Everybody wants to create some passive income, and although the initial work can be intense and exhausting eventually the income generated by real estate or online can be relatively low maintenance. One can even hire out many of the tasks required to build the income in the first place or to maintain it. In this article, I will compare making money online to real estate investing. As a real estate investor myself, I know what it takes to generate income from that method, and I am in the process of learning what it takes to generate income online.

You’ve all the mantra of real estate investing.  You want to make sure that you are investing in an area that is growing and not in decline.  You want to make sure that the area is desirable and has good schools.  The internet is like that.  It is still growing and more people are connecting online each and every day as the world becomes a more interconnected place.  Not only is the internet itself growing, but commerce on the internet is growing as well.  More people are buying things online, more advertisers are spending online since that is where the action is.  The internet sites where I am spending my time, namely HubPages and eHow, are growing and gaining in popularity and enjoy high rankings on search engines.  These locations are pretty good neighborhoods in which to start making money online.

Acquiring the land at HubPages and eHow is pretty easy; you simply create an account at no cost (you can sign up for HubPages here). I also have done the same with my blog. If you want to own your own site, then you must purchase a domain name and have it hosted. Hosting can be available at all sorts of sites like GoDaddy and Yahoo or any number of others at a myriad of pricing points. I am personally choosing to bootstrap my online money making venture by going totally free and not putting any of my own money into the investment. However, if you have the capital and want your own site, go for it!

When you build a house, you start with the foundation. Well, the foundation of making money online is content. The better the content, the better your chances of attracting individuals to your site and the better the odds of making some real money. The content can be articles, blog posts, forums, pictures, videos, an online store, etc. The bottom line is that people on the internet have to find it useful or entertaining. I am in the foundation building stage right now, working on content that people might find beneficial. Because I am doing this part-time and not spending my own money, I is taking some time and will likely take me about one year to create the online income equivalent of a single family home. But that’s OK. If you wish to create your content more quickly, you can hire subcontractors to work for you. You can work on multiple projects also.

Once you have your property built, it is time to advertise and rent.  In the online world, it is time to advertise, drive traffic and monetize.  I am also working on this stage while continuing to work on a larger amount of content with greater diversity.  Here is where you learn about SEO and backlinks to drive traffic.  Instead of collecting rent, you try to collect clicks whether via Google Adsense or on an affiliate or on an ebook that you created.  Again, there are all sorts of ways to monetize your online efforts, but it does take some work initially which you can do yourself or pay to have done for you.

Eventually, you may want to add more properties by continuing to build more and more content or sites.  Alternatively, you could purchase existing properties.  There are all sorts of websites for sale on the internet.  I am not to this stage yet, but may consider it once I am making a more steady online income.  In this way, you can rapidly expand your online real estate portfolio.  You can even grow big enough that you need to hire property managers or have people blogging for you eventually turning the income into nearly passive income.  Or you can simply rely on what you have already created to provide your passive income checking in on your properties occasionally.  As with real estate, there is a lot of potential to grow and expand and take the opportunities as far as you are able.