Passive Income

Lately it seems as if I have created too many passive income streams for me to handle. I only get a few hours each week to work online, yet I have been buying each and every new thing that pops up. This is definitely NOT the way to increase my monthly revenue.

As such, I spent a few hours organizing my passive income streams while my son was taking his nap this afternoon. What I discovered is that I have been bouncing from one technique to another, never giving any of them a real chance to work. My income is down, my production is down and my confidence is down.

I need to get back to the basics.

For me, the most consistent income stream has always been eHow. I have a little over 100 articles published and I should actually clear $100 this month. Some people complain about the eHow sweeps. I find that whenever they do a little house cleaning, my earnings increase a bit. Works for me!

Clickbank is all over the place. Sometimes I make decent money, other times I make nothing. I can sometimes go a month without a sale and then follow that up with four sales in 24 hours. I honestly believe it has something to do with their tracking but you could never prove that.

My Squidoo earnings are absolutely pathetic, although I do manage to make a sale or two every now from a OWM campaign or two. If you are trying to learn how to effectively use Squidoo to make some extra money for Christmas, Jackie, from Beginner’s Internet Marketing, has some really effective ideas. I printed out one of her mindmaps which has really helped me organize a few campaigns.

Finally, my niche sites are quite simply a waste of space. I bought a few domain names that have a ton of potential but the subjects BORE ME TO TEARS. I will never finish these, but at least it taught me to only do things that I like instead of thinking only about their potential.

Passive income is a tremendous way to plan for the future. It is, however, really easy to get distracted. Instead of trying to do everything at once, start slowly and build a little bit each day.

Now, I just need to follow my own advice!

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If you have been reading CTB for long you will know that creating passive income is my passion. You will also know that, while writing articles is typically very easy for me, developing professional looking sales pages is my weakness. I can get people to my sites with no problem, I just cannot create those eye-popping sites that rake in the sales.

The problem with trying to make money online is that you either have to create your own products or learn how to be a really good affiliate. Product creation takes too much time, since I basically have 2 hours a week to get stuff done online. And to be honest with you, I am not really that good of an affiliate (or at least my sales indicate that I am not). Fortunately for me, I found a product today that takes care of both these issues for me. It creates products for me AND creates professional looking websites with a push of a button…No really. It is that easy.

Please, do yourself a favor and go check this out. Once this site gets 100 members it will move from a low one time payment of $37, to a monthly subscription of $17. It is not hard to do the math, is it? How do I know it is going that the membership will reach 100 quickly….Brian Zimmerman, creator of The Newbie Notebook, just blasted this to his lists, and in case you do not know, that dude is awesome.

Here is the link to check out the product – Easy Button Business. I just bought this, so tonight I will create my first site and publish a review for you guys in the next few days!

BUILD YOUR OWN PASSIVE INCOME BUSINESS TODAY!

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The buzz around X-Factor’s adsense course is quite simply astonishing. It seems like everyone and their mother has jumped in head first, pumping out as many of these little micro niche sites as they can. I can see the appeal. Create a quick 5 page website, get a few links to your main domain name and a couple to your inner pages, and viola…pure passive income from then on.

Normally, I would encourage people to give this method a try. After all, what could you possibly lose besides a few dollars for a domain name and a couple hours of your time?

What people are failing to understand is that in order for this system to work it is crucial that you create quality content. Since you are only posting 5 pages at most, each one should provide some value to the reader. If not, you are simply spamming the world.

Need proof? Take at look at this site – http://carlsonfishoil.net (I am not going to link to this since I do not want to negatively impact this dude’s site), so open a new browser and check it out..I will wait …) What is the first thing you notice? Yep. That is the exact SAME template that hundreds, if not thousands, of X-Factor’s students are using. Using the same template as others is not that big a deal. Using the same template while providing the same crappy content is a big deal. Pretty soon the engineers at Google will put a stop to this. Just ask those people who bought NicheDevil.

What else do you notice about that site?

The home page has the following wording: “Here you will be able to find suppliers of all types of Carlson Fish Oil“. Really? I do not see links to any suppliers. What I see is Google ads….so is this writer implying that I should click on the ads listed? I think so, and that is a direct violation of Google’s TOS.

Please understand that I am not against people trying to make money online. If you have been a reader here for any length of time you will know that I think the internet is the best place to develop a nice stream of passive income without having to leave your own home. What I have a problem with is that people take a solid, well-developed plan and then shortcut it so much that it really looks like spam. I am sure John (X-Factor) never intended people to create such crap. Since I have not read the ebook, I cannot be sure, but if he is making the kind of money I think he is, you can be sure his sites are top shelf.

If I were going to test this method out I would do things a bit differently. I would take the information I learned and work it into what I already know. I would definitely NOT use the same template as everyone else, but the ad placement is perfect.  I would create at least 5 pages of quality content that would stand up to a Google exam and I would not begin creating ANY links for at least a month. Furthermore, until my site was indexed I probably would not add any Adsense to it. I am seeing more and more and more sites that look like this that have public service ads on them since Google simply cannot figure out what the site is about.

This is just my 2 cents. I personally know a few people who are absolutely killing it with this technique. Personally, I am using a combination of Google Sniper and One Week Marketing. I also tend to be too much of a perfectionist so I am always adding content to my niche sites when in reality they probably should be left alone so that I can move on to another site.

If you are using X-Factor’s methods please do yourself and everyone else a favor, create readable content that provides at least an ounce of value. Otherwise you are simply spamming up the internet.

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