More of My Best and Worst Side Hustles— The Passive Income Edition
But it sounds so easy in the YouTube videos
While Part 1 looked pretty ok on my side hustle endeavors, Part 2 is a bit less so.
This time I’m focusing on my passive income efforts.
And it all sounds so easy:
Let your assets work for you while you sleep and before you know it you’ll be sipping margaritas on South Beach. Passive income, baby!
Yeah, right. Doesn’t work like that.
In fact, some of it was a trainwreck. So much promise, so little return. Don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s easy street.
One area that I have fallen down on is:
Marketing
No eyeballs. No traffic. No sales. No passive income.
That will improve in the future. In the meantime, here are my personal experiences on my passive income journey.
Multi-Level Marketing
Where do I start?
I was introduced to an “amazing business opportunity” by a contact. Lucky me…
And so began my journey into the hell-hole world of multi-level marketing. The seminars, the high-octane meetups, the heavy selling pitches.
You may have had a good experience with MLMs. Good for you. I didn’t.
I won’t mention the company’s name here as it doesn’t deserve any free airtime.
But it was one big fat pyramid scheme where those at the top scooped up all the passive income, and the foot soldiers were fighting over pointless scraps.
Don’t just take my word for it. The company’s since been sued in various countries and went out of business here in Hong Kong.
The product was meant to be some sort of discount card. In reality, the product was your friends, family, and any other relationships you were set to destroy by signing them up.
Difficulty: 10/10. I just couldn’t sell anything. Lesson learned.
Money: -5/10. Not only did I not make anything, it cost me money to join (around $2,000 from memory). Don’t, just don’t.
Blogging
For now, this isn’t for me.
I’ve owned a few sites but they’ve not worked out. I’ve taken SEO courses, read up on affiliate marketing, collected keywords in a spreadsheet, and joined Google AdSense. It just didn’t work out.
At some point in the future, I’m going to unlearn everything I thought I knew about blogging and start again. There’s value to be had.
Difficulty: 5/10. It wasn’t too hard in principle, although the keyword search and generation of ideas were more challenging. I just couldn’t get the traffic to make it work.
Money: 0/10. I made pennies in passive income and decided to redirect my efforts elsewhere.
eBooks
I’ve written a few self-published books on Amazon based on my finance and resume writing training (including Craft a Winning Resume, The Simple Guide to a Winning LinkedIn Profile, and Personal Finance: More Than Just Numbers).
These have been slow burners. I’ve covered the cost of putting them together. Now it’s just profit.
Difficulty: 5/10. It’s not that hard to write one. It is hard to make good money from it though.
Money: 2/10. It’s a trickle rather than a flood (I sell a few each month). But at least it is now passive.
Amazon Merch
Amazon Merch is a volume game. I just didn’t want to commit more time to create more T-shirt designs. It’s a “non-core” business if you will.
But if you have a creative streak, go for it.
Most of my designs have now dropped off of Amazon, though there some are still hanging around:
Difficulty: 4/10. I created a few through Canva and outsourced some designs. But there are so many T-shirts on the platform, it is competitive if you don’t keep churning them out.
Money: 3/10. To make it proper passive income (not pennies like me) you need a ton of designs that you keep refreshing. I just haven’t made the time.
Etsy
I’ve had an Etsy shop for a little while. Again, the idea was to leverage my CV writing and career coaching background in another environment.
The idea makes perfect sense, but to be honest, I’ve done little to market the products.
Etsy is also so competitive and my lack of marketing is showing in my results.
Difficulty: 3/10. I made CV templates based on my previous freelancing, but there are tons of other templates on the platform so it’s hard to differentiate.
Money: 3/10. I’ve made a few sales but again to make it work you volume and marketing, neither of which have been top of mind.
That’s it
Sure, I could have been more disciplined. But however scattergun it appears, it was me experimenting over a few years.
It’s good to try out a few things to find out what works for you. And I will keep trying.
I’ll move on from my passive income experiences to touch on surveys and testing in a future article — of which, some were surprisingly lucrative.
I’m a finance guy with a career and life coaching background and a past. Find out more on my About Me page.
Essentially, I created Spiritworth to help others “raise their spirit and raise their (net and self) worth.”
Join as a member to get access to thousands of Medium writers. Tap this link.
Connect with me on Twitter.
You may find affiliate links within this article.
