. It can be in the form of e-books, booklets, manuals, videos, audio cassettes, CDs. Specifically for the internet you can publish e-books, articles and e-manuals. How -To books and articles are very popular on the internet and these sell like hot cupcakes. You have to publish, market and sell these products to make money. So, whatever money that you make is yours to keep. You also have complete ownership and control of these books. The best part is that it doesn't require any financial investment from your part. The only investment that is required is the investment of you effort and creativity.

Most of us have heard about affiliate marketing even before we heard of internet. Products like Avon, Tupperware, and Amway etc were marketed this way. The internet has only increased the potential of affiliate marketing. It is like owning a mall where you earn money from the profits of the mall as well as from the profits earned by each individual store in your mall. Affiliate marketing on the internet is so popular because you have such a huge market to market your products. The whole world is truly your market. Affiliate marketing doesn't require any investment. The number of people working under you will decide the revenue you get out of it. The more the number of people, more will be your income. The only thing you need to invest is time and effort. Once you have established a network you can sit back and relax from the income that you make.

Coming to the third option, i.e. generating income from websites. Websites are also called online real estates. The website that you own is your property and you make money using your website. There are many ways to make money from a website but the most important thing to remember is that you should have a lot of visitors to your website to make money from it. Now, how do you ensure that you get a lot of visitors to your site? To make it happen, you have to increase your search engine ranking. There are many ways to do this as well. So, what do you put on your website. Well, it can be anything. It can be a website of your articles. It could be website devoted to your hobby like gardening. If the content of your website is really good people will come back to your site. You can then generate revenue through advertisements placed on your site. They can be banners or any other mode. It can be through pay per click schemes and so on. You need not be a website developer to develop one. But, remember to consult one before you go about. If you feel you cannot afford it then there are plenty of resources available online for people like you to go through.

Whichever type of business you do, keep in mind that you will require lot of patience before you make this into a regular source of income. This is not a lottery ticket. You cannot just start making millions just at the snap of your fingers. This will take time and patience before, you get anywhere near the income that you are dreaming of.
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Sean McPheat provides royalty free information products and services.. Visit http://www.royaltyfreeproducts.com for some free samples.