Passive Income - Stock Media - $0 Required

COMPUK

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Hi folks,

Long-time lurker, first time member. Some great information being exchanged on this forum. Thought I'd share one of my methods for making a passive income online. This will be a fairly brief, no-frills, no affi link guide.

This method requires $0 to get started and $0 to maintain. Be aware, it does require an investment of time and effort, but if you're creative and outsource parts of this method, you can minimize the amount of time you spend.

The beauty of this method is that it brings in an indefinite,constant income. A weeks worth of intensive effort can bring in money for months, even years to come.

Apologies for lack of direct-links. I tried to submit this guide with links and images etc. but I've not been a member long enough to make posts containing the fancy extras. For now, replace _ with . in the links to see the images and info provided in the guide.

Overview

Stock media. Specifically; selling sound effects through audiojungle (and similar stock media websites). In a nutshell, this method involves 'ripping' audio samples from existing content and selling it on.



Outline

There are a multitude of stock media websites on the internet which allow artists and content creators to sell their digital goods online. These sites take a cut of the profit from your file sales (usually 50%), which is fine, as the stock media site acts as our 'storefront', hosting our files, bringing in customers and advertising our files for free.



The Method

I won't tell you which sites to use, as this method is versatile and adaptable to any stock media website. A simple google search with the term "
sell sound effects online" will bring up a multitude of options for you to get started. For the sake of the guide, we'll be utilising audiojungle.


Getting Started

1. Create an account at audiojungle

2. Confirm your account via the email link. Sign in to audiojungle, mouse over your username in the top right of the website and click on "become an author" at the bottom of the options.

3. Choose the "Exclusive" membership. By selecting this membership, you get a higher payout per sale by agreeing that the content you're uploading & selling through audiojungle will only be submitted to audiojungle, and none of their competitors (ie. other stock media websites).

4. Download and install Audacity. Audacity is a freeware audio recorder & editor. Essential software for this method. Feel free to use your audio software of choice (I also recommend Goldwave), but again, for the sake of this guide, we'll work with Audacity.

5. Open Audacity and change your recording settings to "Stereo Mix" (see image link below for reference). This recording setting will capture audio directly from our sound card.

s3_postimg_org/ehjkduacz/Untitled_png

6. Mid-way Ramble
For this scenario, we're going to be building a collection of sound files with the game development industry in mind. What sort of sounds are sought after by game developers? Well, pretty much anything! Smashing sounds (glass, wood, pottery), doors opening and closing, nature sounds, monster sounds, gunshots, robotics, animal noises, machinery, chimes etc. etc. etc.

As someone who utilises this method daily and makes repeated sales on a daily-basis; I'll give you a tip: Any sound effect can sell, no matter how obscure.

7. Now, back to the guide. Let's head to youtube and search for "breaking pottery". If you're following the guide, we'll work with this video: /watch?v=P5jxRgAMrLc

8. Pause the video before it starts and bring up Audacity. Go to 'File -> New' then hit Record (the big red button, of course). Now play the youtube video.

9. Audacity is now recording the audio directly as it is played from the video. You'll notice that the audio in this video is of fairly good quality. There's minimal background noise and the pottery breaking sounds are clear, crisp and undisturbed. This is the ideal sound base, as it requires minimal processing and cleaning. When the video has finished, go back into Audacity and hit stop (the big yellow square).

10. We now have our base audio file ready to be tinkered with in Audacity. From here, we cut out the parts we don't need, clean up the parts we want to keep and then save our finished file(s). I'm not going to go into detail on how to use Audacity, that'd be a lengthy guide in itself. One of the main features you'll be using is Noise Removal, to reduce background noises. Refer to this guide for the basics: manual_audacityteam_org/man/Noise_Removal

Here's a .rar containing 4 sound effects I ripped from the video after cleaning up and separation. These are ready to be uploaded, tagged and sold:

app_box_com/s/qlth0lnoz771922jqcgx

I would list these on Audiojungle for $3 per sound effect.

11. When you have isolated, cleaned up and generally beautified the sound effect(s), save them via "File -> Export -> WAV (Microsoft) Signed 16 Bit PCM".

12. Go to audiojungle, mouse over your username, select 'Upload'. Choose 'Sound Effects' from the dropdown list and hit 'Next'.

13. This is the time consuming part. This is where we name, describe and tag our audio file(s) - and the best part - set our price. If you listened to the sample files I provided above, we're looking at a potential $2-$5 per file.

Some stock media sites allow batch processing to speed up the file tagging process. Remember what I said about outsourcing to reduce the more tedious aspects of this method? I pay a filipina freelancer a modest amount to do the tagging for me.

Note: You can manage your file stats, finances, earnings and withdrawals by selecting 'Author Dashboard' under your Audiojungle profile.

14. Tag your file and hit upload. Rinse & repeat as desired, and wait for the sales to trickle, and eventually, stream in.


Tips

1. Be discreet. Don't rip easily recognisable audio samples. Source out videos with high quality audio and lower view counts.

2. Be creative. As I mentioned above; Everything and anything can be sold. I find that sounds associated with the RPG Genre of games, for example; spell sounds, choir chants, animal sounds, weapon effects (swords, bows, impacts etc.) do particularly well.



Summary

The beauty of this method is the "fire & forget" nature of it. If you can churn out 50 quality sound effects in a day, you're looking at approximately $2.50 per file sold (after website commission) if your samples are of high enough quality to warrant a $5 tag. I personally opt for $3 per file and take a share of $1.50 per sale.

These files will be hosted as long as you don't delete them and as long as your stock media website of choice exists. They can be purchased unlimited times. If you hit a niche, or stumble upon the holy grail of audio samples, who knows how many repeat sales you can bring in.

The only limitation is your ability, creativity and effort. I have a collection of approximately 800 audio sound effect files spread across various stock media sites. These can pull in as much as $200 on a good month, all with zero effort other than the initial ripping, editing, uploading and tagging.

Some of the bigger names in the stock media market have 10,000 + sounds listed. I'd be extremely interested in seeing how they're doing financially! These are the sorts of numbers I'm aiming for.

I hope this guide was useful. Feel free to comment and request assistance & further info if required.
 
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Wow. Just Wow.
This method is simple, unique and well blackhat:).
Never heard of something like this.
Do you change sound a bit? Are there any chanse that you'll be sued for this?
By the way, great share.
 
Hey Tealover,

Thanks for the comment!

I wasn't sure if this was a "known" method, but I discovered it completely accidentally last year whilst searching for sound effects for one of my own game development projects. Whilst looking for the sound of a "hawk cry", I stumbled upon a file on a stock media site which sounded familiar... Sure enough, it was the exact same hawk cry sound from a youtube video which had around a million views at the time, the lightbulb came on instantly when I realised what the seller was up to! :scratchch

Additionally, this was one of the sellers I mentioned in the guide, who has thousands of files listed.

I'm not sure of the exact legalities, but to be on the safe side, I've recommended sourcing out more obscure videos with lower view counts, so that the sound effect is difficult, if not impossible, to trace back to its source :o

I sometimes add echo, reverb or slight pitch changes (you get an ear for what sounds good the more time you spend playing with sounds), but generally, I'll just clean the sounds up, split them into seperate files and upload!
 
Saved before it gets moved to the VIP section:)

This is an amazing method and I never read about anything similar.

Thanks so much for taking the time to share it with us.
 
Thanks very much, HaiiroNeko, my pleasure :beerchug:

I'd be glad to expand on the guide with more info & details, including where I outsource work to, sites I use, stats etc. but not being able to add links and images is a bit of a hassle!
 
Thank you very much, sounds like a great method, a lot of time and dedication needed then its a sure fire method! I just recently started money making methods last week but I have an idea straight away for a niche with this, hopefully it turns to gold!
 
This is fantastic. Very unique and definately a new one for me and for many of us too, I assume. Thanks so much for sharing!
 
Thank you very much, sounds like a great method, a lot of time and dedication needed then its a sure fire method! I just recently started money making methods last week but I have an idea straight away for a niche with this, hopefully it turns to gold!

You're welcome, Sparky :top:

Hope you do well! You nailed it, "sure fire" indeed. It's one of a handful of methods I personally use which is straight-forward and reliable, a perfect example of the old adage "getting out of it what you put in".

As I mentioned in the guide, on a good month, I'll bring in around $200, which isn't bad pocket change off of time and effort that I put in 6 months ago. Now, it takes 10 minutes to log into the sites I use and click the 'cashout' button.

I recently began adding more sounds to my portfolio, which was what prompted me to share the method. I'm aiming to add 10 files a day, or 300 / month - that's a lot of extra potential sales!
 
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Bookmarked! Thank you I will study this and work on it very soon!
 
i was working in this area sometime ago.
Please note that this type of sites are already FULL with thousands of this type of material and most of them are professional recorded sound effects.
So if you believe that you can sell your re-recorded sounds of a youtube video, you have to think again...
Of course here, as in every area of IM you can apply your methods in order to drive traffic to your material but i don't think that you can earn much and certainly this is not passive income.
If you have good methods to drive traffic, maybe you have to search for other offers to promote.

In our case, we use to promote royalty free music, professionally recorded and with decent artistic quality. Unfortunately we sell very little since the offer was enormous and the buyers not too many...
Every time we try some traffic generation method, we sell, but otherwise it was almost impossible to sell in this type of websites (the only way to sell more is to add new material every day, in order to get some exposure on the "new" section - but this is not passive income... need hours of hard work).

Finally we decide to build a website and sell our music directly to customers. We sell almost the same as before and we earn more money (but in any case, not much and of course this is not a passive income, we have to promote if we want to sell)

In any case i wish good luck for anyone who like to try.
 
i was working in this area sometime ago.
Please note that this type of sites are already FULL with thousands of this type of material and most of them are professional recorded sound effects.
So if you believe that you can sell your re-recorded sounds of a youtube video, you have to think again...
Of course here, as in every area of IM you can apply your methods in order to drive traffic to your material but i don't think that you can earn much and certainly this is not passive income.
If you have good methods to drive traffic, maybe you have to search for other offers to promote.

I agree that there are already thousands of high quality audio files that are not stolen and made by professionals; There are also legal issues involved since this is ripping audio from sources without permission. Although, it doesn't require any money to invest in and if someone were dedicated long enough they certainly could earn a passive income from doing this I'm sure.
 
This is actually a really brilliant and well, free, idea.

Certainly does revolve around the "more you put in the more you will get out" line, which is true to most cases but for someone with no budget to start with and has nothing but time on their hands I don't see why this won't work.

Good luck everyone.
 
i was working in this area sometime ago.
Please note that this type of sites are already FULL with thousands of this type of material and most of them are professional recorded sound effects.
So if you believe that you can sell your re-recorded sounds of a youtube video, you have to think again...
Of course here, as in every area of IM you can apply your methods in order to drive traffic to your material but i don't think that you can earn much and certainly this is not passive income.
If you have good methods to drive traffic, maybe you have to search for other offers to promote.

In our case, we use to promote royalty free music, professionally recorded and with decent artistic quality. Unfortunately we sell very little since the offer was enormous and the buyers not too many...
Every time we try some traffic generation method, we sell, but otherwise it was almost impossible to sell in this type of websites (the only way to sell more is to add new material every day, in order to get some exposure on the "new" section - but this is not passive income... need hours of hard work).

Finally we decide to build a website and sell our music directly to customers. We sell almost the same as before and we earn more money (but in any case, not much and of course this is not a passive income, we have to promote if we want to sell)

In any case i wish good luck for anyone who like to try.

I agree that there are already thousands of high quality audio files that are not stolen and made by professionals; There are also legal issues involved since this is ripping audio from sources without permission. Although, it doesn't require any money to invest in and if someone were dedicated long enough they certainly could earn a passive income from doing this I'm sure.

Good points and thanks for the input & info, folks!

Again, I would emphasise targeting the more obscure videos with low view counts for the most "security" when utilising this method. Approximately 100 hours of video content is uploaded to youtube every minute. That's a lot of content to explore and harvest. If you were to rip the sound of birdsong from a Youtube video uploaded last year with less than 1,000 views, I'd be willing to bet it'd be near impossible that your content would ever be discovered as being 'ripped'.

True enough, the stock media market is growing, but I believe there's still plenty of room for contributors. It's hard for the market to become saturated due to the ever growing multimedia industry - stock content will always be in demand! If you price competitively / realistically, and ensure your content is of a high standard, you'll pull in sales.

As an aside, I've never advertised my content for myself, I rely solely on the stock media sites and user searches to generate sales. I've made $14.50 today off of the back of time and effort invested months ago!

This is actually a really brilliant and well, free, idea.

Certainly does revolve around the "more you put in the more you will get out" line, which is true to most cases but for someone with no budget to start with and has nothing but time on their hands I don't see why this won't work.

Good luck everyone.

Thanks, Red :top:
 
A really unique guide.Thanks so much.Im documenting ten methods that require little or no money and this just shot up to the top of my list.
Im gonna start a journey thread when te list is done.
Again thanks for the info.
 
Interesting concept and idea. Has anybody actually made any real money from this yet? competitive is pretty stiff in this area..
 
Seems like a unique method and you explained it well OP. Regarding the competition, I think focusing on volume will help out a lot, if you have thousands of files priced lower than your competitors it will be much easier to sell. Especially since the more files you have, the more easily people will recognize you around the marketplace.

Just have one question OP.. You said you would list the 4 files at $3 each. How would stats be affected if you priced the files at $0.99 each as opposed to $3? It seems like you'd get more sales obviously, but I'm thinking people might decide not to buy the files because they would instantly think they are low quality.
 
Awesome share, like stated this will prob be moved so I def saved it. My friend has done this with great success, except he does it legit by recording his own sounds and also green screen vids ect.

So there is def a market for this, great share.
 
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