building residual income streams

Thank for the tip Ryan, certainly considering that for next year.

Yes, sadly these dumb ass states, pass these Internet Tax laws and so Amazon says..screw you...LOL we are outta here.. and the states then get NONE of the money they anticipated. This has been happening now for about 2 years and California and then Colorado were some of the first states to do this.

Most people, as pointed out, just incorporate in another state, get a PO BoX in that state and go on with their Amazon Affiliation..if you go to Google and type in how to Keep being an amazon affiliate after my state closed down or something along those lines you will find a TON of work arounds.

Bill, I like your general set up, but I wonder if using a traditional enviromentalist issue like GMO's (or climate change, or peak oil) might not come across as too preachy for a general audience and that ir might be better to for a global scale natural disaster, something like a pandemic or impact event (or gamma ray burst, coronal mass ejection, supervolcano, etc) something that massively damages infrastruvture and ecosystems, but cant be construed as blaming the readers.t each of these options also has unique charachteristics to help define your world building as well.

Basically, if you want to live life according to your own terms - you have to become a "creator". One way to build residual income streams is to create products that people need or products that solve a problem. These can be physical products or electronic products. I have to admit that it is sometimes hard to do this for those who depend on a "JOB" and live paycheck to paycheck. When do you have time? You come home from work in the evening and all you want to do is chill out. You're probably experiencing brain drain - simply put - you're shot! So years go by and nothing ever happens! Can anyone relate to this??

However, at some point you have to break out of this vicious cycle and just start creating - if you want to change your life.

Totally Lisa! I have been there and it is very difficult to overcome. I usually come home, change, eat dinner and watch a tv show. at the end of that show, I turn off the TV and go to work. It's hard, but it will mean the difference between a life of coming home feeling drained versus realizing the potential of an empowered life. I used to get home at 5:20 eat and chill for an hour and then work untill 11pm. You can do it!

Excellent and timely thread.

I have done -some- reading about the ebook process. I gather that there has been a lot of flux the last year or two concerning the preferred method/software for producing ebooks. The Scubbly site had a vague mention of several free or low cost programs, but no links or specifics.

Some folks have made references like, you produce it in Word and (some magic conversion happens) and then you have an ebook.

This dude: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-20010547-82/how-to-self-publish-an-ebook/

recommends mobipocket and/or Calibre, but I have zero first hand or even good second knowledge if they are actually good/easy/affordable.


Any specific recommendations for the mechanics of producing an ebook?



Finest regards,


troy

Ryan Mitchell wrote:Totally Lisa! I have been there and it is very difficult to overcome. I usually come home, change, eat dinner and watch a tv show. at the end of that show, I turn off the TV and go to work. It's hard, but it will mean the difference between a life of coming home feeling drained versus realizing the potential of an empowered life. I used to get home at 5:20 eat and chill for an hour and then work untill 11pm. You can do it!

Hi Ryan,
There sure are a lot of us North Carolinians in here - isn't that interesting...I wonder what that means? But
I like your web site. In fact my son wants to go to the conference next year - however, I an not sure if I will be able to make it. I think the tiny house concept is really cool.

And thanks for the motivation! It's tough - but I believe that I can to it too!

Lisa

Hi Troy,
I agree - this is a good thread and a topic that is well received.

I think that producing informational e-books, that people want to buy, is a great idea. I am also looking into this. I don't know the exact mechanics either since I have never written one. However, if you use MS Word to write the book, couldn't you then turn that word document into a pdf. (Adobe) The pdf would be the basis of the e-book. Although, there must be other steps involved. Additionally, you will need to create a kick ass cover for the e-book. I have read that e-books will sell if they have attractive covers. And there are various programs that can create the covers. So no matter what you write about - be sure to have a fantastic cover that attracts customers to it!! I plan to research e-book creation and will share any information that I think is helpful.

Lisa

Lisa Marie wrote:

Ryan Mitchell wrote:Totally Lisa! I have been there and it is very difficult to overcome. I usually come home, change, eat dinner and watch a tv show. at the end of that show, I turn off the TV and go to work. It's hard, but it will mean the difference between a life of coming home feeling drained versus realizing the potential of an empowered life. I used to get home at 5:20 eat and chill for an hour and then work untill 11pm. You can do it!

Hi Ryan,
There sure are a lot of us North Carolinians in here - isn't that interesting...I wonder what that means? But
I like your web site. In fact my son wants to go to the conference next year - however, I an not sure if I will be able to make it. I think the tiny house concept is really cool.

And thanks for the motivation! It's tough - but I believe that I can to it too!

Lisa

I used to live in Hudson,NC outside Linville,NC.Now back home in upstate SC.Add me to the lived in NC list.Wanna move back someday.

Lisa Marie wrote:Hi Troy,
I agree - this is a good thread and a topic that is well received.

I think that producing informational e-books, that people want to buy, is a great idea. I am also looking into this. I don't know the exact mechanics either since I have never written one. However, if you use MS Word to write the book, couldn't you then turn that word document into a pdf. (Adobe) The pdf would be the basis of the e-book. Although, there must be other steps involved. Additionally, you will need to create a kick ass cover for the e-book. I have read that e-books will sell if they have attractive covers. And there are various programs that can create the covers. So no matter what you write about - be sure to have a fantastic cover that attracts customers to it!! I plan to research e-book creation and will share any information that I think is helpful.

Lisa

There was a video floating around explaining how to import either word or note document into a PDF program.I don't know all the proper terminology,but it wasn't real difficult from what I remember.It's been a couple years back since I saw it.The guy was going it to for the same reason you mention,ebook.This may help. http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/search/index.cfm?cat=support&term=convert%20word%20into%20pdf&loc=en_US&self=0&lr=en_US&product=adobereader

If you want to use amazon you'll have to get your book into .mobi format, you can do that pretty simply using calibre (which is free) I also suspect Amazon has a tool availble for this purpose if your putting something on its marketplace. If you just want a PDF people can buy through your personal website or whatever, IMO the easiest way to do that is to open it in LibreOffice and use its export to PDF function.

Good info Logan.

You got the process right. I generate my word document and create the content. From there I typically hand it off to my graphic designer, he makes the ebook cover graphic and then themes to ebook content to the cover and dresses things up a bit. In word you can go to File > save as > PDF or if you have an older version there is a free converter called CutePDF which works great.

I can't emphasize this enough, with ebooks, the cover is EVERYTHING. Good content will mean nothing if you have a bad cover.

After that I load it into a service that automates the payment process and delivery of the ebook. There are a lot of services out there, but I like getdpd the best Check it out here GetDPD Click here

It is $10 a month, but if you sell a few a month its worth it. I literally don't have to do anything and the money just shows up. Done and Done. The other advantage of this service is that you can have the ebooks stamped, so if someone does share your copyrighted material, you know who it is that shared it.

I don't recommend Amazon, they take too much and have restrictions. On top of that, most ebooks on there don't ever make $500, about 5% make above that and about 2% make more than a few thousand. The other advantage of get dpd type of service is that they do affiliates. This means you contact someone with a similar topic website, say, I have this product, here is a free review copy if you like it and will do a post about it, I'll give you 20% of each sale you generate. This means you can sell your ebook without having the traffic (yet, while you're building a following). If you are very targeted with who you approach, you can get some sales.

When you contact a blog to see if they will do a review or become an affiliate keep these things in mind:
1. is it highly relevant to their blog, do your homework!
2. Keep it simple and remove barriers to sign up as an affiliate
3. Demonstrate why its relevant and valuable to them specifically
4. Be professional, friendly, knowledgeable and responsive.

Remember they are helping you, even if you have affiliate programs that pays them, demonstrate value and be appreciative.

In Paul's podcast he mentioned how angry he gets when people email him like he owes them sometime. I have people all the who email me, "how dare you do it this way!" or "you need to post this" or they want me to cover their stuff and its so off base from what I do or I have no idea who they are. Build relationships before you need something and do things for others before you ask things of them. People are willing to do a lot for a friend, that's what you should be.

If you found this post or others helpful, I'd appreciate anyone using this referral link if they decide to go with get DPD https://getdpd.com/?referrer=gjcyidotwjs4kw04ck4w

If you also want to know more about this stuff, I do business coaching if interested.

Anyone a member of FREELANCER and make money through there?I signed up a while back but I haven't found anything I feel comfy taking on.I lack confidence in my skills and ability to meet deadlines.

The 5 Minutes With Jack podcast ( found at jackspirko.com) that Jack Spirko used to do is very much worth a listen to anyone interested in building a residual income stream. A lot of what he says really resonates with the "just do something" and "follow your passion" messages in this thread and Paul's recent podcast on the subject.

Hi Ben,
You are now added to the NC list!! (unofficial of course)

I have never used Freelancer - but did attempt to use eLance a while back. I just found that the pay is too low. I think that the people that like to use these sites to find contract workers - don't want to pay a person what they are really worth. And you will have to meet deadlines - so it's a matter of finding something you like first (which is hard to do) and then pacing yourself to be sure you make the deadline. To me - it's too much trouble for too little pay. It's a better idea to create residual income streams that make "make money while you sleep" - as they say.................

Lisa Marie wrote:Hi Ben,
You are now added to the NC list!! (unofficial of course)

I have never used Freelancer - but did attempt to use eLance a while back. I just found that the pay is too low. I think that the people that like to use these sites to find contract workers - don't want to pay a person what they are really worth. And you will have to meet deadlines - so it's a matter of finding something you like first (which is hard to do) and then pacing yourself to be sure you make the deadline. To me - it's too much trouble for too little pay. It's a better idea to create residual income streams that make "make money while you sleep" - as they say.................

Thanks and I agree.To much trouble for to little compensation.

I really enjoyed the income streams podcast! I was inspired by the playing cards project!
I have been thinking about creating a poster that shows the most common companion plantings like three sisters or Apple comfrey clover mint etc
I've found many that show planting maps with relative size and position of plants but what I want to do is a flow chart showing the plant dependencies graphically
the exchange of nitrogen etc.
I'd like to do it in a classic Botanical or Audubon society illustration style a really beautiful image that people would want to hang in their home but also teach them about permaculture principals
like this:
I can design, illustrate and produce the poster thats my area of expertise
http://www.eller.ca/illustrations---info-graphics.html
where I need some help is editing: selecting the plant families to include and what their interactions are
is this crazy idea? before I spend a 40 hours doing mockups

Just followed a link to this today. I haven't really looked at it.

http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/

What do you all think? What are some of the best ideas for permies?

He looks like he's doing quite well, although he seems to be working his income streams a lot.

He sure beats my $110 last month but then again it was my first month and I didn't do any work to generate it.

Wow, he pulled in more than $58K just in January 2014 ($52K in December 2013). Success breeds success, especially on the internet, huh?

His biggest income generators are affiliate programs via his (apparently very popular) website.

That looks very interesting, although not really for me. I'm making pretty good money as a pediatrician. (I'm no dermatologist, but I can't complain.)

I do wonder about writing short e-books on pediatric topics, though. I wonder if there's a market for that. With two kids, a full time job and lots of house duties, I don't think I could populate a blog with enough content to be successful, but if I tackled one topic at a time. . .

Anybody here know how long a typical $2.99 e-book on Amazon.com runs?

Hello Julia,

I have actually published on Amazon before. If you are a Doctor, I am certain you can manage publishing on Amazon. As to how long it "lasts," that's up to you. I know people who have books over a decade old still on Amazon. (Fictional writers.) I think the idea of you writing books to educate people about childhood diseases is a great subject! Internet blogs are fine for "snippets," but to really impart understanding of something as complicated as a disease, you need a book.

A good approach is to write about the most common disease you have experience with. That way, you do the most good for the largest population and you guarantee a successful base for your book. You can then use this base to then write about less common diseases, helping about ignored minorities. But cut your teeth on the part that will guarantee the largest success.

You then advertise on blogs that fit well with your market. Be creative. Look towards kids sites. Kids can read and they know what ailments they have. They will bring it to the attention of mom and dad. Other obvious ones would be natural medicine sites. Experiment with your advertising and get a good base of knowledge. This first book is an experiment for you, an investment, like your education. Put some time and money into it and learn how to market. That's where the real work will be. Hard as it is to write, selling and marketing are the hard parts. Amazon makes it easy to sell, but does not help too much with marketing.

Once you get your base of knowledge, marketing future books will be far easier.

Then you can sit back and write. It is a bit expensive to setup, but once you have your "education" paid for, you can write as many books as you can and add to your income. Work off of others success with blogs and advertise on their sites.

That's a pretty good start for a writer to earn residuals. Make your investment of money now, while you have it. Learn where and what your customer base is.

YLE

YES! as a doctor YOU could do a lot of thigs to make money online.
1) write up a small MOM'S course on raising children and sell through clickbank.com (They have affiliate programs you could add )
2) You could write a blog about raising children and you could sell sponsorships to companies that selll children's products ( Huggies, foodproducts, etc)
3) True, you can write ebooks ( However marketing can take big chuncks of time)
4 Find people to sell your ebooks ( as suggested, approach blog writers)
5) You could do podcasts on various subjects of interest to parents. ( again , marketing)
Anyway those a a few suggestions.

Julia,

There seems to be a lot of debate lately about vaccinations. Perhaps you could write something about that, from a pediatrician's point of view.

Paul, I'm curious if you see decent money from your YouTube channel? I'm a woodworker/woodturner and know of a couple of people in that area who make their living entirely off of YouTube ad money. They both post new content at least weekly, but also both have fewer subscribers than you.

Rich;)

Great Topic. I totally believe in e-commerce as a way to build residual income. I have a membership site where I teach about one of my expertise's …. Buying and renovating foreclosed homes the energy efficient way. But another idea comes to mind specifically for people who want to get started homesteading or living the permaculture life. Multiple streams of income is part of the answer … Especially when starting out, a young (or not so young, like us) couple probably both have to have at least part time jobs or small businesses. My wife and I have several to support our ventures into permaculture. She is a travel agent. works from her recliner. Sells European River Cruises to people all over the world. I do woodturning. It is especially adaptable to the work schedule demanded of those who would homestead. I have lots of time in the winter to turn products which can sell all year long thru my internet presence. ETSY and Ebay are easy to set up. And fixing up foreclosures is always good business. If you, like me, have the skills, but not the money, there are people who have the opposite who are looking to partner. After I finish my Permaculture class this March, I may be looking for WOOFERs who want to help install the system and learn those income streams in addition to swales, ponds, and hugels……. However we do it, we need to get free from a single income stream job.

Oh, when I wondered about how long a $2.99 e-book runs, I meant how many pages, not how many years. When I went looking for "baby care e-books" what I found were electronic versions of the popular baby books with which I am already quite familiar. It's a rather packed market, and I'm not sure how a self-published e-book would fare against e-versions of established books. If you get into baby care or child care blogs, well, there are hundreds of those and I don't think I have the time to do one properly.

Vaccinations are indeed a hot topic. I'm not sure I have the chutzpah to wade into that particular nest of fire ants. (I just erased a couple of paragraphs after I remembered this is a permaculture site and I'm not in the ulcer factory (or whatever that's called).)

I hadn't thought about writing about diseases. Pediatrics is not very disease driven, thank goodness! Still, perhaps if I wrote an explainer on something like Henoch Schonlein Purpura it might turn up in Google searches when parents are given that diagnosis and looking for information. That doesn't feel good, though, to make money on scared parents. Once I go down that path it seems like I should just put the information out there. And, I still have boxes to try to unpack, and dinner to make, and charts to finish. . . .

Thanks for all of the great, inspiring info all. I've been contemplating something similar as I recently started an eclectic blog on wordpress in hopes of someday getting a readership. I honestly find it difficult to put up a different post frequently enough. This really gives me a lot to think about as I have a set deadline to get out of one particular rat race just to get into a more geographically constant rat race as yet another step to exiting it all together. This may be the proverbial kick in the pants I needed to actually kick the rats and their race to the curb. Thanks for the positive attitudes and great info like always!

Coralee Palmer wrote:
To be financially free means you have the ability to live the lifestyle you desire without having to work or rely on anyone else for money.
Since any lifestyle even with Permaculture is going to cost money; therefore, to be financially free you will need to earn money without working. You will need residual income streams.

There are at least nine (9) ways to build a residual income streams
1. Build an innovative food product
2. Build an influential food brand
3. Build a high-performance food producing team
4. Make food deals taking a cut
5. Buy and sell food commodities for profit
6. Collect food assets that increase in value
7. Control the cash flow generated from food producing assets
8. Build food systems that can be duplicated
9. Design one-of-a-kind food systems that increase in value

We are attempting to help people form companies to do this in Oregon because of a new law. On January 2, 2014, Oregon joined eighteen other states to create a new corporate designation - a Benefit Company, also known as a B-Corp.

The first ideas being investigated to become B-Corps by the Lincoln County Permaculture Entrepreneurship Incubator are:
...

This is really a great idea and I sure wish there was a similar program in AZ. However, I don't think that it is "residual" income. Residual income means that you get paid for doing nothing (after the initial work, such as writing a book or producing a video or website with ads, etc.). It often requires SPAMMING to get the hits so people click on ads or buy ebooks or whatever. I love the examples you list, people coming up with ideas and producing something of value.

I've been on the web for 20 years and I've seen how traffic works. If you have unique content, you'll get loads of traffic until a gazillion other sites have similar info. Paul mentioned how well the rocket stove DVDs kickstarter went because they were the only rocket stove DVDs on the market at the time and there was a lot of demand. I think you need to continually WORK on new products and info, send out newsletters, maintain a forum such as this one, etc.

I recently released an e-book on Amazon Kindle using public domain nautical-themed books, such as Moby Dick, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, etc. and have made a couple hundred dollars off of it since September without doing any marketing. I have made a few thousand dollars running Google ad campaigns for our family's construction company, which seems a lot more productive in a time/money reward sense. Little tip about Amazon I learned the hard way; if you take their higher percentage program, you will be majorly penalized for the size of the book, which I am sure some of the tech background people here would tell you is a ridiculous and unreasonable policy. I shaved my e-book as much as I could and still ended up with a 14 megabyte file and didn't realize for the first month that no royalties were happening because every sale I made was technically negative, based on the file size penalties, lol. The lower percentage royalty program is 35% but has no size restriction penalties. I used public domain texts and ran the HTML files through Calibre to make a Kindle file that was ready for Amazon. I used Calibre because apparently the Kindle software is a little bloated, but I never verified this. There are quickstart guides for Calibre and I managed to do the whole book from start to finish in a weekend with no prior knowledge. It is not performing well on its own, but ten of these would make a real difference in personal financial freedom.

I am wanting to transition out of residential construction (especially with the market and economy beating us up over the last few years) and do much cooler stuff, like the "Duke of Permaculture" Mr. Paul Wheaton, Jack Spirko, etc. I am a complete newbie to Permaculture and stumbled into it last Summer after hearing The Survival Podcast and getting hooked, and Paul has another infected brain under his belt. We sold our spec home 1 year ago and rented a farm house in Tennessee and got some chickens, before learning about Permaculture. I want to document our very beginning attempts at poly-culturing a decent sized mulched, no-till garden and the hopefully productive results in a Youtube video series to help generate ad revenue. Basically in the vein of, this guy never planted a garden in his life, and now with these concepts, is cutting his family grocery bill and building soil. Also want to do a newbie video series on a Rocket Mass Heater in a woodworking shop, possibly integrating cob into a workbench... Any thoughts and/or experiences in relation to this type of income would be very much appreciated.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned video/advertising I'm sure Paul is doing pretty well these days with all his YouTube videos. I have a DIY website & channel on YouTube; http://ricksdiy.com/ & http://www.youtube.com/user/RicksDIY I started making some videos a few years back just for fun and sharing, I don't have that many but with the monetization of the videos I make a few extra hundred dollars every month. One video in particular netted me over $500 last year alone. Not sure how long and how much these videos and YouTube and other sites like them will be making money but since I don't have to do anything besides answer Q's and comments once it's posted it's quite exciting.

As mentioned before, making your own products...not residual just small business type stuff is another option. I've done a few things here and there but 2 years ago finally ventured into my first real product, reset my company as an LLC for tax reasons. Right now I make Generator Transfer Switches through my site http://heezy.com I only have my single circuit transfer switches right now, but have a few larger ones coming and then another product coming out next year. These are great for powering a gas furnace, boiler or sump pump during an emergency. As an Electrican/HVAC mechanic by trade I installed allot of transfer switches and was asked about smaller ones but at the time only one company made them and they were expensive. So I saw where I could make them, make enough of a profit to make it worth it and give a great value to my customers. I also saw that allot of people wanted to be able to install it themselves rather than pay for an electrician, so I made mine suited for a DIY install, with easy to follow instructions and install videos.

So sometimes it's not coming up with anything new, but improving or making it easier to use or apply. Then it's just a matter of manufacturing and shipping charges to see if it's worth it. After 2 years I'm finally in the black with my transfer switches, I sold 4 of them yesterday making it a nice profitable Sunday, It takes me about 15-20 minutes to assemble/pack/ship each one so not a hard days work at all...how many people can say that? I just need another few items and I'll be doing good, I will say that I've had 2 products that were a total bust...just wouldn't sell for what I thought they would. I personally invest up to $2500 in each product for testing/eval and if it's not working I just abandoned it and chalk it up for experience and write it off for my taxes.

If anyone is interested in knowing more on physical products and have any Q's feel free to PM or email me.

Rick

Love the ideas here.

As a passive income stream I have been looking into various p2p lending services. I have signed up for Lending Club and I like it thus far, but haven't been doing it long enough to see how much it will yield. From what I have read the key is to diversify, look for good job security, and then look at the use for the loan. Loans for credit card refinancing, weddings, and vacations have the lowest default rate. If you have a little money sitting in a bank savings account getting 0.1% interest this might be something you want to look into.

What about rental property? And use a management company to truly make it as passive as possible. Or does that not jive with the mission around here?