Inevitably a big part of lifestyle design involves money, and how you make it.  Ultimately every lifestyle designer, wants to make the process of earning an income as fun and carefree as possible.

The word “passive” is often thrown around.  Wouldn’t it be incredible to earn an income without actually doing anything!  However, in reality a passive income takes months (probably longer) of work.  But that’s not to say its impossible.

Sell Graphics, Templates, Code

Unleash your creative flair on the world and sell your graphics, templates and code at one of the Envato marketplaces.  Some designers are making thousands of dollars every month.  Before creating anything, have a look at what others have uploaded and what’s popular.

Resell Hosting

This really only works if you currently have design clients or do consulting.  Its easy to resell hosting (from say This Host) with a design or as part of a package.  I’ve even seen people give away a couple of months free hosting with an info product (and then charge after month 2)

Sell an Info Product

This ones obvious and everyone seems to be doing it.  If you know anything about something than you can create an info product.  Of course it does help if you’re good at what you’re writing about.  Don’t feel you need to create an info-product in the Internet Marketing niche (like flipped), my number one selling info product is actually outside this niche.

Build an Info Site

Also called niche mini sites, these guys are built to either sell an affiliate product or earn advertising revenue.   But what to build a mini site on?  Whenever you do a Google search and can’t find any suitable information on the first page, build your own site on that topic!

Build a Web App

If you build a web app with a monthly subscription, it can earn you a nice passive income.  This is without a doubt the hardest route to go down, but worth it.  When you come across a problem that no other web app solves, build your own.

Write How-To Guides

This is the only method I have zero experience with, but I know of a few entrepreneurs who are doing ok from writing articles at eHow and other sites that pay you for content.   A word of caution though, these sites are built purely to rank well in the search engines.  Google has a reputation for slapping penalties on these “content farms”.  By all means use eHow, in fact I encourage it, but don’t rely on it – things may be different in a year or two.

Sell Merchandise, T-Shirts etc.

I noticed that Colin from ExileLifestyle was selling some pretty funky t-shirts, so I thought I’d include it here.  This is a great way for designers to earn some passive income.  Use Cafepress, Skreened or Spreadshirt to do all the manufacturing, shipping, ordering etc. for you.  All you have to do is upload a design and promote!

Affiliate Products

Want realtime analytics, hosting for your blog or how about a killer wordpress theme?  See what I did there?

Promoting affiliate products is dead simple and no, it won’t corrupt your blog.  If you use and pay for the product you promote, its no big deal.

How Many Streams?

As many as possible!  One thing I’ve discovered about a passive income is that things can change really fast.  Sites close down and opportunities dry up.  Your best bet is to experiment, see what works, focus on that and then once that stream is successful, expand.

All of these techniques, once setup, require minimal work, so there should be no barrier for expansion.

How do you currently/plan to earn a passive income?

This post: Random Thoughts on Being an Entreprenur is one of my all time favourites.   It inspired me to go back through my endless pages of notes (i don’t throw out any of my notebooks) and collect some of the musings I’ve had over the past two years.  By no means am I an expert on being a founder/entrepreneur, but the past year or so, I’ve seen things really take off and would like to share some of my thoughts.

• Running a web app that people rely on is painful.  When your app breaks it hurts real bad.

• I would rather have a website that matters than one that just makes money.  Thankfully I have one that does both

• My biggest mistake(s) was selling an app.  I did this multiple times.  Twice I bought them back, but by then, they were ruined.

• Break down your income.  Know exactly how much money you need to live on and work towards that figure each day.

• Be frugal.  Thankfully thats how I grew up and It comes naturally to me.   frugal living can have a huge impact on your life.

• At some point, everyone, even your parents will doubt your products potential.  Don’t fight this, just learn to deal with it.

• Track everything.  Money, stats, clicks, sentiment, time.  You can track everything without being anal.  If you don’t, you’re burying your head in the sand.

• Make personal connections and be a communications rockstar.   Don’t cold call/spam email bloggers.  Write them a personal email – it works.

• Techcrunch said they wouldn’t cover a feature release of my app because Mashable got the story first.  Totally makes sense.  I’ll email Techcrunch first next time.  But…

• Getting a post on the big tech blogs, although its awesome (and an ego boost), only delivers a burst of traffic.  Where as, getting featured on DailyCandy (a Female targeted blog) which I never even thought to get in touch with, sent through a huge amount of sustained traffic.

• Hire a person not a skillset.  You can always train the right person.

• If you don’t believe people will invest in your app, build it and then figure out exactly how to make it profitable (and do that do), people then will want to invest in your app (true story).

• Don’t answer support emails first thing in the morning.  They can be kinda depressing (damn IE6).  But make sure you answer them within 24 hours.

• Don’t be afraid to change and adapt.  My app will change dramatically over the coming months.

• I’m 100% sure my app will be a huge success.  The mere thought it wouldn’t seems incredibly distant.  This is the only state of mind to be in.

• If you want to design a lifestyle that involves less work, more travel, don’t rely on one income source.  I’m building many

• I failed multiple times.  The only way I actually learn is by failing.   Scary but true.

I’m sure in another 2 years these musings will be completely different…..so stay tuned.

Photo by: Olivander

According to Karol Gajda, you shouldn’t buy How To Live Anywhere, his latest ebook.  In fact he does a pretty good job of persuading you not to buy it on the sales page….but obviously it didn’t work as I did end up buying a copy, and I thought I would give it a quick review.

First off, How to Live Anywhere, is my type of ebook.   Yes, it does cover one of my passions (lifestyle design), but what I really like about it, is the format.    This is the kind of book you skip around as its really a series of short essays much like my all time favorite read Getting Real (free).

This ebook is for those looking to pack there bags, travel the world, and return….well, sometime later.   Even if you already run a business and earn an income you’ll find the practical advice useful.

This is a practical ebook, obviously based on Karol’s world travels.  He seems to do a pretty awesome job of travelling the world and making enough of a living to survive,  so you know this advice is solid.  The techniques he describes (especially in the money section) are practical and they work.

Currently this book is in an online format, and although a downloadable version is coming, quite frankly I’m digging the way its formatted.  I had a couple of questions and because you can comment on each chapter, they were quickly answered.  Hopefully this online version stays online.

So if you think you’re interested in purchasing this book, I would do so sooner rather than later.  The price keeps going up.  As of writing this its about $15.00 but i’m sure that it will increase fairly rapidly.

Check it Out

Want to know how I make a living?

I‘ve had a very productive week, hows your week been?  I redesigned the landing page for the flipped book,  added new features to Task.fm (in beta), and launched a couple of niche mini sites.

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye this past week:

My Massive Passive Income Brain Dump – its always nice to see people using your advice.  This is a great motivating post.

Here’s Why I don’t Have a Full Time Virtual Assistant – There are a number of schools of thought when it comes to hiring a VA.   Pat explains why he doesn’t use a full-time assistant. I don’t either and use a similar setup to Pat.

3 Reasons Why I Might Delete Your Comments – Its good to see Tom taking a stand against self promoting comments.

Vote on Where I will Live Next - Colin from ExileLifestyle is looking for a new place to live next.   I voted for Thailand (which is currently winning) as thats where I’ll be next.

7 Tips for Better Presentations – A great two part video post from Ben.  Explains how we can be better at presenting.

From This Blog:

Although not linked together, I’ve written a mini series on this blog for breaking out and a making a success story.   Read these posts (in the order given):

It’s time to Think About Income - Change the way 90% of bloggers tell you to think.  This post was designed to get you into an entrepreneurs mindset.   It also introduces the Target Monthly Income concept.

Why You Should Build a Web App – This post presents a different alternative to the traditional passive income options.

How to Finance a Web App in 2010 – Not just a web app, any business.  You’ll be surprised to learn, that if you read this blog, you can already afford to build a web app.

Break it Down – My favorite post on this blog and my number one tip.  This advice dramatically changed the way I built a business and everything suddenly became a lot clearer.

A Question For You

What is the essential travel gear for lightweight/one bag travellers?  I need some advice, brands, links etc.

Whether its a web app, blog or info product, if you’re business is becoming a chore, its destined to fail.

The word “passion” has been thrown around a bit recently.  Long articles on “finding your passion” have been written and although the advice in these articles is most likely good, I prefer to look at it from a simplified approach

If you wake up and get excited about your business each morning, you’ve found your passion

Excitement

Passion and excitement go hand in hand.  You can’t have one without the other.  Therefore, its the perfect way to measure a products success.  If you can get excited about your product, thats a great start.  If you can get other people excited about a product….well you’re probably already making a small fortune.

Chasing A Passion

Stop.  You probably know what it is.  Its simply a matter of taking the first step towards your dream job right now.

Write down the three steps needed to get your business/product off the ground. Do the first one now.

Brain Dump

Every month, I dump my brain onto paper in an effort to be extremely honest with myself.  I’m harsh to the point where reading this piece of paper later on down the track is an unpleasant experience.  This process is simply a matter of rebooting yourself and making sure you’re not going off on a tangent of non return.   It’s now you can identify your business has become a chore.  Have you lost the enjoyment?  Are you still excited?

Write down what you will change for the coming month.

Quality

When it comes to blogging, I throw away lots of content.  I hate doing this because I feel like im wasting time.  But the content I throw away is created when I’m blogging simply for the sake of blogging or because I haven’t met a quota.  Yes I’m into quotas, and use them, but this unfortunately also turns work into a chore.

However, I believe, and I thnk you should to, that in the long run, if you only create quality as opposed to quantity you will be happier and more successful.

Please don’t use this as an excuse to stop hustling, instead, try and focus on what really excites you.

Photo by – Stuck in Customs

We all have them, you know, those slow days where nothing seems to happen. You’re dying to get some work done, but instead you get stuck in a procrastination death cycle, flicking between Twitter, Facebook and your inbox.

These days, usually being the Weekends or Public Holidays, are fairly common. And just because you’re working, doesn’t mean anyone else is.

Yesterday, I had one of those days. Or I was having one of those days, until I decided to do something about it. Instead of getting frustrated by the situation, I used this simple technique:

Stop the Cycle

The first, and most important thing to do, is stopping the procrastination death cycle. This cycle usually involves you constantly checking Twitter or your inbox for new content. I have done this plenty of times, and yes, its bordering on insanity.

Force yourself to stop checking your inbox and social networks. If you have trouble with self control, like I do, make use of one of many applications that will block these networks.

My favorite is Concentrate, which is a Mac application. With a click of a button it hides all distractions and opens only the apps/websites I need/should be using.

Meditation Beats Frustration
If meditation and frustration entered a kick boxing ring, mediation would slaughter frustration. I know many of you aren’t into “airy fairy” things (and either am I), but meditation simply means focusing the mind and releasing stress. There are no rules when it comes to meditation. Your meditation could just involve lying down listening to music with the intention of relaxing. That’s what I do. Of course, you could take it to the next level and try and visualise the schedule I mention below.

Start Being Creative

If nothing is happening in your world, then it should be the perfect time to get creative. I usually site down and try and force myself to do some design work when nothing else is going on. Creative work, which can involve anything from writing blogs to designing logos, requires focus and no distractions. Consume yourself in this task.

Set a Schedule

I find it hard to even think about achieving goals when I enter a procrastination cycle. Instead of goals, a simple schedule or list of small tasks is more appropriate. Rather than say working towards a goal of selling 10 ebooks during the day, I would simply come up with 5 tasks which will help business but not necessarily achieve the goal.

The reason why this works, is if its a slow day, the chances of selling something (or whatever your goal is), is likely to not happen. Therefore, instead of just giving into the frustrations of not achieving the goal, I set myself knowingly achievable tasks.

Communication Embargo

A major source of frustration on a slow day, is people not responding to you. Whether its a question on Twitter, or a quick email to a developer, its just not getting answered. How annoying!

So instead of allowing this to happen, stop communicating. Rather, push information out – tweet out old blog posts etc. instead of asking questions. Your questions can probably wait until tomorrow anyway.

Comment Like Crazy

I get a bit slack sometimes. I usually like to comment on any blog post that mentions my startup, but often due to laziness I miss a few. A slow day, is the perfect time to go out and catch up on comments.

I also like to go back through posts I have commented on in the past and see if the author has replied. Not only will this make you feel good, its extremely good marketing.

Pound those Numbers

You should (if you read this blog) have a spreadsheet with your Target Monthly Income, expenses etc. Catch up on data entry. This is usually a mindless task which doesn’t require any brain power. But it needs to be done, so do it on a slow day.

This is what worked for me on an extremely slow and frustrating day. What works for you?

Photo By – - reuben -

If you can keep blogging for more than 1 year, your odds of success are greatly improved.

Starting a blog is easy.  Anybody can do it.  Furthermore, its also not difficult to pick up your first few readers.

However keeping up this momentum is a while other ball game.

The 1-2 Year Rule

This isn’t the first blog I built.  In the past (2003-2005), I ran a startup blog.  And 2005 onwards I ran an online marketing blog.  Both of these were eventually sold for less than they should have been.  I got impatient and it cost me.  I should of held onto these blogs.

I have found, that if you can keep a blog going, with at least new content happening on a weekly basis, the odds of success are greatly improved.

Organic Traffic

New blogs that are less than a year old will have very little organic traffic.  This traffic comes from search engines, blogrolls, other blogs that mention you etc.

This traffic, unlike paid advertising, isn’t instant and takes months and months of ongoing work to achieve.

A Compounding Effect

Every post you make on your blog will have a compounding effect on your traffic.  It will be picked up by the search engines, and will eventually, in time, send through search traffic.

This search traffic, will either bounce of your blog (leave straight away) or hopefully, visit more articles and even subscribe.

This compounding effect is important.  You simply can’t build a blog and just stop posting after a month or two.  You need to continue to add new and fresh content.  If you don’t, things may actually become stagnant or worse, go backwards.

The Bump

From personal experience, about 2-3 months into blogging, I usually hit a wall.  Content ideas suddenly seem harder, traffic tails off and everything begins to slow down.

This 2-3 month period is a very important time.  90% of blogs will stop posting or dramtically cut back on posting frequency during this time.  If you want to succeed you absolutely, must, must, must not give in to any excuses and stop posting.

Excuses, Excuses

The worst thing you could do is create a post letting readers know you don’t plan on blogging much due to “insert excuse here”.  This will cause readers to stop checking for new posts (if they don’t use an RSS reader like me) or worse, even unsubscribe from your blog.

Dig deep and go above and beyond to create a killer post.

If you push on past the two year mark, 90% of the competition you started out with will have disappeared.

Photo by – Studio494 (Simon)

In order to maintain my Target Monthly Income, I only need to sell 5 ebooks a day.

That’s not a part time income – 5 ebooks is all it takes for me to live what I feel is my current dream lifestyle.

That’s Impossible

Firstly, let me say I am natually a very frugal person and secondly that TMI is what I need to live comfortably in my next destination, Thailand.  Obviously Thailand is a very cheap place to live.  I would have to triple that figure to live the same lifestyle in Australia or the U.K.

Know Your TMI

I’ve done the calculations, reserved my housing and locked in the price I will pay and know how much I will need to spend on food, utilities etc.  It was this calculation which formed my Target Monthly Income.

But seriously, Just 5?

Yes, just 5 a day.  Do the calculations.  When you break down your TMI into a Target Daily Income, things suddenly become a lot clearer.  The first time I did this, it was amazing.  My eyes were opened and suddenly everything became clearer.  I now had such a managable target that I can hustle towards each day.

Break it Down

This is my best advice – if only ever read one post on this blog, let it be this one.

If you don’t know exactly how much money you need to make each day, and are planning to live the lifestyle of your dreams – you’re a fool.  There I said it.  And I only say it because I was once a fool as well.

If you set yourself a daily target (or even weekly) you can’t hide behind an excuse of ignorance.  Are you just building a blog and hoping that money will someday appear?

Diversify

Selling 5 ebooks a day sounds easy, but I honestly don’t believe that I can realisticly keep this up in the long run.  Therefore, don’t just count on the one income source.  But just like I broke down selling ebooks, do the same with other income sources.

Its a Challenge

Its so much easier to be ignorant and ignore the reality of actually having to make an income.  You could follow the advice that so many bloggers give – build an audience first monetize later.  Or you could open your eyes and actually face the harsh reality of what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

Seriously, open your eyes! (oh and leave a comment )

There was a slight delay putting this post out.  So it went from being weekend reading to a Monday edition.  But the great posts are still the same.

Here are some of the posts I’ve been reading this past week:

What Does Your Workspace Say About You – A post on one of my favorite topics anti-clutter!

9 Ways to Simplify Your Startup – This caught my eye, as I recently wrote a similar post with the theme; It doesn’t take thousands to found a startup.

7 Life Lessons I Apply to Internet Marketing -Some solid advice here.  Its nice to know there is a human side to business.

Get 2500 Subscribers and Not Earn a Penny – A great story.  I made the exact same mistake decribed in the post, multiple times.

And finally a bit of news from me:

I’ve been working on an appfor a while now as a side project.  Its very betarish at the moment and I’m not going to explain what it does.   I’ll simply say this – if you were only going to do one task today what would it be?  Heres the app ( updates on the way soon)

I also managed to put together a 10 day action plan for flipped.  Its based on all the coaching sessions I had with readers.  If you purchased Flipped, it should have arrived in your inbox.  If you haven’t bought the book yet – get it here

It was 2004 and Kevin Rose, the then host of the obscure Screensavers, had an idea that was going to change the way we did media.  Such a revolutionary idea would surely require hundred of thousands of dollars to create with a large team?

Rather, Kevin spent just $99 on server space and paid a developer $12 an hour to mockup his idea into a web app.    And it costed  further $1200 to secure the now infamous domain, Digg.com.

This story is typical of many a successful startup.  If you were inspired by my previous post on Why You Should Build a Web App, and thought you might give it go, read on to discover just how accessible it really is.

Costs Are Now Low, Ridiculously Low

That was 2004 when Digg.com was launched for around $2000.  And the cost of entry has only become lower thanks to App platforms (Google App Engine) and other Cloud Computing (EC2).  If you have an idea, you now have no excuse to bring it to market.

Where To Find Money

With costs so low, you really don’t actively need to seek venture capital while building version 1.0 of an app.  Talking to a number of founders it seems most started by racking up a debt on their credit cards and borrowing from friends and family if needed.

If you’ve got a job, don’t quit before building the app, try and work while version 1.0 is in the works.

Make Money From Day One

Task.fm made its first sale on the first day it launched.  I wanted to make sure I had some form of turnover coming in from day one.   Thanks to a loyal customer base (due to the nature of the product), very few people cancel their Task.fm subscriptions.  This means I have predictable a steady monthly income which is only growing.    If you can use a similar pricing model in your app, I highly recommend it.

Gone are the days when you can simply build a web app and then use “advertising” as your business model.

The most common model amongst bootsrapped apps is Freemium.  This involves giving away part of the app for free and than offering more features or a premium version for a fee.   Ever wondered how many free users convert to paid?  The average is around 1-5% across a large variety of apps.

Plenty of people will tell you to build traffic, your brand and culture first and then worry about money later on down the track.  This is the most ridiculous advice I have ever heard.  If you’re serious about building an app, you need to have a business model from day one.  Even if its not 100% implemented (which it should be), you should at least have a plan.  Open your eyes people!

Some of the Costs Involved

So you have some idea of the costs involved I’ve included a brief run down of what I think an app requires to get built.  Of course, you probably have your own suggestions so let me know in the comments.
Servers

A web app can be launched on a server costing as little as $20 a month.  You probably spend more than that on coffee in a given month.  The idea is to start small and scale.  A VPS or Virtual Private Server will make scaling simple.  Processing power, memory and hard disk space can be added with a click rather than a complete hardware reinstall if you were using a dedicated box.

Expect to pay around $50+ a month for a decent setup and expect this to increase month on month as you grow.

Domain Name

This is an easy cost to estimate as once you have invested in a domain, the costs to keep it registered are minimal.  Task.fm costs less than $100 a year.  If you want to acquire a premium domain, expect to pay upwards of $500.  Don’t fork out more than $2000 for a domain, its really not worth it.

People

The cost of labour really depends on how much work you can do by yourself.  Hiring people will be your biggest expense, even if you work with freelancers.  Figure out exactly how much development work you can do and then decide how much you can afford to spend.  Create a budget and try and stick to it.

Developers work for around $20+ an hour.

The Other Costs

Its amazing just how many other costs are involved in running a startup.  Here are some of the bills I pay each month:

• Mailing List
• Email Server
• Helpdesk Software
• Subversion Server
• Offsite Backup Provider
• Voip – my number, office number, voicemail, etc.
• API’s – used to power sms and voice reminders, transcription, gateways etc.
• Statistics – realtime analytics
• CDN – Content Delivery Network to server images, scripts etc (really fast).

Of course these don’t include legal fees, incorporation costs etc.  This will most likely happen later on down the track for you, so I decided not to include these costs right now.

As you can see, there are lots of little costs involved that all add up.

Got $2000?

So do you have a great idea and $2000?  If so, you potentially have all that’s required to get your app off the ground.

Photo by – velo_city