Building Passive Income Streams - Anyone Can Do It

People often ask me if all I do is sell on eBay. No. I have many other income streams. eBay is just one of them. The key to making money with multiple streams of income is persistence, time, and commitment. For example, here is my history on eHow - an article writing site.

I started writing for eHow back in June 2007. I didn't even know the site paid its writers. I was just writing articles about how to do stuff on eBay. In January of 2008, money started showing up in my Paypal account. I have submitted 316 articles to eHow since September 2007. The last article I submitted was in February 2010. (I stopped submitting articles when the system changed and it became more time consuming to write there.) Click here to see my profile. My articles have had over 1 million views in the last 3 years and I am now making about $35 a day and haven't submitted anything in over 8 months. I now make enough money from this income stream to pay my mortgage.


Here are screen shots of how my earnings have grown over 3 years:

2008

2009

2010

Why am I telling you this? BECAUSE ANYONE CAN DO IT. All you have to do is start and make a commitment to keep building these income streams from now on. It only takes minutes a day. But you have to do it every day.

eHow is only one of my streams of income. In addition to eHow and eBay I make money from these things:

Selling books on Amazon
Google Ads on my blogs
Affiliate marketing
Writing for the Examiner

It just takes discipline, commitment, and the understanding that rewards will come later - delayed gratification. Here are some tips on where and how to get started building passive income streams.

Start a blog to promote your eBay store.

Start a blog about anything you want and monetize it.

Sign up for Swagbucks.
(Here are my gift card rewards for this year - so you can see it really works! I have redeemed 28 $50 Amazon gift cards this year so far for a total of $1,400. You can use the gift card balance immediately or let them accumulate. I will be doing all of my Christmas shopping on Amazon this year with money that Swagbucks paid me.)


Submit articles to Constant Content.

START NOW - DON'T WAIT. Six months from now you can be seeing income from these sources.

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Amazing eBay Story - Sue the Truck Driver

I received an email a few weeks ago from Sue regarding selling books on eBay and Amazon. You have to hear her story. Sue is quite a resourceful and shrewd business person. I am amazed at what people can do when they decide to do it.

I am a long haul truck driver, just me and my dog Kelly. I stay out from home about 4 weeks at a time. I have my net book computer and I use truck stop wifi to gain access to the internet. I have some books, cds and dvds in my truck cab and list them for sale online. I also have a printer and can print the shipping labels. When something sells, I can package it with my packaging materials that I keep in the cab too, and drop it in a mailbox at some truck stops.

And I also have many amazon affiliate links on my websites, as well as affiliates for other places. So if anyone buys from my sites, I get a commission. I am also going to sign up with e-junkie.com and use their service to process ebooks and other electronic items that I can sell. I am a member of click-bank and they have a wide variety of items that I can sell on my websites or on amazon and eBay.

If I get to a yard sale or thrift store, I can scan bar codes with my i phone app and then determine by the price of the item whether or not to buy for resale in amazon or eBay.

This is a side hobby I do in my free time when I'm not driving. We get a 10hr break after every 14 hr work period. Sometimes we wait all weekend long at a truck stop to deliver on Monday, so we have a lot of time to do internet work.

My websites right now are www.truckersue.com and www.tropicalsue.com and www.bajapoker.com. I use register.com for my sites as they are not too pricey and are very user friendly. I can build a website in a few hours. I then use godaddy.com with discount code "ron" (from harry potter) and get domain names. Then I forward those domain names to my websites.

I am slowly building my sites where I can do a shopping cart with ejunkie and when customer buys, they are taken to download the items they purchase. I don't have to stock anything. It's all automatic. I give the personal touch by sending them a email thanking them for their purchase. And I can and will set up nice coupons and discounts for customers as well. I do all this whenever I have free time.

I also enjoy making videos and have started a video series called "Ride Along with Trucker Sue" on YouTube. I check in from various places in the country & talk about anything exciting. I then always include some links to my sites in the videos. I have done podcasts too. But I don't have too much time for too much stuff!!

I am on facebook at www.facebook.com/myyango I post on there probably more than anywhere else. It's a fun place to keep in touch with friends & family.


Susan Miller and my dog Kelly

Wow, a mobile eBay and Amazon business run from the cab of a truck. Very impressive! This just goes to show that you can do what you want to do and figure out a way to do it if you are persistent and determined to find a way.

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Create Your Own Blog to Attract New eBay Customers

eBay sellers are constantly on the hunt for new customers. That is the nature of selling. You can communicate with your target audience by starting your own blog that parallels what you sell on eBay. For example, I have a client who sells trade show exhibits - the materials for the displays used at trade shows. This client wants to communicate with existing buyers and attract new ones by starting a blog that focuses on trade show exhibits. His blog will discuss all sorts of trade show related topics like:

Display hardware and graphics
Portable displays
Custom designed displays
Trade show flooring
Rentals
Hiring set up and dismantle labor
Trade show schedules

His blog will attract readers that he can send to his eBay store and website. He will make some residual money using Google Adsense and affiliate programs. He is very knowledgeable trade show exhibits and knows this niche inside and out. By creating a blog in conjunction with his eBay store, he can stay in touch with his customers from eBay, and his blog can be found by new customers when they Google phrases like trade show exhibits, trade show displays, and trade show booths.

When selling online, your goal should be to create and maintain several streams of income. In other words, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. The magic (and the money) comes when all your streams of income are weaved together into a virtual tapestry - and they take on a life of their own. Multiple streams of income will feed off each other.

Taking your eBay business to the next level involves starting a niche blog. This is how people interested in your product line can find you - they may not go to eBay first. I highly recommend this course and am taking it myself - I am in month 5 and the information just keeps coming. I like this blogging course because the format allows users to move at their own individual pace. The concepts of online marketing, keyword optimization, identifying niches, finding your target audience, etc. can be applied to more than just blogging.

There is a free 3-day trial, so if nothing else, take the trial and see what the course has to offer.

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Making Money During the Arctic Blast

I received this email from Cotie in the freezing Northeast. Due to the awful weather, he (like many of you) can't get out and make the rounds to buy eBay inventory. His question:

"I'm a 62 year old male (not a work at home mom) but I took early retirement after my computer programming career ended, due to outsourcing. After my career ended in 2001, I started selling books on eBay then eventually Amazon.

My question: Old man winter is here in the Northeast at full force and it's time to start making money with my brain until summer comes back. I love researching things to look for at garage sales and thrift stores and was thinking of writing a bunch of articles on ehow. But, I wonder. Would it be more lucrative to start a blog on that subject (I see it as sort of like the now defunct Auction Rebel blog.)

If so, how do you receive your money from a blog. On eHow they pay you thru PayPal, but how is the money distributed from a blog? Would I make just as much just writing those articles on ehow? or would I make more doing it via a blog?"

Ok, now for my answer. Keep in mind that different people will answer this in different ways, but here are my thoughts.

1) Continue to write articles on eHow. You will build your article bank over time and it will start to pay better as time goes by. Before you jump into a blog you need some practice with online writing and start to establish an internet presence.

2) The traffic is already on eHow, you don't have to drive it there as you would with a blog. I have close to 300 articles here, and I make about over $500 a month. I only add about 10 articles a month and have been writing for the site for just over 2 1/2 years. The trick is learning to write articles that drive high paying ads and submitting content on a continual basis to build your article bank. Click here for an outstanding guide on how to really start making money on eHow - this eHow guide is my Bible.

3) You can learn about blogging while you continue to add your articles to eHow. I recommend The Niche Blogger. This is a 1 month course that only costs $19.95. The teacher (who makes money with many niche blogs) explains the entire process step by step and you move thru the course at your own pace. I wish I had found this course sooner. I have 2 more blogs that I expect to launch in the next few weeks. My goal is to eventually have several streams of income set up that I won't have to rely so heavily on eBay (although I will never quit completely) - but working with a physical product is labor intensive.

4) When you have a blog, you are paid by the affiliates and advertisers whose products you promote. There are many different companies out there. For example, I get checks from Google AdSense, Clickbank, Commission Junction, and Logical Media. It is like having a bunch of part time jobs - you eventually have checks coming in all the time and it is wonderful!

I hope this helps. You may also want to get active in the eHow Forums. There are many helpful writers there who also blog. Also check out sites like Bukisa, HubPages, Associated Content, and Suite 101 who pay you to write.

Good luck!

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