It’s been a busy couple days for me.  I just finished implementing a new blog theme and catching up on my personal finance blog reading, which I had been neglecting for a few weeks.  It turns out I’m not the only one who’s been busy, as other bloggers have been hard at work writing some great posts.  Here are my favorites from the past week:

• Passive Income Idea and Affiliate Marketing Idea - The Passive Dad talks about a site he’s been using called BigCrumbs.  He’s having some success in starting a little passive income stream with it.  He reports that some members are earning $100 - $200 a month in passive income from the service.  Not too shabby.  Hmmm… I wonder if BigCrumbs would be better than Spree?  Especially if you do any buying or selling on eBay, this appears to be something worth a second look.  I signed up for an account today, and I’ll do some more digging into it.  I’ll report back after I’ve kicked the tires a bit more with it.
• Creating a New Income Stream - General Electric - Passive Family Income talks about buying GE, which is a dividend-paying stock, and hedging his bets using a covered calls strategy.  Interesting… I hadn’t heard of this strategy before.  I’m curious to learn more about it and his success with it.
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  Categories : Ways to Make Passive Income

When I started this site back in early 2006, it was just a place to offer rebates on the products I believe in and promote in my affiliate marketing campaigns. Since then, this site has morphed and grown a few times: from an online tutorial on cash back credit cards, to a blog where all things related to passive income can be discussed.

Even when this site became a blog, it was still effectively just a hobby for me when I wasn’t busy with other things.  I love blogs as creative outlets for people’s passions, but I have been reluctant to regard them as ways to create significant passive income, as they take a decent amount of personal involvement to keep them going.

I continue however to have an open mind about blogging for generating passive income.  I’ve learned a few approaches from Yaro Starak and other pro bloggers which have me encouraged that blogs may yet be catalysts for creating and growing passive income streams.  Armed with this information, it’s time to put these approaches to the test.  This blog will now also serve as a living experiment on ways passive income can be created from blogging.  As I validate strategies that work in creating passive income, I’ll of course share them with you.

The first step of this new experiment was to introduce a new theme.  The result of which you see here.  The layout of my old blog theme did not lend itself well to some common blog monetization approaches, so that had to change to allow the other parts of this experiment to take shape.

So what do you think of the new theme?  Likes?  Dislikes?  Sound off below.

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This carnival is relatively new, but sorely needed.  I was going to start a carnival similar to this myself, so I was glad to see when Living Off Dividends got it going.

My favorite post was “How Passive Is Your Passive Income” from the carnival’s host. In this post, he makes a good point that the passivity of his online income is not exactly passive:

I’ve been lumping in my online income with my passive income, but it isn’t really passive. It may not be very strenuous and it gives me geographic flexibility and I don’t have to show up for work every day, but there is some effort involved.

The same is true for me, with some limited exceptions, where I have some affiliate programs that offer residual commissions.  I also like the fact that my online income gives me a lot of flexibility over my working schedule, and I can even take a few days off if I so chose without much impact.  If I gave it some thought, I could probably outsource and systematize some of what I’m doing to make things a little more passive.  That reminds me, if you haven’t read Tim Ferriss’ book, The Four Hour Work Week, I highly recommend it.

My entry into this carnival was “5 Reasons You Should Be Creating a Passive Income“, which describes why I believe building passive income streams are so important.

Check out the entire Carnival of Dividends & Passive Income here.

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Well, it’s been about a year since I opened my FNBO Direct account. Although I was initially apprehensive about FNBO Direct, I am happy to say that I have now come to trust FNBO and can recommend their online savings account to others.

My initial concern stemmed from an e-mail I received soon after I opened my account. That e-mail stated I needed to verify some personal information or risk my account being closed. That e-mail was followed-up with second one stating the first was in error, however the ding to my confidence in their operations had already been done.

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In the previous post, I talked about why creating passive income streams are so important. Now that we’ve covered the benefits of this form of income, let’s start the conversation on ways it can be created.

What’s below is a list of different kinds of passive income streams. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it will work for starters. As you read the list, make a note of which ones catch your interest. Here they are in no particular order: continue

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