The Myth of Passive Income: Online Stores
Passive income is an amazing concept. It’s a stream of payments that you get every day/week/month/year with absolutely no effort. I’ve been trying to find sources of passive income ever since I first read Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad when I was in high school. While I was wanted to create passive income sources as a teenager, the book didn’t really tell me how to create passive income. Over the years, I’ve seen many people make claims about the best way to make passive income, but once you look into it more deeply, they aren’t really passive and they might not actually produce income. In this article, Joseph Hogue looks into whether online stores are a good source of passive income.
Online stores are a poor choice for truly passive income. While you do not necessarily need to spend the amount of time drawing people to your online store that you would spend blogging, you still need some way to attract people to the site. This usually either means paid advertising or some kind of content marketing.
Joseph Hogue, Quick Finance Fix
I was especially curious to read this article since I have watched a lot of TikTok videos of beautiful, young people, making tens-of-thousands of dollars a day while they sit on a beach with their Shopify stores. According to the videos, you just need to pick a product to drop ship, build a quick Shopify page, buy some Facebook ads, and the money begins to roll in. However, this article on Quick Finance Fix talks about just how difficult it is to turn a profit on Shopify stores. On a scale of 0 (myth) to 10 (true passive income), they ranked building an online store at less than 4.
What Is A Productive Day When Your Focus Is No Longer Earning Money?
Most people judge whether they had a “good day” or a “bad day” based upon the clock. They are either trying to maximize how much they accomplish at work, or maximize how many leisure activities they are able to accomplish on the weekends. This makes sense because we spend most of our lives at work. When you have a productive day at work, you automatically get a sense of pride at what you accomplished. Likewise, since you have such precious little time outside of work, you also want to make sure that you’re maximizing all of that time outside of the office. But what happens when you no longer need to work? How can you evaluate whether you’re spending your time in the “right” way?
After FI, I expected that my day-to-day plans would revolve around my interests, irrespective of their financial potential. However, a few years into hitting our FI number, I find myself still prioritizing activities with a financial payoff, or feeling guilty when I don’t.
Caroline, Costa Rica FIRE
In this article by Caroline of Costa Rica FIRE, we get to glimpse behind the curtain of what it’s like to experience early retirement. Although Caroline retired so she could pursue leisure activities, she often finds that she is still motivated by money. She reports that she feels like she spent her time wisely when she does activities that earn her money. On the other hand, she recognizes that this is not how she should be managing her expectations about time. If you are considering early retirement, this article is definitely worth a read to make sure you’re mentally prepared to retire.
Digital nomad advantages and disadvantages
The pandemic has certainly highlighted remote work and jobs that you can perform remotely. One of the purported benefits of remote jobs is that if you had a remote job, you could become a digital nomad. Without being tied to a physical location, you could travel the world while you worked. In addition to a life of slow-travel, you could use geo-arbitrage to live in a low cost city while you earn a high rate of pay from your employer in a big city. But is being a digital nomad all that it is advertised to be? This article by Lylia Rose takes a balanced look at what it is like to be a digital nomad.
Some people believe that becoming a digital nomad is the best way to work and travel. This is because it allows you to live in a new country for a while, explore the culture, and enjoy the local food. You can also make money from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection.
Lylia Rose
While there are certainly benefits to being a digital nomad, there are also disadvantages that you need to consider before making a change to remote work. While you have the freedom to travel the world while you work, if you are moving all of the time, you’re missing out on the chance to form deep friendships with others in your community. Many digital nomads report feeling lonely. There also a host of potential issues regarding work. If you are a freelancer, you may have periods of low income that could add stress to your life. Furthermore, if you live in the United States, most health insurance is tied to employment, and this could be another source of stress as a digital nomad. If you’re considering moving to a nomadic lifestyle, it is definitely worth checking out this article.