Another excerpt from the book I'm writing on How To Make Money Virtually By Harnessing the Web!............. all content is Copyright 2008

There are actually many ways on how you can earn residual income, but what I’m going to share to you is how you can obtain it in the World Wide Web.

Together with my wife, I have been in an Internet marketing business for the past two years, and though there are series of ups and downs, I must say that the risks here are a lot lesser than when you decide to settle for a brick-and-mortar business. First, there are lesser overhead costs that you have to think about. You can always opt to operate inside your home, so all you need to worry about will be electrical costs. When it comes to equipment, you only have to make sure that you have a well-maintained PC with a stable Internet connection, and you’re already good to go. Most of all, you have a variety of selections with regard to your passive income. Here are some of the best:

1. Develop information products. The foremost reason why people surf the Internet is because they are looking for information. It could be anything—something that piques their interest, a research material for their school project, and the newest products and services available, to name a few. So you can already deduce that you have a very wide market for this. But how can you earn passive income?

Do you know how to write an e-book? All you have to do is to create how-to materials for your target market. You just need to make sure that you can offer them something new or unique, so you can definitely capture their attention. It could be as short as 5 pages or as long as hundreds of pages. The most important thing is you can deliver your message. When you already have your e-book, you create a sales page, optimize it a little bit, and promote it to your intended customers. You just need to watch orders start coming in.

Another method of earning money through an e-book is to sell your space to advertisers. There are a lot who are interested in viral marketing, and they are willing to pay as much as hundreds of dollars for a small ad in any of your pages.

2. Create an affiliate program. If you love to sell products in the World Wide Web but you want to distance yourself from the time-consuming process of creating your products, then your next best choice for a passive income will be an affiliate program. With it, you simply need to set up a website where you can display products of your chosen company. Like an e-book, you just need to see to it that it’s properly optimized so that your targeted customers will be able to find it. After that, you just need to monitor the number of clicks and sale you’ve accomplished with the help of your website. You earn through sales commission, which could be as high as 30 percent. You can also earn through referrals to the affiliate program. For instance, if you have a friend who signed up to your affiliate program and sold some products from their website, you could earn something from their sale.

3. Advertise and earn through commissions. If you’re running a website that receives as many as thousands of Internet visitors every day, then you can transform your white space as advertising spaces. You will just have to make sure that you can constantly offer something new to your Internet visitors so they will continuously visit your website.

How you earn through your ads will clearly depend upon you. You may want to have fixed monthly rates for it, or you may like to earn every time a customer clicks on the ad, and if you’re wondering as to how much you will likely get from advertising commissions, get this: Perez Hilton, the owner of the notorious Hollywood gossip blog Perezhilton.com, sells space for $9,000 to $16,000 every week.

4. Develop your own software product. If you’re gifted when it comes to technology, you may develop your own software product. The purpose could be for a number of things. You may want to automate the accounting system, produce instructional materials for all ages, or you want to introduce a new application. Whatever it is, there’s huge chunk of passive income in here.

Let me tell you about Susan. She’s my wife’s friend, and she would usually spend the majority of her days knitting or sewing some stuff. She’s not only very skillful, but she’s highly artistic. For several years being exposed to these types of activities, she could already design her own creations. Later, she discovered that she can teach other mothers new techniques and designs with regard to sewing and knitting. Thus, with the help of a handy video camera, she began producing instructional materials. She uploaded these files to her website and sold the link to those who were interested. She’s at home, she has more time, she gets to do what she wants, and she earns a good amount of money.

And do you know Bill Gates? Of course, you do. I don’t have to tell you how much he earns every year just because of his Windows operating system.

5. Sign up for referrals. This is pretty simple. All you have to do is to build a network of individuals that may be offering products and services that are highly similar to yours. You earn every time you refer somebody to their services or products. I have another friend—his name is Mike—who does this. He’s a website designer, and he couldn’t handle any copywriting or search engine optimization jobs. Rather than lose such golden opportunities, he would then refer these customers to me or to anyone who belongs to his network, provided we pay him a very small fee. In the end, it becomes a win-win situation. He earns his residual income just by referral, and we have another new client to serve.

6. Develop a membership site. Do you have something to offer to a certain group of people? Then you can just build your own website. However, there will be a catch: before your visitors could enjoy your fabulous tips or take advantage of some freebies, they need to sign up and pay for their membership. It’s up to you how you’re going to set up the system. You can always go for a monthly, quarterly, or yearly fee. Another method is to let them pay a lifetime membership fee. All you just need to do is to encourage them to purchase your products. You may also sell your space to advertisers.

Indeed, when it comes to passive income, the Internet won’t let you down. As a matter of fact, you can do all of these things simultaneously—that is, if you can handle it.