Membership Sites 

Many websites now have an area that is protected by a membership-only portion. This is a very good idea as it means you can have free visitors that you can attract with an array of interesting and valued items and then suggest to them that they can get the full benefits of your site and save money by joining for a nominal fee. 
This can be a very powerful way to generate online income and operate a service-based business. If you have your members paying a monthly or yearly fee to get access to a password-protected area where exclusive content is made available and you offer exceptional value and a broad interest base (or a specialized niche) to keep your customers happy as well as wanting to spread your business by word of mouth to others (one of the most productive methods of building an online business), you can transform an average site into a very profitable recurring income-generating business, bringing a regular flow of income from the same customer base. 
One of the other benefits of a membership site is that you can start your site or launch it without it being totally complete. In fact, by only creating a small portion of your actual content, you can allow it to grow organically with content from your customers. This can be a huge benefit and you’re getting paid in advance. This gives you the advantage of having a site that has content that people really want, you get quality, real time feedback, which helps you to provide and ensure that you are creating a product or service based site that is providing contents that your customers want, and not just a site that has stuff that you think or hope they might want. 
Often people will spend a lot of time, energy and money developing a fantastic site that nobody really wants and so nobody will pay for. The secrets of internet marketing are to provide relevant information that people want in an easy to find and understand format and at a realistic affordable price, but it must be user friendly and simple. The simpler the better as people will not bother if you complicate things. 
  
Selling Software 
Selling software can be one of the most lucrative passive income streams you can try. Many people do not think of it because they do not have the experience or the technical skills such as programming, or the different types of software writing abilities, but this aspect is not important. The reason is because all of this can be done by other people who you can find on the web without much difficulty. Once you find a good program developer and have a good idea, (this is the important part), it becomes easy. If you can find a small, but very useful product or service in an area that needs to be addressed and offer a solution for what is needed, the software you develop does not have to be expensive or feature-rich to be successful. Often a small tool that solves a big need, if priced right, can be very profitable, getting back to those 3.5 billion people (plus an expected additional 3 billion over the next few years) on the net. If you can get $1 from 0.001% of those people you could be getting a return of $35,000 and If you can make that a recurring fee it becomes very profitable. 
  
Website Services 
Nowadays everyone is starting a website or webpage, whether it’s using a home desktop PC, a laptop, or a hand held device, most people are not technically savvy. In fact, most are technically challenged. When setting up a website or page there are 101 things to do, including all kinds of setting up, programming, and small tricks to know if you want things to look perfect. Most people cannot be bothered and would be willing to pay someone to do it for them. 
If you have any talent at setting up websites and anything related to website creation such as SEO, post writing, creating graphics, creating website themes, programming, etc, then you could easily sell your services to people who want them. Places to find these people are Upwork, Freelancer, or some of the other virtual assistance sites. People also look on Facebook, eBay Craigslist, etc. 
  
Chapter 5: Selling Instructional Products 
At the moment, the fastest growing area on the internet, both for finding things and having an internet presence, is Instagram. It is so simple and effective it has taken over Facebook and YouTube because of the huge amount of garbage they have both now collected. 
Right now the biggest Instagram users are women over 45 years old and this is no joke. It used to be teenagers on Facebook, but because of the new smart phones, these often technically challenged users have become the biggest users and also the biggest spenders with an estimated user rate of 45%, and with their relatively large spending budget, these people are usually at the stage of life when they have a little spending power and are happy to use it. 
If you can write an eBook, then putting together an instructional or informational book or better still, some kind of eProduct such as a DVD series, software, app, instructional CD set, online course, podcasts, technical video or anything that would help people and solve any technical problems etc., this should not be too difficult (especially as you can outsource where needed). There is a huge readymade customer base on Instagram, (not that you should stop using all the other social media platforms as well), for this kind of product. 
These products can be sold anywhere and there is no interaction (unless you want it). They often start at several hundred dollars and can be updated as needed or you can ask for an email address to send them updates so these people become part of your email base. You should be trying to add to your email at every opportunity as it is your best source of high quality traffic. High quality in the sense that they have already purchased from you so are very likely to do so again, without too much persuasion, especially if you have provided good quality for money in the past. 
  
Revenue Sharing 
There are a lot of people who do not want to or cannot be bothered with setting up their own website and do not have a product to sell. This is where some of the revenue sharing sites can help provide you with the opportunity to earn money online without having to do all this extra stuff and take the time to learn how. 
If you wish to write for pleasure or as a hobby you can also make some extra passive income by writing high quality articles and submitting them to a variety of different locations on revenue sharing sites. 
  
Squidoo 
Squidoo is a writing platform that lets you create pages with rich content and then use those pages to sell products for profit and many people use it to market Amazon and eBay products, but to earn anything from ads on Squidoo, they need to incorporate a buying angle. 
  
Hubpages 
Hubpages is similar to Squidoo; it is a content community for writers. Members have their own sub-domain, where they post their content-rich articles (known as Hubs). As a writer for Hubpages (or Hubber), most of your earnings come from your own Google AdSense account and sites such as Kontera, as well as eBay and Amazon Affiliate programs. They use revenue splitting, which is done by alternating the code used in advertisements: Your code will be displayed 60% of the time, and HubPages' code 40%. This site is one of the 500 most visited US sites on the Internet. 
  
Infobarrel 
Infobarrel is a site that is smaller than Squidoo and Hubpages, but its earnings program allows you to keep a majority of the money that your articles earn often as a publisher and you are entitled to 75% of the revenue generated from the display ads on your articles. Infobarrel pays directly to writers, unlike Squidoo and Hubpages, so all you need is a PayPal account which can be an advantage if you are just starting out. InfoBarrel forums have a regular thread entitled 'InfoBarrel Earnings Reports’, making it easy to see what other writers are earning.