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Category 6

Digital-asset & online-business income

Assets you build online that keep earning after the work is done — with maintenance.

Mechanism: Business profits You own an operating company that someone else runs.

Read this first
Significant initial work plus periodic maintenance — semi-passive, not passive.

Everything in this category is paid the same way, so what separates one page from the next is the wrapper rather than where the money comes from: how much it takes to start, how quickly you could turn it back into cash, who does the work, how it is taxed, and how it fails. The line on each card says whether the income keeps arriving once it is set up or whether somebody has to keep working for it. If the mechanism itself is new to you, the course spends a whole lesson on it and is a shorter way in than any single page here.

Advertising-Supported Websites

A content website that earns by renting its pageviews to advertisers, paid out monthly by an ad network on the traffic the site attracted.

Semi-passive · Illiquid. Sale via broker or marketplace, typically weeks to months including due diligence, escrow and a migration period. Read →

Affiliate Websites

A content site paid a commission by merchants when a reader clicks a tracked link and then buys, with the merchant — not the reader — writing the cheque.

Semi-passive · Illiquid. Broker or marketplace sale over weeks to months, with buyers scrutinising merchant concentration. Read →

Subscription Websites and Membership Sites

A site where readers or members pay a recurring fee for access, so income is a contracted monthly or annual charge rather than an advertising accident.

Semi-passive · Illiquid, but recurring revenue makes it one of the more saleable online assets. Broker sale over weeks to months, priced on a multiple of recurring revenue or earnings. Read →

Paid Newsletters

An email publication with a paid tier, where subscribers pay a recurring fee for the writing and sponsors pay a CPM to reach the same list.

Semi-passive · Illiquid. Sale through brokers or newsletter marketplaces over weeks to months, with a steep discount where the product is one writer's voice. Read →

Mobile Apps

Software published to the App Store or Google Play that earns from paid downloads, in-app purchases, subscriptions or advertising, with the store collecting and remitting.

Semi-passive · Illiquid. Sale through app marketplaces or private transaction with a store-managed transfer process; weeks to months, and blocked entirely if the app shares certificates or infrastructure with the seller's other products. Read →

SaaS Businesses

Software sold as a recurring subscription, where customers pay monthly or annually for hosted access and the operator carries hosting, support and security.

Semi-passive · Illiquid but the most saleable digital asset class. Broker or acquirer sale over weeks to months, involving a full technical and contractual migration. Read →

Online Courses

Pre-recorded teaching sold once and delivered many times, earning from enrolments on the creator's own platform or a revenue share on a course marketplace.

Semi-passive · Illiquid and often not separately saleable. A course sells as part of a package with the audience and the site; marketplace listings are usually tied to the instructor account. Read →

Digital Templates and Downloads

Files made once and sold repeatedly — templates, presets, themes, printables and assets — with no inventory, no shipping and a licence attached to each sale.

Semi-passive · Illiquid, and often obstructed: marketplace shop accounts are commonly non-transferable, so what sells is the intellectual property plus a self-hosted store and list. Read →

Stock Photography Portfolios

A portfolio of images and clips hosted on stock agencies, earning a royalty every time a customer licenses a file — income scaling with portfolio depth, not with new shoots.

Semi-passive · Poor. Contributor accounts are generally non-transferable, so the portfolio behaves like a personal income stream rather than a saleable asset. Read →

YouTube and Podcast Advertising

Advertising revenue earned against video and audio episodes — a platform revenue share on YouTube, and CPM-priced inserted or host-read ads in podcasting.

Semi-passive · Illiquid and often obstructed by key-person dependency. Faceless and format-driven channels and podcasts transfer more cleanly and do trade through brokers. Read →

E-Commerce With Outsourced Fulfillment

An online store where a supplier or third-party warehouse picks, packs and ships every order, so the owner runs marketing and customer service rather than a stockroom.

Semi-passive · Illiquid, and priced at lower multiples than SaaS or content. Marketplace seller accounts have their own transfer rules that can complicate a sale. Read →

Domain-Name Portfolios

A held book of registered domain names carrying an annual renewal cost, monetised through aftermarket sales, lease-to-own deals and parking revenue from type-in traffic.

Semi-passive · Bimodal. Strong names sell quickly through escrow and a registrar push; the long tail may never sell. Wholesale portfolio liquidation happens at a steep discount. Read →

Lead-Generation Websites

A site built to capture enquiries in a commercial niche and sell them — per lead, per call, or as a monthly rental of the whole site to one local business.

Semi-passive · Illiquid. Broker sale over weeks to months, priced on trailing profit, with heavy discounts for buyer concentration or reliance on paid traffic. Read →

Data and API Licensing

Selling access to a dataset or a live API under a licence agreement, with customers paying per call, per volume tier, or a flat annual fee for defined rights of use.

Semi-passive · Illiquid. Sells as a business, and only cleanly when contracts are assignable, the pipeline is documented and provenance can be demonstrated in diligence. Read →

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