The best hands off business ideas work around the clock 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They generate an income through automation and through using the internet.
So how can you capitalise on the internet as a means to generate a hands off income? Simple; become a part of the growing number of people who refer sales online. In short, it’s a business model known as affiliate marketing. It’s one of the best hands off business ideas, and is available to anyone with a laptop and internet connection.
Affiliates put themselves in-between customers and products.
In 2020 online sales sales grew by 46% while overall retail sales fell by a record 1.9% – according to the office of national statistics (ONS). With so many people buying online, it makes sense to learn how to become an affiliate so you can benefit from the growing trend in online purchases.
Hands Off Business Ideas – Affiliate Marketing
Affiliates promote all kinds of products online, from those you would buy from Amazon, to digital training and education products. If someone buys an affiliate product from your unique affiliate link, you generate a commission based on the sale. When you learn how to make a single sale online, you can make many more; even selling products in your sleep!
Product delivery and customer services are already taken care of by the product owner. As an affiliate you only need to concentrate on generating the sale. This makes it one of the best hands off business ideas available today.
You’re probably wondering how an affiliate can make a sale online? So here’s some of the ways in which anyone can create a passive, hands off business from the internet through using the affiliate marketing model.
Hands Off Business Ideas – Promoting Affiliate Products
Within affiliate marketing there are multiple ways to operate. Most affiliates will build an email list of subscribers and automate a follow up email series. They share information and link to affiliate products through their email messages. Some affiliates will even build an email campaign which stretches for months or even years. So when someone joins their email list, their email autoresponder automatically sends out emails promoting products on their behalf.
As people buy products and services through these email messages, the affiliate earns commissions based on the product sales. This can be completely passive too, once set up!
To build an email list affiliates will use various methods:
- Paid marketing – using the various marketing platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Google Adwords etc.
- Content marketing – content such as this article is also used to drive online visitors (traffic) to landing pages where the owner collects the visitors email address.
- Social media marketing – there’s various other strategies affiliates can use including free strategies on the various social media platforms. See unpaid social media marketing.
- See also 22 ways to promote affiliate products.
Passive Income From Adsense
One of the best hands off business ideas is to use Adsense (or a similar program). With Google’s Adsense program, you can profit from the advertising placed on either a website or through your video content.
Website owners generate content and get that content found on the main search engines. They place advertising on their site through Adsense, and earn revenue when their website visitors click on advertising on their site.
The amounts you earn from clicks will depend on your particular content, but are generally very small. But when you start generating free traffic to your site, you can generate an automated and passive income through using this method. See get traffic to your website free for some free traffic generation strategies.
You can also use Adsense in conjunction with free blog sites and with YouTube. YouTube’er generate lots of content and get paid for clicks on their adverts. Website owners do the same with written content.
Sell Digital Products You Own
The affiliate marketing model lets you sell digital products you don’t personally own (see above). But you can also sell your own products from a website in a hands off way. One of the best things to sell is an e-book because you can automate the sale over the internet. See also how to sell ebooks on your own website.
Anyone can create an ebook based on their individual expertise on any given subject. You can also use your own ebooks in conjunction with the affiliate marketing business model – giving your ebook away to encourage subscribers to join your email list. See ebook lead magnet.
Amazon Self Publishing
If you are creative enough to write an ebook, why not use Amazon self publishing to upload your material and get paid passively for it?
Books you publish will appear in Kindle stores online within 24-48 hours. You can earn royalty payments on your work too. Enroll in KDP Select, (Kindle Direct Publishing) and earn more money through Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.
Here’s an ebook I uploaded to Kindle which was originally only intended to be a lead magnet for my online business.
Summary
So here’s a short run down of the hands of business ideas I’ve shared:
- Affiliate marketing – sell other people’s products using automation and online systems. Get training videos here.
- Adsense/online advertising – create content and drive traffic to advertising. You’ll receive revenue when people click on your adverts
- Upload your own ebook to a website for sale – sell automatically through email marketing or through using a Paypal button on your website. See how to sell ebooks on your own website.
- Use Amazon’s self publishing resource to publish a book of your own! This can be done quickly and Amazon uses print on demand so it’s also free!