So what is the secret to success when it comes to passive income? What should you expect from it? And how do you approach it without risking serious disappointment?
Great Expectations
The first thing to do is to have the right expectations. Too many people expect to get money for nothing and to make a huge profit from a website or blog for example after putting in only a small amount of work. What’s very important to understand here is that passive income does not mean that you are getting money for nothing. This is not a get-rich quick scheme and it does take a lot of work and a lot of smarts.
Let’s take running a website as an example. While may creators seem to be under the impression that they can set up a website in a matter of a few days and start earning thousands of dollars from advertising, the reality is very different. Actually, the main form of advertising used to make money from a website is AdSense. AdSense is a form of PPC advertising, which stands for ‘Pay Per Click’, meaning in other words that you get paid each time someone clicks on one of your ads. If there are no clicks, you don’t get any money.
And thus, it follows that you need to get as many visitors as possible to make any serious money. How many visitors? That depends on numerous factors including just how well you have optimized your ad placement and how good the niche you initially chose is. But what you can rest assured is that it’s going to require at least a couple hundred thousand. In fact, if you read around the web and do your research, you’ll likely find that the average advice is that it takes somewhere in the region of 150,000 views for your website to make $100.
How long does it take to get to those kinds of numbers daily? I’d argue that it can take at least a couple of years for most people. And that’s only if you put in a huge amount of work to consistently flood your site with excellent quality content and to continuously promote your site and your brand in the meantime. The same goes for selling digital products. For creating an Amazon Kindle. Or for using any of the other passive income models we’re going to look at here.
The Right Approach
Why is this important enough to deserve it?
Simple: because if you head into this expecting to make $100 a day immediately, you are going to be disappointed and you are probably going to quit out of frustration before you get anywhere. This is what happens to the vast majority of people. It’s also important because I don’t want any of you to run out right now and quit your day job!
What you need to do, is scale back your expectations and make a steady attempt to increase your earnings and to build a business.
Your aim is not to give up your day job. Not right away anyway! Rather, your aim is to make yourself some extra money on the side that will make your day-to-day life that much comfier and more enjoyable. It’s to fund your lifestyle and it’s to follow something you’re passionate about. To begin with, you’re not going to quit your day job or stop providing services online. Instead, you’re going to start devoting just a short amount of time in the evenings to creating content, creating a sales page, or following through with any of the other passive income models we’re outlining in this book.
Choose something you’re passionate about and that you enjoy and do it for the love of creating. If you make a little money on the side, then you should consider that to be a bonus – not the main reason you’re getting started.
If you do that, then in a few months you might start earning an extra $10 a week – enough to treat yourself to something nice at the end of the month. In time, that might climb to $20, $50 or $100 a week.