A motivational thought regarding earning passive income
Although I have only experienced small trickles of monthly income through IM, I have been making a living primarily through passive income for the last year and a half. I make $1500 per month from renting out my 3 spare bedrooms in my house. My active income is made through playing live music with my band and eBay sales. I guess you could say that I'm an "entrepreneur".
Anyway, I would like to point out something to everyone on here that still has doubts about whether or not they are capable of earning passive income through IM (or any passive income for that matter). If you are an avid reader of blogs and forums relating to IM, it may appear that you have lots of competition, and therefore it is a major challenge to try and figure out a way to separate yourself from the herd.
However, you actually don't have much competition at all. Why?
Because most people do not pursue passive income, nor do they even believe that such a thing is even possible!
Almost everyone has a purely "active income" mindset where they believe that the only way to make money is by directly trading their time. Most people believe that their time is best spent if they are working for an hourly figure or a salary. They feel that doing anything else that does not have an hourly figure or direct amount of monetary gain attached to it is nothing more then "leisure time".
Ever since I quit my engineering job in May 2012, people like to poke fun at me about the fact that "I don't do anything all day". However, I still do have a full-time job...I'm working towards creating passive income systems. I often work for 10 hours straight, and I often stay up until 3 am in the morning in order to hit certain project completion goals. Of course I get to wake up whenever I want, and I'm free to take time off whenever I want as well. However, I'm usually very driven to work as often as possible.
People laugh at what I do and say "when are you going to get a real job?"
The people that say that to me are not happy with what they do for a living, but they do it because it yields a direct monetary gain. They feel that what I do is a waste of time because I make no immediate money for my work.
Some people almost get it, but not fully. They believe that the reason that I spend my time writing eBooks, blog posts, etc. is so I can eventually get hired as a writer. They think that I'm essentially working towards eventually getting some sort of active income opportunity. Obviously that is far from the truth.
For all the rest, they just think I'm completely wasting my time. If I was getting $20/hr to write, then they would consider what I do as time well spent. When I occasionally do side work for my buddy who owns a construction company, people praise me by saying things such as "Ya making money!". If people know that I am doing active income tasks, they respect my time much more. On the other hand, if I tell someone that I'm busy working, and that "work" is doing something that's working towards earning passive income, then they assume that I'm free to do whatever they feel I should be doing. "You have the whole day free. You can do this for me." That is the attitude that people towards me when they may need a favor or want me to be somewhere.
Then you have the generation of people pre-internet. I'm referring to those who were born prior to about 1975. Those people are fully aware of the internet, but most of them only view it as a tool to learn and share information. They do not view it as an opportunity to earn a living. They do not understand the concept I of "digital currency" where you can get paid via clicks of a mouse. They are stuck in the mindset of getting paid through cash and/or checks by providing direct services in the real world (not the virtual online world). This generation is aware that it is possible to be an entrepreneur, but they think that can only be done by opening a real-life store or company, or through investments. This pre 1975 generation views the concept of "earning money online" as some silly scam.
Just look around you and see how many people fit these descriptions. See how many people are deadest on earning income by directly trading their time. Watch how most people don't even seem to understand the concept of passive income. Consider how many people you encounter on a daily basis that would consider spending 3 months on a project with no direct or guaranteed monetary return to be completely silly. Most likely almost everyone that you encounter in the "real world" fits these descriptions.
That's your REAL competition, not the small subset of passive-income minded people.
If everyone else is DEAD SET on trading their time for their money, that means that they are not spending their time doing the things that we are doing. Therefore, we do not have very much competition in life.
"If you do what no one else is willing to do, you will have what no one else has".
If you're willing to spend your "9 to 5" hours working towards creating your own passive income systems, then you will likely find yourself earning passive income one day in the near future. If you're willing to do the tedious work UPFRONT with no immediate payout, then you will often be paid passively after the system is in place.
Everyone else is doing their full-time work attempting to earn money in direct exchange for their time. That's great! That means much less competition for us!
What motivated me to write this post was due to something that a few of my construction worker buddies said to me yesterday. We were talking about going on a snowboarding trip in the near future for three days on a Sunday to Tuesday. I was all about it! They then proceeded to say "Are you sure you can make it? You don't have to clear your schedule?" The implication was that I have all the free time in the world, and what I do for work is somehow less important then what they do.
My reply was, "Nah I work whenever I want. It's awesome!" My implication was to poke at them letting them know how awesome my life of freedom is.
They then said "well I don't know what you consider to be work, but..." Implying that what I do isn't actually "work".
I began to get a bit annoyed because I never talk about what I do for a living, yet people always attempt to try and make me feel like I'm somehow living my life wrong...
Anyway, I then said "Once I'm making $3000 per month without having to actually do anything, you won't be laughing."
Of course this resulted in more laughs and eye rolls. I just smiled as well because my doubters just make me want to succeed that much more. If not for the complete and utter freedom of earning a living through passive income, at the very least I get to say "I told you so."
Our competition is scarce.
Anyway, I would like to point out something to everyone on here that still has doubts about whether or not they are capable of earning passive income through IM (or any passive income for that matter). If you are an avid reader of blogs and forums relating to IM, it may appear that you have lots of competition, and therefore it is a major challenge to try and figure out a way to separate yourself from the herd.
However, you actually don't have much competition at all. Why?
Because most people do not pursue passive income, nor do they even believe that such a thing is even possible!
Almost everyone has a purely "active income" mindset where they believe that the only way to make money is by directly trading their time. Most people believe that their time is best spent if they are working for an hourly figure or a salary. They feel that doing anything else that does not have an hourly figure or direct amount of monetary gain attached to it is nothing more then "leisure time".
Ever since I quit my engineering job in May 2012, people like to poke fun at me about the fact that "I don't do anything all day". However, I still do have a full-time job...I'm working towards creating passive income systems. I often work for 10 hours straight, and I often stay up until 3 am in the morning in order to hit certain project completion goals. Of course I get to wake up whenever I want, and I'm free to take time off whenever I want as well. However, I'm usually very driven to work as often as possible.
People laugh at what I do and say "when are you going to get a real job?"
The people that say that to me are not happy with what they do for a living, but they do it because it yields a direct monetary gain. They feel that what I do is a waste of time because I make no immediate money for my work.
Some people almost get it, but not fully. They believe that the reason that I spend my time writing eBooks, blog posts, etc. is so I can eventually get hired as a writer. They think that I'm essentially working towards eventually getting some sort of active income opportunity. Obviously that is far from the truth.
For all the rest, they just think I'm completely wasting my time. If I was getting $20/hr to write, then they would consider what I do as time well spent. When I occasionally do side work for my buddy who owns a construction company, people praise me by saying things such as "Ya making money!". If people know that I am doing active income tasks, they respect my time much more. On the other hand, if I tell someone that I'm busy working, and that "work" is doing something that's working towards earning passive income, then they assume that I'm free to do whatever they feel I should be doing. "You have the whole day free. You can do this for me." That is the attitude that people towards me when they may need a favor or want me to be somewhere.
Then you have the generation of people pre-internet. I'm referring to those who were born prior to about 1975. Those people are fully aware of the internet, but most of them only view it as a tool to learn and share information. They do not view it as an opportunity to earn a living. They do not understand the concept I of "digital currency" where you can get paid via clicks of a mouse. They are stuck in the mindset of getting paid through cash and/or checks by providing direct services in the real world (not the virtual online world). This generation is aware that it is possible to be an entrepreneur, but they think that can only be done by opening a real-life store or company, or through investments. This pre 1975 generation views the concept of "earning money online" as some silly scam.
Just look around you and see how many people fit these descriptions. See how many people are deadest on earning income by directly trading their time. Watch how most people don't even seem to understand the concept of passive income. Consider how many people you encounter on a daily basis that would consider spending 3 months on a project with no direct or guaranteed monetary return to be completely silly. Most likely almost everyone that you encounter in the "real world" fits these descriptions.
That's your REAL competition, not the small subset of passive-income minded people.
If everyone else is DEAD SET on trading their time for their money, that means that they are not spending their time doing the things that we are doing. Therefore, we do not have very much competition in life.
"If you do what no one else is willing to do, you will have what no one else has".
If you're willing to spend your "9 to 5" hours working towards creating your own passive income systems, then you will likely find yourself earning passive income one day in the near future. If you're willing to do the tedious work UPFRONT with no immediate payout, then you will often be paid passively after the system is in place.
Everyone else is doing their full-time work attempting to earn money in direct exchange for their time. That's great! That means much less competition for us!
What motivated me to write this post was due to something that a few of my construction worker buddies said to me yesterday. We were talking about going on a snowboarding trip in the near future for three days on a Sunday to Tuesday. I was all about it! They then proceeded to say "Are you sure you can make it? You don't have to clear your schedule?" The implication was that I have all the free time in the world, and what I do for work is somehow less important then what they do.
My reply was, "Nah I work whenever I want. It's awesome!" My implication was to poke at them letting them know how awesome my life of freedom is.
They then said "well I don't know what you consider to be work, but..." Implying that what I do isn't actually "work".
I began to get a bit annoyed because I never talk about what I do for a living, yet people always attempt to try and make me feel like I'm somehow living my life wrong...
Anyway, I then said "Once I'm making $3000 per month without having to actually do anything, you won't be laughing."
Of course this resulted in more laughs and eye rolls. I just smiled as well because my doubters just make me want to succeed that much more. If not for the complete and utter freedom of earning a living through passive income, at the very least I get to say "I told you so."
Our competition is scarce.
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