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:

1. Earn Passive Income Writing for Constant Content
2. Earn $3,000 per Month in Alternative Income – SMART Goal Setting
3. How To Earn Passive Income At Home

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Just recently I announced the 100 Article eHow Challenge in an attempt to accelerate that passive income stream. The plan is to pump out 100 articles on eHow in one month in order to reap the rewards in the future. I expect that in a few months after my challenge has completed that my eHow earnings will have at the very least doubled.

After writing about my 100 article challenge, I had several people comment to me that I shouldn’t concentrate solely on building eHow articles and should diversify. I couldn’t agree more and am actually working on building several streams of income. Without a collection of diversified income streams, you are leaving yourself at a high risk of losing out on becoming financially independent.

I have laid out 10 different ideas that I am currently working on (or will be soon) to diversify my passive income.

10 Ideas for Diversifying Your Passive Income Streams

1. eHow – As I have mentioned many times here on PFI, eHow has become my most successful passive income stream. Once my 100 article challenge is completed, I will continue to add articles – but at a much slower rate.
2. HubPages – I have recently started writing HubPages to generate passive income, specifically AdSense. Once the 100 Article eHow Challenge is complete, I plan to run a similar challenge for HubPages.
3. Niche Blogs – I have my virtual assistant busy helping me build and grow one of my niche sites with a few new ones in the pipeline.
4. Squidoo – I spent some time several months ago building affiliate campaigns using the One Week Marketing guide to build passive income. I have some income coming in from these efforts and plan to continue to create new campaigns when I have the time.
5. CD’s and Interest – I am continually rolling over interest generated from multiple certificates of deposit and other interest bearing accounts to generate more income.
6. Peer Lending – This hasn’t been the most stable income stream for me but one that I have not completely given up on yet.
7. Dividends – I continue to work at building a solid dividend producing stock portfolio. As money comes in from my other revenue sources, I continue to add to my existing positions.
8. eBook – There are plans to have my first eBook written and published by the end of this year. More to come on this potential revenue stream.
9. InfoBarrel & Bukisa – Not that I need any more sites to write for, but I am considering opening up accounts on each for further diversification. Once my eHow and HubPages challenges are completed, these two sites may be next.
10. Passive Family Income – The income generated from running this site is probably considered more active income instead of passive income. However, running the site is currently bringing in some monthly income so I am including it in the list.

Don’t Have Too Many Eggs

I try and build my passive income streams around the old phrase – “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. However, I think there is a point that you can overdue it – which I have been a little guilty of. Jumping around from idea to idea eventually will catch up with you. In the case of creating mini content sites (i.e. HubPages, InfoBarrel, etc.), concentrating on too many platforms and ideas can result in unfinished projects and campaigns, which is counter productive.

While I believe that diversification is critical to your overall success, I also think that you need to run with your winners. Take my eHow challenge for example. I have proven (as well as others) that eHow is a legitimate and great opportunity to build passive income streams. I have also learned there are many equivalent sites that don’t compare to eHow. Instead of diversifying across sites that are not successful, I am spreading my time across platforms and ideas that work for me.

What other passive income ideas can you add to the list?

Related posts:

1. Build Passive Income Streams from eHow
2. How to Identify the Best Passive Income Streams
3. How to Jump Start a Passive Income Stream

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

There are many ways to create passive income through writing and publishing content. Some people choose to write articles on eHow to earn residual income while others may decide to start a blog and add advertisements or publish an eBook. The internet and other media sources have opened up so many business opportunities to make money for anyone willing to dedicate their time and hard work.

Another potential passive income opportunity besides publishing an eBook or writing for eHow is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is an income source that I really had never considered in the past, partly because I had no understanding of what it was. At a high level, affiliate marketing is a way for a writer to publish content that includes an affiliate link to a product or service that they are trying to sell. It may sound a little sleazy and there are a ton of affiliate marketing scams out there. However, there are also a lot of honest and legitimate programs and products available that can be used to create passive income.

Recently, I purchased PotPieGirl’s One Week Marketing product that she is selling which details how to generate affiliate income by using Squidoo and other free tools. I typically don’t tend to buy products like this as I like to learn things on my own. Fortunately I talked myself into using some of my eHow earnings on purchasing these new materials that could help jump start a new passive income stream. This product was the reason I began my affiliate marketing passive income stream, which has the potential to be huge.

Want to know why I am so positive about affiliate marketing? Like any new passive income stream, I try to start slowly and with caution. After reading through the materials for One Week Marketing, I started creating new campaigns mostly on Squidoo that centered around the concept of promoting an affiliate product. Once I got a few of these campaigns started, I decided to use the concepts laid out by PotPieGirl using tools other than Squidoo. I won’t give away any of the secrets from the product – but it worked! It actually worked!

I will be honest that I was skeptical about the affiliate marketing hype. Besides reading up on One Week Marketing, I had also been reading up and researching other supposed success stories. I went several weeks without a sale and was becoming a bit concerned that I was doing something wrong. I always try to preach being patient and focusing on the long term – but it can be a little frustrating when you devote countless hours to a project that isn’t producing any tangible results.

After several weeks of no sales and little inspiration moving forward with this income stream, I opened up my Clickbank account and there it was. My first ever affiliate sale! I was ecstatic – all of those tireless nights plugging away at my laptop finally paid off! Even better was the fact that my sales commission from selling this item was more than my last two months of eHow earnings combined. Selling that one item was also more than what I have earned from AdSense over the last several months.

Sometimes staying on track and being focused only takes a little event. My little event was the sale of one affiliate product. That sale showed me the power of affiliate marketing and the income it can earn for you. Using One Week Marketing as a tool gave me the foundation to build my business model around. Did it go out and sell the product for me? No. Purchasing these materials did not pick out my niche topics to write on or tell me what tool to publish the content on, or even pick out my affiliate product to promote. What it did give me was the motivation and thought process on building affiliate campaigns which is truly a valuable asset.

As you can tell, I am so excited about the future opportunities available through affiliate marketing. I have only been publishing content for less than two months so much of my material is still very young. PotPieGirl writes about affiliate marketers making well over six figure incomes per year just by building campaigns around products to sell. I plan on being one of those people!

I plan to share any tips or tricks I come across along the way in my affiliate marketing endeavors. I will admit that I am still a rookie in this business and have a lot to learn. However, I believe it is important to help out anyone interested in starting an affiliate marketing income stream. Look for more posts on – How to create passive income through affiliate marketing in the future.

What tips can you provide on your affiliate marketing experiences?

Related posts:

1. Internet Marketing Guides and Resources
2. Creating Reusable Affiliate Link Titles
3. Stay Organized! – Keep Track of your Affiliate Links

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.