Make Money From Software & Web Apps
By Richard
Whatever it is, from WordPress themes to online productivity tools to a very industry-specific thing like an online billing service for architects, this could make you serious coin.
Obviously, you can get all the heavy lifting done by professionals, and then you just sell the software online yourself through your own marketing efforts.
There’s been a lot of debate on what’s better; info products vs software, for making money online (passive or not).
I’d have to say being an information dealer vs a software seller is really a personal thing.
Both have their pros and cons, and having analyzed them deeply I cannot call it.
One thing I will say, is that if you have little or no technical skills / background, going for a software product as your first attempt at creating a passive income stream is risky. You could find yourself in way over your head from the get go and you could find yourself $10,000+ in the hole before you even have a product ready to go to market.
PS I really want to stress how simple you can go with software; for example, creating a pack of PowerPoint graphics that people can use to quickly prototype apps and other UIs counts (this is in fact an idea someone had, checkout Keynotopia, which earns the creator about $8,000 a month according to his submission on the Four Hour Work Week Blog!).
Or making a simple niched-up WordPress theme (or getting it made by a contractor on elance for say $1500), that also counts, and it’s all super easy. Keep it simple on your first go is the main thing I’m saying here.
PPS I think it would be irresponsible to not point out that this business is a lot less passive than others IF you decide to offer support to customers, which you kind of need to in order to sell things like themes, online apps, software etc.
You could always outsource this OR you could of course full Ray-Kroc-it-up and systematize the shite out of it by supplying world class super detailed documentation / help guides (hello online guide + video tutorials).