I have a short term goal (less than 2 years) of earning an additional $5,000 per month in new income streams that I am building each and every day. My intent is to make all of these income streams as passive as I possibly can. The whole point of creating passive income is to free up my time so that I can enjoy spending time with my family and watch my children grow up.
As time goes on and as I build more passive income streams, this goal may change to $10,000 per month or $20,000 per month, or more! This goal is not set in stone, but is sitting out there as a target that I am trying to hit. Without any goals set, I would just be wasting my time jumping from one project to the next with no direction.
Why $5,000?
You might be wondering why I decided on $5,000 as my monthly income goal. Did I just randomly pick it? No – with that amount of money coming in I could safely quit my job and my family could live as comfortably, if not better than we do now. That mark is actually about 25% higher than what our household currently brings in every month, which means we could more than cover our monthly bills.
Does this mean that once I hit $5,000 per month in passive income that I will quit my job? Not necessarily, but what it does provide is the financial freedom to make that choice. To have the power and opportunity to control my family’s financial future instead of relying on the company that I work for to decide to keep me around and employed.
Breaking Down the Earnings
Is $5,000 in passive income earnings each month an achievable goal? A few years ago I would have said no. However, now I know it is absolutely possible based on what other people are doing today. There are tons of people earning a six figure annual income through different programs like One Week Marketing.
While I believe that bringing in $5,000 per month is more than possible, it is still a little hard to visualize. So instead of trying to reach a monthly amount of $5,000, I am going to set a goal of reaching $167 (rounded for simplicity) per day. To me, breaking down the numbers on a daily basis makes it seem more achievable, which is an important motivator to keep me moving along.
Individual Passive Income Stream Goals
So now that I have a goal of earning $167 per day in passive income, I can set individual goals for each passive income stream that I am building. Let’s take a look at my eHow passive income stream broken down into daily earnings.
Within two years, I plan to bring in $1,000 per month in passive income earnings from this source (which is absolutely possible). So breaking that down on a daily basis, reaching $1,000 in monthly earnings on eHow would translate into about $33 per day in earnings. Subtracting that amount from my overall goal of $167 would leave me with about $134 per day in earnings that I need to go out and build! This is still a decent amount of money, but easier for me to target than a monthly amount.
How to Earn Passive Income on eHow.com: Maximize Your Online Earnings
Creating a Plan
Now that I have my numbers broken out into daily totals, the next step is to write up a plan of how I can reach this goal. For example, I may say that my goal is to earn an additional $20 per day from HubPages. Taking that $20 per day goal, I can then go out and research what other Hubbers are doing to earn that kind of money. During my research, maybe I find out that in order to feasibly earn that kind of money, I have to do steps X, Y, and Z and write about 1,000 Hubs.
Once I have this information, I can set additional daily or weekly goals for myself. For example, if I want to reach 1,000 Hubs in one year, I will need to plan on writing just under 3 per day. The task of writing 3 new hubs per day can then be added to my daily routine.
Final Thoughts
Does this approach to earning passive income guarantee success? No – it will still take hard work and dedication. However, setting daily or even weekly goals provides a design for me to follow. It prevents me from jumping from one idea to another. It keeps me focused on the main goal of $5,000 per month without feeling overwhelmed.
How do you set your earnings goals? Do you prefer to break it down on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis?
Disclaimer Notice – Please understand that I benefit financially from any products or services you may decide to purchase as a result of clicking on one of the links contained in this article.
Related posts:
- Earn $3,000 per Month in Alternative Income – SMART Goal Setting
- How To Earn Passive Income At Home
- Passive Income eHow Updates – December (2009)
- Passive Income Results – April (2010)
- Passive Income eHow Updates – August (2009)
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While having passive income is great, I think that focusing solely on ehow and hubpages is a mistake. When Ehow and Hubpages change the percentage of revenues they share with publishers or simply decide to remove your content and link to their own content, you would be in big trouble. I don’t like to build the business of someone else – you shouldn’t either. I know several bloggers which have been able to generate $1000-$2000/month online with blogging ( which is more active but is location independent source of revenues). If you just build your brand online and keep at it you should do great.
I bet that most of the best performing ehow articles in your account are in a similar niche. If you simply created a blog/site around this subject you would be making much more per month in the long term..
@Blogging Banks – I agree with you! That is why once my 100 article eHow challenge is over, I will move on. In the end I am moving to have my own sites because that is where you can control your own destiny.
I like that you’re using your goal as a way to focus on what works. You’ve had success in the past using eHow and HubPages, and that’s the basis of your passive income. Since you’re proficient at writing these articles, perhaps you could find other sites similar to eHow that would help diversify your passive income in case there is a change to their payout percentage.
@Corporate Barbarian – I actually agree with Blogging Banks that your own sites is where the true value and security is. However, I think that diversifying out on some of these sites can help some along the way.
I have to say, I really love that way of thinking. I don’t have any real goals like that, but I think I should start. I would also probably pick a number similar to your daily total. Doing steps towards chunks of that total really does seem to make it a lot more manageable.
@WCC – I find it easier to break it down on a daily basis. I have a few other “chunks” in the pipeline that I hope to post soon!
I wish I could be a bit more focused sometimes. The whole ‘making money online’ thing is a huge area, so I kind of flit from one thing to the next, hopefully (as Corporate Barbarian said) figuring out ‘on the fly’ what works and weighting my efforts in that direction.
Actually, when you think about it, the third party platforms such as eHow, Squidoo, Triond, whatever are great ‘research and development’ tools. I always find that for every 10 articles/lenses I write, one of them gets the lion’s share of the traffic – so this gives a clue as to which things to focus new self-hosted ventures on (plus you get paid a little while doing the research!)
@PFI did you say you are concluding your 100 challenge then? After big confusion about images on Triond, plus some other research I did, I’m also moving to a slightly different (and experimental) project.
@Neil – No, I am still going strong with the 100 Article eHow challenge. My point was that I will be taking a break from eHow for a while after this month to focus on other income streams.
BTW – When I say “break”, I will still post 10 – 20 articles per month after August, but not the 100 that I am working on now.
@PFI lol. Ah, okay. I’ll still be posting articles as well, just not aiming to do the 100 Triond ones full-time for August as I originally intended. (BTW I think 10-20 eHows per month is pretty good going!! I’d be happy building up a decent portfolio at that rate.)
I’ve taken a 6 month mental vacation and haven’t visited your blog for a while. It’s good to see that the information and debate is as lively and useful as ever….
I have to throw in my two cents and say that I don’t have a problem sharing revenue with the third party sites like eHow, especially when you are struggling to stay motivated when you are just getting going. I don’t have many articles on eHow, but I have to admit that I check my stats every day, just to see if I had any pennies rolling in….
As a person who bills hours evry day in my real job, I am absolutely fascinated by the concept of doing an hours work and then getting paid for that work over and over. Sweet.
Thanks for the great blog. It’s pure motivation for me.