Written by Matt Zavadil
Updated June 3, 2020
What IS the best residual income business?
There are a few options available and I think you need to ask yourself why you want passive income to begin with.
Sound silly?
You might say, “Duh, Matt, I want residual income so I can sit around and do nothing all day.”
Here’s my response to that: “OK, and then what?”
Cause I used to be the guy saying I wanted to hit the residual income goal so I could hang out and do nothing.
But really, think about what you can do with the freed up time passive income provides us:
- Donate your time to charity
- Invest more time with your family
- Start a passion business that requires time, but provides a big impact
- Start a nonprofit
- Travel
The possibilities are endless.
To me, the truly cool part is you can dream up all kinds of ways to be a shining light to those in need with the extra time you gain back.
Plus, generating passive income streams becomes addictive. Once you get one going, you might just find that you start working toward another…and another…
But I digress…let’s dive into what you’re going to learn below.
What Is Residual Income?
The simplest definition might be: Money that’s earned long after the work required to generate it has finished.
The key part to this is that your residual income stream shouldn’t be something you need to work 10, 15 or 20 hours per week to generate.
That’s either a job or an active business you’re participating in.
Passive income is exactly like it sounds…passive…meaning it doesn’t require work on your part to continue those predictable and regular payments hitting your bank account.
By the way, residual income doesn’t equal “get rich quick”. I’m not talking about doing anything spammy, weird or unethical in order to produce your passive income stream.
You’re not going to start an online business today, for example, and suddenly be on a beach next month with $25,000 per month rolling in forever.
Which brings up another important distinction about any type of residual income business activity you decide to partake…
Nothing Is Truly Passive
There’s this odd mentality in the world of business and online marketing that there’s a way to push an elusive, magical button…
….and money flows in.
Does anyone know where that button is?
LOL
My point is that a residual income business is one where you do some work today with the intent that revenue will continue to roll in for years to come.
If you want to achieve a passive income stream, then you’re typically going to need to do a whole heck of a lot of upfront work first.
But that’s what’s so great about it.
Wouldn’t you rather do hard work today in order to receive money on the backend for years to come?
You’re going to work hard to bring in immediate income, such as working a job for your boss, right?
It would be a good idea to figure out how to build a residual income business sooner than later so you can eventually motor back on all that working.
Examples of Non-Passive Income
- 9 to 5 job
- Small local business
- Online business requiring 10-40+ hours of work per week
- eBay selling
- Stock trading
- Flipping real estate
- Flipping domain names
- Freelancing
- Service offerings
Examples of Residual Income Businesses
- Network marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Blogging
- Real estate
- Purchase an existing online business
Network Marketing As a Residual Income Business
Let’s kick the elephant out of the room: No, I’m not talking about starting a scammy, spammy business where you convince family and friends to horde a bunch of product in their garages.
I’m not talking about being that annoying person posting MLM product pics on Facebook and screaming about how they have a way to get rich.
Network marketing can be built in a professional manner.
There are ways to build an MLM business where you never leverage personal relationships for profit.
Instead, a professional network marketer applies the principles of professional lead generation in order to target prospects who genuinely have the problems the chosen MLM company’s products solve.
For example, a person building in a coffee company like OrganoGold puts out advertising that attracts people who love drinking coffee.
A person building a Rodan & Fields, Arbonne, Jeunesse Global, Herbalife or Plexus business creates marketing messages that attract people interested in health, nutrition or skin care.
A person building a Young Living or doTERRA business markets their essential oils professionally to people interested in that sort of thing.
A person building an It Works! business markets to the weight loss niche.
Beachbody coaches advertise to people interested in getting help with their fitness goals.
See the trend here? There’s absolutely no need for any of the above MLM reps to build warm contact lists and bug their families. They don’t need to run around town doing that stupid 3-foot rule nonsense or annoying people in bookstores or restaurants with that, “interested in a career change” crap.
They especially don’t need to litter our social media feeds with “I just found the BEST way to get RICH…PM me now!” or annoying pictures of their product boxes.
Nope…you can build a residual income business via network marketing by learning about real marketing.
Creating MLM Passive Income Professionally
There’s absolutely no difference between marketing an online store, a coaching business, an online course, an accountant service, an affiliate product, a pest control business and a network marketing offer.
Every reputable business owner, no matter the type of business, sits down and brainstorms who their best target customer is.
They then ask themselves what problems that person has. They then figure out how to market and advertise in such a way as to get that person in looking at their product or service.
You live in the age of the Internet. Getting in front of a lot of people is easy today.
If you have an interest in network marketing, there’s no need to prospect 1-to-1 to uninterested, random people who want to run the other way as soon as you open your mouth.
I would go so far as to say doing that 1-to-1 prospecting is outright stupid and dumb in today’s world.
We have the power of the Internet in our hands. A little bit of thinking allows us to put together marketing strategies that attract interested, engaged prospects right into our world.
Blogging, paid ads, podcasting, YouTubing, partnering, etc.
All that stuff works to sell online courses just as easily as it does a network marketing product and business opportunity.
If you’re drawn to network marketing as your residual income business, then learn online marketing as your way to build a team of distributors that eventually creates that passive income stream.
