Most articles on the Internet that mention the word 'rich' are purely concerned with getting rich quick, and most of them (if not all of them) are scams preying on our dreams. Similarly most things that promise you can 'make money on the Internet' are also scams, preying on our desire for something more than a 9-5 job. If the con-men were more honest, the final product they sell (to get rich quick) would be a one page booklet containing the advice; “make a get rich quick course and sell it.”
Fortunately it is possible to make money on the Internet, and it is also possible to get rich; you just need to realize it will take a long time to happen and it will take a lot of effort to get it there. In order to start down a path towards financial freedom, start looking for systems that make you money without you having to put further effort into them (beyond effort of their first creation). Royalties are a good example of this. A writer pens a novel, sells it to a publisher, then continues to receive royalties from sales of the work for as long as the work is available. The novel requires no more effort from the writer beyond the effort to make it, but becomes a valuable source of income thereafter.
A job on the other hand requires constant effort. As soon as you make your weekly pay, you have to go back and do it all over again to make next week's pay. Your job will always require your attention. Any kind of paid work suffers from the same problem.
The goal is simple, to free yourself from the work>money cycle. The methods of achieving this are many and varied, and depend largely on what you're good at and passionate about. For example, photographers can sell their photographs on stock photography websites. Musicians can sell their compositions on stock music websites. Those who are good with computers can create a vast array of content for the multimedia thirsty 21st century. Programmers can create games or programs. The product doesn't matter, so long as you own the rights to it. The idea is simple, if you own content you can license that content to third parties who will sell it on your behalf (for this purpose digital content is favourable to physical products since an unlimited number of copies can be sold).
The next step is to set up a system that takes care of sales automatically, so that you never need attend to it. You might have to do this yourself, or hire someone to do it for you. Fortunately in a lot of cases, there are third parties who sell what you're offering, and are always on the look out for contributors. Such companies will take care of the website, advertising, administration, and paying you, leaving you to worry only about supplying them content and spending (or saving) your royalties.
Such websites include dreamstime.com and istockphoto.com for photography; revostock.com for stock movies and music; constant-content.com and triond.com for writers (not to mention the endless possibilities open to fiction writers). 3d02.com and 3dexport.com are where the tech savvy can sell 3D digital objects. For those who yearn for a serious challenge garagegames.com is worth checking out with a platform allowing amateurs to create their own computer games (and casual games are very popular these days).
So to put it simply, you're looking to switch from being an employee to a content owner. Of course, none of this will help you get rich overnight. Getting a loan and starting a business would surely be faster, but that I'm afraid is outside the scope of this article.
Be prepared to make very little. If the kind of residual income mentioned in this article was easy to come by, then lets face it, no one would be working. A simplified rule is; the more content you have, then the more income you can get out of it all. Through dedication and hard work having content will pay off in the long term, but first aim for realistic targets.
- Your first target is to make two dollars per day. “Two dollars per day!!” you surely exclaim. Yes – don't give up your day job quite yet – but aim for that. Once you reach it consider yourself fortunate because half the world's population – 3 billion people – live on less than two dollars per day. If you're making that from residual income then you're doing well. If you're able to set up a system that makes two dollars a day then there's no reason why you can't reach ten dollars a day, or twenty dollars a day (and so on). Now you can see where this is going...
- Second target: pick a bill (rent, electricity, phone) and aim to get your residual income to the stage where it covers your bill. Once that's covered, move onto the next bill. Repeat until all your bills are covered.
- Third target: savings. Start saving some of your residual income, so that interest can add value to it. The savings will also play an important role later in smoothing out the ups and downs of the residual income.
- Fourth target: diversify. Once you have a residual income, the last stage is to diversify. Only by having a number of separate sources do you ensure against disaster. Any one source of income could dry up at any time. Diversification is key. Once you reach this stage, then you should also have plenty spare money to reinvest back into making more money.
By working through this list, someday you'll likely find that you have the financial freedom to pursue your own projects and your own agenda. By freeing yourself of the work>money cycle you are leaving yourself open to a vast array of possibilities that would otherwise have passed you by (because you were busy making someone else rich). It's not a get rich quick scheme, but it has its merits. Not all of us are in the right place at the right time, to spot a niche, to invent a winning product, or invest in the next hot stock... but we can all invest time to create content, in whatever shape or form it takes, and subsequently enjoy the benefits that residual income brings.
