This week I have added a few more article posting sites and a handful more of the Envato Network sites. The list grows:

• Bukisa.com | Props : Reed
• AudioJungle.net
• ThemeForest.net
• Activeden.net
• Infobarrel.com

So this brings the total of the residual income list to ten total ways of making passive and residual income. Lets keep adding to the list and please if you know of something not on this list let me know and I will add it and in return you get a link to your site. Cheers!

It was a usual day of being a freelance hero. I was sitting at my desk reading some blogs much like you are doing right now, when I went to the old trusty browser and loaded up my email. ‘You have been invited to beta test our network’ the email read. Apparently I was chosen to be a part of the GraphicRiver.net pre-release. I was allowed to setup an account and get a jump-start before the site went public. This would allow me to build a portfolio and setup shop so when the curtains dropped I would be able to start making some money.

Fill your tank with the right gas.

I did some browsing of the site, and I saw one fatal mistake that 90% of the users were making. They were all uploading every little graphic they have ever made, nothing that could universally used throughout the design world. I went with the opposite, I sat down and created a Web 2.0 Background Designer, a simple, customizable web background maker. You could easily adjust the colors and pump out different backgrounds you would need. Out of the gate it was an instant success. People with 200 items weren’t getting sales, I had 1 dinky item and made 60+ sales the first month.

I had the right idea, that is where I was successful. I had an original file that could be used time and again, so naturally other designers wanted it.

Step on the gas!

So i thought I was going to begin my life on easy street. I thought to myself, make 3 files like my background maker a month and let the cash start pouring in. I mean one dinky file sold over 60 times resulting in $60+. If I could make an average of $54 dollars a month per file, and add 3 files a month I thought to myself:

• 1 file x 54.00 = $54
• 3 file x 54.00 = $162
• 6 file x 54.00 = $324
• 9 file x 54.00 = $486
• 12 file x 54.00 = $648
• 15 file x 54.00 = $810
• 18 file x 54.00 = $972
• 21 file x 54.00 = $1,134
• 24 file x 54.00 = $1,296
• 27 file x 54.00 = $1,308
• 30 file x 54.00 = $1,620
• 33 file x 54.00 = $1,782
• 1 year = $10,594.00

All of this is great in theory, and I knew all things wouldn’t sale so well, but maybe some would be an even bigger hit. Lets not get ahead of ourselves though, for there is one more part of the equation, for this isn’t how I made $10,000 in one year, its how i DID NOT!

Total Engine Failure!

You want to know what that last part of the equation was? It was me. I never did another god damn thing to help build my portfolio on graphic river. Hell I barely even logged into the site for a few months. Call it procrastination, call it being dumb, call it what you want, but needless to say my sales dropped off. At the start since I was getting so many buys and portfolio views that my item was constantly at the top of the list. When you sorted by sales alone I was second to the top, but I neglected my shining star, and the result:

Sales dropped dramatically. So as you can see this adds no where close to $10,000. In fact it adds up to a couple hundred dollars, but the potential was there.

Lesson: Know When to Capitalize

In retrospect it could have been so simple. Have a goal, make a goal-plan, follow that goal-plan, check the effectiveness of the goal plan and tweak it as necessary. All the puzzle pieces were in the right place but I failed to capitalize on the moment. I just had dreams in my head and never put them into action. That is half of the reason I started this blog, to give me an external source of motivation. To have a place to mark my accomplishments. So please, learn from my mistakes and take this advice:

• Keep eyes open for oppurtunity, it is out there you just have to see it.
• When oppurtunity is spotted do your homework and give it your best shot.
• Make a goal and goal plan to achieve success.
• When you see results, CAPITALIZE on them.

Like my story? Have a similar story? Maybe some advice so others do not make the same mistakes? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

*note – this blog post was written for a challenge from SimplyZesty, but is a very true story.

How it works:

You have the graphics, they have the marketplace to expose your work. Its that simple. You become a member to their site, you have to pass a simple little test that gives you the lowdown on making sure that you content is simply that: your own. You are not allowed to have made items from templates on the internet, everything has to be created by you, this way they can’t get sued for copyright infringement and you can avoid a nice long legal battle. After you are a member you submit files for the marketplace and they will set the price for that particular file. Bam, just like that you have a little design on the internet waiting to be sold that you can collect the check after you reach the threshold. You get a % of each sale, and the % rip that you are getting each time is broken down by how much you sale. The more you sale, the more you make. Check out their description of services.

Making that money:

If you become an Exlusive Author you get a bigger rip (rip = the % of the sale) on each item sold. If you are not an exclusive author you get 25%. If you become exlusive then you will get 40% each sale. Once you break the the $2,000 mark then you get bumped up to 41%. After another $2,000 in sales you get 42%. The thresholds get further apart once you start to make bigger money, but with time you can get all the way to 70% of each item sold.

Make even more money:

Saleing graphics and design templates are not the only way to help build your passive income with GraphicRiver. They also have a referal program built into their system. Basically it works like this. You refer a person to their site, you will get 30% of their cash deposit. So lets say you know a designer who wants a nice business card template. You refer them to your site through a link, they deposit $50 bucks to buy it, you walk away with $15 bucks. Now it may not seem like a ton of money, but the ResidualBacon knows that little things add up over time.

More about GraphicRiver:

One of the greatest parts about GraphicRiver is the tools they give their authors to track which items are saling well, as well as monthly breakdowns on money earned. They have graphs for items sold as well as money earned each month. They have nice layed out tables for your referals and clickthroughs. Not to mention the styling of GraphicRiver is producer from the Envato Network which is leading edge as far as creating nice clean layouts for thir user interface. Everything is easily navigated unlike many of the other stock sites out there, and when searching for items everything is broken down into easily understood categories, so tracking down that specific type of file you may be searching for is simple.

The Lowdown:

• Expose your designs/templates to their expanding marketplace.
• Cash in on graphics that you have created that are just sitting on your hardrive.
• Earn extra cash through referals.
• Do the work once, reap the rewards forever.

For tips on designing itmes specifically for stock sites see –

Lets face it. We all don’t want to work for a living. There has to be a better way to make money in this world rather then finding some guy who hires us on a whim and then we spend our next 30 years working our asses off. And for what? Just to hope to get raises that may never come, profit sharing if the company does well, and benefits so when the job stresses me to the brink of suicide the insurance can cover my happy pills. No way Jose. That life is not for me! That is the reason I have created this site. Welcome Residual Bacon!

This blog is dedicated to people that are interested in learning the go-to ways of earning residual income. Now its not always going to be easy. Let us be honest here when we know that hard work pays off, but our goal here is our hard work keeps paying off again, again and again! I already have a rather small revenue coming in each month from a website called Graphic River. This is a ’stock site’ that lets me create a profile and sell digital imagery of different sorts on their site. They bring in the people and I make the product. This is just one of many ways that I will be talking about to earn your passive income. I will be creating “THE BIG LIST” which will hold different sites for different ways of making passive income, as well as reviews on such sites. I encourage you to help me create this list as well as bring your experience and knowledge of creating lines of passive income to the Residual Bacon, you can do this by commenting on articles and subscribing to our feed.

I will also be sharing my revenue goals and report my earnings each month. This will do two things. It will help create a visual outline of what works and what does not work in our world of passive income, as well as help keep my goals in sight while trying such a feet. My goal as of now is to make $1,000 dollars a month in residual income in 1 year. We can talk more about this once the site really gets up and running.

I encourage all to SUBSCRIBE to this blog as well as leave comments! Lets start making some money!