Comments on: How To Make Your Business More Passive

By: Elly Wireles Phones

Elly Wireles Phones — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:47:46 +0000

I want unique ideas to generate passive income. No mlm or shemes, surveys, or other useless crap. I am open to good ideas for a business, but it has to be minimal or no effort for maximum return. To give an idea of what I mean, I bought a peice of machinery that I lease out to a company, I make payments, but they are far less than what I earn from it. Things of this nature. Yes real estate, yes investing, but I am looking for unconventional or interesting ways.

By: Chris Guthrie

Chris Guthrie — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:16:26 +0000

Yah that sounds like a good number – especially because you never know just how much a person will care to take the time to click a link.

Hopefully your visitors do care though and will be able to help minimize the spam coming through.

By: Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:38:47 +0000

I set it to 2 as a starting test. If anyone abuses it I will adjust. Thanks!

By: Chris Guthrie

Chris Guthrie — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:03:49 +0000

Hey Brian,

What number did you decide to settle on? I know it varies on a case by case basis – i.e. if you have a highly traffic’ed site you should set the limit higher. But I was just curious what you decided to choose.

By: Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:25:58 +0000

Good example, thanks Matt!

By: Matt Thomas

Matt Thomas — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:36:39 +0000

Hi Brian,
Great quote from the E-Myth, one of my favorites. The great thing about automation is that not only does it save you a lot of time, but it often is free, and this free system can be replicated and tweaked to fit a lot of different processes. A very simple case-in-point I believe is Gmail’s filtering and labeling system. Certain emails simply don’t require your review, but is important to have for later reference. Setting up a simple filter to mark the item as read and archive it will solve this problem quite easily. This is a very basic yet effective example of automation that can be tweaked and reused and save you a ton of time.

By: Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:20:39 +0000

Hi Caleb, good points. You’re right there is often a trade off between income and growing net worth. I see this especially in real estate.

I try to mix both in my real estate deals. They all cash flow a little bit, while capturing some nice equity.

You don’t have to have large amount of capital to get passive income though.

Blogging I see as passive income because although it takes “work” to write, it takes the same amount of work whether 100 people read it or 100,000 people read it. So there isn’t a direct correlation between time & income like a salary job. You’re unlikely to get a 1000% raise for doing the same amount of work in a regular job, but it can happen in blogging.

The other type of passive income businesses I like (which don’t take much capital) are web businesses like my tutoring site (www.universitytutor.com). It was started with very little capital ($100 and my own time) but provides passive income.

So anyway, I guess I think about it more in terms of 3 categories. (1) growth – meaning buying appreciating assets, (2) regular income, and (3) passive income.

The best source of regular income is definitely a typical job. It’s stable and far more likely to provide you real income in the short term.

But while at that job you should try transitioning into the other two so you aren’t stuck there forever. If you have capital, invest in income generating real estate. If you don’t, you can try building a passive income business which doesn’t require capital. Web businesses, blogs, review sites, etc.

This is a great question, and I’ll probably make this into a post. Thanks for bringing it up!
Brian

By: caleb

caleb — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:49:03 +0000

Brian,

I’ve noticed that wealth generation falls into one of two categories: Income and Growth.

Income puts food on the table today.

Growth builds over time until your net worth itself becomes income (by interest from investments).

Growth is almost always passive by nature. INCOME usually requires some kind of sweat equity, at least up front.

The two are often inverse compliments of each other. If you own a rental free and clear, you maximize INCOME (pure cashflow). If you fully leverage the equity of the property instead, you may end up with negative cashflow, but now you own more than 10 times as much real estate, all appreciating (GROWTH).

You cannot have growth without income first to pay the bills. So I am focusing my study and learning on INCOME-type methods.

I’ve noticed you’ve dipped into Real Estate, Blogging, Speaking, and other forms of INCOME methods. Could you please do a comparison of all the income methods you’ve explored, with a by-number breakdown of how profitable they have been? I suspect your Real Estate deals win hands down, but I’d happily be proven wrong…

I’m probably not alone in still exploring all the different INCOME options out there, without having yet settled on which one to devote my full time to learning.

Thanks for the great blog.

By: Andy @ Retire at 40

Andy @ Retire at 40 — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:58:48 +0000

Heh, I wonder if the real work could be automated :-)

Luckily for me, whatever I try and do I can automate since I am a programmer by trade venturing into a few other areas to help create extra (and passive) income.

I’m not sure what other things I’d like to automate over and above those I have already thought of. I’d probably know more once I actually get going.

By: Caroline

Caroline — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:55:43 +0000

My brother in law was hit with a similar scam and even received a check. The problem is by the time the bank reports the check as fake you have sent them the cash.