PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUSE IS
Greg Bruce finds it hard work — and costly — to become passively rich online
Greg Bruce finds it hard work — and costly — to become passively rich online
Imust have been having one of my occasional massive panics about my general lack of money, because one Saturday afternoon earlier this year I found myself listening to an episode of a podcast called “Smart Passive Income”.
A little part of me has always wanted to be rich and a bigger part of me has not wanted to have to work for it, so the title alone was very attractive to me.
After listening to that first podcast, I began to read through related online information about how to generate a passive income, of which there is much, and to download free e-publications, of which there are many.
What the podcast and related online information suggested was a roadmap: You start a website, give away lots of great, free “content”, and save up your “best stuff”, for which you charge “megabucks”, or you find other ways to make money from your large audience, like online sponsorships, or consulting, or speaking gigs, or publishing deals.
The more I read about it, the more obvious it became that to get to the point where you’re receiving a passive income actually requires quite a lot of activity.
Generating lots of useful content is, in itself, far from a passive act. Our world is already awash with content. What could I come up with that would set me apart? And that would only be the first step. After that, there would be marketing it, finding an audience, building an email list, search engine optimisation, email optimisation, social media campaigns, A-B testing, figuring out how to monetise, and all manner of other rabbit holes of non-passivity.
Nevertheless, the pull of the money-making impulse was strong enough that I didn’t care. I started to “work up some content” and started broadening the scope of my money-making research possibilities beyond the strictly passive. I started studying the successes of world-leading entrepreneurs. I started to dream big. My plans became ever grander.
I would drive past expensive-looking houses in expensive areas and think, “I’ll probably own that one day.” If mindset was important, I had it, and anybody who’s anybody in the entrepreneurship game will tell you that mindset is important.
When I saw my friends, I would run my latest ideas past them, ask them for feedback and ideas of their own, and generally shut down any other avenue of conversation. Instead of scrolling emptily through my social media accounts in the 15-20 nightly minutes it took to get my 18-month-old to sleep, I started using the time to brainstorm.
“When did you catch capitalism?” my rich brother asked me one day. That was probably the first time I thought of it as a disease.
For a good few months, my obsession raged. I read several books on entrepreneurship and took three separate online courses. I became a disciple of the “lean startup” movement. I drew up rudimentary business plans on a blackboard at home.
What I didn’t do, in all that time, was take any action.
I HAD started too grand, become too ambitious too soon. I needed to start small, get my feet wet, walk before I could crawl. I went looking for opportunities with low-set up costs and I discovered Fiverr, a site where you can offer various services to the people of the internet and charge not much for them — as little as $5.
I thought hard about the intersection of what I could sell and what people might want to buy. I can write and not much else, and after thinking about it for a while, I concluded that the thing people want written more than anything else is online dating profiles.
I set up my basic bio on Fiverr, then hung out my shingle. I wrote: “Research shows that the quality of your online dating profile has a massive effect on the quality of dates you go on. Actually, I’ve got no idea whether research shows that, but surely, right?”
I thought this was funny, but the market didn’t respond with either amusement or interest. I tried to meet the market with rewritten blurbs and new pricing, and I even put up new profile photos, including a great one of a lissom, silhouetted couple walking on the beach, but I just couldn’t get any traction. A handful of people viewed the ad, but nobody ever contacted me about it.
I dropped the online dating thing and started offering to write love poems, then love poems written in calligraphy, then funny lists for people’s websites. None of it made an impression. Barely anybody saw my ads.
MAYBE, I thought, I just need to get some money — any money — coming in, to kickstart things. “Money begets money”, that type of thing — the sort of phrase I imagined appearing in a self-help book, and I know a thing or two about selfhelp books.
I went through my bookshelf and picked out three of my highest-value self-help classics: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Artist’s Way and Eat Pray Love. I also found an adult-size kangaroo onesie in the wardrobe and a brand new unopened neck pillow that had been given to my wife by someone who obviously didn’t like her. Then I listed the lot on Trade Me.
When I told my brother about this new plan, he said, “Do you think that buying things retail