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INTRODUCTION
Trading your time for money is likely the worst possible way to earn an income. While you can earn a living doing this, you will be very unlikely to earn enough to become rich. The power of passive income is the ability to put money into your bank account while you are asleep. In order to start with passive income you have to know first what it is. Granted that most people believe that passive income is easy to do and that it can be achieved fast. This my dear reader can’t be further from the truth. Think of passive income as a means to delay getting paid for the work you put into it.
Passive income can take many forms. You can invest in the stocks using online trading platforms such as E-Trade.com or Robinhood.com or many others. In the past few months these and many other trading platforms started to offer free trading, which will save you a few bucks to a few hundred bucks depending on your trading frequency.
You can also earn money online creating a blog and displaying ads or you can create income using affiliate marketing such as Amazon.com, ClickBank.com, or any other such site. These are only a few examples of what’s possible in today’s online-centric economy.
If you want to become rich you will have to think and act like a rich person. The rich all know that you should avoid buying liabilities and instead focus on acquiring assets. The more assets you have the wealthier you truly become. Every rich person has multiple streams of income which were acquired over many years.
The average number of income streams for millionaires is 7 and rich people in most cases have many many more.
Think of making money online as a way to create additional assets which you can create or buy. As with every asset you will have to do the up-front investment first. This can be in the form of money, if for example you buy an existing website, or in the form of time and effort. While you will likely start investing more time than money, you should remember that the wealthier you become, the more expensive your time and effort will become.
When you start with passive income, it may be reasonable to spend months on building a web site and a social media following. If you have millions in your bank account, you may want to outsource some or all of this required effort.
To achieve success in your pursuit to make money online you will have to focus on one asset at a time. Once things are rolling you can outsource tasks to e.g. a virtual assistants. A good place to find virtual assistants is on Fiverr.com. Your can find help with almost anything on Fiverr.com. From building a web page creating artwork, voice-over or social marketing to the management of your affiliate accounts.
A word of caution is in order here, as you could end up hiring people who will do questionable things in your name. For example I once hired someone who did black-hat SEO for my sites, which ultimately got me in trouble with Google’s search algorithm and was counterproductive.
Always do your research up-front. Read the reviews and ask the right questions to anyone before you are going to hire them, especially if the service required them to gain access to some of your online accounts.
How to assemble an Army of assets
This simply boils down to three basic points.
Step 1 : find an area you want to add to your assets
Step 2 : take action over and over again
Step 3 : rinse and repeat
In all honesty though, this can be boiled down to only one point Take action. Having knowledge is worth nothing if you don’t take action. How many people do you know who have dreams and goals but never act on them ? They are your next door neighbor, your co-worker or even your spouse. The only way to leave the path of mediocrity is to get off your behind and take action.
When ? Now !
Setting goals
Setting goals is a well discussed topic online. The basic idea is to create a vision for your future as detailed as you deem fit. Likewise, if you want to start with passive income you have to set your goals accordingly. The important difference between a goal and a dream is that goals have a timeline associated with them.
For example :
“I will have a net worth of 1 million dollar in 5 years”
“I will stay healthy and exercise at a minimum 3 times a week”
“I will go on at least 2 vacations a year”
These are all goals with specific dates. Once established, you can then work backwards and figure out strategies to achieved these goals. Now remember you have to come up with a set of strategies which you can also time box otherwise you will have to break them down into smaller actionable items.
Strategize
In the example above, possible strategies could be
- Attain a pay-raise and invest the raised amount automatically into the stock market.
- Create a play store business with at least 20 apps
- Create two blogs to earn passive income
- Create a YouTube channel about topic X
- Invest into REITs ( e.g. Through Fundrise.com or Groundfloor.com )
- Create an ebook about topic Y
- Build a following of 10k people on social platform Z
Keeping this list down to an attainable number, you should now go through and see if there are synergies you can leverage. For example, if you have 10k follower on YouTube, you could then start a blog about the same or a similar topic and link those two up to increase your reach and impact. In that case you want to first focus on building a YouTube channel, then acquired 10k subscribers, and finally focus on building your blog.
If you are working for the man then point #1 should always be on your list. Listen, you are already at work for at least 8 hours, try to make the best out of it. Think in terms of what you would do if you were the CEO of that company. However never forget that you have goals to achieve outside work. So make certain that you don’t spend 16 hours per day working for someone else, leaving you with only 8 hours to eat sleep, and follow your personal goals.
A job should be seen as such, a place to get you by and pay the bills so you can achieve your goals.
I want to stress it again though to make sure you understand that while you are working 8 or 9 hours in your job, you have to be working with a sense of urgency. I have seen to many people chabbering at the water-cooler, going out to have a two hour lunch break and then expecting a pay raise at the end of the year for their ‘hard work’. No no no no no, that’s not how things are working in real life. Don’t follow those losing strategies.
Also stay away from toxic personalities, those who always complain, stabbing others in the back or trying to play politics. They will suck you into a black hole of resentment and ugliness. Your thoughts should be clear and crisp your mind should be focused and driven to achieve the best results while at work. You will realize that you get more work done than 90% of your co-workers.
Break it all down
Now go and break down the other strategies you decided on into smaller pieces. For example
#2) Buy or find source code for 6 apps per year and publish them to the play store / App store
- Learn Android programming
- Look into Flippa.com, codester.com or GitHub.com
- Improve the apps, change the look and feel, and add value to each app to make it stand out
- Handle translation and App Store optimization ( ASO )
You can now go and break those down to smaller, actionable goals, like
- Create first app by January 1st 2020
- Find source code by October 25 2019
- Learn Android programming by November 1st 2019
- Add improvements to app and release as beta to the play store by November 30
- Create store description in 5 languages ( using Fiverr ) by Dec 15 2019
- Do ASO and start marketing to social media by Dec 31st
- Release app to the general public by January 1st 2020
If you go through all of your strategies and divide them into daily or weekly goals you will quickly realized that your time is your most valuable asset of all. So respect first and foremost your time.
Don’t get discouraged by the sheer amount of work in front of you if you truly want to start with passive income. Go through your goals again and see how you can best plan them into your available time.
The important thing here is consistency, consistency, and consistency. Working every day 2 or 3 hours on your personal goals will give you almost ½ as much time as you spend on your full time job. For example 2.5 hours Monday to Friday = 12.5 hours on the weekend you can likely add another hour per day, which brings your time to about 20 hours each week. That is a lot of time over one year which you are using to build your own assets. This is time most people are unable or unwilling to spend.
As Earl Nightingale once said : “A successful person is he who spends his time achieving a worthy goal”.
Attitude is an asset
Making money online generally depends on three key attributes you must possess or learn to obtain
- You have to have a “can do” attitude
- You have to be persistent and don’t give up easily.
- Adapt quickly to a changing environment.
Embrace the failures, because every single one will bring you a step closer to success. However also write down what you have learned from them.
If you made a bad bet in the stock market, then write down why you bought the stock and what your expectations were at the time. Then write down why you believe it did not work out as expected.
Now before any new investment, skim over the list and ask yourself if any of the points could apply to your current pick as well and if there is a way to mitigate the risk, like adding a stop-gap order.
What I changed when I started
I used to be a night owl, burning the midnight oil after work to advance my personal goals. However I noticed that I would get tired and my thoughts were not as focused late at night, after a full day of work and taking care of my family.
So I started to get up at 5:00am and have not looked back ever since. Sure I will need to get to bed by 10:00pm to get a good 7 hours of rest but when I get up I am refreshed and have a productive 2 hours before the kids get up and before I have to get ready for work.
Dealing with failure
I started to set weekly and daily goals which keep me focused on the important tasks at hand. I have learned that you will not be able to achieve every one of those goals because life happens but you can adjust as you go along.
Let’s face it, we all struggle to achieve our goals. Sometimes you will not be able to achieve them even if you give it your best. You can’t let this discouraged you. If you fail and you stop trying, you have become a failure. However if you fail and you keep trying it will be impossible for you to lose.
Those who never failed have never tried. Those who never try will never win.
Embrace every failure as a learning opportunity and as another stepping stone to your ultimate success. The law of averages is going to work in your favor. For example if you start an affiliate web page and you fail the first time around, keep on trying. Adjust your approach and learn from your mistakes. You may fail again and again but if you keep on trying a hundred times it will be almost guaranteed that you succeed.
Finally since you have reached the end of this blog post I can now tell you what I wanted to tell you at the very beginning of it.
Start with passive income now. Stop reading, browsing the internet or watching Youtube videos. Start to plan out your future, set your goals, strategies, take action and keep at them. There is no other time you can ever be. The past is in the past and the future is yet to be written. If you start now your future will be a bright one.
I will see you on the rich side.