For those of us trying to earn a living working from home, we know how important residual income can be. Having money coming in no matter how bad things are currently going is crucial to the success of your home based business. Without it, there may be extended periods of time where our business would suffer. With residual income, we can feel at ease knowing we still have money coming in no matter what.

Before I get into some strategies for earning residual income, I want to define exactly what residual income is. Residual income is income earned on an ongoing basis for effort done once in the past. In home based business terms, as long as someone stays a part of a certain program, or maybe your e book is still selling, you will keep making money from the people in those programs or from the people buying your e book. Residual income can last forever!

There are many ways to earn a residual income online with your home based business. One way to do so is through affiliate programs. Promoting other peoples or companies products can earn you a commission for every referral or sale. As long as your referral remains a paid customer through the program, you will earn a residual income from that person. Or if you place an ad for an affiliate program and that ad continues to produce sales for that company, you will receive residual income from the company for as long as your ad produces sales.

Another way to do this is to offer your own product. Once you create your own product, you can promote it as an affiliate and offer commissions for those who sell it for you. Doing this will create desire for others to promote your product and will produce sales like a snowball effect. This method could have money trickling in for as long as the life of the internet!

The best advice I can give to earning residual income for your home based business is to spread out the wealth. Don't put all your eggs in one basket so to speak. Enroll yourself in several affiliates and promote the ones that offer the best commissions. Then create a handful of products rather than just one or two. Put out a new product once every couple of months and promote the holy heck out of it for months at a time. Once you have all this residual income coming in from various sources, you can then sit back and relax. Your income at that point should be on auto drive. If you notice that your residual income starts to slip or dive, go back to the drawing board and start working on your next product.