It’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? That when it comes to money, we can either give up our time, or we can turn our time into money. But isn’t that the same thing? Isn’t that what we already do now? We go to work, spend X amount of hours there, and at the end of the week, collect our paycheck. In the process we make a few friends, have a couple laughs, rip our hair out with frustration every once and while, rinse, and repeat. Then week number two starts, and we wake-up, start the morning coffee, get dressed, and it’s off to the office once again.

What is this process? Work? Well yes, it’s certainly that, it’s certainly “work” in its most rudimentary form, the art of getting up every day and repeating a task we find uninspiring, unimaginative, and uneventful. That’s not to say your job is like this, as there are plenty of people out there who enjoy what they do every day of the year. Work isn’t “work” for them, rather it’s a career path that inspires and transforms them into a better developed individual. But really now, for the rest of us out there, what is this task we so often find ourselves doing, day in and day out?

Time for Money

Although, probably not the kind of “time for money” you’re thinking of. Not the kind you scream out when you realize you just got the biggest salary bonus you’ve ever received, or when someone informs you you’ve won the lottery. Rather, time for money carries a more direct approach, being the thing you do day in and day out: trading your time for money. It doesn’t matter whether you work in a corporate office, pump gas, pick up garbage, or drive a truck, in the end you’re still trading your time for money.

Of course, this is normal, right? It’s something we all do, entering into the workforce and committing our time at the expense of a paycheck. If we didn’t do this, how would we get by? How would we generate an income for ourselves and keep a roof over our heads. Worse yet, what if others rely on our care and supervision to provide for them. We certainly can’t just give up on them, so we have no choice but to work, committing our time for money on a regular basis. Certainly it would be ludicrous to think otherwise, right?

Money for Time

This is exactly why so many people get stuck within the job realm that they’re in. Not that they’re stupid, or that they lack the necessary skills, rather, this mindset of sacrificing time for money has become so commonplace that we don’t even think to question it. This presents more than just a few problems, (which I’ll address throughout the duration of this article) however the biggest one being your lack of ownership in the work you do. What do I mean by this? When you go into work, you work your 8 (or more) hours and leave. You then get paid in accordance for these 8 hours. So if you’re getting paid $20 an hour roughly, that means you just made $160. However, what happens to that work when you’re not “on the clock?” Are you to only to receive pay for the work you do while you’re actively there? This presents the first big problem with exchanging your time for money.

On average, for a full-length article like this one, it takes me about 8-10 hours or so to plan, write, and revise what it is that I want to say. That means that if I was at a job making $20 an hour, I would have received anywhere from $160 - $200! Wow! Why am I wasting my time writing this when I could be out there earning real money instead of squandering away my time for free?! Unfortunately, this is the mindset many people harbor when it comes to generating passive income vs. hourly income. You can’t blame them though, because from the outskirt of things, it would appear exactly that way. If you’re reading this article right now, then you’re doing so for free. Nobody is charging you anything, and no screen is flashing on your computer asking for a credit card number before you can proceed. So as generous as it is, why would anybody want to sacrifice their time for free when they could get paid to do so instead?

Passive Income

The thing is, I’m NOT giving up my time for free. While you can navigate every inch of this website without paying a dime, in truth, I’m still generating income from my work. How? For one, you can see that throughout various parts of the site I’ve laid out different kinds of advertisements. Nobody is requiring anybody to click on any type of advertisement just to access the content I’ve provided. Every word or sentence I’ve written here has been of my own accord about a topic I genuinely wanted to discuss. On top of that, you certainly won’t find any recycled stories here on this site, as each and every article is 100% fresh and original. That means I’ve taken my own time to create and publish all the works you see here without charging anybody a single penny. If that’s the case, then how am I able to generate an income? As I mentioned above, one strategy is the use of advertising on this site. Specifically, I like to use Google’s Adsense program. This program creates a win-win-win scenario each and every time someone decides to click on one of the ads.

When an ad is clicked, it does one of three things. First of all it gives a business the potential to make a new customer, while giving the customer the potential to interact with a new business; essentially acting as a meeting point for both business and customer. In exchange for hosting the advertisements of this particular business or organization, when one of those advertisements is clicked, I generate a few cents.

A few cents?!

Yes, a few cents. While initially that may sound like a small amount, it gives me one huge point of leverage over the same person who spent their time working for $20 an hour. However, if all I’m able to generate is a few cents every so often, then what is that point of leverage? Truthfully, wouldn’t giving up 8-10 hours of your time a few days a week, and coming home with $800 - $1,000 every Friday be a lot easier than relying on a few cents to get you by?

The Power of Ownership

In writing an article like this one, an article in which anywhere from zero to millions of people could potentially see, I still have a one-up on the person that worked an 8-10 hour day “on the clock.” What is it? My power in ownership. This article right here, and this entire website you’re viewing it within, are completely owned by me. Not “the company” or “the business,” because I’m not being paid by some outside force to write this. This is being written completely out of my own free-will, stemmed completely from my own free-thought.

What exactly does the power of ownership represent then? Well for one, it means that even after I’ve written this I can continue to profit from it. Instead of limiting my income to that 8-10 hour window in which I initially wrote this, if this article grows in success, I could still be profiting from it in years down the line. This is simply because my work isn’t being limited to strictly the time in which I created it, which is exactly what happens when you’re “on the clock” somewhere. It doesn’t matter if it’s a product you’re helping to create or sell, or whether it’s a service you’re providing. The “company” owns that work, not you, and so even if it continues to provide benefit to others, you’re still receiving no compensation for those other contributions. What’s an example of this?

At one point in my life I worked in a pharmacy as a technician, aiding the pharmacists in filling prescriptions, entering prescriptions, and billing insurances. One of the routine tasks the company implemented after some time was a program where we would call patients and ask them if they wanted their medications setup on a program that refilled them automatically each month. While initially this seems like a very easy, manageable program, the amount of calls we had to make each day was astonishing; especially with the rest of the work we had to do. Aside from the fact that a lot of the patients were simply rude, I essentially felt like I was throwing them a sales pitch while trying to remain honest. Each day this report would generate new names to call, and each day I’d call and successfully sign up new people.

What’s the kicker though? I didn’t own my work. The company I worked for did, and so it didn’t matter if I signed up 10 people or 100 people, at the end of the day, the company, not I, benefited from this increase in business. I received my regular hourly pay and that was that. It didn’t matter that I had the highest sign-up scores, or that I had successfully increased the entire prescription volume of the store, because the company owned that work. At the end of the day, I still make the same amount of money I always had, while the company continued to profit itself. This represents only one small example of why owning your work is so important. If you look at your current job now, I’m sure you can think of at least a few examples in where owning your work would have provided at least a mediocre increase to your overall salary.

So What Does All This Mean?

Am I advocating you just walk out of work on your next shift? That you tell the boss you’ve decided to quit and you’re never showing up again? But I have a family to support, I have bills to pay, and I have to put food on the table. Make sure you understand that the point of this article isn’t to advocate you quitting your job or deciding to never work again. From reading this, I hope you're starting to become familiar with two ideas: The power of ownership, and the power of passive income.

It would be unrealistic for me to expect anyone to simply give up their job tomorrow and never go into work again. That’s not the point, the point is in harnessing your potential to start taking ownership of the work you do and the content you make. What’s another reason to start taking ownership of your work? For one, having a job in itself is often very expensive, aside of course from being extremely time consuming. Growing up, I remember having a friend who needed a car so he could get to his job. Having a job, and thus having a weekly supply of money, he was able to afford a car. After purchasing the car however, he realized that payments each month were going to be a lot more than he anticipated, and so he had to go from working 30 hours a week to a solid 40 hours each week. Because this vehicle was so expensive, each and every dime he made from this job went into supporting it, whether it was the actual car payments, gas, insurance, inspection, or anything else that came along. Now let’s think about this for a second…

He buys a car so he can go to work, to PAY for the car he bought… so he can go to work? If I’m understanding this correctly, that means he constantly worked so he could pay for his transportation to go to work? Breaking this down even farther, we see that he worked 40 hours each week just so he could go to work in the first place! Not the most economical decision for his time or his money. To make matters worse, he had to continue this cycle until he had completely paid off the vehicle.

So Where do I Stand?

Looking back over the repertoire of jobs I’ve worked, I can honestly say I’m glad that a lot of them didn’t fit me too well. I can’t think of any environment where I was a bad employee or didn’t get along with my coworkers, just because that’s not my personality. However, each job experience I had left a bad taste in my mouth, whether it was dealing with rude customers in a retail position or dealing with corporate bosses that constantly expected me to kiss their ring. Why am I lucky? Because had I not had these negative experiences, I probably never would have started searching into passive income like I did.

There are 3 areas you can reside within while working a job:

Positive: Where you truly enjoy what you do. “Work” no longer feels like work, but rather something that directly contributes to making you happy.

Neutral: This is where most of us reside, in that pseudo-happy medium where we aren’t excited to go into work but we don’t wake up dreading it either. This is perhaps the worst stage you can fall into, because you lack neither the happiness to make your job enjoyable nor the negativity to motivate you for change.

Negative: The area where you truly dread what it is you do. Whether your job induces bouts of anxiety, depression, or even anger, falling into this spectrum is certainly no fun. However, what this spectrum lacks in immediate happiness, it makes up for with motivational forces and driving power. Being in this category will motivate you to a much higher degree than any other category will. Most previous jobs I held resided within this category, each one pushing me one step further to pursuing passive income and a life of ownership in my work.

Instigating Change

Hopefully you’re beginning to see just how powerful a force passive income can be for you. Not only is this a financial force, but it’s also a social and mental one too. Imagine earning the same amount of money you do now but instead of slaving away in the office, doing something you enjoy? Or what if you could at least cut back? Even 30 hours in the office would be nice as opposed to 40 each week, supplementing the rest of your income passively. But, what if you can’t even afford to do that? What if no matter what, you’re stuck working 40 hour weeks for the rest of your life? Is passive income merely out of your reach, just too far away for you to make any use out of it?

Absolutely not. The power of passive income lies in that it’s passive. Even if you’re forced to work a 40 hour week, you can still supplement that income by doing something you enjoy, creating work that you own, and profiting from it. All of these articles I write and publish here on Personal Web Guide are done because I genuinely enjoy doing so. As hard as that may be to believe for some people, writing is something I particularly like, and thus if I can earn some form of passive income through it then all the better.

What does this mean for you though? Am I suggesting you go out and register your own website, start up a blog, and then begin cranking out articles? If that’s what you enjoy then go for it, I certainly find enjoyment in that myself, but that's by no means the limiting factor to passive income. The unique thing about passive income and generating content you own is that NOBODY CAN TELL YOU HOW TO USE IT. It’s owned by YOU, nobody else.

Putting Things Into Action

The key is finding something you enjoy, something you’re knowledgeable about, and something you think others could benefit from. When writing these articles, I know that other people are inevitably going to read them, meaning my words will carry a constant audience. If I was just going to haphazardly throw some sentences together and then put them onto this website, it would be foolish of me to think I could actually generate any serious passive income from that. When people read my articles, I want them to walk away with a form of personal guidance, feeling more enlightened and developed as a human being. I want to make sure my words leave an impact on whomever it is that’s taking their time to read my thoughts and ideas.

Now that you realize the potential you have, it’s time to actually unlock it. Instead of thinking like an employee, it’s time to start thinking like an entrepreneur. Instead of sacrificing your time to help build the financial empire of another corporation, start using your time to build your own financial empire. Begin by determining what traits and characteristics you have that you feel stand out or excel above others. Are you a particularly good speaker? Are your writing skills well developed? Do you have better than average IT skills or mathematical skills? Whatever they are, you need to determine your strongest skills and bring them out, making sure they represent the best of your abilities.

That being said, not all skills are created equal when it comes to passive income. I’d say the top four skills needed in developing a steady rate of passive income are:

• Creativity
• Writing
• Speaking
• Marketing

But in looking at these skills, we can see that they’re responsible for a lot more than just passive income. These skills represent the core upon which all of our others skills are dependent. Let’s take a look at each one:

Creativity
Creativity represents a big part of generating passive income and obtaining ownership in your work. Why? Because your own unique thoughts and work all stem from creativity. If I lacked creativity, how would I write this article? Sure, I could slap together a few sentences, throw up a title, praying that someone stumbles upon my page, but would it actually get me anywhere? Harnessing my creativity, my uniqueness, is what allows me to stand out from the crowd. It allows me to develop content that nobody else has, allowing me to effectively deliver a product or service that can’t be found anywhere else. When determining what it is you want to create, market, or sell, your ability to be creative will either make you or break you. You need to ask yourself: Is my content really good enough that it deserves the attention of others? Have I truly created something interesting and unique that others can benefit from?

Everyone has some form of creativity bottled up within them, the difficulty stems in finding out how to use it. Find what it is you enjoy, do it, and make people want to experience it. I find my creativity stems mostly within writing, which is why you’ll notice so many of my articles here on Personal Web Guide are so long. I’m not simply grinding out a 500 word article in hopes to attract more traffic, but rather once I get rolling I find I genuinely have a lot to say. This is the attitude you need to carry with whatever it is that you’re setting out to do, making it unique and inspiring, not merely a carbon-copy of something found all across the web. In doing so, you’ll be successful in bringing out your best ideas and thoughts, meaning people will be interested in whatever it is you wish to say, create, market, or sell.

Writing:

Why is writing important? For one, it represents one of our biggest skill sets as a whole. If I can effectively write, that means I can successfully transfer my ideas and thoughts through a medium which doesn’t require direct communication. Whether this is within a blog or website such as this one, or whether it’s through emails or personal letters. If you lack the ability to properly write, then that means your message transmission is never going to be 100%. That doesn’t mean the other person isn’t going to receive your email or be able to read your website, but it means that somewhere along the way the transfer of ideas from yourself to them never quite made it. You’re thinking one thing, but they’re only grasping a percentage of that thought. In order for your audience to get the entire message, it needs to be clearly written and stated in a way that they can understand. If I had a million ideas in my head about passive income but was only able to put down a few sentences on the subject, then that would mean the transfer of my thoughts to the audience was unsuccessful.

Chances are, you’re going to have a lot to say about whatever it is you intend to do for passive income. Is it a blog? What about writing a book or other short stories? What about marketing a specific product across the web? Maybe you’re selling a product or service via a home business, and customers are going to be reading up on what it is you have to offer. Regardless, your writing skills are going to be one of your most critical skill sets. Why? Because you obviously won’t be having a face-to-face or telephone discussion with each person in regards to your content. This means your writing is left to do the talking for you. It’s there to constantly answer questions and inform people when you can’t do so directly yourself. It represents a front to your means of passive income around the clock. If your writing is poor, then people have a natural tendency to assume your product or service is also poor. However, if you can truly harness the power of your writing, then you’ll realize it takes a big load of your shoulders when interfacing your content to the rest of the world.

Speaking:

Speaking of course represents a big skill set for multiple reasons. For one, often times people will directly inquire to you about a specific product or service you sell, and the way in which you dictate this information to them will often have as profound an effect as the actual product or service itself. I’m not talking about lying to people, something a lot of businesses practice day in and day out, but rather being able to effectively showcase what it is you do. If you’re trying to inform someone of a service you can provide, but you can’t explain it in a way which is clear to them, then you’ve just lost a potential customer. Maybe this is a service they greatly want or desire, but due to your lack of proper communication, they’ve now lost confidence in your ability to do what you intend to do. Speaking goes hand in hand with writing to a degree, but it also works in separate channels too. Maintaining good speaking skills not only help to spark the interest of potential business partners or customers, but it also makes you look that more enlightened and educated about what it is you do.

With that being said, the biggest reason to maintain sufficient speaking skills lies within its ability to persuade others towards your cause. Don’t confuse that with manipulating, lying, arguing, or scheming others into doing what you want. Rather, the strength of your persuasion lies in the fact that you can demonstrate to others how your service, product, or ability can help them. This means they’ll be more eager to listen to what you have to say instead of brushing you aside. Not only will this make you look like a more confident individual, but it’ll make your product or service appear that much stronger too.

Marketing:
Marketing is a big one, although probably not in the same vein that many people are familiar with. Marketing encompasses the three skill sets mentioned above, but also includes some core values of its own. For starters, marketing allows you to reach out to potential clients or customers in ways that you normally wouldn’t be able to. I’m not talking about sitting around all day and thinking of some slogan or advertising layout, but rather figuring out who is most interested in what it is you have to offer.

This article for example, would have come out extremely long regardless of how I tried to organize it. Passive income is just genuinely a topic I have a lot to say about. With that in mind, what’s my marketing strategy in regards to this article? Instead of merely touching on the most basic aspects of passive income, I instead created an in-depth article that explores the topic in a lot of different regions. Why? Well for one, I knew that even though the length may be a potential turn-off for some readers, that overall, people interested in the subject would want as much information as I could provide them. I’m effectively providing my readers with what it is they desire, instead of what’s easiest or most convenient to myself. That’s how you need to think of marketing when generating a strategy for passive income. What do my potential readers, clients, or customers want, and how can I provide that to them? Don’t get caught up in some superficial mindset of trying to lure people into your website or business by providing false advertising or attempting to play up fake interests. That’s something a lot of people try and do, and in the long-run it effectively gets them nowhere. Instead, focus on discovering what it is that others want, and how your strengths, traits, and characteristics can provide it to them.

Achieving Passive Income

The last and most important aspect I’d like to discuss in regards to passive income is what it means to set your own standards. Right now, regardless of the job you’re in and regardless of the salary you make, your current employer still tells you how much you’re worth. It doesn’t necessarily matter what specific skill sets you have or what past experiences you’ve drawn upon, you currently make X dollars an hour each and every hour. This means that somebody else is telling you the worth and value of not only your own character, but also in the work you create. Sure, you may get bonuses here and there and the occasional yearly raise every so often, but aside from those, your value is dictated by a number.

The interesting thing with generating passive income and owning the work you do is that YOU decide just how much you’re worth. The money you bring in is dependent on how strong the product, service, or content you sell is. You effectively set your own standards and decide what your value is. Not only that, but you have the power to adjust this value as you see fit. Want to create your own blog? Great! Throw up some poorly written articles however, and when it comes to developing a loyal readership you'll find yourself at the back of the line. Put a lot of time, effort, thought, and creativity into those articles though, and the sky’s the limit to how much value those can deliver to others. The more value you can successfully deliver to others, the better chances you have of raising your income. That means nobody tells you what skill sets to use and what those skill sets are worth. You determine that yourself, meaning the responsibility and well-being of your ability to generate passive income falls squarely into your lap.

So what if I’m unable to generate any serious passive income? What if I lack the above skill sets, or that generating passive income just isn’t within my reach? First of all, everyone is able to generate passive income; it just varies from person to person. Secondly, and while it isn’t a pleasant thought, many people are simply not cut out for passive income That isn’t to put them down or say they’re worthless, rather they’re ineffective at delivering useful content to others. They have not learned how to properly harness their creativity and turn it into something inspiring. Instead, they get accustomed to having somebody else own their work, selling that work for an hourly rate at a job somewhere.

The other mistake people run into is thinking of passive income as free money. There is no such thing as free money unless you’ve somehow managed to win the lottery or someone just walks up and decides to hand you some cash. People are so accustomed to having another person or business dictate the value of their work, that when they realize how much money their work could be generating them if they retained ownership, they start thinking that they’re now getting free money. As I said above, you decide what the value of your work is, nobody else. Is an article you write worth $30,000, $5,000, $100, $10, or just a couple of cents? Nobody can answer that for you but yourself, and it all depends on how you harness your own unique traits and abilities.

Just be sure you don’t fall into this free money mindset. Don’t think that by buying a domain, writing a few articles and throwing them up there, that the next day you’re going to have $100 sitting there with your name on it. Generating passive income requires hard work just like any other job does, sometimes requiring you to develop skills you’ve never used before. This is one of the reasons so many people find it easier to just stay within their current job, they’re told exactly what skills to use and they don’t have to worry about managing any others. Of course, this not only limits their competency, but also their personal growth as an individual. In order to generate serious passive income you need to work hard, possibly even a lot harder than you work at your current job. However, in doing so you’ll have complete ownership of the work you do. This means that in creating quality work, you’ll be benefiting from it for a long time to come.

That pretty much wraps up my article on passive income and what it can do for you. Hopefully you now have a better understanding of what it means to own your work and the importance it carries within your financial life.