Hey what’s up, it’s Jerad, with Practically Passive, and in this post I have seven ways to help you find time to build your passive income revenue stream. This is super timely for me because I forgot to put a blog up yesterday. I had announced, not even a full week ago, that I was going to be putting out a blog every day for 30 days and yesterday I straight up forgot to edit a video and get a blog posted.
Now, I started the day early and had meetings in the morning, and then had a couple hours back at the office, tried to knock out editing a video for State of Tech and then had to drive to another town to pick up some stuff for a photo shoot, and then make it back in time to take my kids to Jujitsu practice. Then I had to figure out dinner, I mean, it was just a crazy day, it totally slipped my mind. In looking back, I had forgot to add it to my task list for the day, so it just wasn’t a thing that was on the top of my mind. I had too much going on to really think about it. Then of course there’s today, which at the time that I’m recording this, Apple announced their new iPhones and Apple Watch, so I watched that keynote. I got a new drone in, so I was messing around with that. So there are things for my passive income that I’ve been working on.
Yesterday, I was editing a video on the comparison between the Galaxy S9 Plus and the Note 9 cameras, and so I was editing that video and then I also got my Galaxy Note 9 review video out. So I was working on my passive income revenue streams but I failed at getting a video up for this channel. So here’s seven things that I have identified as things that I need to continuously remind myself of and work at, in order to grow my passive income. I think that they’re things that are going to help you out. So let’s dive right in.
1. Cut Back on Other Activities
The first thing is to cut back on other activities. Now, there are a lot of things that I know that I could cut back on, like TV watching, scrolling Instagram, news and stuff like that. I read … I have to stay up on the industries that I’m in with my passive income, I need to stay up on technology. I need to stay up on what’s coming out with cameras and all of that stuff because I have to constantly be generating ideas for content, and thinking about what’s next and what’s new.
For example, like with the time that I took today, two hours, to watch the Apple keynote, that was two hours that I could’ve been working and doing other things. I tried to multitask but it’s a little hard to take notes and prepare for producing a video while doing other things. So, there’s some times I have to pay attention to that, but when it comes to watching TV shows and scrolling Instagram or Twitter or Facebook, or whatever, those are all things that you can cut back on. I know at times I need to remind myself to cut back on those.
I mean, would you rather be editing content or writing content to put out there that’s going to help you build passive income or would you rather make sure that you are up-to-date with whatever TV show episode that’s out, that you’re interested in. The TV show adds value in an entertainment aspect, but it’s not going to add passive income value to you. So you need to look at those ares and how you can cut back. When you go to reach for that remote, to open up Netflix, or whatever it is, you need to just put that remote down and go jump into whatever it is that you’re doing to start building your passive income revenue stream.
2. Wake up Early or Go to Bed Late
Number two is to wake up early or go to bed late. Now, I am not going to trade out time with my family for my passive income. For example, I’m not going to go home after being gone all day working and then ignore my family so that I can work on my projects. My passive income is not more important than my family. My family comes first because if I sacrifice my family in order to build passive income, what good is having the passive income? I just don’t believe in trading extra dollars for time that you could be spending with your family. Especially in the stage that I’m in now, with kids that are elementary school aged. I want to make sure that I’m spending as much time as I can with them and I don’t want to trade to much of it out for work if I don’t have to.
I already feel like I do that. Going to work from 8:00 to 5:00. I’m already gone throughout the day, and even though they’re at school during the day, there’s still a few hours in the afternoon that if I was able to leave a little earlier I could spend time with them. That means, if I want to work on my passive income, I either need to wake up earlier then everybody else. Everybody in my house wakes up around 6:30. So that means I need to wake up maybe an hour earlier then normal to spend some time in the morning on it before everybody wakes up or wait until everybody goes to bed and then spend a little bit of time.
My kids go to bed around 7:30, 8:00. My wife goes to bed usually around 10:00, so maybe that means I stay up until 11:00 or 11:30 working on it. So that’s a way to kind of get some additional work done on your passive income revenue streams without trading out time that you could be spending with a significant other or your kids, or something else important to you. I also wouldn’t trade out time that you spend on yourself, like going to the gym, remaining fit or taking care of yourself, don’t trade that out either. I would rather it take longer to build my passive income revenue streams then sacrifice taking care of my body. Because these are all things that catch up with you, you can’t get time back in those areas and the more that you put those things off the more that you sacrifice the things that’s are important, the more challenging it is to actually make them important again. So, wake up early, go to bed late. That’s number two.
3. Automate Simple Processes
Number three is to automate as much of it as possible. One of the lovely things about the Internet, if you’re going to be doing content on the Internet, like I do, and a lot of what I’m talking about, whether that be blogs or stuff on social media or a course or an eBook or videos like this for YouTube, is that you can sit down and do a whole bunch of them at once. You may have noticed the videos that played before this one, the majority of them I’m wearing the same shirt. I didn’t even bother trying to pretend like I am recording new videos every day. I sat down and recorded three or four videos at a time. A few days later, I sat down and recorded three or four more videos at a time. Now, this one I’m recording today because I wanted to talk about how I forgot yesterdays video but tomorrows video would have been a video that I recorded a couple days ago.
So, you can actually sit down and knock out a bunch of work, and stagger that work to be published because all of these platforms allow you to schedule your content, so you can make a promise like I did, of releasing something every day for 30 days, and get all that work done and then schedule it out and then it doesn’t become something that you have to do every single day. It becomes something that maybe you have to spend a bunch of time on one day. Maybe you spend a couple of hours on a weekend getting that content done, so that you can schedule it out. That’s automating because it’s automatically going to be posted at the time and date that you give it.
If you’re going to be putting out content, depending on the type of content, it’s best to release it in the morning, especially if it’s content that’s more informational, like what I’m putting out. If it’s entertainment content, you may want to schedule that out later in the day because most people are consuming informational content earlier in the day and entertainment content later in the day. But every audience, in every industry, and whatever type of content it is, it’s going to vary. It’s not a solid rule, it’s just my experiences in having produced both types of content.
So, automate as much stuff as possible so that you’re not doing work that could be easily setup and ran automatically. A lot of that comes down to you being able to just sit down and produce a bulk amount of content and scheduling it so that it looks like you have stuff going out every single day. You want to have that activity, it’s extremely important to have that consistent activity happening constantly so that people are exposed to what you’re doing.
4. Hire a Virtual Assistant
Number four is to hire a virtual assistant. If you don’t have that extra time then you can hire a virtual assistant to do the simpler work. This is one of the things that was talked about a lot in, The 4-Hour Workweek. One of these books that is touting the lifestyle of being able to go and do whatever it is that you want and only work for a few hours, automation is discussed a lot in that book and hiring out and allowing other people to do your easier work. Giving the assistant the authority to do certain things so that you can go and explore the world.
For me, it’s looking at the different things that I don’t necessarily need to do, that somebody else could do for me. What are the things that I know somebody could do faster? Now it’s tricky with video, editing video, I would love to outsource that but the files are so large that transferring them would be tough. It’s much easier for me just to shoot a video, do minimal edits to it and upload it myself. When I had an employee I could have the employee handle that stuff and I could get a lot more content out because I could be shooting videos, he could be editing, I could work on other things, he could still be editing, and so I was able to get much more stuff done and get more content out when I had an employee working full-time. But now that it’s just me, it’s a little bit more challenging and if there was a simple way to outsource my video editing I probably would do it, but when it comes to logo design or some other graphical stuff, I will hire out for that, I’ll use Fiverr.com.
When it comes to converting these videos into articles, I don’t do that because it’s going to take me a lot of time. I use Rev.com, get 10% off your order by clicking here. In a video in the near future I’m going to talk about Rev.com because it saves me a ton of time to have these videos transcribed, for a couple of different reasons, I don’t want to get into it too deep, but I have these videos transcribed so that I can convert them to a blog really easily. I can add closed captioning to my videos, which is extremely important to help with these videos being discovered on YouTube.
5. Find a Partner
Number five is to partner with someone. Is there someone that could add value to what it is that you’re doing and with the two of you together you’re actually able to cover twice the amount of ground, in half the amount of time. Maybe you’re married to that person. You have a spouse that’s interested in a similar thing and you both can share the different responsibilities. Partnering with someone can definitely help get you more ground covered. If there’s something that you can offer and there’s something that that other person can offer, you bring both of those parties together and you have a nice team and you’re able to get these passive income revenue streams built faster.
The only problem with this, is that passive income comes from a lot of different sources. So it’s going to be tricky to look at all of that and make sure that each person is getting what it is that they deserve based on their efforts. 50/50 split is probably going to be the easiest, but one person may be contributing more to a certain income stream and another persons work contributing to a different income stream, so that might actually become a little bit challenging to maintain. Its definitely something that you can do. Especially if you enjoy more working together with someone then you do by yourself.
For me, and I think a lot of people reading this, you’re wanting to build passive income revenue streams for yourself, to separate yourself from being reliant upon anybody else or a job. So partnerships aren’t going to be for everyone. I know that they aren’t for me, but I wanted to include it because a lot of people like that aspect of working together, and with the right partnerships you can definitely achieve a lot more then you can on your own.
6. Cut Back On Work Hours
Number six is to cut back on your work hours. This is something I have done, and it made it easy for me to do that because when I had my last employee quit, I was used to paying that persons wage, 40 hours a week. So that was an expense that all of a sudden wasn’t there. There was a certain amount of revenue that I was able to keep and that allowed me to scale back on a little bit of work. Because not having to pay several thousand dollars a month definitely cuts back on the overhead. That means there’s less work that I have to agree to take on and then that gives me a little bit more time and flexibility.
Now I’m still playing catch up with all of the work that we had signed on before he left. There’s a lot that I still have to get done but in things going forward I’ve definitely been much more picky in taking on new work, so I’m definitely taking advantage of this one by cutting back on the amount of work that I’m taking on so that I don’t have to be as tied to active income and I can work more on my passive income streams. It’s just tricky because I don’t have a typical 8:00 to 5:00 job where I clock in, clock out or I’m not getting all of my instruction from the company that I work for. I have multiple clients with different needs and every day I have different requests coming in through email and phone calls. So it can be little tricky to actually find that time.
So a lot of times I have stuff in my task list, for my passive income, that I have to keep moving to the next day, and to the next day, but I leave it in there because if I do have extra time come up I want to make sure it’s top of mind, that it’s on my task list and that I’m able to achieve it.
7. Quit!
The last thing is just to go all in and quit. Now, that’s not likely something that most people can do. You can’t just up and quit your job, you need that income, until you build your passive income revenue stream big enough that you can replace your regular income with that. Now if you are a duel income household, you’re married, you have a husband or a wife that’s also working, you might be able to work something out there where you say, “I’m going to quit my job and I’m going to go full throttle into this passive income for six months. We’re going to have to sacrifice a little bit, maybe not take any vacations or whatever … ” You might have an option there.
If you’re a single income household, like me, then it’s a little bit tricky because you have everything on your plate, as far as the expenses go and you can’t just necessarily say no to everything. There is no guarantee that your passive income is going to continue to grow and that it will get to a point where you can replace your income with it. That could take a lot of time. So it’s very tricky, and kind of scary, to do that. The more responsibilities you have, the more caution I suggest, in making decisions like this, because the job that you currently have is guaranteed, so long as you’re able to keep the job and they’re able to keep paying you.
Passive income is going to vary, it’s going to be different for every single person as to how long it’s going to take to build that up. Your idea may be really good but it may take a lot of execution to pull that off before you’re actually able to start selling it and start making money. If you’re building passive income like me, you’re getting paid small amounts from different things that you’re doing, and it’s going to take even longer because initially you’re not going to get paid much. YouTube has limitations and things that you have to meet before you’re actually even able to get paid by them. So there’s lots of things that you have to start working at before you’re even going to have much of a passive income at all.
So, the whole passive income thing is most likely going to be a side project for you for a while, until you’re able to get it to a point where you have enough income coming in that you can replace at least some of your current income. That’s my goal for this year. It’s what I’ve been talking about, is trying to make sure that I can invest enough time, into my passive income revenue streams, to build them up to the point where they are meeting my needs of my household. If I can get to that point, I’m able to cut back on that active income that requires me to do client work and doesn’t allow me any flexibility and of course that’s the goal for this year for me and I hope a goal that I can help the majority of you reach as well.
Put in your email address to the form here on PracticallyPassive.com so that you could receive updates, whenever I put stuff out. I have some cool stuff that I’m working on in the background here that I haven’t talked about yet. A giveaway that’s going to be really cool and interesting. So definitely make sure you subscribe so that I get notified when all of that stuff comes out. I don’t want you to miss it.
That’s going to do it for now. I hope to see you in the next one.