This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Do you need more passive income in your life? Well, that's what today's listener question is about. It's from a web developer who wants to create more passive income streams. He is currently trading time for money, which is how a lot of service businesses work. Like you perform a service, you get paid, that can be fine.
That can be your ultimate goal, or it can be a transition. It can be like, I wanna do this for a while, but I would also love to be able to go to bed at night and wake up in the morning and see some payment notifications for something that I don't have to do anything for, right? That is passive income. And as I sometimes say, there's often a lot of active work behind passive income. We don't wanna oversimplify or say things are super easy all the time.
But the reality is that there are projects you can build that require your active attention and other projects you can build that require you to put a lot of work in on the front end and then earn from that project for potentially at least an unlimited amount of time. So I think all things being equal, wouldn't it be great if you could have some of those revenue streams? Even if you continue to provide services, it's not that trading time for money is always bad, right? So Moses from San Antonio, his goal is to supplement his successful website building side hustle with more sustainable, scalable income sources that don't require his active presence. I need more passive income in my life.
That's the question. Does that apply to you too? I think it applies to a lot of our listeners. Let's hear from him and see what we can do to be helpful right after this quick shout out to our sponsor. And by the way, thanks so much for being out there.
[Music]
Hello, I'm Moses, a web developer from San Antonio. I've been running a successful side hustle building websites for small businesses, but I'm realizing that trading my time for money isn't the most sustainable path. I'm interested in creating passive income streams to supplement my side hustle income. What are some effective strategies for developing and optimizing passive income sources that align with my skills as a web developer? [Music]
I love this question.
To create passive income streams that align with web development skills, what do you do? - Okay, so first of all, what do web developers usually do for clients? They're often building websites. I mean, there's other stuff they do, but that's a big part of it. They're building websites, they're fixing websites, they're building and maintaining apps.
So if you want to move to a more passive income format, you want to, for example, develop and sell website templates or themes. And there's a huge market for this. I don't know how many millions of dollars, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, perhaps, create customizable website templates or WordPress themes that you can sell on marketplaces like Themeforest or Creative Market. A lot of people have developed a business where they sell them directly even, like not just on those platforms. But once you have made a template or a theme, these digital products can be sold repeatedly with minimal ongoing effort.
And you can go and buy templates for $97, sometimes several hundred dollars, depending on the complexity. This can be a great business for a web developer. It's a competitive business now. There's a bunch of people doing it. So not saying it's easy, but it is great to make something.
And then, as I said earlier, go to bed and you wake up and you've got a payment notification for that $97 product or that $300 product or whatever it is. So similar to website templates or themes, plugins or add-ons. This is also super popular with WordPress or Shopify, other big platforms that lots and lots of people are using. If you develop a plugin or add-on, you can sell it as a one-time product or as a subscription, which is increasingly common. Like we all know so many subscription services out there, sell these tools on marketplaces or through your own website.
You could also offer hosting packages. Now this could be a bit trickier because hosting does require maintenance. It's not totally passive. It's somewhere in between passive and active. Because if things go wrong, you have to fix them.
So you're kind of on call. Nevertheless, when things are going well, then the money is just kind of coming in. And then last but not least, on my list of suggestions, which we talk about a lot, of course, create an online course or a tutorial series. So not just providing the product, but actually educating people along the way. People who might want to make their own website or might want to learn some basic coding, basic web design or development.
And of course, those courses can generate passive income as well. So I put that last today because I think if you have the web development skills, then creating products for sale, like these digital products can be really lucrative. It might be the first thing that I would think of, but there are other options as well. Moses, I respect the goal of building more passive income. Listeners, I hope you think about that as well.
What can you do? What's one step you can take in the next 30 days, let's say, to help you build your first or your second or your additional revenue source? Even if it's not a ton of money, like we've heard over and over through this first $1,000 series that we have and other features, just being able to make money on your own feels really, really great. And it often leads to something much further. So I encourage you to consider that.
If you have a question, you know where to go, www.sidehustleschool.com. Much more is coming up. Thanks for tuning in today. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from the Onward Project.
