Passive Income Opportunities – Think Creatively

photo credit: Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton
There are an endless number of passive income opportunities available to people these days. Many of these opportunities involve hard work and dedication (and sometimes a little luck) upfront with enormous potential future returns. Some obvious choices include investing in dividend paying stocks, peer lending, eHow, niche blogging, Today.com, and much more. But what about opportunities that may take some thinking and creativity? Are there passive income opportunities that are just sitting out there staring you in the face – but you just don’t know it?

I recently read an article about a potential new passive income opportunity that took some creativity and out of the box thinking. While the initial concept may not have been a true passive income idea – there is some potential. The money making idea included the following high level steps -

1. Scan Weekly Ads – Look through your weekly ads to find items that have a rebate available.
2. Purchase Items – Purchase items found in your weekly ads that come with a rebate. Look for items like glucose monitors, electronics, computer & software items, etc.
3. Submit Rebate Request – Once you have made your purchase(s) for the week, submit your rebate request.
4. Sell the Item – Once your rebate has been submitted, turn around and sell the item on eBay.

Money Making Opportunity
I am sure everyone would agree that the steps above could be an opportunity to make some money. My wife and I purchased a glucose monitor last year for $29.99 at CVS (on sale from $99.99). We used a $19.99 coupon found in the weekly paper and also redeemed the $29.99 manufacturers rebate for a profit of $19.99. We didn’t make this purchase to make money – but were buying the item for a family member who was recently diagnosed with diabetes. Turns out this person already had one and we still have the item. I am going to test this process out by trying to sell it on eBay.

Now I am sure that most people would agree that this is not a true form of passive income as you need to spend time searching weekly ads, shopping, filling out rebates, and selling the items on eBay. But what if you broke down each step and tried to automate it the best you can? Or what if you paid someone else a cut of your profits to do the work for you? Let’s take another look at our 4 steps above and think about how we could make each one a little more passive.

1. Scan Weekly Ads – As frugal shoppers, my wife and I scan weekly ads as our Sunday morning ritual. Therefore, I would not spend any extra time looking for rebated items. But what if you didn’t browse the weekly ads? You could find someone who did (friend, neighbor, etc.) and ask them to make a list of rebated items along with the retailer information that they came across. They could email you the list each Sunday evening. You could even give them a cut of your profits if you felt it was necessary and they do a good job for you.
2. Purchase Items – Again – my wife and I shop 4 to 5 stores each week to pick up the best deals. Some of the stores that we shop at offer rebated items so we would already be shopping there. But what if you didn’t shop a lot? There are services available that you could pay to do your shopping for you. You could provide these services a weekly list of items you wanted them to pick up for a fee.
3. Submit Rebate Request – If you purchase items that have rebates that are redeemable electronically (i.e. Walgreens), then you probably would not spend a lot of time on this step. However, you could hire your kids or neighbor kid to log in to the retailer websites each week and redeem your rebates.
4. Sell the Item – I will be honest – I have never sold or bought anything on eBay. I have heard that this step could take some time as you have to worry about packing up the item and sending it out. This is one step that you could absolutely pay someone to do for you. I have a close relative who has a side business doing just this. He charges a 22% commission to take items people don’t want and sells them on eBay. You could pay someone like this a fee or commission to turn around and sell your items.

So what do you think? I know it is still probably a long stretch to consider those steps as passive income. Plus, the profits may not be large enough to be worth it – but that is not the point. The point of this post is to promote creative thinking and build new passive income opportunities for yourself. Take normal money making opportunities that require your time and break down the process into small steps. Each step that you breakdown, think about how you could improve that simple little process through automation or paying someone to complete that task. Then take all the parts of the process and put them back together.

So maybe you are not interested in thinking about any new passive income opportunities. What about existing passive income streams that you have? Are there any areas you can define for improvement? When I first started out with peer lending, I was spending 30 minutes to 1 hour every day looking through loans to bid on. Some of that time was trying to learn the system and get accustomed to lending money online. But I was still spending a lot of time each week that could have been used on something else. I started to brainstorm how I could spend less time on the bidding process each day. I found that you can create a custom search within the Prosper site to filter only the loans you are interested in by defining your criteria. Once I started using my filter, I was spending 10 minutes or less a day on the bidding process. What did I do with that extra time save? I started this blog!

I challenge everyone to take a simple money making process and write a post on their site breaking down each step and showing how it can be made passive. Or if you don’t have your own blog – feel free to include it in the comments. I am very curious to see what creative ideas other people come up with!

Have you automated or paid anyone to build your passive income streams?

Tagged as: eHow, niche blogging, peer lending