Passive Income – The Dream and the Reality

Hi and welcome to my blog about starting up and running an online passive income business.  This is a little different from most of the others that you may find if you Google for “make money online”. There are no fast cars, or skinny gorgeous women here! Sorry – probably just lost of bunch of you right there.

Also – you know that secret about how to make millions of dollars while you sleep …  Well if I knew that I wouldn’t be maintaining this site would I duh!

Actually this site is genuine -the pictures really are of me, I really do make money online and I am quite happy to tell you how I do it. Can you make money doing what I do? I have absolutely no idea – probably not though – most people aren’t prepared to put the work in.

If I haven’t scared you off yet and you actually like what I have to say feel free to subscribe to my blog’s feed to be notified when I get around to updating the site.

Why Passive Income?

That’s my dream – lying on the beach getting paid while I sleep. Who wouldn’t like that! That’s why there are so many scams and over-priced programs all about how to make passive income online – for a lot of is its the ultimate dream. Now I do get paid while I sleep – most of my income comes in over night – but that’s because I live in New Zealand and most of my websites’s visitors are from North America (and no that’s not a typo I have far more websites than just this one!) . So yes its true that you make money while you sleep -but that’s not the whole story.

What is Passive Income

There three ways to make passive income (legally) in  current the financial system.

• dividends from shares;
• rental from real property;
• profits from a business

Online income falls into the third  group – you’re building a business – you can make a passive income online – but first you have to build a business. My business is a number of websites  that make me money from the advertising I display on those sites.

But everyone knows that building up a business is hard work, that most small businesses fail in their first few years. That’s not very sexy is it – so hence started the myth – online was different – online you just started a blog – maybe about your passion – and you will make money and retire and live the lifestyle.

Sorry – you won’t. The good news is that you  probably won’t lose your house over it because starting online is low cost (though I know people can pay up to $5000 for the information which is available on this site and others for free so maybe you can lose your house over it). The bad news is  whether you find the right information or the wrong – you will have to do a lot of hard work to make that online business a reality.

And yes you can work in your PJs.

Why This Blog

I am moderately successful with this site i.e. more people than my immediate family read my blog. I am moderately succesful because some of my online income comes from this blog. I’m not making millions – but I’m not making zero – and that’s what most people make from their blogs.

But I didn’t plan it this way. This blog started off on blogger.com with the catchy title of “my journey to 100 sites” or something similar. I got annoyed with blogger’s technical limitations and decided to move to a self-hosted WordPress blog – for which I needed a domain. I already owned lissowerbutts.com because I wanted to make sure no one else owned my name – I figured I keep on paying fees for my name – so I dumped the blog on the domain.

People now probably think that the name is about personal branding – it wasn’t but  it is now. Yup I’ve always ranked very, very well for my name, including mis-spellings. Unfortunately hardly anyone searches for that name because they are looking for information on me. Its not what we call “a buying keyword” – a much better name for this blog would have been make money for beginners (that’s Grizz BTW – he’s probably forgotten more about Adsense than I’ve ever known).  But I didn’t know that when I started this blog. I try hard to maintain a non-professional persona around here. I swear, I don’t always get my righting write! Really in real life I am the uber-professional who would never leave the house without full makeup – which is why you shouldn’t believe everything you read online!

This blog started off as an online diary. It helped to write down my frustrations, and later my insights.  I thought I could monetize it by adding some Adsense ads or maybe I could sell posts (fortunately I never did that otherwise this would be an ex-blog too – like the one I did sell posts on).  It never made me more than 5 cents – I took the advertising  off just kept on writing.

Then I learned that my blog should be called something that people search for, something maybe want information on, something that relates tot this site’s content. – that was when Passive Income was born.

What I Write About on this Passive Income Blog

I write about how I make online income.  I periodically talk about my progress.

I talk about what I’m thinking about, insights that I’ve had, the stuff that works for me, the stuff that doesn’t

I write about products that I’ve come across – if they are a scam I call them out on it.  One of the “tricks” with making money online  is to write a fake review which is just a pitch for readers to sign up to said product. Now lets be clear I make money from affiliate sales on this blog.   But I only support products that I actually use.

Sometimes I write about the purely personal – and sometimes I even talk about being a Kiwi  making online income. In fact I write what I when when I want – but some seem to find it helpful and its great the network of  friends I’ve made through this site. Thank you all for giving me the motivation to continue on – and now I hope I can return the favour to some of you- yes its bloody hard work this passive income lark – but it is possible!