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.