Time and again people come to me asking my secret to earning passive income.
“It isn’t difficult,” I always say, “But you have to work for it!”
Inevitably, the person will look at me with a perplexed gaze. They think maybe I didn’t understand the question: they asked about passive income, right? And passive income means you never have to work again a day in your life…right?
Absolutely not.
I’m 100% serious when I say that they only real secret to earning passive income is to work for it. I think the name “passive” is extremely misleading, and it encourages people to think that there’s this mystical solution out there that they can just buy or start once for 2 hours and voila! they have income for life!
Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work that way.
I’m a huge believer that success with online marketing is a lot of work. Did you know that 80% of people who start out with an online business never make $100? Why is that, when it’s insanely easy to do.
Easy != effortless.
(That’s easy does NOT equal effortless, btw).
All you have to do to be successful with online marketing is decide that it’s something you truly want to do, commit to working towards, and then make sure you have the right information to follow to get there.
I’m not exaggerating when I argue that anyone can do this. Anyone can, but most people won’t.
Make 2016 The Year You Find Your Fortune
I was listening to a Jim Rohn tape last night and he made an exceptional point that sums up the real difference between passive income and wage income, and how to get there.
First, he noted that a wage earns you a living, while profits will earn you a fortune, which gets at the notion that with online businesses, you’re working to build something that will pay you dividends far into the future, rather than an overnight result with a salary next month.
Then, he made a point about psychology. Don’t think about your work as leading to an “extra side income.” Having a little extra isn’t going to motivate you to do much of anything.
Instead, think of your work as part of the process of building your fortune. You would walk through walls to get a fortune, right? Most people would work a lot harder and put up with a lot of frustration if they knew a fortune was lying just ahead of them, but would barely do anything if they thought is was just a few dollars.
The good news is that you don’t have to walk through any walls to get there. You just need to build a few websites.