The Smart Passive Income Guide (2015)
Chapter 3: Passive Income: The Easy Way to Make Money?
As explained a little bit above, a passive income is not always what it seems. Many of the people who fail with doing this kind of income will do so because the work is completely different from what they expected. To start, they may have thought there was hardly any work and been amazed that others did not jump at the opportunity to make a lot of money without a lot of effort. This chapter is going to look at some more of the realities about making a passive income. First it will address some challenges that come with a passive income and then there will be a nice uplifting part about how you can actually make a profit or succeed with a passive income if you put in the time and effort that is needed.
The Emotion Requirements For Making Passive Income
Making a passive income is not something that is always the easiest. You should know that by now. This section will spend some time explaining some of the more difficult aspects of earning a passive income.
Hard Work
First, making a passive income is a lot of work. This cannot be reiterated enough. In reality, it can be quite a bit more than the work you are putting in at your current job. There is no room to have many days off. There is no room for you to have a lazy day where you do the bare minimum. You won’t have the option of pushing the blame off onto someone else or asking another coworker if they can help you out if the work is not getting done. Sure, you can have days when you slack off and don’t get as much done as you should, but all this will do is harm you in terms of the amount of money you are able to earn. You can slack off as much as you want, but doing this too much will mean you might have to go back and beg for your old job in order to earn any money!
Instead of being as easy as many people believe it is, a passive income is going to take a lot of work and dedication on your part. But if you can put in this effort, you are sure to see the results in the form of a good income.
Time
When you are going into the field of passive income, you need to be prepared for the amount of time you will be spending at work. Many newbies to this income source think they just have to put in a little bit of hard work in the beginning and then they can sit back and relax. This is something you can do, but it is going to backfire. Soon the competition will have gotten the better of you and you will have lost your source of income.
Let’s look at a few examples. First, we will look at rental properties. You have to put in the work in order to find the buildings, buy them, get them fixed up so they look nice and are ready for people to live in, and then you need to advertise and make sure you can fill them up. But the work is not done there. You will have to keep working to make sure the buildings are maintained, that you can answer tenants’ complaints, collect the rent, fill up buildings when someone moves out, and even purchase more properties if you would like to make more. The process is never ending and if you just stop after the tenants have moved in, you will soon find that the income source is gone.
Here is another example. Say you have decided to go with Kindle publishing in order to make the passive income you want. You may have found a niche that no one else has gone into and written an amazing book. The work is not done yet. You have to market the book, make sure others know about it, and even write another book to keep the momentum going. You have to do all of this because soon others are going to come out and write even better books on the same topic and the market will be saturated in no time; then there will be no more money for you to make.
Both of these examples show it is possible to make a passive income, but the work is not going to be easy. You have to work hard and keep working in order to keep the income coming in.
Think Outside the Box
Finally, if you want to make some money when you are working with passive income, you need to be able to think outside the box. If you are doing something that everyone else is doing, you will never make any money in the business; it is likely that the market is all filled up and there is no more money to be made. You need to come up with a good idea that you will be able to make some money on, and you need to be able to think outside the box to do it.
One reason a lot of people fail at making a passive income is that they are not able to think outside the box. They are not sure how to come up with a good idea to keep things going with the income or they just go after an idea that has been around for a long time, unable to make any money. Figure out something that is new and exciting and you will be amazed at how much you are able to make through passive income.
Passive Income: Benefits of Having Passive Income Streams
By this point, you are probably wondering if there is anything good you will be able to get out of a passive income. You may see that there are a lot of pitfalls or maybe you think the work is too hard. You might have actually been scared away by this point! If you are that scared so quickly, then passive income is not the right choice for you. On the other hand, if this is still something that interests and excites you, here is the part you have been waiting for. Here are some of the benefits you can receive when you make a passive income.
Potential
There is a lot of potential for making money when you go into passive incomes, as long as you are smart about it. Just handing over your money to someone who promises you a big fortune or blindly following a bad idea is not going to make you the money you are looking for, but some hard work is sure to help you reach the point that you want.
There are a lot of people who have been able to make a good income from working with passive income streams. They are the ones who were able to think outside the box and come up with an idea that made them rich. The great thing is that once you start to make a good income from this source, it is easy to roll it into some more income-making options. For example, once you get established with some apartment buildings, you can roll the money into purchasing and filling up more or you can use that money to try out a new way to make an income.
Be Your Own Boss
Many people are tired of going into work each day and making money for someone else. They feel like they are underappreciated and someone else is getting rich off the work they are doing, while they themselves can barely make ends meet. Many of the people who fit into this category are the ones who find the idea of a passive income to be the most appealing. They like the idea of being their own boss, taking control of their lives, and having the ability to make as much money as they want.
There are many benefits to being your own boss. You no longer need to answer to someone else or put up with a bad boss like you used to in order to get a paycheck. There is no longer the need to meet their deadlines, take the heat when they do something wrong, or deal with a horrible person who never should have been promoted. When you gain control of your job, it is much easier to have freedom and do the things you want.
Those who are going to be successful with passive income are going to find that being their own boss is a huge perk. They like being in charge and they do not need the guidance of someone else to get things done. If you are scared of taking charge and doing your own thing, this income source is not the right one for you. On the other hand, if you crave excitement and freedom, you should check out the options available for you.
Flexible Hours
When you are working on a passive income, you might find that some of the hours are more flexible. This of course does not mean that you can just pick to work an hour on one day and then take the rest of the week off, but it does provide you with a little more wiggle room than what you will find with some of the other sources of income.
The hours of a passive income are unique. In the beginning, you will find that you are working a lot more than you probably did at your original job in order to keep up and get everything done. Even with these intense hours, including a lot of hours that can go late into the night, you can still manage to find time to move things around and be somewhere else. For example, if your child has an appointment in the middle of the day, you might find that, while earning a passive income, it is easier to stop and go to the appointment and pick up the work later if needed. Often your regular job will not have that kind of flexibility, causing you to miss out or have scheduling conflicts.
As you get your passive income source going, you will find that the flexibility is even more present, especially if you have done your job right. You will still have to put in the hard work, but you will be able to change around the hours in order to spend time with your family or get other things done. You will not be able to walk away from the job for long periods of time, but it will be possible to have a life outside of work.
Time With FamilyAnd Friends
Everyone wishes they could spend more time with their families. They do not like missing out on important conversations, fun events and milestones, or even just the day-to-day things that occur in their family. But this is a reality that a lot of people have to face when they are working a regular job. The work might come home with them and get in the way rather than them just doing the work and then getting to go home when they are done. For a lot of people, work takes up a large part of their lives and this can really cut into their family life.
When you are working with a passive income stream, you will have more of the time you need and want in order to hang out with your family and the others you love. Your life will no longer just be about your job, even though you will need to spend a lot of time working hard to see it succeed. You will have more time to think about other things now, and that includes spending more time with your family.
With passive income, you are the one in charge of your own destiny. You get to decide how hard you want to work and when it is time to take a few days off and see your family. The more successful you are with the endeavor and the better you plan it out, the more likely it is that you can start to choose your own hours and make them work for your family’s needs. If you are tired of doing work for someone else and never getting to see your family, a passive income is a good option for you to consider.
Choice of Career
Sometimes the thing that you want to do for the rest of your life is not as cut and dry as going to work for a company. There are a lot of career choices, but there are even more when you look into a passive income. It is difficult to be a writer in a regular 9-5 job, but with a passive income, there are a lot of opportunity to write self-help books or other genres for eBooks and such. You could own your apartment buildings and make money that way. You could purchase land and turn around and sell it. With a passive income, it is much more likely that you are actually doing something you really love rather than relying on some other company to notice you and give you a paycheck each month.
Opportunities
And finally, there are a lot more opportunities when it comes to making a passive income. The real world does not have all of the chances you may have been told about when you were growing up. Sometimes having a college education is just not going to be enough in order to get the things that you would like out of your career. When you take a different approach and try out a passive income, you may be surprised by all of the opportunity that comes your way. You can actually find something that goes along with your skills, and if you do the right research and work hard, you might find that your income becomes substantial, which will make the work itself even better!
As you can see, there are a lot of benefits from making a passive income. Understanding both the good and the bad and figuring out what they all mean for you can help you to make the best decision before jumping in. Use the good aspects of a passive income as a motivation to put in the hard work needed to avoid the problems that can arise with this source of income.