Passive income, multiple streams of income, make money in your sleep.
These are common buzzwords you hear when you're trying to make the kind of money that alludes
most people. And if you're anything like me, when you hear these words, you might even feel a little
bit skeptical and you probably should. The dream of making money online without doing a damn thing,
has grown to a fever pitch. When you scroll through YouTube search, you see a list of people
who have nailed the make money online thing. You might start leaning into that survivorship bias
that everyone who's trying to make money online is succeeding at it. And that's just not true.
I'm making this video because I'm one of the stories you don't hear about. I'm not crushing it.
Today, let's talk about passive income. We'll briefly talk about what passive income is,
my personal experience with passive income, and most importantly,
I'm going to give you the five critical reasons why I failed at earning passive income. But,
how did I fail? Did I even earn any passive income at all? Well, you'll have to stick around to find
out. By the end of this video, I want you to have a clear understanding of what passive income is.
And I want you to have realistic expectations for earning passive income. And if you're as
much of a passive income fan as I am, don't forget to double ax handle that like button.
Wikipedia defines passive income as income that requires little to no effort to earn and maintain.
It is called progressive passive income when the earner expends little effort to grow the income.
Examples of passive income include rental income and any business activities in which
the earner does not materially participate. And for me, and I think for a lot of people,
I think passive income is also money that you earn outside of your nine to five day job.
Have I ever earned any passive income? Yes I have. But you know how some people have passive streams
of income. Mine are more like passive trickles of income. But the two things that have turned
into the most passive income for me have been affiliate income and Google's AdSense program.
In a nutshell affiliate income is when you recommend something to someone, and in my case,
something that I actually use and when the person buys that thing, you end up getting a commission
for it. And AdSense is Google's advertising platform that connects advertisers to potential
customers using the content that you create. For example, that could be blog posts that you write,
or it could be YouTube videos that you make, when you get monetized. If we're talking about passive
income that I've been able to generate on my own from things like affiliate marketing and AdSense,
then I've never made more than a thousand dollars in a single calendar month.
And if I'm lucky in a good month, I can earn between 500 and $700. But if we're talking about
consistent passive income, money that I make month after month,
year after year, then I'd say I average between 200 and $400 a month. And that's before you
take out expenses like web hosting and domain registration, et cetera. And I really do think
the term passive income can be very misleading because for some people, I think it gives you the
perception that you don't have to do any work and nothing could be further from the truth.
Yeah, some of that stuff is hands-off now, but it didn't start like that.
Just to get the bit of passive income that I have, I'm not going to sugar coat it,
it took work. A lot of work. So I don't earn all that much passive income, but I do know
firsthand that you can earn passive income, and you don't have to be a sleazeball to do it,
and if done right, passive income can be consistent money.
So if I'm only earning hundreds per month, instead of thousands in passive income,
what's keeping me at a trickle instead of a roaring stream of passive income?
Well make sure you stick around because in just a bit, I want to tell you the very mistake
that I think is keeping my passive income capped.
Mistake number one, wrong niche, wrong angle. To make earning passive income worth your time,
I think it is critical to choose a niche, to choose an area that pays well. I think a great
analogy is college. A person who graduates with a degree in engineering, in any of the engineering
fields is probably going to earn more money over their lifetime in someone who got a degree in say
education. And that's just real. But what some of you might not know is that mind over finance isn't
my first YouTube channel. I have another channel called the Japan Guy that's not all that big,
but it's monetized, and at the moment it has over 13,000 subscribers. And do you
know how much money I earned from YouTube ads on that channel every month? About $30.
And yeah, that's embarrassing, because that channel was my labor of love for years,
and I worked hard at it. But when I look at it objectively and try to take the lesson from it,
what it says to me is that YouTube wasn't really servicing ads for the type of content
that I was creating. And the fix for that would either be to find a spin that works
to get me the income I want on that channel or to change niches altogether.
Mistake number two, promoting things that don't pay well. Piggybacking off of my first YouTube
channel, in that channel, I was talking about living here in Japan as a foreigner. I came here
not knowing a lick of Japanese, but as I started to pick up the language ... [foreign language
00:06:06] I would share resources that I genuinely found helpful in picking up Japanese. And most of
those things were textbooks. And while I do think that was useful for people, you have to keep in
mind that you don't make all that much affiliate money from textbook sales on Amazon. Unless of
course, maybe you made the textbook. And nickeling and diming, or even $1 billing your way to any
substantial passive income, like $10,000 a month or more is really hard and really discouraging.
And I think that this is the main reason that my passive income has been capped for years. And if
you don't want your passive income to be capped, all you have to do is obliterate that like button.
I'm just kidding. That's not going to fix your passive income problems.
Mistake number three, the grind paradox. Keep working at it and you'll succeed. Bull[inaudible
00:06:59]. The grind paradox is you putting your head down, you working hard at something,
maybe even for years, when you finally look up from all that hard work and look around,
not only are you not where you want to be, but you don't have a whole lot to show for it,
whether it's here on YouTube, a blog or something else entirely, you can grind, you can work hard,
but that does not guarantee you success. Me not succeeding to the levels that I want hasn't been
because I hadn't worked hard at it. It's because my hard work has been misguided.
Mistake number four, fuzzy systems, when it comes to working out or cutting weight, I know exactly
what I need to do because I've done it before. I know how I need to eat, how I need to train,
how to do intermittent fasting or carb cycling if necessary. It's a very clear cut process and my
personal finances are similar. I know what's going into my emergency fund, what's going into savings,
what I need to set aside for monthly expenses, what's going to Vanguard.
That's also a very clear cut system, but truth be told when it comes to passive
income and the systems that I use to track that passive income things are a lot fuzzier.
So if I'm going to go from passive income trickles to passive income streams,
I think it is monumentally important for me to have a very clear process that I know, understand,
and track from A to Z. Passive income systems take time to build. Is it worth putting the time
in? Is it even realistic to try? Make sure you stick around to the very end, because I'm going
to give you my honest thoughts on whether or not I think passive income is realistic.
Mistake number five, not being best in class at something. I think passive income flows way
more easily to the people who are best in class at what they do. So many of us, and that includes me,
want to make all this crazy money, but we haven't developed a skill to a level that bridges that
gap between the money dream that we have in our head and reality. And it's easier said than done,
I know, but if you are particularly good at something, if you go full nerd about something,
especially something that people value or are willing to pay money for,
or that garners a large audience, then it's kind of hard for the money not to flow your way,
passive or otherwise. The best written blogs get the most traffic and make the most money.
The best podcasts get the most ears. Or here on YouTube, if Long Beach Griffey has ever made
you laugh until your sides hurt, if you've ever watched David Doebrick or Mr. Beast,
and wondered why you couldn't stop watching, it's because these guys are best in class
at creating content that millions of people can't stop watching.
Some people might disagree with me on this one, but what do you think? Do you need to be
best in class at something to earn significant passive income? Let me know in the comments.
Is earning a full-time passive income, a realistic goal? Yeah, I think it is,
but earning full-time money from it like three to $5,000 a month, definitely isn't something that
happens overnight. It's legitimate hard work, especially upfront. And anyone who tells you
otherwise is either lying to you or trying to get you to buy some scammy ass course.
There are many different ways to earn passive income, and I think you have to test and test and
test again, to find a method that sustainable and to find a method that suits what you're good at
and be open-minded enough to realize that you probably won't succeed at it right away.
The vast majority of people don't, and the people that do are exceptions, not the rule.
Well, that'll wrap up today's video as always, thank you so much for watching. And for those of
you trying to earn passive income, do you struggle with any of the mistakes that I've made? If so,
let me know about them in the comment section. I'd love to hear them.
And if you enjoyed today's video, please don't forget to Miles Morales that like button
Hey.
Share, and if you're brave enough, subscribe and join me on this journey to grow Mind Over Finance
to 1000 subscribers strong, and I'll catch you in the next video. Peace.
Oh yeah. And I wanted to take a quick second to shout out a subscriber, sorry to put you on
blast like this, but Janine, I see you, and I appreciate all the love and support. And to all
the subscribers who take the time to comment or to subscribe in the first place. I appreciate you.