I recently wrote a post about challenging yourself. In this post I created a challenge for for myself to complete that week. Time has really gotten away from me and I now realize that it’s actually been two weeks since I wrote that post.
What was the challenge?
The challenge was to generate some traffic to this blog by commenting on other blogs, and by setting up a twitter account. The idea was to overcome my fear and get the word out about this blog.
How did I do?
As I mentioned above, I forgot to post on my progress at the end of the week which isn’t good. However, I did comment on a few blogs and a forum and that was able to generate several visitors to this site. This was done in that first week so I did meet that aspect of my challenge. Unfortunately, I have not set up a twitter account yet. I won’t consider this a failure because I did manage to get my name out there and pull in some visitors to this site.
Final thoughts
I don’t have a lot of time to work on my alternative income streams and I’m a little concerned that twitter would only add to my distractions. I read another inspiring post today about a tool for encouraging people to tweet about blog posts. The post was written by Pat over at The Smart Passive Income blog and even though it was about the tool, it’s another example of the power of twitter. Basically, the post explains how by using this tool, eight of his readers spread the word about his blog to about 40,000 other twitter members. Impressive. I really think I’m going to have to at least give twitter a try.
I must say that I am excited about what this blog and setting up challenges is doing for me. Even though I only completed half of my challenge, the key is that the blog is doing it’s job and holding me accountable to what I say I’m going to do. If it wasn’t for this blog I probably wouldn’t have created the challenge in the first place, let alone feel obligated to follow through. To keep the ball rolling I’m hereby setting another challenge for myself to get a twitter account up and running by the end of next week. Let’s see if I can follow through this time!
Today (as I write this post) it happens to be the last day of the September which marks the end of my first full month blogging! Shortly, I’m going to post my very first Monthly Income Report. This will be the benchmark on which I measure my alternative income revenue going forward.
I’d like to wrap up the survey experiment that I conducted from mid August through to mid September. I learned a lot about taking surveys and I’ve spent some time doing some data analysis that I’d like to share with you. I’ll show you how the three survey panels tested stack up against one another, how much money I made from them, and which one is my top pick. Finally I tell you my opinion on whether participating in online surveys is worth while.
Generally speaking, taking surveys was a good experience. I spent just under 8 hours taking surveys in total during the course of the month. Some of the surveys were interesting, and some were a waste of time. In the end, I’ve learned a lot about what can be expected of online surveys as an alternative income method.
Quantity
I received 50 surveys in total. Only a few came from Survey Lion while a little over half of the remainder came from Greenfield Online and the rest coming from Opinion Outpost.
Time Spent
By far I spent the most time completing surveys for Opinion Outpost. Despite the large difference in the number of surveys received, the time spent completing surveys for Survey Lion was actually very similar to the time spent on surveys from Greenfield Online. One important thing to note here is that Greenfield Online only offered compensation on about half of their surveys. This puts the surveys from Greenfield into two distinct categories… Compensated and Uncompensated (To be fair, Greenfield online does provide sweepstakes entries for completion of what I’m calling “Uncompensated” surveys). The graph below indicates the time spent completing surveys (in minutes) from for each of the three panels.
You can see in the graph above that by skipping the Uncompensated surveys from Greenfield Online, you can significantly reduce the time spent filling out surveys. Since no true rewards are offered on the Uncompensated surveys, this strategy does not have a negative impact on your earnings.
Compensation
This is the most important part to me. How much money can be earned completing surveys online? Which survey panel offers the best compensation? Before we tackle these questions, take a look at the graph below. This graph shows how many surveys were completed for a cash reward (Credited) vs how many did not provide a cash reward (Not credited) either because the survey could not be completed, or, in the case of some Greenfield Online surveys, because no cash reward was offered.
Now on to those questions above. How much money can you make by taking online surveys? Well, In my one month completing surveys for these three panels I managed to earn a total of $41.50 in return for my 8 hours spent completing surveys. Not great, but not bad considering the effort required. Lets be honest, it’s not difficult to sit at your computer and answer a couple of questions. Lets take a look at how the earnings break down.
The graph above portrays the earnings I received during the course of the month. Perhaps the most interesting is the difference between Survey Lion (only delivered 3 surveys) and Greenfield Online (delivered 26 surveys). Despite Survey Lion delivering less than 1/8th the surveys, I actually received 2.5X the reward. Opinion Outpost’s surveys provided the most compensation but they also required the most time to complete. The best way to do an apples to apples comparison is to compute the effective hourly rate for each panel. To do this, I divided the total time spent filling out surveys by the amount earned from each survey panel.
Notice that I’ve once again split up Greenfield Online into two categories. The first one considers the effective hourly rate if all surveys are completed, while the second one indicates the effective hourly rate assuming the “uncompensated” surveys are not attempted. In this comparison, Survey Lion is the clear winner at just under $10/hour. Opinion Outpost and Greenfield online came in pretty close with Greenfield online taking the edge when uncompensated surveys are omitted.
Conclusion
Survey Lion takes first place in this comparison. Even though their website design wasn’t the prettiest, and they only delivered a small number of surveys, they gave me the opportunity to complete them all. They didn’t play any games like making me spend several minutes filling out a survey only to tell me I didn’t qualify (both the others did this). Even with only three surveys, I still managed to earn nearly as much cash as from the highest payer, Opinion Outpost.
Opinion Outpost receives second place. Opinion outpost had the best website design without question. In terms of effective hourly rate, Opinion outpost came in ahead of Greenfield online by about a buck and a half an hour but only if the unpaid surveys from Greenfield Online were omitted. Opinion Outpost also provided enough surveys to make it possible to earn a larger reward relative to the other two panels.
Greenfield Online comes third. The poor effective hourly rate was disappointing. After omitting the unpaid surveys from the results, the effective hourly rate only slightly beat out Opinion Outpost (by $0.12/hour). Combine that with the minimal number of compensated surveys that I was actually able to complete and it’s apparent that this panel just wasn’t worth my time. Only 6 bucks for the hole month. To Greenfield Online’s credit, the paypal compensation delivery method is a great feature. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to out way the points above.
Are online survey panels worth the effort? Maybe. Sorry for the weak answer but it really depends on what you’re after. If you enjoy filling out surveys and want to earn a couple bucks while having a little fun, then absolutely! If you’re intention is to bring in a bunch of extra money to pay the bills or generate some extra spending money, probably not. You’d probably do better by picking up some overtime or taking on a second job. The effective hourly rate and quantity of surveys do not offer lot of income on a monthly basis. That said, I am pleased that I decided to give online survey taking a go. I now Know what online survey panels have to offer. I’ve proven to myself that it’s possible to earn money online, which will have a huge impact on my mindset going forward with other forms of online income. And finally, I’ve earned a couple bucks to help me bootstrap my Quest for Quiescence. I’m trying to do this with little to no money out of pocket. The money from completing surveys during this experiment will cover the few bucks I’ve spent to start this website plus leave a bunch left over to spend on something else. Will I continue to complete online surveys going forward? Probably not. There is no recurring or passive aspect associated with this method of making money and it takes up a significant amount of my time. I’d prefer to invest in something with the potential to be a little more passive.
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I’ve been reading a lot about internet marketing for a while now. I think that Internet marketing has a lot of potential to provide passive income streams after some initial setup. I’m really excited about giving internet marketing a try, but the problem is that its such a broad topic, I’m having a hard time getting started.
What is Internet Marketing?
Internet marketing is the practice of utilizing various aspects of the internet in order to convince an audience to perform a desired action. Basically, we can use all the things we love about the internet; websites, blogs, facebook, twitter, youtube and so on, in order to get people to perform actions that will eventually lead to money in our pockets.
What is the appeal of Internet Marketing?
The great thing about internet marketing is that once you establish a presence online, there are a number of ways to make money. You can sell ad space, create and sell your own product, or become an affiliate for someone else’s product. The options of implementing such models are limitless. Best of all, there is a very low barrier to entry in Internet Marketing. All you need is a computer and an internet connection, and you’re off to the races. Once, you’re on the net, there are plenty of free services available that can get you started with internet marketing for free.
How to get started?
Ahh, there’s the Million dollar question. One thing I like about internet marketing is that there’s loads of great free information available. The problem is, how do you sort through it, pick a method, and get started? I’ve been reading as much as I can get my hands on from all over the place. I’m learning a lot of high level stuff but not that many details (although I am getting better at finding the more detailed information). I’ve got a pretty good idea of a strategy I’d like to implement but I want to make sure I understand more of the basics of Internet marketing before I dive in.
A while ago I signed up for a FREE 12 week introductory course on internet marketing. Shortly after signing up for this course, other commitments started piling up on me and I ended up putting it aside. However, now that I’m getting serious about generating some alternative income, I’ve decided to get back into it. The course is called The ShoeMoney Extreme Internet Marketing Program. ShoeMoney is a popular and very successful internet marketer who received fame and fortune after creating a successful website selling ring tones and other stuff for cell phones. The program seems like a good starting point. It introduces several different approaches to internet marketing and how to implement each. To me, the best thing about this course is the fact that each chapter ends with a list of action items. This should help to ensure that I take actions on the lessons I learn.
For the next little while, in parallel with Freebie Trading, I’m going to be studying this free course and learning as much as I can. Hopefully by the end of it, I’ll have my first internet marketing website up and running. As always, I’ll keep you updated with my progress.
One alternative income stream I’d like to create for myself is a real estate rental property. Lots of people have been making money in real estate for a long time. There are many ways to make money with real estate by the model I’m most interested in is a rental property.
Why a rental property?
Cash Flow – Rental properties provide cash flow. A revenue stream that continues to come in month after month. There are other models in real estate that many people follow but they usually involve a large capital investment or a lot of time in exchange for a large lump sum of money. These models do not appeal to me at this time.
Tax Deductibility – Here in Canada, interest paid on mortgages for a personal residence is not tax deductable. However, interest paid for investment loans are. One popular tax savings strategy is to invest cash into paying down the mortgage on a personal residence. The equity that is built up in the house can then be used as collateral for a tax deductible investment loan. This loan can in turn be used to purchase real estate. This is an effective way of essentially making a non-tax deductable mortgage tax deductable.
Diversification – Most of the methods for creating alternative income streams I’ve been looking into are internet based. It seems like a good idea to try something in the “real world”.
As good as real estate investing sounds, I’m having a difficult time getting my foot in the door. We built our house just over 5 years ago. In that time, the real estate market in our area has seen tremendous growth. We recently had our house appraised and the value came back at double what it cost us to build! With all the extra equity we suddenly have built up in the house, we decided to set up a re-advanceable Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC). Basically a revolving line of credit that’s tied to the equity in our home. As we pay down the principal on our mortgage, the limit on the line of credit grows, up to some percentage of the value of our home. This created a large sum of credit , suddenly available for a worthy investment. Once the HELOC became available (or perhaps a little before) I immediately started looking for an investment property. The problem is, the entire real estate market here (not just our house) is really expensive right now. It turns out, the money I’ve accessed with our HELOC is simply not enough to get into a decent rental property in our city.
The next option is out of town real estate. Or, how about out of country? I’ve been referred to a real estate agent in Florida who has been passing on some really interesting properties. A 1,200 square foot condo, about two years old, in Florida, is selling for around $50-$60K. Something like that would fetch around $250-300K here. This got me really excited, but as I’m beginning to realize, when your looking for cash flow, the cost of the home isn’t all that matters. You have to think about rental rates. Rental rates in Florida are much lower than they are here. So much so that when you consider taxes, utilities, condo fees etc, even at $60K, It seems like there wouldn’t be much left for cash flow. To make matters worse, in today’s low interest rate environment, interest rate increases are very likely which would reduce the potential for cash flow even more.
I’m still interested in finding a rental property to generate some monthly cash flow, but I think I’ll need to do a lot more research before I’m ready to put equity from my home on the line. Would you consider investing in real estate right now? Submit a comment and share your thoughts.
Now that the survey experiments are wrapping up I’m starting to dive into the Freebie Trading thing. I’ve set up a new email account to help manage emails relating to freebie trading and I’ve joined a couple of Freebie Trading forums.
The first forum I’ve joined is called the Free Lunch Room, or FLR as people seem to refer to it. It seems pretty clear from the research I’ve done, that FLR is by far the most popular freebie trading forum. I’m not sure whether that popularity would be good or bad for a new freebie trader, but I intend to find out.
The Second forum I’ve joined is called Calistyle101. Calistyle101 is a site that was recently taken over by a guy who goes by the alias of “The Freebie Guy”. He was featured on an interview over on entrepreneurs-journey.com which is how I came to learn about Freebie Trading. He has a large following of loyal Freebie Traders, and seems to be a genuine guy so I figured I’d give calistyle101 a try. It’s a smaller forum but it seems most of the people there have been around a while and have migrated from FLR. This forum doesn’t have as much traffic as FLR but that also means less competition.
Why a forum? Forums are the place where Freebie traders meet and conduct trades. This is where I’ll find someone to sign up as a referral for (who will pay me cash to do so) and also where I’ll find people to sign up under me at some point. I’ll keep you updated on my Freebie Trading experiences.
Yesterday I posted the second review of SurveyLion.com, and the day before that was the second review of GreefieldOnline.com.Today’s review will focus on OpinionOutpost.com. Feel free to check out the first review of Opinion Outpost if you haven’t already. This review will focus on presenting my own opinions and personal experiences after completing surveys for Opinion Outpost for an entire month.
Quantity of Surveys
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I received 50 surveys in total during my one month trial. Of those 50 surveys, 20, or 40% of them were from Opinion Outpost. I was able to complete 7 of those 20 surveys for a completion rate of 35%.
Duration
In total I spent 4.5 hours working on surveys for Opinion Outpost. The average time specified for an Opinion Outpost survey was 20.65 minutes.The average time I spent on surveys that I was able to complete was 33.4 minutes. The worst case was a survey that was spec’d to take 15 minutes that actually took 52 minutes to complete! That’s nearly 3.5 times the specified time. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there was one survey that took 8 minutes less to complete than was specified. Most surveys took slightly longer to complete than what was specified. 36 minutes was spent taking surveys that I was unable to complete leaving just under 4 hours (3.9 hours to be exact) spent on completed surveys. Many of the surveys that were not completed took a very long time (typically around 5 minutes) before I was informed that I did not qualify to complete the survey for one reason or another. There were even cases where I had answered questions that provided good valuable data to the researchers, but still did not qualify for compensation. This is not cool.
Compensation
All Opinion Outpost surveys offered some number of points as incentives. These points could then be exchanged for cash payments. The rewards ranged from 15 to 50 points. Since each point was valued at $0.10 the surveys were valued at $1.50 to $5.00 each. For the 7 surveys that I was able to complete, I received 205 points for a total value of $20.50. Based on the rewards received and the total time spent, that put’s my hourly rate at about $4.55/hour. This is not a great rate.
I requested payment a few days ago but so far haven’t heard anything. Since they send out paper checks via snail mail, I don’t expect to see anything for a couple weeks yet. I’ll update this post when I receive the check and let you know how long it took.
Other observations
Some of the surveys from Opinion Outpost were interesting, but many had way too many questions. They seemed to go on and on forever, even restating the same questions over and over again in different patterns. Some of the surveys also had different methods for conveying answers. Examples would be describing your feelings by selecting a picture, or dragging and dropping answers instead of using check boxes or radio buttons. This felt like a waste of time in an effort to appear innovative. It didn’t work.
Conclusion
Opinion Outpost presented a number of surveys during the test period. What I didn’t like was that the surveys took a little too long to complete and worse yet, I ended up spending a lot of time on surveys that I never ended up getting credit for. I did like that all surveys offer compensation for completion but I’m not a fan of the points system. In my mind the only reason for having a points system instead of offering cash, is to leave the door open for changing the points values in the future. A sneaky tactic. I also disliked how they tried to be innovative in some of their surveys in the way that they collected responses. This just ended up in redundant questions and a lot of wasted time.
Still to come on the survey front… Now that I’ve provided two reviews for each of the survey panels, I’ll be posting a comparison between the three. I’ll be offering my advice on whether online surveys are worth doing, which of the 3 I recommend, and maybe some tips for maximizing your earnings.
Yesterday I wrote a follow up review of GreenfieldOnline.com. Today I’m going to post another follow up review, this time of SurveyLion.com. You can find the original review of Survey Lion over here. Last time I discussed the the company, their website, referral program etc. This time, I’m going to share my personal experiences after participating in their panel for a month.
Survey Lion was very different from the other panels I tried. They are an independent research firm and only deliver their own surveys. As a result I received much fewer surveys from Survey Lion than from the others. Read on to find out more…
Quantity of Surveys
If you remember from yesterday, I received 50 surveys in total over my one month trial. In fact, I only received three surveys from Survey Lion during the entire month. It may not be entirely fair to compare stats from Survey Lion with the other two panels because of the small sample size. But, I’m going to anyway. Of the three surveys delivered by Survey Lion, I actually completed all three. That’s a 100% completion rate! So far so good. Not once did I get booted out of a survey for not meeting demographic or any other requirements.
Duration
On average the time specified to complete a survey from Survey Lion was 23.3 minutes. My average time to complete these surveys was 31 minutes. The worst case, in terms of duration, was a particular survey that was spec’d to take 30 minutes but actually took 45 minutes. That’s 50% over the specified time. Although the surveys took longer, I think you can feel better knowing that you have a higher probability of completing the survey and not wasting your time. In total, I spent a total of 1 hour and 33 minutes completing surveys for Survey Lion.
Compensation
All Survey Lion surveys offer cash rewards as incentives.The cash rewards I received ranged from $3 for a survey spec’d to take 10-15 minutes to $6 for a survey spec’d to take 30 minutes. In total I earned $15 for my hour and 33 minutes spent completing surveys. That translates to an hourly rate of $9.68 per hour. Not terribly bad for filling out surveys.
I requested payment a few days ago but so far haven’t heard anything. The confirmation page indicated that I should receive a check in 4-6 weeks. I’ll be sure to update this post when I receive the check and let you know how long it took.
Other observations
The surveys for Survey lion were interesting which was good. They were simple and didn’t try to get to fancy. They stuck to multiple choice questions with a few text boxes for custom entry. The surveys focused on products and services that I actually use and care about. It will be neat to see when the products emerge, whether any of my suggestions were incorporated into the final products.
Conclusion
I didn’t receive many surveys from SurveyLion.com, but I was able to complete every single one I did receive. The reward value for surveys was good. The surveys were easy to complete and I didn’t need to waste time working on surveys I didn’t qualify for. These factors made for a pretty good pay out rate. The surveys were also interesting and relevant which was nice to see. Over all, I was pretty pleased with Survey Lion. If only they could provide more surveys, and switch to a paypal system for delivering rewards, they’d be perfect.
There’s just one more follow up review left. After that I’ll be posting a comparison between the three panels and I’ll also give my take on whether or not its worth completing surveys online as a source for alternative income.
Today I’m writing a follow up review of GreenfieldOnline.com. You can find the original review of Greenfield over here. Greenfield was a decent panel that did really well at some things and terrible at others let me tell you a little about my experiences.
Quantity of Surveys
Of the 50 surveys I received during the month long experiment, 26 of them were from Greenfield Online. Of these 26 surveys from Greenfield, I managed to complete 4 or 15%. When I say complete I mean surveys that I could actually get all the way through without being told that I do not qualify. Often you will be disqualified from a survey part way through if you do not meet the target demographic, or for some other reason do not meat the criteria for a particular study. With all the profiling surveys Greenfield had me fill out ahead of time, I expected to finish more than the 4 I did.
Duration
The average specified time to complete a survey was 20.58 minutes. In total I spent just under 2 hours completing surveys. Of those 2 hours, 30 minutes were spent on surveys that were never completed. That leaves 1.5 hours spent on surveys that were actually completed. Looking only at the surveys that were completed, the graph below shows a comparison of specified time vs actual time.
I found that the surveys could actually be completed in less than the specified time as long as you are careful with your answers. For example, say the survey asks “which of the following products have you tried”, and presents you with 10 options. You will often be expected to answer a series of questions for each of the products you select. So, if you selected 2 from that list of 10, you will probably be alright; If you selected 8… well, I hope your comfortable because you’re going to be busy for a while. As far as the surveys I didn’t complete, some of the them let me know fairly quickly that I did not qualify, however, several of them let me go on for several minutes (one as long as 9 minutes) before informing me that I would not be able to complete the survey. Why don’t they get those qualifying questions out of the way to begin with?
Compensation
Greenfield did not offer cash rewards for all of their surveys. Some of the surveys only offered an entry into a sweepstakes contest for $5000. I was less than excited about this. No doubt there are TONS of people taking these surveys and the chances are you’re not going to win the $5K. I’d prefer to receive a couple bucks guaranteed rather than a pie in the sky shot at $5K. 12 of the 26 surveys I received were for cash compensation. That’s 46%, so more than half of the surveys I received I was asked to complete for free (I did get the sweepstakes entry though). One thing Greenfield did do is compensate for each survey that was NOT completed by way of a sweepstakes entry. One interesting thing to note is that for a survey with a sweepstakes entry as a reward, you will actually receive a sweepstakes entry for attempting the survey even if you don’t complete it. So what’s the incentive to complete it? Again, I don’t place much value on those entries, so they were of little consolation to me anyway. The paid surveys I received had an average value of $3.73. Most of the paid surveys were worth $2 but a few were as low as $1 and a couple were actually worth $12 (of course I couldn’t complete either of those). Of the 4 surveys I actually completed, I earned cash for 3 of them. In total, for my 2 hours spent completing surveys, I received a total of $6. That’s $2 for each of the 3 surveys offering a cash reward. This puts my hourly rate at $3/ hour. Pretty sad really.
There is one really positive thing to say about Greenfield Online. They pay cash rewards via Paypal. I love this feature and don’t understand why anyone running a business that pays people for providing a service online (such as online survey completion) would compensate via check sent by snail mail? Doesn’t make any sense. Anyway, I requested payment of my $6 last night. Would you believe that I received the Paypal notification this afternoon! Even the confirmation message I received from Greenfield indicated it would take 2-3 weeks for processing. It’s true, less than 24 hours to receive payment (closer to 12 actually). I was very pleased with this aspect of Greenfield Online.
Other observations
There were a few disturbing things about the Greenfield surveys. A couple of times I received a survey in my inbox, but when I clicked on the link I was immediately told I had already completed the survey. Why would they send me surveys that I had already completed? Occasionally a survey would not present a full range of answers. This sometimes even happened after a pre-screener question. This forces you to provide a false answer. For example, if one question asks if you ever use film cameras and you say no, should the next question be a multiple choice asking if you go through 1-5, 5-10 or 10-20 rolls of film per week? Doesn’t make any sense. This is a fictitious example, but I did see this sort of thing several times. I’d be a little upset about this if I was paying for survey research. NOTE: many of the surveys Greenfield delivered were setup by third parties so It’s possible that these ones did not come directly from Greenfield Online.
Conclusion
Greenfield provided a large number of surveys but I didn’t manage to make much money. There were a few usability quirks as well with some of the surveys completed. Only about half of the surveys received actually offered cash compensation. I would definitely recommend not bothering with any surveys that don’t offer cash.
I’ve got two more follow up reviews to complete for the other panels. After that I’ll do a comparison between the three panels I’ve been investigating and provide my recommendation as to which one is best. Don’t miss it.
I’m pleased to announce that this past Saturday marked the end of my one month online survey experiment. Between August 19th and September 19th, exactly 50 surveys showed up in my inbox. I attempted all but two surveys within 24 hours of receipt. The other two were started within 36 hours. I have done my best to complete all surveys honestly, accurate and in a timely matter in order to provide meaningful results to myself and readers of this blog.
I did earn some money, although it’s all banked in the three survey panel accounts. I have requested payment from each account today, so start the clocks, and we’ll see how quickly the payments arrive from each panel.
Over the next little while I’m going to perform some analysis on all the notes I took during the month of online surveys. I’ll then post the results here in a series of posts. I’m going to provide as much information as I can about these three survey panels as well as online surveys in general. By the time I’m finished, we’ll know if there’s value in taking surveys and the pros and cons for each the three panels. I expect there will be a clear winner between them, so that will be announced as well. I’ll see if I can spot any patterns that can be translated into a method of survey selection to maximize potential earnings while minimizing time spent.
I hope you find the results valuable, and if nothing else we’ll know once and for all just how profitable it is to take online surveys. Even if it turns out to have been a waste of time, I should have a couple bucks to invest into the next alternative income experiment.
I haven’t talked about passive income on this blog yet. So far I’ve mainly discussed alternative income. I want to discuss passive income and how it relates to alternative income. First off, let me describe what alternative income means to me.
Alternative Income is any source of non-traditional income. By non-traditional, I mean anything other than a typical day job. Something that wouldn’t require submitting a resume, being interviewed, working for an employer or exchanging your time for a predetermined rate of pay. This may include but is not limited to…
- Selling Stuff on Ebay
- Washing Cars
- Typing Transcripts
- Running a Lemonade Stand
- Completing Online Surveys
Each of the money making methods listed above could be considered alternative income according to my definition above. The problem with each of these examples is that if you stop actively working on them, the income goes away. This is called Active Income. Active Income isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is something you need to be aware of. You need to understand that setting up alternative streams of income that are active in nature will require continual effort if you want to see on-going returns. For example, for me personally, in my “Quest for Quiescence”, I don’t want to end up with any active income sources UNLESS the active portion is something I truly want to do. So, what’s the alternative? Passive Income of-course!
Passive Income is also a form of alternative income (Active Income and Passive Income are subsets of Alternative income) but it is the polar opposite of Active Income. Passive income will continue to provide returns with out requiring any active effort. Ideally, passive income would be something that would not require any effort at all… Ever. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I don’t think this exists (If I’m wrong please let me know). Some amount of effort is always required, at least initially. Even on an ongoing basis there is usually some amount of effort required to maintain an income stream. That said, most people will accept an active component in their Passive Income definition at some level. Usually people will consider a significant initial effort followed by minimal effort over a longer term as Passive Income.
Passive Income is a subjective concept. Everyone has their own opinion as to what constitutes Passive income. But, true Passive Income, even if unattainable, is the holy grail of all alternative income. It may be an objective that is impossible to reach, but it’s a journey to see how close we can get.
What’s your definition of passive income? Care to share in the comments?
