So far I have assumed that we have a fixed income from a day job to work with. When you start to get more interested and involved in investing you will soon notice that the investment potential of an ordinary paycheck is not that huge. How could we find additional streams of income that we can add to our investment?
Lets look at some options.
Reinvest your returns
This should be a no-brainer, during the build phase of your money machine you should reinvest everything. For funds, many of them do this automatically and you don't have to think about it. If you are investing in common stock of businesses then there is a chance that there is a dividend payout from time to time. You should add this sum to your next investment.
Over time, this approach together with your normal savings/investments should start to yield larger and larger return.
Start a business on the side.
If you have the know-how, why not monetize on it on your spare time? Register a small business and start doing extra jobs. Could be anything from photography and web-design to household chores.
If things go well, this could turn out to become your main business in the future. And until then, put all returns into your investment portfolio.
Garage sales
Sell off some stuff that you do not need anymore.
Advertise in a local newspaper and remember to figure out a pricing system that you want to follow on the big day.
- Make sure that you have a permit if it is required in your area.
- Bundle items. Lower valued items together with medium valued can boost the sell factor
- If you have more valuable items, try researching a little to figure out the price-tag that you can put on them. But expect that people will haggle about the price no matter what.
- Get extra change so that you don't stand there empty handed when someone hands you a large bill.
- Put on price labels that are easy to read.
- Use prices that match the change you have available at the start.
- Make sure there is enough parking place outside of your house. If you have advertised, there can be a real rush and its not fun to see potential customers go somewhere else. If 5-10 cars cant park then try finding an other location.
- In the last 30 minutes, lower prices to get rid of the last things. You've already decided that you don't want it anymore, then turn it to a profit even if it is less than what you asked for in the beginning.
In the end, if you feel that you have got the hang of the haggling business, you could try starting a side business. Buying items from other peoples garage sales and then selling at your own. Its quite a lot of work but a fun way to meet people.
Write
If you have knowledge of a subject, why not write about it?
For information on how to publish your own book, go to
Writersdigest.com they have a large in-depth guide on the subject.
If you instead want to write smaller articles that maybe not suite as a book, try out blogging.
With the correct ad-placement you can turn it to a revenue stream as well. Key notes on blogging is to have a continuous publishing schedule to keep people coming back for more. This is something that I am not that good at. I tend to write a lot of articles and then have huge gaps until I get into writing mode again.
If you have your own hosting, try out
wordpress. Their free service does not allow advertising (as they put their own ads into your blog). If you do not have your own hosting, then
blogger is the way to go.
Also, make sure that you use high quality images that convey the subjects. Best are of course photos and images that you create on your own, but using one or two images from various
free stock image sites can upgrade the quality feeling that you get at a glance.
Another way to monetize on articles is to sell them to magazines, try contacting a magazine that writes in the field that you want to write in. Put together a portfolio (could be your blog) and send them a question if you could write for them.
Good luck :)
