Want to know why Steemit is one of the best sites on the internet? Let me tell you a story. No, it’s not short. None of mine are.
Anyway, I’ve always been an entrepreneur. When I was a kid I would have yard sales and sell all my toys. In my preteens I would dumpster dive at the back of electronics stores and thrift stores and fix the broken stuff and resell what I didn’t use myself. When I was in my late teens, I was almost obsessed with get-rick-quick schemes and multi-level marketing programs. I dropped hundreds of dollars on late night infomercial schemes. I bought things I would never sell to anyone and sold things to people I would never buy myself. I attended seminar after seminar listening to guys talk up what it was like to be rich and how I could be, too…if I just paid $395.95 to buy their package that “would change your life forever”. They were always very motivational and inspirational and encouraged me to keep looking for that one “thing” that would make me richer than I could ever imagine.
I attended this one seminar that sounded just like the rest. But not long into it I realized this wasn’t the same get-rich-quick seminar. This guy actually had something valuable to offer…and he was giving it for free. It was so valuable that not one person actually bought the thing he was really trying to sell, which was just another multi-level marketing package. Hell, now that I think about it, it might have been Amway, but I can’t remember. I honestly don’t think he realized what happened that day.
What he gave was perspective. The perspective of the wealthy. The perspective of the elite. He explained what made rich people rich. It wasn’t just that they had a lot of money or that the money gave them a certain amount of power. It was that they knew how to make money and they could do it over and over again without batting an eye. It was, essentially, a personality type. A world view. A work ethic. His exact phrase was, “Work smarter, not harder.”
This was a major turning point for me, because up to this point, I had always wondered how rich people got rich when there is only 24 hours in a day. I was making $9/hr and worked 40 hours a week. What would a person making a million a year have to do to make their $480/hr? They sure as hell didn’t do it busting their ass like I was. And how was their work more valuable than mine? If I didn’t show up for work, dozens of computers didn’t get built (I was working for a company that built the custom “OEM” machines for IBM and HP at the time). If they didn’t show up for work, what would happen? This question was actually posed by the speaker at the seminar. What would happen? Nothing. Nada. The world would keep on turning and he wouldn’t be missed all that much. But he’d still get paid.
“Wait, What?” I thought.
This hypothetical rich guy was so well off that he didn’t have to work to keep making money. I thought, “How in the hell is that possible?” Well, it’s quite simple, really. It’s actually SO simple that the simple minded either don’t believe it or won’t believe it and the ethical would think it unethical. It’s also so blatantly in the face of everyone on the planet that it’s unnerving and a bit disturbing that there are so many blind to it.
It’s called passive income, sometimes incorrectly referred to as residual income. This is income that you don’t actually have to work for. The idea that you can make money and not have to work for it is a concept foreign to most people. For some people it’s even perceived as unethical. I mean, come on! Make money and not have to work for it? What kind of bullshit scheme is this?
It’s not a scheme, and it’s not bullshit. It’s actually a perfectly legitimate way of making money and millions of people do it. As I’ve been writing this, I’ve thought about all the different ways that you could earn passive income. I even had a list of ideas floating around in my head and then it occurred to me. Most can be summarized with one word…creativity.
Anything you CREATE, you can generate passive income from. Musicians do it with their music. Actors do it with their movies. Authors do it with their books. Once their work has been created, it can be sold over and over again without any additional work.
Web content is also a form of passive income, And that's what makes Steemit one of the best sites on the internet. It allows a content creator to earn passive income with little effort. Write once and you're done and the content will generate the income for you.
Putting your energy into great content will pay off over time, and you can wean yourself away from the manual labor stuff that stresses you out and takes away years off your life.
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