Before you get your hopes up, let me warn you that this post isn’t going to turn into an episode of “Weeds.” Instead, it’ll provide some much more tame (but workable) suggestions about how to make a little passive income on the side while you continue your main pursuit of a career on the web.

Write and Publish an e-Book

It may seem like a daunting task to write and distribute a full-length e-book, but look around. Just about everyone who works with social media seems to have managed to release at least one e-book. The reason it appears to be such a popular endeavor for those working in the social web is the multiplicity of angles there are on the subject. Your own specialized area is probably ripe with topics that would merit covering in a book-length work.

You may not even have to actually write a book to create a book. Check your existing IP to see if you have enough material to publish. It could be an archive of blog posts, or something much more technical, but if you think an audience may exist for it, go ahead and publish it. Actually creating an e-book and posting it for purchase requires almost no overhead, so any revenue you generate is profit, even it it’s only a small amount.

There are various services online that will publish and distribute your e-book. Take a look around and find one that’s right for you.

Rent Out Your Extra Space

This is definitely not a problem I have personally, but some web workers may find that they have tons of room at their home/office that they just aren’t doing anything with. You could fill that gaping hole with cats and/or flea market bric-a-brac, or you could offer it up to other, more space-challenged individuals in exchange for cash.

You can find renters yourself via an ad on craigslist or Kijiji, or you could use Sparefoot, a new web site specifically designed for the purpose. On Sparefoot, you can create an account and list for rent any space you’re not using, including rooms in your house, a garage, parking spot, empty lot, shed or whatever other square footage you might have.

On the other hand, if you’re like me and find your belongings need more nooks and crannies to be crammed into than you have available, Sparefoot also provides great search tools for finding space to rent. That doesn’t generate any income, but it might pay dividends in terms of peace of mind.

Rent Out Your Car

I suspect people will be far less inclined to rent out the use of their car than they would be to rent out extra space, but as long as you do it intelligently there’s no reason it can’t become a profitable way to get some income out of that depreciating investment sitting in your driveway.

I live in a major metropolitan area, so I don’t actually own a car myself. I used to, for the better part of my life, when I lived in a much quieter, less densely populated area. As a result, I got used to the immediacy of private transport. Not that I don’t like public transit, but sometimes you just want to be able to pick up and go somewhere, on your own schedule instead of on someone else’s.

That’s why I occasionally give a friend of mine $25 to rent the use of his car during the day (he uses transit to commute to work, and generally only needs the car on weekends), plus the cost of giving it back to him with a full tank. He doesn’t feel like the cost of maintaining a car in the city is wasted, and I get to experience the freedom of car ownership once in a while.

There are countless ways to generate so-called “passive revenue,” but those I’ve mentioned above are specifically tailored to people who work from home. They generally don’t require too much extra effort on your part, and they take advantage of your position as someone who doesn’t have to commute to an office for work, or who can be on site as a facility manager at your home during most hours of the day.

Do you have any other suggestions for generating additional revenue? What are some creative solutions you’ve come across for supplementing your income?

Photo credit: Monochrome

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

When I think about projects, I always separate them into two categories: revenue generating and non-revenue generating. A non-revenue generating project is almost always going to be a professional development activity, although revenue generating activities can be classified as professional development as well.

VirtualVocations: Paid Work

Finding revenue generating projects is probably the most difficult. My number one source is, unsurprisingly, the internet. Sites like Problogger.net provide great job boards where all of the work is done remotely, but it can feel a bit crowded there. I recently came across VirtualVocations, which features different kinds of job listings, and has a smaller user pool, meaning more chance to land any given job.

VirtualVocations features a lot of the more common teleworking positions, including marketing specialists, transcriptionists, writers, and programmers. As with many sites of this type, listings are a little hit-0r-miss, and sifting through them is mostly left to the job hunter’s discretion,

The nice thing about VirtualVocations is its community support. Possible scams are quickly flagged in the user forums, and members share job information and their experiences readily. There are also some handy resources available from the forums, like this rate sheet detailing how much you should charge for transcription services.

[places for writers]: Professional Growth

I’m not always out to get paid. Sometimes I want to hone my craft, which in my case means improving my writing. Places for writers offers me the opportunity to do so, and to contribute to the online literary community in the process.

Obviously, this one is a little skewed towards those of you working as writers, but there is no field of web work in which good writing skills will not pay off. The written word is still the primary means of internet communication, and in all cases, the better you are at communicating, the better you will be at your job.

Places for writers offers opportunities for those interested in all types of writing, from poetry to non-fiction. It features open calls for submissions from small press and literary publications, a few job listings (though these are not often updates), information on how to pursue writer’s grants, and resources for writers.

A lot of the content is Canada-focused, but in most cases, the information and resources are available and applicable to all those interested in improving their writing and adding to their clips.

I love having multiple things on the go, and sites like those I’ve listed here today help me achieve that. The only problem is avoiding a situation where I’ve taken on much more than I can handle, but that’s an entirely different article.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

NetMechanic aims to help. Begin using this service by entering in your URL on their website. Their robot checks your site for spelling errors and gives you a report based on its findings. You can specify a custom dictionary if you’d like the service to ignore certain words. Additionally, you can set NetMechanic to check either a single page or go drill down 20 pages into the site.

A new site called Spellr.us goes one step further.  The site, currently in a closed beta, will offer hourly, daily, or weekly analysis of your site and will give you a visual image of the page containing the spelling error, annotated with strikethroughs.  Pricing is hard to find on Spellr’s homepage but if it’s kept at a reasonable rate, I could easily see publishers paying for this type of service.  Perhaps a more efficient way for Spellr to operate is to scrape a blog’s RSS feed and provide error notification using this as a tool.

How do you keep track of the grammatical health of your site?  What’s your method of monitoring these types of issues?

[From Net@Nite via TechCrunch]

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks