There is no such thing as “EASY MONEY” and a lot of us learn it the hard way.
I have tried a lot of stuff over the past few years and here are the reality of the Passive income idea’s which I have found out!
So Called Passive Income Streams
Blogging
Writing a blog is not as hard as most people think as you have lot of tools to help you out nowadays. Given its one of the most easy idea to start passive income, most people do try it.
But to make blogging a successful stream of income, you need to be consistent in writing blogs as a single blog doesn’t generate much income. Blogging platforms (like Medium) and the audience show interest in authors who post regularly. If an author maintains high consistency, they receive priority over others, even when the content is the same.
Here I have shared My Blogging Journey so far which can shed more light on this!
Youtube
It has a higher level of difficulty based on what niche you are going into and if you will be recording yourself or making content that doesn’t require your presence in the videos itself.
If you are planning to record your self then you just need a camera and youtube account to get right into it but if you are making content then it becomes a bit tricky. Based on the niche you are targeting, you might need to have a video editor and require some level of video editing skills.
Making it a success requires a higher set of skills such as videography, public speaking, video editing, and writing good scripts.
I don’t aim to overwhelm you, but you can learn these skills along the way. However, you must invest effort to enhance them because audiences enjoy watching an artist grow, creating a stronger connection. Again to acheive this you have to be consistent. Youtube will reward you for consistency by giving you videos a higher impression rate but after that its the content of the video that does the magic! Even if you have the best content in the world and you post only one video it won’t get much views. A lot of people try out youtube thinking to earn but then realty hits them as it takes a lot of time and effort to grow channel initially.
Stocks Investments
Buying and selling stocks for short-term profits seems easy, but is often not. This process requires a deep understanding of stock analysis and a continual awareness of the latest news. Such news could drastically affect stock prices, making this endeavor far from simple.
For swing or long-term investors, the concept of value investing often arises. Many experts advise identifying fundamentally sound businesses, reasoning that if these can be bought at a fair price, they represent a solid investment. However, this theory doesn’t always hold over the long term. Changes can occur in the underlying business model, potentially transforming a once sound investment into a poor one.
Take Twitter, for example. A decade ago, it seemed like a smart investment given its size and market potential. Yet, following significant changes such as Elon Musk’s acquisition, investors might think twice. Therefore, staying updated is crucial in the dynamic world of stocks. Even seemingly good businesses can falter, making investing less passive than one might hope.
A better option would be Mutual Funds, Index funds or ETF’s and even bonds where your risk is managed by experts in that domain making that truly passive.
Drop Shipping
This model of business has been in the lime light for sometime now as lot of the people talking about it makes it look like a passive income business but it’s not. It’s a full time job at the start if you are planning to try it out.
Given the low startup investment nature of the business, you have to select the product and market it to customer and once the purchase is made then you will be ordering it for them from the suppliers. This saves you the inventory management cost but you also become a direct point of contact with the customer. Every sales that you make means you have to order it. There are automated systems in place which again adds up to the cost but you won’t be doing that at the start. Like any other business, if you have enough capital then you can make it passive by hiring people to do the job of order management, customer support, refunds, etc but you will first need to understand the process yourself so it becomes a passive income on a much later stage when you have a successful business in place which you understand.
Selling Digital Products
Here you need to create digital products and then sell them. Its highly unlikely that the first product that you make will go viral and make you millions. You will have to spend a lot of time in market research on getting the answers of the questions like what is you target niche, what audience in that niche is looking for, what is the competition of your idea present in the market, how can you make a better product, etc.
Post this research, it will take a decent amount of time investment in creating the product. Once you have created it and start selling, you will have to keep re-iterating on it to keep making it better overtime. If you don’t do that, someone will apply the above formula over your product and take the customers which were until now with you!
So it depends on you as to what you are looking to earn from that effort but it won’t be passive at the start!
Conclusion
The point which I want to drive home is that earning money is not easy. It takes effort, consistency and hard work to get it. It’s just that once you start learning skills and growing, it becomes easy overtime to do the same things and then these things turn into passive incomes.
Like when you were learning cycling, you would require a lot of focus to paddle and keep your balance and your full focus was on driving it. As you master it, you can talk on phone or get lost in your chain of thoughts making cycling a passive activity as you know how to do it now!
“Sometimes you face difficulties not because you’re doing something wrong, but because you’re doing something right.” — Joel Osteen
It’s great to look for growing your financials and upgrade your life but for that you have to have a growth mindset. Things will become easy overtime but at the start they going to be difficult and the difference between success and failure will be your ability to push through!