Some people have asked whether it would be sustainable if everyone tried to earn passive income, so let’s get that out of the way before we continue with this passive income series.
I think the supposition here is that certain jobs don’t adapt well to passive income strategies, and therefore certain work is best suited to active income. Let’s suppose that’s true for the sake of argument.
Passive and active income strategies compete in the marketplace. People are free to choose either strategy. Most people choose active income. Why? I think the main reason is that they’ve been socially conditioned to choose this strategy. They probably make this choice without much knowledge of passive income strategies. Schooling, parents, and peers help train most people to chose active income.
Even if a lot more people started earning passive income and fewer people were willing to earn money as active income, I believe the market would adapt without skipping a beat. For critical tasks that could only be performed with ongoing labor, prices would rise, and therefore more people would be willing to perform those tasks.
Presently we have an oversupply of people who are looking for jobs, and we have a shortage of jobs for those people. So is it really wise to keep training more people to look for jobs? No, that would be foolish and will only make the problem worse. It will also cause salaries to drop, lowering people’s standard of living.
I think a better solution is to teach passive income strategies and help some of those people make different choices. Passive income is a great choice in this economy since you won’t need to find a job. In fact, you can actually help to stimulate more job creation.
Passive income has the effect of creating more jobs as well as supporting existing jobs. Whenever I create new passive income streams, I create income for other businesses. These generate revenue that helps cover the salaries of many employees.
Remember that passive income methods involve delivering value to more people than you probably could with an active income strategy. I see no reason to hold back on providing value. You may be providing different forms of value with a passive income strategy, but it’s still a net gain for others if you increase your contribution.
If you license your book to a book publisher and receive passive income in the form of royalties on sales, the publisher may in turn pay people to perform specific jobs to keep their system running, and those employees may receive active income in the form of a salary. Your book deal helps to facilitate this and creates and sustains jobs for others.
Passive and active income strategies are mutually supportive. They are not opposites. I think it’s healthy for both to co-exist.
I don’t personally want a regular job, but I understand that many people do, sometimes desperately so. I may poke fun at the regular job mindset now and then to get people to think about this more consciously and to consider alternatives, but I respect people’s ability to make their own choices.
As for whether it’s fair to earn passive income, I’d say it’s more than fair. It’s downright generous. As I’ve shared in previous posts, passive income tends to be more heavily rewarded (and less taxed) than active income. But passive income strategies can also add a lot of value to the economy, and so it makes sense to reward these strategies more heavily. By helping to create and sustain more jobs for others, you can actually generate significantly more tax revenue than you would if you earned the same amount via active income.
It’s not uncommon for active income earners to think of passive income as a greedy strategy. The irony is that it’s just as easy to regard active income earners as holding back and making a lesser contribution… contributing to just one employer when they could be serving many more people. The truth is that both strategies seek to contribute, just in different ways.
In the next several posts, I’ll cover some specific passive income strategies. I’ll even demonstrate some of these strategies with specific examples from my own business, so you can better understand how they work.
Read related articles:This guest post is by Timo Kiander of Productivesuperdad.com.
Are you afraid that you’ll never reach blogging success? Are you working your backside off on top of your day job to produce articles, ebooks, videos, and podcasts, and learn everything about Pinterest (or any other social network for that matter)?
Do you feel you are running on a blogging treadmill like a hamster but never giving yourself time to rest and recover?
If this is you, then welcome to the club! I have been there, done that, and I can relate. It’s not a very pleasant feeling to experience. However, things don’t have to be that way: there is a solution for this situation.
Burnouts, broken relationships, and abandoned blogsLet’s face it: working harder and longer hours on your blog doesn’t necessarily make you more productive.
In the short term it might do that, but in the long run you are going to burn out. You are going to lose the fun of blogging too—even on the topic you’re passionate about.
On top of all that, you also put your relationships with your closest ones to danger. When too much of your blogging time is prioritized over the family time, you are soon in a situation where you have to make a decision: you can choose either your blog or your family.
They’re to blame (and you too!)It’s a lot easier to blame someone else than to take responsibility for your own actions, but in this scenario there are really two responsible parties: them and you.
No matter which blogging hero (or productivity hero) you listen to, they keep telling you that more is better. Create more. Engage more. Be everywhere!
They say, “You cannot build a successful blog without working like crazy, taking massive action, and producing solid, shareable content on a frequent basis. And if you can do it all on a daily basis, that’s even better!”
So, you look up to your blogging hero and think, “Well … s/he must be right. I’ve got to get my act together and work more, do more, engage more. Otherwise, I’ll never see the blogging success that I want or the six-figure income that I’m dreaming about.”
You believe the stories they tell you. It’s virtual peer pressure at its worst—and you take the bait.
Time to slow downI have been blogging since 2010 and I have consistently produced material for my blog twice per week. That includes written content and videos, and at some points I was even doing podcasts.
In addition, I have guest posted on big blogs and produced couple of ebooks as well—all while having a day job, a family (my wife and a son), and some time-consuming hobbies (I’m a triathlete and a marathoner).
Lately, I have felt like that hamster on a treadmill—I keep running and running but I never have a chance to relax or recover. Nor have I had time to study, do more research, or truly connect with other bloggers.
That’s why I decided to slow down my blogging pace. I’m not leaving blogosphere. I’m just cutting down the speed a bit. By doing this I aim to grow my blog even bigger than it is now.
In practice, slowing down means posting every other week instead of on a weekly basis. This change gives me more room to breathe, and allows me to do more reading and testing, and to create more new material.
For instance, for a couple of months I have wanted to build my own time management system, but I had to postpone the project because of lack of time. Or what about learning photo reading? That’s yet another project that I had to postpone. Interviews, tests, experiments, case studies … I guess you already know by now why I have never started with these projects, though they’re all on my list.
Some people are scared of this change and think that slowing down is like regressing—that if you slow down, you won’t be on everyone’s minds and lips anymore.
Well, maybe. But look around. There are many big bloggers who don’t follow a daily blog post pattern, and they’re still doing well! Derek Halpern and Glenn Allsop and Jon Morrow come to mind (and by the way, check out this video to learn why Derek is posting so infrequently).
In my opinion, slowing down is not regression. Actually, it is the best thing that has happened to me for a long time.
How to slow down successfullySlowing down may sound easy, but in reality it’s not. One scary word keeps most of the bloggers working the same way they always have: fear.
They fear that if they change their routines and habits, they are not going to reach blogging success. They are also afraid of missing something crucial if they don’t follow to the letter what the gurus are teaching (advice that so many other bloggers are following).
But if they’re brave enough and decided to get through that glass wall known as fear, a new world would emerge for them. Are you one of these brave ones? If you are, here are five steps to follow that should make the transition much easier:
Don’t get me wrong: it is fine to learn from gurus, but be sure to adjust their lessons to your unique situation! You are the only one to say if you are capable of producing epic content every day, or only once a week.
Over to you now: have you slowed down your blogging pace because of increased stress, weaker relationships with your close ones, or just plain burning out—even when blogging about something you are passionate about? Leave your comments and share your experiences below. Let’s support each other to slow down!
Timo Kiander, a.k.a. Productive Superdad, teaches WAHD superdad productivity for work at home dads. If you want to get more productive in your own life, grab 222 of his best Tips for Becoming a Productivity Superstar.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger