How do you generate income?

[ahimel]

I recently quit my job, and have been trying to generate multiple streams of income. Mostly I've been failing. Things that I can see that make money I can't do, and things I can do I can't figure out how to make money from them. Steve says I have things of value that I can provide to people -- everyone does -- and I can see how that might be true. I'm pretty good at organizing things into a logical arrangement, and setting up systems. I have excellent (although not super-scary) excel skills. I'm good at looking at things from new perspectives, and coming up with ideas. But I can't see how to make money off of any of that.

So I'm curious to know how other people generate passive income. We all know that Steve has a high-traffic blog that generates ad revenue and referral fees. He also has affiliate programs, does some public speaking, and his wife runs a magazine. I don't know that any of those would apply to my situation.

But now the forums are up, and I can ask LOTS of people how they generate income. Maybe some of those methods will work for me.

So where does your money come from? Do you exchange it for your time, or have you figured out a way to provide value without being personally present? What ideas do you have for generating income that you haven't tried?

[Milo Riano]

I have a day job and work as a technical lead. At night I am a professional blogger and earning good enough from it. It only takes and hour or two at night and pays well. You might want to check out B5 on it.

[sjpeer]

Since you're in a transitionary time right now, it might be a good chance to get a job doing something you REALLY want to do, even if it means taking a pay cut if you can afford it.

Other than that, I would recommend making a list of business ideas. Add 3 a day for a week or two. You'll be amazed at the ideas you'll get when you start consistently dedicating your thoughts to it consistently. I have a huge list of ideas that I keep. Currently I'm working on just one of them as time permits. One is all you need.

Once you've chosen an idea, take consistent action towards it and course correct as needed. The worst thing you can do is to stand still. Standing still makes it almost impossible to gain additional clarity or bring new opportunities into your life.

Good luck! Keep us updated.

[Razo]

Originally Posted by sjpeer

I would recommend making a list of business ideas. Add 3 a day for a week or two. You'll be amazed at the ideas you'll get when you start consistently dedicating your thoughts to it consistently.

Wow, so simple yet so effective, great suggestion! I'm still in high school but when i leave i'd definately like to consider some income through drawing/blogging, this helps a lot, thanks!

[thadroe]

So I'm curious to know how other people generate passive income. We all know that Steve has a high-traffic blog that generates ad revenue and referral fees. He also has affiliate programs, does some public speaking, and his wife runs a magazine. I don't know that any of those would apply to my situation.

Hi,

I'm kind of in the same boat except that I still have a job right now but I really need to quit. I have done it for the past 11 years and I can't stand it anymore. Generating passive income has been a goal of mine that I've been working on for the last year.

I really didn't start to take action on it until about June of this year. I looked at a lot of different things but I ultimately chose to dig deep into working on affiliate marketing with mostly pay per click ads and article marketing.

It was a struggle at first but now I am profitable and growing my business every day. You can see my signature link if you want to check that out as an option for passive income. Wealthy Affiliate has helped me in ways you can't imagine. It's an outstanding community and a very helpful group.

Ultimately though, there are so many ways to make passive income online that you could do well at. What I'm finding is that it just takes finding something that you like and that you know will work and stick with it.

I see a lot of people who just dabble in one thing or another and just jump from trying one thing to the next without really trying to master a particular method of generating passive income.

Research and pick something that you think you will like doing. Then stick with it for a while and really try to make it work. Then as you go along, you can try to branch out and spin off new ways of generating passive income. Don't spread yourself too thin trying a bunch of different things at once. Get one thing profitable and then go on to the next.

Thad

[Dolazy]

I believe it's an important prerequisite that it feels natural to make an income from automated income streams.

[darkmoon]

A month ago I also quit my job, to become an independent game producer. So currently I'm working hard on my next game, and hope to make some money from it when it's finished!

Besides that, I'm trying to create some passive income streams. Currently, I have a small blog that I'm monetizing with Text Link Ads. And I'm running a website together with my girlfriend, which is monetized with Google Adsense.
Affiliate programs haven't really worked for me (yet).

Both these sources are still small, but they will grow over time. And they buy me a little bit more time to grow in game production, and increase the chances of success!

Oh, and most importantly: I really really enjoy doing all these things! So the fact that I'm living of my savings right now doesn't bother me at all.

[demk]

I'm lucky because I have always had things in my life that I enjoyed doing (Music/art) so it was an easy choice to go into doing that kind of thing.

My advice is to experiemnt and find out what you enjoy. Bare in mind that you won't be good at new things straight away but with practice you will get good. People who get good practice because they enjoy doing it. Following what feels good is a good way forward.

Imho its better to start a business by turning something you already enjoy into a business. In fact a lot of businesses probably flow from that. Try something and offer it as a service for free. If people like it it will motivate you to do more because you will be involved in the reciprocal system that rewards service. Things will grow from there.

Demk

[A.K.Light]

Very good question. What are some passive streams of income that you folks have?

I don't really have any worth mentioning at the moment. I probably make an extra $25 to $50 a month without doing anything special. Play some poker, win some lottery tickets, find money on the ground, sell something that somebody gave me! LOL.

I'm one of those people who just has a full time job. That's basically how I get most of my money. That's going to change within the next year or two.

For a while, I was playing around with websites, domain names, and web hosting. I made plenty of mistakes and wasted plenty of time, but after a few months, I was starting to make small profits. In about a 9 month time period I learned 30 times more than I could have imagined when I started. Then, I quit doing all of that after realizing that I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I didn't believe my websites were helping people or anything, I was just making them for money! I was just doing all of it for money! And I hate boring computer work, so after I gave up on all that stuff, I've been having a lot more fun. At least now I know that if I ever need to make a website for a reason, I will be able to do so with no problem. But I'm not doing it backwards anymore, which was making the websites and then trying to rationalize reasons why I was doing so.

Anyway, good luck to everyone trying to create new streams of income and kudos to everyone who has them already.

edit - Part of the reason my online ventures failed was because I didn't believe my websites had any value, so I was not willing to put in any advertising effort at all.

[Belle]

I'm a freelancer, which pulls in the bulk of my income and is something that I enjoy doing very much. I also make money from affiliate sales and Adsense, as well as from my blogging. I enjoy all of that a lot, too.

My freelancing has lead me to so many opportunities. I've co-authored a book, ghosted another book and also became a professional blogger.

When I first became self-employed, I read a book called The Perfect Business, which helped me a lot. You can get it from Amazon - it's by Michael LeBoeuf. I haven't read it for a while, but I do remember that it was very inspirational, and helped me think of everything that I do as a separate stream of income. I found that if I was open to a whole variety of opportunities instead of restricting myself to any one thing (not, for example, saying, I'm a freelance writer and sticking with just that), lots of things started happening for me.

[annie]

I generate passive income through Real Estate. I played enough CASH FLOW, that it seriously motivated me to start purchasing property. Unfortunately, you have to be very clever or have $$ to purchase real estate for the down payment ...but there are ways of having very very little down.

What I did was keep my lifestyle down for many years...I made good money and saved as much as I could. I used the extra to put as a down payment on Real Estate. I'd buy 2 pieces a year. This would give me abouit $750 a month in passive. In about 5 years time, the passive surpassed the expenses.....

Now that's freedom!

Check out CASH FLOW...the game by Robert Kiosacki

[seoartix]

Aside from my web content writing biz, I've also tried blogging for blog networks as a sideline. I haven't earned from it yet but I'm getting quite giddier on blogging everyday because the network I'm working for is truly supportive of my needs.

It really pays (pun intended, teehee) to work for something you love.

[richie]

making income online ?,well i am searching...................

[dmauder]

I would absolutely LOVE to find something I can do to earn a full time income online. I've tried SO many things in the past including MLM, selling on eBay, AdSense, blogging, affiliate marketing, etc...

I've spent more money on memberships, training materials and tools than I care to admit, and have never really found anything that "gets me up early and keeps me up late" if you know what I mean.

Well, that's not entirely true... I used to sell John Cummuta's "Debt Free & Prosperous Living" basic course, and other related materials. That was pretty cool because I'm very interested in debt reduction, investing, financial planning, etc.

After the original business fell apart, I tried to stay in the financial game with affiliate marketing, but was never able to make it successful. It seems like there are SO many sites out there about debt reduction, and unfortunately people just don't seem to care about it as much as I think they should. It seemed pointless to continue spending so much of my time trying to convince people to get out of debt and actually care about their finances. I gave up.

Anyway... I'm also very interested in health, fitness & nutrition, and have thought many times about starting a blog or something about it. But then I end up with analysis paralysis because there are also SO many sites about that topic, and I can't come up with a unique twist that would target some sort of niche market.

I'm probably hopeless when it comes to making money in my own online business. So, I continue going to work every day along with all the other rats in the race (to where I have no idea). Maybe I've sold out on my dreams.

I just watched the movie "Fight Club" last night, and there was a scene where Tyler Durden holds a convenience store worker up at gunpoint and asks him what he wanted to do when he was a kid. The guy is scared to the point of peeing himself, and finally admits he used to want to be a veterinarian. Tyler presses him as to why he's working in a convenience store and the guy says he never finished his schooling. Long story short, Tyler takes the guys ID and says he's going to check up on the guy in like a month (or something), and if he isn't well on his way to becoming a vet, he's going to die.

I know that's an extreme example, but I think many of us need some sort of life changing event to remind us of our dreams and what is really important in our lives.

When/why did we stop going after what we really want, and just "settle" on a mundane existence??

Gemini4X

[Camilla]

Sounds like you have some wonderfull skills, and I'm absolutely sure they can be turned into a profitable business.

In my business I always find, that it is impossible for me to earn money when thinking "How can I make money?", but when I ask myself the question "How can I help people" ideas start to come. It is my experience, that if you create something of good use to people, they will pay for it.

I think you will gain better results, if you start by finding the way you and your busines can contribute and THEN figure out how that can be twisted into some passive income.

- Camilla

[Henry]

I get a little bit from index funds. A bit more money from from my J-O-B.

Don't forget my $7 from Adsense. Woo woo!

http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/b...te-6-88-a.html

[ahimel]

I started another thread to deal specifically with online income generation. It seems like there's enough of that to make its own topic.

Please don't consider this a closing post. I still want to hear other people's ideas for generating income, on- or offline.

[JiriNovotny]

Originally Posted by Gemini4X

I would absolutely LOVE to find something I can do to earn a full time income online. I've tried SO many things in the past including MLM, selling on eBay, AdSense, blogging, affiliate marketing, etc...

I think that the easier and sure way is to CREATE something, rather than just sell something. If you are the exclusive seller of the stuff you are selling, you have much better chances. You will instantly bring much more value.

Also, if you create a website with content, you bring value, but you are not really selling what you've produced, so that is the hard way - you depend on 3rd party services like AdSense to make money.

For example, I am selling software that I've developed. You can sell your OWN ebooks, courses, etc. Digital products are also much easier to sell than physical products.

Ability to create such products is a skill like any other and you can definitely learn it, your products will be better and better over time.

So maybe you should try it this way. I think that it is much more rewarding... and fun! Just an idea

[MSC2471]

Outside of my job, I generate income through freelance writing (music reviews and interviews for various websites). I plan on developing other avenues of income revenue, just have to sort out what I exactly want to do.

Matt

[yacapo]

I get a pretty good check every now and then from an ebook I wrote. Ebooks are an excellent way to make some extra money. The tough part is trying to come up with a good topic that doesn't have too much competition and that people are willing to pay for.

[mklaebel]

Consider the skills you have from a variety of different perspectives. Your organizational skills, for instance. You could be a professional organizer - of homes, offices, etc. A lot of people would love to pay someone to come into their business (particularly small businesses) or home and get them organized in a way that they can maintain.

You can also use those organizational skills for keeping up with the various things you try and figuring out what is the best fit for you.

What do you enjoy doing? What do you do for fun that seems to make the time pass in the blink of an eye? Is there any way you can see to turn that into something generating income? If so, go for it. Then you can teach others what you learned, which can be another source of income (through a blog or something similar - like Steve has done for us).

Never give up. The right idea/product/business will come along when you least expect it. Just be open to it when it does.

Best of luck to you!

[TSchmitt]

I have made some extra money marketing ebooks online. While it hasn't been enough to allow me to quit my day job I'm always lookings for ways to add new income streams. There are many ways to make money online you just need to focus on one thing at a time until it is passively generating income for you.

[JohnB23]

It may sound a little harsh, but I think one of the reasons why people struggle so much to "make money" is that they ask the wrong questions.

Here's a little experiment to try for the next 30 days.

Everytime you think to yourself "how can I make money", change it to "How can I add value to peoples lives".

-What problem can I solve?

-What pain can I alleviate?

-What can I improve?

-How can I make peoples lives easier, safer, better, more comfortable, less stressful, more convenient?

Think about big, hugely successful companies and what they have done.

-Classified ads to Ebay.

-Boring old coffee shop to Starbucks.

-Slow money orders and checks in the mail to Paypal.

Always think about the end results. For organizational skills, people really want to be more productive, have less stress, have more free time. That might be a big benefit.

I would also agree about mastery vs dabbling. It's very hard to do much dabbling.

[manifestingamillionbucks]

Originally Posted by JohnB23

It may sound a little harsh, but I think one of the reasons why people struggle so much to "make money" is that they ask the wrong questions.

Here's a little experiment to try for the next 30 days.

Everytime you think to yourself "how can I make money", change it to "How can I add value to peoples lives".

-What problem can I solve?

-What pain can I alleviate?

-What can I improve?

-How can I make peoples lives easier, safer, better, more comfortable, less stressful, more convenient?

Think about big, hugely successful companies and what they have done.

-Classified ads to Ebay.

-Boring old coffee shop to Starbucks.

-Slow money orders and checks in the mail to Paypal.

Always think about the end results. For organizational skills, people really want to be more productive, have less stress, have more free time. That might be a big benefit.

I would also agree about mastery vs dabbling. It's very hard to do much dabbling.

This is exactly it. I just realized that a few days ago when I started to use the million dollar intention! I actually started to manifest in an idea, and now I have a blog that helps people make money on the internet from absolutely zero, and how I did it, it's actually in the making so check it out.
Million Dollar Reality

/chris

[bellbird]

In my business I always find, that it is impossible for me to earn money when thinking "How can I make money?", but when I ask myself the question "How can I help people" ideas start to come. It is my experience, that if you create something of good use to people, they will pay for it.

I think you will gain better results, if you start by finding the way you and your busines can contribute and THEN figure out how that can be twisted into some passive income. - Camilla

Thanks heaps Camilla for that, you're absolutely right. Reading that has been very helpful to me to remind me to stay focused!

[Lauxa]

How I have been making income is through freelance work in web design, programming, and video editing. This has not been very much income, under $5K/year.

How I want to make income is by designing and deploying php applications. I'm sure I can figure out a way to monetize them if I can get some traffic.

[Alex Zito]

Originally Posted by annie

I generate passive income through Real Estate. I played enough CASH FLOW, that it seriously motivated me to start purchasing property. Unfortunately, you have to be very clever or have $$ to purchase real estate for the down payment ...but there are ways of having very very little down.

We are buying our next house with zero down, but getting a good APR%

[gc3833]

When I first got involved with online marketing I focused on random Affiliate products and I would recommend them without first trying them out. I have since changed that. Now I test them out before making any type of recommendation.

In addition, I now primarily focus on residual affiliate products.

But the bottom-line is first make sure you focus on quality. That will get people to read your blog post or website then provide them additional value.

[Freelancer]

I have a Network Marketing business (Herbalife) which will become my main stream of income in the next 6-12 months (probably more like 1-3 months).

[investorblogger]

I've had some success over the past few years, but I'm still a few thou' short of $10K in additional revenue. But every week brings me a step closer.

I'm definitely interested in additional streams but once I complete more of the early stages. One idea I'm interested is finding people who are talented enough to take over some of my primary responsibilities at our business. Then I'm going to start exploring rentals to students at some of the local universities as a way to get started in the property market.

Mmm. It's difficult though when i don't speak enough Chinese.

kenneth