Wow. Ok. So, I launched this website and concurrently my passive income project about 150 days ago. The intention was to report regularly on my progress towards creating low-input income streams. Having a look around here it seems that so far I’ve pretty much sucked on both updates and generating income.

So what’s been going on? Well, the truth is that I have sucked on updates to the site, and I haven’t really been able to spend much time putting plans in place to generate new income streams. As it stands, the project has earned a whopping £1.60 from Adsense adverts on the How To pages found on the site and nothing else.

I’m certainly not complaining though. The last few months have been great fun as my girlfriend and I have been deep in the midst of planning our wedding. My regular work has also been very busy as we lost some members of our team and workloads have increased. Both of these things have meant that I haven’t been able to dedicate much time to passive income trials, however I’m going to re-focus and double efforts in the coming months.

My focus in the coming weeks

I haven’t lost my enthusiasm for the passive income project and the aspects of lifestyle design that it entails, so over the next few months I am going to be trying out, and posting results on, the following:

• Zopa, a UK based peer-to-peer lending venture has recently caught my eye, so I’m going to have a nose around and experiment
• iphone apps: I’ve had some good experiences using Elance in the past, so I’m going to look into getting some apps made up by some coding professionals found on Elance
• Going paperless:

Looking forward to getting these mini-projects up-and-running and reporting back to you all

1. Know your distances Each approach shot you face on the course is an exact distance to the pin. But ask the majority of weekend golfers how far they hit a certain club and the reply will inevitably be “roughly” this distance, or “about” that distance. Funny that. Golf is a game where people make the most minute adjustments to their swing, but are happy only knowing how far they hit a club to the nearest, say, 10 yards. Ok, so no one hits it exactly the same distance every time, but REALLY knowing the average distance you hit a club will help massively when you’re next stuck between clubs!.

   So, borrow or invest in a measuring wheel. Head to the practice ground, warm up, and then when you’re ready, hit between 30-50 shots with the same club. Wander out to where your shots have landed and find the rough centre of the group of balls. Measure the distance back to where you hit the shots from and note down the distance. Rinse and repeat with next club. You now know your distance. You might be very surprised by the results! (bonus tip: try and do this at least twice a year. Your distances will change in between summer and winter, so it is useful to keep on top them at different times of the year)

2. Long or short? When playing approach shots, look at your target and ask yourself whether the majority of the hazards are in front of the green, or behind the green. You will find that across almost ALL the golf courses you play, the majority of greenside hazards, bunkers, ditches, ponds and lakes will be placed in front of, or in front of and slightly to the side of the green. Often, there is much less punishment for being slightly long of the green than for being short. Now, obviously you are trying to get your approach as close to the pin as possible, but knowing whether you would rather miss the green long or short can inform your approach. You should club your shots accordingly. (and now you know your proper club distances from 1) above, this will be much easier!)

3. Get to the hole to go in the hole This is an obvious one, but it helps to have it pointed out every now and then. Your putts will not drop if they have not got enough gas to get to the hole. Although lagging the odd putt has its place in match-play and on lightening fast downhill putts it must be remembered that the aim of the game is to get the ball in the hole! In your next practice round purposely hit your putts slightly harder that you would do normally. If you do this you will have a few ‘testy’ return putts that you might not normally have, but in all likelihood you will hole a few longer ones that you would not expect to normally.

4. Pre-shot routine. I cannot stress enough the usefulness of a repeatable pre-shot routine. This is especially true when you are coming down the stretch in a good round and you want to be as focused as possible. Golf is a game of momentum and repetition. A good pre-shot routine allows you to keep your momentum and it repeats again and again without conscious thought and letting you drop into the ‘zone’. It will vary individual to individual, but if you try to encompass target selection, approaching the ball, aiming and addressing into your routine, you will eventually free yourself to concentrate solely on the swing you are about to make.

5. Get fitted Still playing with those clubs you picked up at the local sports shop 15 years ago? Seriously? This is not going to be a popular tip, because it will involve spending money, but the fact of the matter is that if you are serious about improving your golf game you need to get clubs that have been fitted to YOU. The problem with off-the-shelf golf clubs is two-fold. First-up, as golfers we come in all shapes and sizes, but off-the-shelf clubs are put together for the ‘average’ build. Odds on you are not the average build! Second, although usually well constructed, off-the-shelf clubs are not assembled CONSISTENTLY: shafts are not aligned the same across a set; progression of lofts and lies are different club to club, grips are mis-aligned, this list goes on. By getting your clubs fitted (or even better, getting a set constructed for you) you ensure that clubs fit your build, strength and swing speed. In addition, you will have a consistency across your set that allows you to ‘trust’ each club in the set the same amount. The improvement in your golf game will be large and noticeable. Primarily, the dispersion of your shots will narrow, your ‘bad’ shots will be less bad, the distance between your iron shots will become consistent and the clubs will all ‘feel’ similar, promoting trust in your game.

Please let me know what you think of this ‘how-to’, using the comment form below, or via my contact page.

And with a press of my mouse button…….we are launched on our passive income journey! It will be a long, long road, but I hope you will pop by every now and then to check on my progress, and maybe leave the odd comment (of encouragement!).

Let’s clear up an important point early on

On the front page of this website I make a lot of noise about something called “passive income” and how the concept can be used to generate money whilst at the same time freeing you up to have more leisure time. But what exactly do I mean by passive income? A tight economic definition might be something like this

Passive income is a rent received on a regular basis, with little effort required to maintain it.

My personal definition (which, I guess, reflects my current limited understanding of the topic) would be something more like this

Continuing residual income earned from endeavors which, although they may take large amounts of effort to set-up, require minimal ongoing maintenance.

It’s a bit wordy but I prefer this one for two reasons. First, it captures the notion that nothing worthwhile comes for free, and second, it alludes to the idea that correct construction of a passive income stream will allow for minimal maintenance.

Why am I pursuing passive income and writing this blog?

Short-term: curiosity. Generating income is a challenge, and challenges are fun, right? I’m curious to see if this is possible, if creating passive income from nothing is feasible in practice. Building the blog, and learning some new technical skills have also been engaging, fun, processes.

Medium-term: income diversification. Being reliant on a single source of income (i.e. a regular job) can leave you exposed if things take a turn for the worse. Constructing a series of income streams would alleviate this over-reliance through diversification.

Long-term: who knows?!? Blissful retirement and bountiful free time?

I hope that by posting candidly about all the results and the problems I encounter along the way I can create some discussion around the topics by readers of the blog who are also interested in the topic.

How am I goign to go about this?

My initial approach is going to have two strands. First-up I’m going to write a series of ‘how-tos’ on topics I know well and publish them on this site. The hope is that they will generate enough trafiic to try and monetise them with adverts. This is a mirror to the ehow phenomenon in the US, which monetises contributor content and passes them a percentage of the ad revenue. Why host on my own site as opposed to using ehow, I hear you ask? Because, at present, ehow does not revenue share with UK contributors.

The second strand of my current strategy is t-shirt design, as can be found here. Please don’t laugh. I figure if I can produce one or two designs a month, it cant hurt to pop them up on the site and see if anyone takes a fancy to them.

Now, I’m the first to admit that these aren’t the best or most original strategies, but they are a start. I think part of the fun of the overall project will be to look back across the months and see how the various sub-strategies develop and suceed (fail). To be able to do that I need to start somewhere; ‘how-tos’ and t-shirts are where I stick my flag in the ground!

What do you think?

I’d love to hear what you think of this project. Am I mad and dellusional? Should I be starting off with other ideas? What are your experiences in trying to generate passive income? What successes and failures have you encountered?

Please leave any comments or thoughts using the form below. Cheers, Tim.