So you want to create a passive income stream, like me. Firstly, you need to set some goals. Think about what you what to achieve. For example, how much you want to earn from a passive income stream. Start small, and build it up once you achieve it. Keep increasing your goal and eventually, you will on your way to replacing your salary with passive income.
Let’s say you want to achieve a passive income of say $25 per week in passive income. That is an admiral goal and should be achievable, but that is the point. Start with small achievable goals and move up. Once you achieve that, you can move on to $50 per week.
You need to find out what you have to invest. Simply put, there are three things that you can invest in. You will have differing amounts of each to invest with, depending on what you have, and in what stage of your life you are in. You can either invest Time, Money, or Skills.
Money
Money is the investment vessel everyone focuses one. The problem with investing money is that you need to create a surplus of it first. You need to earn more than you spend. Now, you could try to climb the career ladder and earn more money and have a surplus to invest with. But, it is far easier and faster to downsize your spending than to increase your earning.
Mr Money Mustache has used this technique to retire early. He saved the majority of his income and lived on a modest income. Not that he went without creature comforts, or lived on rice for a few years. He managed to do both, live comfortably on a low-income and save up to 80% of his income. Do this for a few years and you should have enough money stacked up to create a significant money tree.
There are several investment tools you can use to invest money. You can by high dividend stocks, index funds (way better than managed funded in my opinion) peer-to-peer lending, invest in startup businesses, and real estate.
There is an upside to investing money. One is that it doesn’t require you to spend a lot of time managing it. Take an index fund for example. You simply put the money into it and then you are done. Just check on it every few months to see how it’s going.
The downside is when what happened to the Dow Jones a few weeks ago, happens to your investment. A sharp drop can wipe a significant percentage of your investment away. But that doesn’t really matter if you are investing for the long run. As history has shown it will always rebound and you will recoup your losses. It’s just a matter of time.
Time
Time is the second thing you can invest in. Everyone has a certain amount of time. We all think that we don’t have enough time in the day to get done what we set out to get done, but in reality, it is all about what we chose to do with our time. Think about the time it takes to binge-watch those TV shows. Could that time be used instead to invest?
Even if you work a 60 hour week and sleep 8 hours a night, you still have 52 hours of awake time to invest. Even if you only invest 1 hour a day it is better than not investing at all.
The ultimate goal is to invest time now so that you will have more free time in the future.
There are many ways in which you can invest time. You can write an ebook, and sell it online. You can become a YouTube creator and make videos, write an app and sell it on the app market. You can create an affiliate marketing site to drive sales and take a cut. You could freelance your skills.
Speaking of skills….
Skills
The skills you have acquired either through your career or personal hobbies are another item that you can invest to create a source of passive income. Investing in learning new skills will always pay off in the long run. I have decided to increase my skill by aiming to read a book a month. This will hopefully improve my writing skills, I will learn new things, and I will keep my mind healthy. You may think that is a small goal, but I am a slow reader and need to actively assign my reading time.
By the way, if you have a book you would like to recommend, leave it in the comment.
You can use your skills to create products to sell. You could sell handmade things online (Etsy, eBay, Amazon, Shopify). You can condense your skillset and sell tutorial courses and workshops.
In reality, you need to invest a big of all three. You need time to invest money skillfully.
My plan
I plan to invest part of all three. But at this stage, I haven’t figured out how I can invest skill and time to create a passive income. I do earn a good salary, so I am focusing on saving more and investing better. Arguably I think saving more and investing is the easiest thing you can do to create a passive income. Although it is the easiest. It is possible the slowest method, but probably with the least amount of risk.
Currently, I am working out what my current weekly passive income is. I have always been focused on the total amount of money invested, rather than the amount of passive income I am earning. My first goal is to reach a passive income of 25 per week. Who knows, I may have already achieved this.
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