How many times have you heard or seen one of these things – “Make hundreds of dollars by working one hour a day. Build residual income in your spare time. The secret to getting rich with penny stocks.”
If you spend any amount of time online then probably a lot.
The promise of easy money and passive income that requires no upfront time or capital at all is plastered everywhere. And I’ll admit, it’s easy to want to click over and see how you can become an instant success too.
Only life doesn’t work like that.
The truth is, you can build “passive” income and you can earn a good living. Unfortunately, there’s no secret that will allow you to do this in a couple hours of time. The secret to success all boils down to one thing: hard work.
What Earning a Good Living Requires
In today’s world I’m a firm believer that you don’t have to have a college degree to earn a good income, you don’t need a ton of letters behind your name, and you don’t have to be the very best at what you’re doing.
All you need is patience and a good work ethic.
Earning a good living requires a couple of things. First, you have to be able to determine your skills. Second, you have figure out how to apply those skills to a career or business. Third, you have to work super hard to build up your name and subsequently, your income. Last but not least you have to continually learn and continue to work hard.
It really is that simple. And very rarely is this ever a quick process.
What Building “Passive” Income Requires
I’m not going to lie – I love thinking about passive income. I want to build passive income streams myself. BUT I realize that passive income doesn’t start out passive.
One example would be building a business. Before you could hire a team of people and a manger to oversee your business you’d first have to be bringing in a great enough income to warrant hiring people. Could a business be passive? Yes, but only after a bunch of hard work.
Next let’s look at investing. Investing is a way to build up a passive income over time but you need two things to make that happen: capital and patience. How are you going to get that capital? Hard work.
Here’s the Secret to Success
There’s not a single income stream in the world that doesn’t first start out with hard work. That work may not be directly involved with a particular income stream but it still happened somewhere in the background.
(For instance, let’s say someone built up a business and then used the proceeds to buy a rental property that is professionally managed. The rental income stream could now be considered passive but how did the investor get the money to invest in real estate? Hard work.)
There really are no overnight successes. What you might think is instant success or easy money for someone most likely boils down to years of work, which includes a whole lot of failures thrown in the mix.
If you want to build your income then don’t look for the easy way out. Deep down you know what to do so go ahead, take that first step, and as Nike says, just do it.
Alexa Mason is a freelance writer and wanna be internet entrepreneur. She is also a newly single mom to two beautiful little girls. She chronicles her journey as a single mom trying to make it big at www.singlemomsincome.com.