Developing a passive income stream – offline (sort of)

Internet marketers and entrepreneurs are in a rave about creating passive income streams. A passive income stream is simply a form of revenue that you receive regardless if you work on the business or not. It’s regular, runs 24 hours a day and does not require you to be there in order to earn money. The net is the perfect environment where passive income streams can be generated as you can automate business systems that give information, accept immediate payments and deliver your value offering 24 hours a day, without you having to do anything. Could there be anything better?

In fact, many online marketers think there is a better way… have several of them. Makes sense doesn’t it? If you can build a website generating $40 per day and you build 5 of them, then that’s $200 per day. Every day. Without you requiring to work for it.

The next question is what type of passive income stream can you build? We know the options vary from selling products online whether it be your own products or through a drop ship mechanism, through to creating a membership based training course or similar. If you want some offline options have a look at this post. The main difficulty we face is that the average online consumer is becoming more accustomed to searching the net and getting what they want.. for Free. For example I was recently doing some research on how to learn php programming online. There were many courses available varying from $47 through to $497. Which one did I decide to choose? Neither. I picked the free options which gave me some basic tutorials and I went from there. Where there is plenty on offer, your bound to find what you want at no cost.

With the Internet today you simply can’t create something of mediocre value and expect great returns. The flip side is that when you provide something with great value it requires your undivided attention yet you yield the benefits. Meet these two halfway and your potential customers will search for the free options. So what do you do?

Ultimately you need to keep your expectations in check. Unfortunately you would most likely be unable to set up a decent passive income stream in a couple of months. Yes, there are examples of this happening but these are the exceptions and chances are you won’t be that exception. Sorry. I’m not trying to offend here but if everyone was the exception then it would no longer be exceptional? Correct? Successful online businesses take time and effort to build and sustain. Developing a passive income stream is something that requires plenty of trial and error, tons of effort and dedication. I believe that you can most definitely create multiple forms of passive income using the Internet however you will be the only factor that stops you from doing it.  The online world is very competitive and getting into any niche industry will almost certainly mean competing against established businesses in the same field. You will need to offer great value over an extended period of time in order to start gaining market share, gaining momentum and develop loyal and viral customers.

Another option is to think of other mediums other than the Internet. The Internet is attractive because the setup costs are extremely low, there are very minimal barriers to entry and it provides the potential of generating income 24 hours per day from anywhere in the world. But what if I told you that there is another, virtually untapped medium which can generate revenue 24/7 from anywhere in the world? What if I also said that this very medium is growing by an even greater rate than the Internet? What If I went as far as saying that, compared to the Internet, this other medium has even lower start up costs, lower barriers to entry and an abundance of untouched market niche’s which you can take advantage of?

This is a screenshot of a business I set up in January 2009 using this ‘other’ medium. I started off with a bit of advertising to generate just under 100 unique users per day. Now it’s closer to 1000 unique users per day in under 3 months with little to no change in advertising.

I am able to build traffic quickly due to being in an medium which isn’t yet infiltrated with content and businesses. I think the future in this medium will be targeting the niche markets and developing the appropriate revenue models. There is a chance to get back into the hay day of internet business and advertising.

But i’ll leave that for my next post. I’m a bit tired after a full day so please excuse my tardy grammar this time around!