Residual income is fascinating. You create or do something once, and yet you get paid for it multiple times, sometimes for years on end. Why work over and over again, creating new income daily that you will just have to do again tomorrow to sustain? That seems too hard to me.

There are many ways to create passive, residual income. You can purchase stocks or other investments that yield regular dividends. You can own property and rent to other people for a monthly rental. You can sell insurance for long-term residual income as well. These are tried and true methods, and have been around for years. Renting property has been a source of residual income for centuries, and probably a lot longer than that.

Writing is a great way to make residual profits too. You can go the original route, and write a book for the royalties that can last as long as your book keeps getting published and sold to consumers. The Internet has made this possible for almost anyone who can string words together into understandable sentences, through way of self-publishing, print on demand, and the ease of ebook creation.

You can also make residual profits with your writing by submitting poetry, fiction, articles and other content to websites like Ehow or Info Barrel.

Writing isn’t the only way to make residual income online. You can make passive income by selling affiliate products, and make money whenever someone buys a product through one of your links. Of course these things take work to set up and advertise, but once you have a system going properly, it’s possible to sit back and get a decent income stream without any extra effort.

You can even turn your artwork into a source of residual income. Sites like Café Press and Zazzle let you upload your artwork and designs to be printed on demand on clothing, mouse pads, cards and other items. You do the work once, and get paid a percentage of the profit each time a customer chooses a product with your design, and you get to keep the original art and the rights to it as well.