What in the heck is a "Passivilionaire" anyway?

When I was growing up I learned that if you saved enough money in the bank, you could live off the interest it earned. Sounds good, and yes, that can work. Surely, saving up a million dollars just might do the trick!

Pulling some numbers out of thin air, let's assume you have $1 million dollars in an account earning 3.1% annual interest. You then can live off of $84.95 each day, forever, and ever, and ever.

We track our multiple streams of passive income daily. These are ideas from our own book that we've put into practice ourselves. Once we reached $84.95 per day in passive income we celebrated and dubbed ourselves as official Passivilionaires!

You can do this too. For most of us it's much more fun, and much easier, to gain an extra, passive income stream than it is to tuck away money to reach the same goal.

Essence magazine article praises our book!

Over the past couple weeks we noticed a very definite sales increase for our book Secrets to Creating Passive Income, and we were a little mystified at the sudden jump in passive income this represents. A few days ago we discovered a very nice review of our book on a site called Woogleme.com, and at first thought this might be the explanation, but a check of the posting date showed this article appeared a few days after the start of our sales increase. So we kept looking around.

Last night we received a very kind e-mail from a reader thanking us for the nice information in an article in the July edition of Essence Magazine, a popular magazine with a circulation of well over 1 million readers. We immediately went to the nearest Walgreens magazine rack (it was after midnight) and sure enough, on page 69 there's an article about "What Rich Black Women Know". A couple pages into the article, in step 4 of 10 steps for the reader to take, the author gave our book some glowing praise. Wow! What a pleasant surprise!

Passive income can grow on its own, and it's so nice when this happens. We are so grateful for the very positive reception our book has received, and mostly we're grateful that it is very likely helping a lot of people increase their personal income in fun, creative, and enjoyable ways... Much like what we're doing for ourselves!

For more information about our book, check out its Facebook fan page.

Yes you can write a book!

Income from your own book is a great way to create a passive income stream. At the risk of sounding a little self-referential, our book Secrets to Creating Passive Income is a good example.

Now here's the really, really cool idea for you to mull over today. You can actually write, market, and sell a book of your own with very little effort. You don't even have to write the contents, and yes, this is perfectly legal to do! Once an author has left this plane of existence for over 70 years, their copyrighted material is in the public domain. Anyone can print, publish, and sell their book, and it's okay to make money doing so.

Here's a great example. We discovered an axtraordinarily valuable book that was way ahead of its time, written by Wallace D. Wattles about 100 years ago and titled The Science of Getting Rich. It's a great resource, and if you like what you read in The Secret, you'll be fascinated to learn that Wallace's book teaches much the same thing but many decades earlier.

The Science of Getting Rich is in the public domain. You are free to copy the contents and create your own book. All you need to do is learn how to cost-effectively get published, and away you go! Check out this Examiner article for ideas on how to go about this.

How about Beekeeping for passive income?

Selling honey is a low profit margin business and only the largest commercial beekeepers reach profitability. That's the low-down you'll read on many web sites. But here's the good news... Keep looking around and keep thinking outside the box and you'll discover there's more to this hobby than just selling honey. Much more!

Beeswax candles sell for several dollars each, and even the raw beeswax itself sells for many dollars a pound. Propolis is a very expensive yet powerful natural anti-fungal and anti-bacterial product worth big bucks. Some large companies are paying more per ounce for Royal Jelly than the price of gold, using it in shampoos and beauty makeup products to great marketing advantage. Some commercial farmers will pay good money to rent a hive for pollinating purposes. And some entrepreneurs are making lucrative extra income from bee removal services.

You might create your own signature BBQ sauce that's based on your own organically grown honey. If you're into beer or wine making you could specialize in brewing honey beer, honey wine, or good old fashioned mead like they drank in the Golden Age of Ancient Greece.

You can even write a book about beekeeping!

The point is, whatever your passion or hobby is you can very likely create a significant passive income stream while having some fun doing what you like to do!

Even your simple idea might be profitable!

For years I've enjoyed pointing out a simple idea that can help people save a little bit on gasoline. There's only a minimal extra income, in the form of gas savings, for anyone who uses this idea directly, but recently this simple idea of mine has added a very significant kick to one of our passive income streams, bringing us some extra cash!. Let me explain.

Early in life I learned that airplane wings and even the main fuselages are rounded in the front ends and tapered to fairly sharp edges at the rear, simply because this minimizes wind drag from turbulence. Take a look at the many spock boxes on the tops of cars now days. (I like to call them that because they remind me of the space casket Mr. Spock's body was disposed of in Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan.) Anyway, people like to see spock boxes with sharp leading edges, I suppose because they look like they're cutting into the wind, and the trailing blunt ends towards the back of the cars don't seem to matter. If everyone would mount their spock boxes backwards the total gasoline savings would like be very significant!

I presented this discussion and explanation on a web site containing affiliate marketing advertisements for car top carriers, and our commissions for spock box sales through Amazon increased dramatically. The prices of these items is significant, so our affiliate income stemming from this one little passionate idea of mine has been significant.

Do you have a crazy, perhaps passionate idea that you'd like to tell the world about? With a little creative thinking and planning you can very likely cash in on it. Give it some thought!

Just what is Passive Income?

How do you define "Passive Income"? While authoring our best-selling book Secrets to Creating Passive Income we wrestled with the exact meaning and definition of this phrase, and finally came to the conclusion that it can mean different things to different people in different circumstances. However, to avoid being vague or ambiguous, the following working definition handles most situations pretty well.

First of all, everyone tends to agree that passive income opportunities have nothing to do with a time clock. If you are making money by reporting to work at a specific time and checking out later in the day, all for a fixed amount of income, that's not passive. There's nothing wrong with eight-hours-a-day employment, passive income is supplemental, or ideally a replacement for linear, time-based income.

Someone once declared "I work 18 hours a day on my passive income streams, so I can make money while I sleep!" Well, ideally passive income keeps on keeping on even when you sleep, but it also ideally shouldn't be something you have to work so hard at! The core point, I believe, is that passive income opportunities should, by definition, involve skills, tasks, and efforts that you enjoy. A "job" may or may not be drudgery, but true passive income should be a joy.

Many sources of passive income are non-linear in a time and effort sense. If you have to double your hours to double your income, then there's a direct linear relationship between the hours spent and the income received. Passive income generally allows, in one way or the other, to increase your income in a multiplicative or even exponential way. As just one simple example, consider a piano teacher who teaches one student at a time and therefore earns a rather fixed income per hour of time spent. Perhaps that shouldn't be considered passive income. However, writing a book full of piano lessons and earning royalties, or perhaps being paid the big bucks to perform to large, paying audiences, are both "passive income" ways to multiply the income for a similar amount of effort.

You'll find many books on the market that basically define real-estate investments as passive income, without expanding into the multitude of other passive income opportunities all around you. Real estate income is okay, and for some it can be extraordinary, but it's not for everyone, not by a long shot. In our book we focus on the many, many other ways you can earn passive income. Many of these ideas can be started on a shoestring budget, and you'll surely discover something in our list of ideas that is fun and enjoyable for you.

Almost daily we discover new ways to make passive income, several of which we've put into effect, and all of which we've had animated and fun conversations about. Here on these pages our intent is to share many of these thoughts and ideas. We welcome your thoughts and ideas too.

Remember our new twist on an old bumper sticker saying... "The one with the most toys - gets financially free first!" We are all in this together, there's plenty for everyone, and we like win-win-win results! We are grateful for your following, and joining, us on this great adventure!