Mar 1, 10

11 Ways to Make Money while You Sleep | Profitable Business Ideas

Written by: Maren Kate // Comments
11 Ways to Make Money while You Sleep | Profitable Business Ideas

Have you ever wanted to make money while you sleep? Isn’t that the American dream? Or somebody’s dream, somewhere. Well lucky ducky it’s your day! Here are 11 ways to make money while you sleep that I hand picked and some I use myself :) You sleep better when you know your little piggy bank is growing.

  1. Develop & sell an App. Applications for Facebook, iPhones and other PDAs are all the rage now, the truly hit the mark of a profitable business idea that can keep paying off for years. They can cost anywhere from .99 cents to 99 bucks and they sell like hot cakes if you develop a good one (or a popular one because the two aren’t mutually exclusive). Apps sell on the app store, or iTunes or Facebook 24/7, 365 days a year. They never sleep, so you can rest easy knowing every time someone clicks that magic ‘buy now’ button you’ll just made a little more dough, without lifting a finger!
  2. Write a killer eBook/real book. Notice I say “killer”, in NO way am I saying “writing an eBook will make you tons of money” that is HARDLY the case, unless it’s amazing that is. Examples of amazing eBooks that have actually made the author’s lots of money while they sleep are: Desperate Buyers Only and SEO School
  3. Create a membership program that people are dying to get into. Not literally of course (unless it is a morge membership program… hmm) but there are THOUSANDS if not tens of thousands of membership courses out there. Many people will tell you that the re-occuring income from membership courses is a sure fire way to get rich, but they leave out that it has to be a completely UNBELIEVABLE one for people to pay for in the first place. If you are going to make a membership course make sure it is DAMN good. Like really, really good. Whatever its about, be it writing, cooking, CISCO certification or street racing, you must be above and beyond to truly make money. An example of a membership course that I have paid hundreds into because it actually WAS amazing is the Internet Business Mastery program.
  4. Create an internet e-commerce site that runs 24/7. You can really be selling anything, just ask one of the founders behind Stompernet.com who sold fancy swords and ‘medieval’ stuffs on his first online commerce site. As long as you pick something you are passionate about and others are passionate about buying you can do well, no matter how small your niche is. Just make sure you dominate it and become the big dog and you’ll be able to dream of sugar plum fairies and minueting dollar bill signs all night long.
  5. Hire VAs (virtual assistants) to work on  your work while you sleep. Say what? This works if you provide any kind of service that isn’t say gardening. If you are an editor, a programmer, a blogger, a designer, even a personal assistant you can delegate much of your tasks to virtual assistants in foreign countries who will be busy at work while you snooze. So say your client wants two mock ups of X done by tomorrow, you can kick back, write up a sketch of what needs to be done and then send it off to your trusty VAs. They’ll do it while you sleep (time differences you know) and you’ll be refreshed and chipper when you hand it in in the morning. So you make money from your client, pay some money to the VA but still get to pocket the different and snooze through the process.
  6. Buy a gas station. I felt like I was offering to many ‘internet based’ options, so this one is more brick and mortar. It is quite simple, just buy a gas station & you’ll always be making money while you sleep. People need gas, all night long. How will  you get the money to buy one? How will you run it? Heck if I know. You would need to refer to a gas station blog for that info.
  7. Buy and rent ATMS, jukeboxes or cigarette machines. I went to a hosh posh networking event the other week and rubbed elbows with people who thought I was the help. But the two good things I got out of this were I got a free dinner (yummy) and met a man who owns a VERY big nightclub here in Vegas. He said monthly he makes $90k (90 thousand dollars) on ATM fees, and he only rents them from a guy. He gets half, the guy who OWNS them gets the other half. You want to be that guy (or gal).
  8. Build a strong, loyal community around your blog & sell ad space. This is a longer road to making money while you sleep than you think, it takes a lot of giving, a lot of late nights and a loyal community of readers to build a blog that you can truly profit from. If you do manage to become one of the Yaro Staraks out there who makes a full time living blogging then congrats… you’ve tapped into the ULTIMATE way to make money while you snooze and do what you love.
  9. Same as the above but making money via affiliate programs. Rinse & repeat.
  10. Pass out (sleeping) on a sidewalk on Haight street & put a tin can in your lap. You laugh but people make hundreds a day doing just this, not ‘homeless’ needy people just those who aren’t below begging for a dollar. I’ll let you make up your mind on that one.
  11. Sign up for sleep studies. This one is pretty basic, get paid to be a volunteer for various sleep studies. Ultimate sleeping while earning money :)

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Filed in: Mobile Entrepreneurship
  • Some great and very practical ideas there. I've added a link to this list, from the resources section of my business forum - http://bit.ly/b060Km
  • #1 is definitely really hot and more and more apps keep coming out. Does not seem to cost much (well compared to other software) to develop and has a platform set up already. A few downloads, a little word of mouth, and its off....If only it were that easy though....Hmmm back to the idea lab on possible Apps
  • Hahahaha the last two made me laugh! I'm curious about the Internet mastery program, I've heard about it quite often. What do you like about it Maren?
  • I absolutely loved it, check out their free podcast on iTunes... but truly did it for 6 months and it truly changed everything for me another one of their success stories is Pat Flynn of smartpassiveincome.com so it really is amazing. Here is the link if you think about trying it for a month http://www.internetbusinessmastery.com/cmd.php?... also they are very good about their money back if you don't love it so there isn't a risk.
  • Yeah I might try it out. The thing is that I try out a lot of different stuffs (be it trials or purchases), but I need to take the time to catch up to the materials before piling up more. Yeah I noticed that Pat has been promoting that as well, and I love his blog. I'll keep this link handy. Thanks!
  • Maren Kate: your creativity amazes me. Even if we never use one of your ideas, you show us how to think out of the box and the value of being willing to try anything. Empowered! Off to brainstorm.
  • Lol :) thanks! let me know how the brainstorming goes!
  • Hey Maren,
    you are amazing I really love how you can find all these ideas where to make money, even though everyone keeps saying the times are bad. I really got some ideas from this I am even going to write a good post on this so I can pass it along thank you so much
  • Awesome, send me the link of the post when you write it I love reading encouraging stuff :)
  • Maren,
    How about nurturing the rockstar in many of us and go out and record an album?

    That's what my brother did and is now what he does. Very proud of him :)

    Adrian
  • Heck you are right! That could be number 12 :)
  • Maren,

    A unique list to say the least ;) My interest is growing in web apps, so I'll be giving that some serious thought.
  • I'm going the web app route myself. I came up with the concept/business logic, and found a great developer to partner with. We're hoping for great things to come in the next year or so. Good luck on your future endeavors. That last bit goes to everyone here. :)
  • Let me know when you know how to program them, I have a few ideas and am just looking for a programmer
  • Maren,

    Some really great ideas there both on and offline. At the moment I'm working on building a blogging community but some of your other suggestions look very tempting. I'm going to take a look into some of them.

    Thank you for sharing.

    Regards

    Paul
  • Thanks Paul!
  • I am currently working on number 9 at the moment, but have an ebook and membership website in the back of my mind for future development.
  • Awesome Tom you are really working it :)
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