Have you ever thought about how millionaires build passive income? After all, they may have millions and counting each second, but it is all thanks to their main businesses and additional methods to make money.
You must remember about millionaires that they approach money differently than the average person or what you would know as “Joe.”
How’s that? First of all, they think about how they can make money without putting in too much work, and they are all loyal to the actual: “work smarter, not harder” saying.
The question is, out of all the ways to make income and passive at that, which ones are they using? It is clear that not all of them work the same way or are as efficient as most people would expect. Thus, you need to determine the difference between what they actually work with and what they don’t consider worth your time.
Here, we want to share some of the best ways to do so and explain—a bit—how they do it. That being said, let’s start with the basics.
What Is Passive Income?
Passive income, which is simply money that you can earn without having to work, is what you are curious about here.
Although it can take a lot of work (even investing), the idea behind building this income structure is to make sure people sustain themselves.
You will usually work hard in the beginning, but most of the work done afterward is minimal, if at all.
If you need a better idea, keep in mind what the opposite is. Active income means that you have to do something in order to make money actively. This is illustrated by the 8 hours or more job from Monday to Friday where you don’t get paid if you don’t work and follow policies.
It depends on what occupation you have, but it can be difficult to make a living if your only source of income is active, and you usually end up burning yourself out as well.
Passive income isn’t foolproof, but millionaires prefer it because they invest lots of time to them reap the fruits of their efforts without any extra work. They just make money every second without moving a single finger.
Made simple: passive income is not a magic money-making system that will make you rich overnight. However, it can maximize returns and allow you to work less over time. This means that over time, your effort decreases, and profits increase.
Also, it is a long-term investment that requires short-term sacrifices. You could make thousands if you are willing to put your time, talents, and money into your goal of creating passive income.
Building Your Way to Passive Income
With the basics in mind, we can start working around the actual information you care about: how millionaires make it possible.
The main idea is to work with passive income ideas, and we want to make clear that more than one will be necessary if you truly want to follow them in their $10k+ per second income.
Overall, millionaires analyze a market and study an idea or strategy for passive income before they decide to invest time and money in it. Thus, consider your options and determine how much you want to invest in this.
Once done, you can start working towards the ideas that allow them actually to build passive income:
Create An E-Book
An e-book is a great way to make money and leverage Amazon’s worldwide distribution to reach millions of potential buyers.
E-books are usually only 30-50 pages long and relatively inexpensive to produce. They also rely on your expertise, and you won’t have to invest a life to finish one and get the money from it.
Expertise in a particular topic is required. However, the topic may be a niche or require you to have special skills that many readers need. It’s easy to create a book online and even test-market it as long as you analyze the area or topic you chose for it.
Suppose you have difficulty figuring out why this is good passive income and why millionaires just release at least one today. In that case, it is because e-books can be used to provide valuable information and value to readers as well as to drive traffic to other offerings such as audio or video courses or higher-value seminars.
However, to build a strong following, your e-book must be well-written. It is also important to have a way to market it. This could include a website, promotion on other websites, appearances on media, podcasts, or any other means.
You could also put in a lot of effort up front but get very little return, especially for the first few months.
While an e-book can be nice, you will benefit if your writing skills are good enough to make it profitable, or you have great information to share and know how to do it, and you build a business around it. Or make the book a part of your business that helps strengthen the others.
Your biggest risk is that you spend too much time for little return if it isn’t a big hit or you don’t have an audience to promote it to beforehand.
Affiliate Marketing Has Always Been Popular
Affiliate marketing allows website owners, social media influencers, or bloggers to promote third-party products by linking to their site or accounts.
While Amazon is the most well-known affiliate partner in the world, ShareASale, Awin, and eBay are also big names. TikTok and Instagram have been huge platforms for people looking to build a following and promote products.
To draw people to your blog or to direct them to other products and services, you might also consider building an email list.
This works because site owners earn a commission when a visitor clicks the link and purchases from the third-party affiliate. It is possible to earn a commission of 3 to 7 percent. This means that you will need significant traffic to your website to make a high income.
If you have a larger following or a lucrative niche, you might be able to make great money from this option alone.
Affiliate marketing can be considered passive since you can make money by simply adding a link to your website or to your social media accounts. If you don’t have readers interested in buying something, you won’t make any money.
When you are just starting out, it will take some time to create content and build traffic. It can take time to build a community unless you already have it. You’ll also need to figure out the best way to attract that audience.
Dividend Stocks Are a Favorite
Companies with dividend-yielding stock pay a regular payment to their shareholders. Companies pay cash dividends quarterly from their profits. The trick, which isn’t hard to deal with, is that you need to own the stock and make your money.
Dividends are always paid per stock share, so the more you have, the greater your payout.
Because the income from stocks isn’t tied to any other activity than the initial financial investment made, dividend-yielding stocks may be one of the passive ways of making money. You will receive the money in your brokerage account.
Now, you will have to prepare yourself since it’s the tricky part is choosing the right stocks.
Companies that issue high dividends may not be financially able to keep it.
Experts warn against novices jumping into the stock market without fully investigating the company that is issuing it.
This is why it is common advice that you must thoroughly investigate each company’s website and become familiar with its financial statements. But before you decide to invest, you should spend at least two weeks researching each company.
That being said, there are many ways to invest in dividend-yielding stock without spending too much time evaluating companies.
You can invest in exchange-traded funds or ETFs, for example.
ETFs can be described as investment funds that hold stocks, commodities, and bonds but trade just like stocks.
A huge benefit is that they can diversify your holdings so that if one company reduces its payout, it won’t affect the ETF’s price or dividend a big time.
Develop an App
An app can be a great way to save time and reap the rewards over the long term, even when it takes a lot of time to make one unless you are more than familiar with it.
You can develop or create one for almost anything. Playing a game, helping them with shores, and more. Once you have all set, you only need to fix small issues, make some changes, or even designate someone for it while you get the most income.
As many millionaires mention, the trick with this is that your time is most likely being wasted.
You have very little changes of making this work and making money if you don’t spend any money on the project.
You ought to remember is how competitive this market is, so successful apps must provide a compelling experience or value to users.
Also, you need to ensure that your app does not collect any personal data as privacy laws are taken seriously but vary in each country and even state.
So, if you’re going for it, make sure you have a good idea in mind and know how to work around it properly.
REITs Are Great Options
Made simple: a REIT is an investment trust that holds real estate assets.
They are known for being a unique legal structure that allows them to pass on most of their income to shareholders without having to pay income taxes for corporations.
One of the beauties about REITs is that they can be purchased on the stock exchange like any dividend stock or company you have in mind.
The best ones are known for increasing their dividends on an annual basis, which means that you could be able to have a steady stream of income thanks to the dividends.
Individual REITs can be riskier than owning an ETF with dozens of REIT stock stocks, and you still work around receiving a nice payout and immediate diversification with a fund.
Like dividend stocks, make sure you pick the best REITs. This means that you will have to thoroughly analyze each business you are considering buying. It can be time-consuming.
Consider Investing in High-Yield Savings Accounts or A CD With High Yield
You can generate passive income by investing in this option at online banking. But remember this: in addition to the highest interest rates, you will also be able to earn passive income, which means there’s the pro and cons.
To ensure you are getting the most out of this option, do a quick Google search of the top CD rates and the top savings rates.
In most cases, an online bank is more beneficial than a local bank since you will be able to choose the best rate in the country.
If the FDIC backs your bank, you will still get a guaranteed return on principal up to $250.000 or even $300k.
Your principal is safe as long as your bank has been backed by FDIC and is within its limits. A CD or savings account can provide the best return.
These accounts, overall, are still safe, but they return less than in the past. This can make it less attractive than inflation which was in the mid-single digits of last year.
Inflation will affect your real purchasing power and could reduce your savings. However, a savings account or CD will give you better returns than cash or a non-interest-bearing check account.
Investing in Real Estate Is Big
Since the dawn of real estate, investing in property has been a proven method to build wealth, and although not many love it, it’s a huge plus for any person that wants to either become a millionaire or continue building their fortune.
However, this passive income option is often hard to deal with since it isn’t that simple to invest in real estate.
It requires a lot of effort, time, and knowledge before you see the profits. Real estate investment apps have made it simple and easy to be a real estate mogul, removing many complications.
This option takes us back to what we mentioned about a REIT, but we are more interested in the general way for real estate in this idea.
Just take the time to learn about it, build yourself with enough knowledge, and gain some experience.
Make An Online Course
Making an online course that people buy again and again is a great way to make passive income as you don’t need to update it or, at least, not too often.
You can say it’s similar to writing a book. Creating the course will take some time and effort, but once it is complete, you can put it online and reap the income from every purchase.
Online courses can cover almost any topic, and as a result, anyone can create them. Just imagine those made by personal trainers, chefs, or regular teachers. Anyone could offer online cooking classes, and accountants could teach others how to do bookkeeping.
You can create an online course if you have the skills or knowledge to do so.
To create an online course that sells, you might need to have relevant experience and qualifications or something valuable to share while you make sure to build it properly, so it is informative and worth the investment for your future students.
Rent A Property
The original source of passive income was the rental property. They are still a valuable asset today and a bit different from what we have mentioned about real estate so far.
You can make your rental property truly passive by outsourcing its daily operation to a management company. Then you can just arrange the mortgage and watch the money flow in.
Turnkey properties allow you to skip the tedious steps of renovating and finding tenants before renting out your property. You can buy a property with tenants already living there.
This means that you only need to make sure the property is maintained in order to keep tenants happy. You could also hire a management company for this.
Invest In Index Funds
An index fund is a mutual fund (or collection) that follows a particular market (stock, bond, real estate, etc.). You are not investing in a single stock but an entire index such as the S&P 500 (500 largest US companies).
The low-cost index funds are great because you don’t need to worry about choosing investments, rebalancing your portfolio, or selling and buying companies.
Index funds have historically outperformed actively managed mutual funds. There are risks involved in investing. However, history has proven that it will rebound if an index goes down.
Blogging IS Profitable
Bloggers and hobbyists can make passive income by just building their sites and sharing content, but it can be hard to get yourself on top of the game, considering how this is booming nowadays.
A blog, abbreviated to “weblog,” is an online journal or informational site that displays information in reverse chronological order. The latest posts are displayed first. It is a place where authors can share their opinions on a topic.
Display ads, affiliate marketing, and/or sales of digital products can make your blog a passive income source.
Search engine optimization (search engine optimization) is the key to passive income from display ads since your blog will show more often based on how optimized it is.
Companies may be interested in partnering on projects if your blog has been getting consistent traffic.
What Is the Key Number of Income Streams You Should Have?
When it comes to creating income streams, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The number of sources of income you have will depend on where you are financially and your financial goals. However, it is a good place to start, even if you have a few.
Now, if you are looking at it as a millionaire would, you don’t need to stop at just a few.
Millionaires have way more passive incomes than you think. It’s a matter of knowing what works better for you and how profitable your efforts end up being.
Just remember that having multiple ones is basic science. You will need them, and we’re not talking about two or three but rather 5+ as long as they are worth your time and money and generate passive income.
You’ll need to ensure that your efforts in a passive income stream aren’t distracting you from other streams. You need to balance your efforts and ensure that you are choosing the best opportunities.
Going back to our mention about how millionaires work around building their passive sources, it’s simpler than you’ve read so far. Just keep these “steps” in mind:
- Workaround your current options.
- Always take the time to analyze and consider them properly.
- You shouldn’t try several at once. Instead, go for one and move onto the next one when you are, somehow, stable.
- Consider options that don’t require much investment unless you’re confident it is possible to get your money back at least.
- Trust in yourself.
- Don’t be impulsive.
And always think as a millionaire would.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.