I started a phone farm back in college, which was essentially a bunch of old burner phones that sat on my desk and earned money every day by watching videos/advertisements:

I’ve been slowly winding down my farming operations due to time constraints, although that whole experiment was a fun way to make $500+ in free gift cards.

However, I recently stumbled across another peculiar money making option that anyone can start in a matter of minutes.

That idea is selling internet bandwidth for cash.

Let’s see what this money making idea is all about!

Whats Is Bandwidth & Why Is It Sold?

According to TechTerms.com, internet bandwidth “describes the maximum data transfer rate of a network or Internet connection. It measures how much data can be sent over a specific connection in a given amount of time. For example, a gigabit Ethernet connection has a bandwidth of 1,000 Mbps, (125 megabytes per second).”

As it turns out, most online activities barely come close to maxing out your bandwidth for most residential internet plans.

Unless you’re downloading some hefty files or running many intensive applications at once, you probably have a lot of unused bandwidth at any given time…and this isn’t even considering the hours you spend asleep or out of the house.

So, a handful of companies have made it possible to sell your unused bandwidth to them (since you have a lot of it) in exchange for cash or cryptocurrency.

These companies then rent out your bandwidth and allow other users or companies to use it (through your IP address).

These companies often operate as or sell their services to VPNs, which allow users to access the internet through a different IP address/country than where they reside.

Some of these companies also use unused bandwidth as a type of CDN, which is basically a distributed network of servers that delivers content to users from an optimal geographic location, but VPNs are definitely the main player on the buy side.

The main thing to note here is with these services you are selling your internet usage to other people for their browsing behaviors.

IPRoyal Pawns

IPRoyal Pawns is a PC app that helps people make passive income online by sharing their internet connection. The network is used by businesses for market research, intelligence, app testing, content delivery, etc. Here's more info about that.

In short, they pay you to run the app and share your internet. All traffic is encrypted, there's no bundled software or ads, and the app doesn't have access to your personal data. They're open for people worldwide, and they pay in USD via PayPal or Payoneer. No crypto stuff or anything like that. Also, they offer an affiliate program where you earn 10% from everyone that joins through your link.

Honeygain

Honeygain is one of the newer players in this industry, and the app has gotten a lot of love and hate in various Reddit communities.

With a global user base and the ability to be run on windows and android devices, Honeygain seems pretty appealing at first glance. After all, most software that allows you to sell bandwidth does not work on mobile devices.

However, Honeygain does have a $20 cashout threshold via PayPal, and they only pay $1USD/10GB of bandwidth used.

From what I’ve seen on Reddit, the buy side can be pretty limited, so earning performance is rather volatile. It seems like some users are cashing out $40+ a month while others can barely make a dollar.

Honeygain does allow for multiple devices on the same IP, so if you have some old burner phones it could be worth trying out!

PacketStream

PacketStream is a peer-to-peer network where people can use other people’s IP addresses (for a price).

PacketStream allows users to become nodes in their network from anywhere in the world, provided you have a residential IP address.

If you sell your internet bandwidth through PacketStream, you earn $0.10/GB as the software runs in the background of your computer.

PacketStream chargers their buyers $1.00/GB, and part of the problem is that free platforms like TOR essentially allow users to browse the web anonymously as well. From what I gather, this means PacketStream is a bit weak on the buy side currently, so your earnings will probably be slow and steady.

FluidStack 

FluidStack is one of the newer players in the bandwidth buying industry, and they operate as a CDN to distribute content to users from nearby networks to increase page load times and overall user experience.

Once you signup and install FluidStack’s software, they will detect when your computer is idle and use your bandwidth/CPU to serve content.

The fact that FluidStack uses your CPU instead of GPU helps limit power consumption, and the whole idea of their platform is to only use your computer when it’s idle and to limit how much power you end up using.

LoadTeam

LoadTeam is yet another option to make money with bandwidth, and their app allows for multiple computers to run under the same account, which is kinda neat.

You can use the LoadTeam calculator to estimate how much you could earn on a monthly basis.

Your account balance will update periodically as your computer completes tasks, and you can tweak how hard your computer works in the background on this application.

I actually have 0 idea what these ‘tasks’ are, and I’m admittedly sketched out, but this whole post is one weird rabbit hole anywhere so here we are!

Users can cashout via PayPal upon reaching $1 with LoadTeam.

A Quick Disclaimer – The Risks & Final Thoughts

I’m going to conclude this whole article with an important statement: this is kinda sketchy.

Now, I’ve engaged in plenty of…uhm…less than kosher online money making endeavors while I was a student to make some beermoney, and from running my phone farm to dabbling in the sale of online textbooks, I’ve definitely gotten a taste of these sorts of things.

However, selling Bandwidth is not something you should do without thought.

Depending on where you live and what ISP you use, you might have more stringent laws surrounding what your IP address is used for.

Companies like FluidStack have stated that they don’t access your data or files and that they even block users from going to malicious/harmful websites, but this is still a risk you have to factor in.

By using these services you are opting in to be part of a network and you have 0 control about how people use it.

Personally, this would be the sort of passive income stream I would 100% use when I was back in college and living in a building with hundreds of people on the same network, but I don’t think I’ll run it on my home network.

You won’t get rich by selling your internet bandwidth, but if you are comfortable with the process and you do your due diligence, you can probably earn a few hundred bucks a year if you have fast upload speed.

A new passive income idea, or a recipe for disaster? Who even knows!