Sep 14, 2020

How to Rent Out Your Computer's Bandwidth for Passive Income

Yes, it's possible to rent out your excess bandwidth and generate a steady stream of passive income. There are many services which pay you money for your internet capacity. It makes sense to extend this resource and earn money on it. This post will show you how with Honeygain and other platforms.

Your internet connection is a resource that you use daily. Having a persistent high-speed connection is not a matter of luxury but a necessity. Given the services we use (gaming, binge-watching seasons on Netflix, Amazon Prime), many households carry higher bandwidth internet connections. The connection comes at a cost. On average, $65 is spent by a household every month on broadband services.

Now when you have dedicated bandwidth for your home internet, an important aspect to note is that you continue to pay for it, whether you use it or not. When you take a vacation and your bandwidth is idle, you're still going to receive a bill. How about the 7 to 8 hours you are asleep every day? Same. However, these pockets of unused bandwidth can be sold at a price. Companies help you sell this unused bandwidth and, in exchange, pay you monthly for allowing usage.

What happens to the rented bandwidth?

Companies that pay for your bandwidth do the following with your rented bandwidth capacity.

VPN Services - This is the most widespread use; companies use proxy services and employ your connection to give proxy usage to others under IP ban or restrictions. Businesses and clients who require to test their applications or advertisements without facing any IP ban or detection are the most common users.
Content Delivery Network - Content Delivery Network or CDNs provide the ability to have your data available in many geographies, thus having high availability of your content and low latency access. Your bandwidth might be used to allow access to such CDNs on behalf of customers.

Where can you install the software?

Laptops, Desktops - Many companies allow you to install the software on multiple devices. Most services capture usage by tagging the IP address. Multiple Operating systems/platforms are supported, including Ubuntu, Debian, Dockers, and even Raspberry pi.
Mobile Devices - Some providers like Honeygain allow installation on Android Mobile devices as well.

How do you get paid?

Paypal - Paypal is the most common method to get paid. Each company has its usage; for example, they may pay your $.10 per GB, and you can keep accumulating based on allowed use.
Cryptocurrency - Some companies choose to pay you via crypto. Mysterium Network, for example, pays in their own Crypto- MYST.

Honeygain

One of the most popular applications in this space is Honeygain. Honeygain is one of the few providers who support an Android version for your smartphone. The overall package is very light, just 8 MB to download and get started with Honeygain. No pesky advertisements during the program's run time. Honeygain pays $.10 per GB. The average payout is listed at $26.5 per month, and you can increase your chances of payout by utilizing more devices and keeping them more available.

Honeygain is also gentle on your device. It's programmed never to use more than 10% of your bandwidth so you will never feel the toll on your network. Honeygain is also reasonably secure; it ensures no data is stored. It also boasts of vibrant customer support. Though some customers have posted sketchy reviews, Honeygain scores very well on Trustpilot reviews.

Other platforms that you can also consider are Fluidstack and Mysterium Network. In a future post, we will go into greater detail on how you can rent out your GPU as well using Fluidstack.