Passive income is income from trade or business activities in which you do not materially or actively participate in generating that income. For example, your day job generates your active income since you actively participate or work for that income. If you have investments on stocks or shares or bonds that actually earn profit, then that’s your passive income since you didn’t actually work for the profit. It was your money doing the work for you.

Why is passive income good?

The most obvious reason why passive income is good: you’re not working actively to earn it.  You do some work (e.g., invest in stocks) and that earns you income while you’re sleeping. It’s supplemental income to your main income source. Who wouldn’t want to earn extra income?

Why earn online income?

In my example above, I mentioned investing in stocks as a passive income generator.  But one thing to consider about investing in stocks is: you need money to earn money.  To earn more money, you need to invest more money. Why? An investment of 100 dollars earning at 50% would earn 50 dollars.  If you want to earn 500USD you need to invest 1000USD. The higher the target the earning, the higher the investment. But the risk of losing money in stocks investment is also high, your initial investment of can be lost overnight when the value of the stocks go down. Imagine, you invested 100 dollars then the value of the stocks you invested in goes down by 10%: you end up losing 10 dollars.  Stock prices volatility (instability) is a hard reality of investing on stocks.

Now let’s  look at earning online income, specifically from affiliate marketing. To go into affiliate marketing can cost you money, but the beauty of it is, you can also do it for free. The basic strategies of affiliate marketing actually doesn’t cost you anything, and you can use the free services in the internet, like blogging and article writing, to promote and market.

How can something free earn you something? What’s the catch? Well the catch is, you have to invest a lot of efforts initially. Your initial effort will then produce income for you, while you sleep, or while you do your primary work or active income. Another benefit of earning online income is that it can be exponential. You may earn small change in the beginning but this will grow and accumulate over time as your marketing strategy propagate across the Internet.

In Short

Having an active income is a good way to sustain a regular and consistent income. But if you find yourself looking for additional income, consider learning passive income sources like how to earn online income. You can try affiliate marketing for free, removing the need to invest a lot of money just to earn passive income.  All you need is do is dedicate some time and focus regular effort, and soon you’ll see the income trickle in.

If you want to learn how to do affiliate marketing, check out this free training program from Ewen Chia, one of the most successful internet affiliates marketers. The link is:

http://earnonlinenow.net/recommends/affiliate/

You can also try his Autopilot Internet Profit System where he shows you the basics of affiliate marketing and how to automate it.  The link is:

http://earnonlinenow.net/autopilot/

1. Work from Home is literally WORK at home.

Let’s get something straight: when you say work from home, it means you work or do something to earn a certain amount of money and you do it at home, your refuge, your shelter. Since there are thousands of work from home opportunities, there are a thousand possible ways you will be working.

In most cases, the ratio of effort to income is 1 to 1, or your income is proportional to the effort you put in. For example, doing surveys. For you to earn a lot of money it in, you have to do a lot of surveys. I’ve never read or heard of someone who earns a thousand dollars just by answering 1 or 5 surveys.

So what if you need to work hard? Some may even say, “There’s nothing wrong with working hard, it’s honorable.” Ok I agree with that 100%. But when you do work hard and focus on whatever you’re working on, you run the risk of taking up the time that should be spent with your family (unless you’re single).

In one survey done on work from home moms that I came across, one of the comments of the respondents, was “what I miss most from my day job was going back home.” Think about that.

2. Work from Home is not equal to Internet Marketing.

Internet marketing is just one of the work from home opportunities you can try. A lot have tried this online income opportunity, a lot more have failed. But those that did succeed, they are now bragging of 5-figure monthly incomes.  What does this mean? It means that the result of work from home endeavors are varied, and you should invest a good amount of time researching about it.

3. There are no guaranteed results.

If you encounter people saying that you’ll earn xxx amount of money in xxx amount of time, GUARANTEED, stay away from those people. Unless you’re a full-time employee of a company who’s willing to let you work from home, there are no guaranteed income in work from home opportunities.  You may have contracts for projects that run for months, but, as with all contract jobs, there is a risk that those contracts fold. I’ve come a good article about work from home scams here:

http://tinyurl.com/nj2ro

4. Work from Home opportunities are not free.

They will cost you something, one way or the other. Like the old saying, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”, work from home activities will incur costs. This can come as utilities expense  (i.e. electricity), equipment costs (your computer), and consumables (ink for your printers, stationery, etc.).

You should treat it like a business: separate your personal money from the money that is for the business. It’s one of the most common mistakes that people do, causing them to burn holes into their pockets, instead of stuffing them with money.

5. There are a LOT of work from home scams.
Invest a lot of time in researching the Work from Home opportunity you are planning to take up. Like all popular opportunities, there will always be malicious people who will try to scam you. Try searching Google with  ”Work from home scams” and you’ll get more than 20 million hits.  Don’t let those fancy, catchy ads lure you. “Look before you leap”, as they say. Again, try reading this article:

http://tinyurl.com/nj2ro

I know there are more things you should know but those 5 items above can be a good start.

As for my ongoing research on earning a good online income, I’ve invested 3 days worth of lunch money to buy an information product about working from home and earning through online means.  I’ll be posting a review of the product in the next couple of days; I’m still trying to absorb the massive amount of information it offers.

Thanks for reading, and see at the next post.

By the way, below is the ad that got me skipping 3 meals.