Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Active Income Vs. Passive Income - Review of WordPress AdSense System

When I started blogging to make money online, a few things become apparent to me. The most important is the significant difference between "active income" and "passive income". Let me explain.

"Active income" is the amount of money you make while you're actively blogging, writing, leaving comments, submitting articles and marketing your blog. "Passive income" on the other hand is residual in nature, and it's how much money you can earn if you suddenly stopped doing all of the things above. Understanding the benefits of both can help you decide which ones to focus on.

Active income is easy for anyone - while you're working hard you earn what you deserve. That's great, but what happens when you stop? It's a marketer's greatest fear, because 95% of people stop making any form of online income the moment they cut down on writing and blogging. If something were to happen to you and active blogging becomes impossible altogether, your online well literally dries up quicker than you can imagine.

That's why I learned to focus on building "passive income" as well. Unlike active income, this type of income generally takes a longer time to show results, and even when it does the cash usually comes in small "streams". Most people would scoff at it and dismiss it as mere "pocket money". I did the same thing, but when I look back at my income for the last year, my passive income streams have been growing steadily and consistently, with almost no extra effort on my part.

If I stop everything I am doing right now and literally disappear from the face of the earth, my little passive income streams will continue to grow. Now, what if I could add more streams of passive income to this, and build it to the point where it becomes a raging river of cash, still running virtually on auto-pilot?

That got me thinking hard. Active income is absolutely necessary to pay the bills, but passive income is vital for building wealth. Read that again: BUILDING WEALTH.

Building wealth requires a completely different mindset and strategy. If you're not consciously building wealth, then you're no better off than you would be working a 9-5 job. Your income is to tied up to the work you do NOW, and the amount of money you make is directly related to the amount of time you sacrifice.

I found a great guide by Gobala Krishnan, a.k.a the Profit Blogger, that talks about auto-pilot income and building streams of online wealth:

His guide talks about using WordPress to build niche, auto-pilot sites and monetizing them with Google AdSense. I strongly recommend you take a look at it, as I personally found it to be one of the most revealing and practical systems to making money from your blog:
Google AdSense is not something new. It's been hyped about before, but I find that Gobala has taken the most practical and logical approach to making it work. A lot of people still make a five-figure income from Google AdSense, and can you imagine what kind of life it would be when you are that level?

You can practically quit everything, go on vacation for a year, and your income will just keep growing. That's what I've been trying to say here - the allure and power of "passive income". It's possible.

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