LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS & PASSIVE INCOME

One of the advantages of going to a top-tier MBA program is that you get to meet a lot of succesful, well-known people. Last week, billionaire real estate investor Sam Zell was on campus and gave an hour long speech about his views on the economy.

He made an analogy that the economy was like a bus being run by a monkey who let everyone drink, smoke weed and fornicate like crazy and then crashed it!  There’s no free lunch.  We’re going to have to pay for the past excesses.

 Read more... (1417 words, 9 images, estimated 5:40 mins reading time)

One of my near-term goals’ is to create $3,000 in passive income. (Since writing this post, I’ve broken that record. Check out this post to see how I made over $3,000 in a month) So far I’m about half way there, with income from various sources like blog advertisement revenue, Canadian Income funds and stock dividends,  and direct oil and gas drilling programs. Serial-blogger, Derek Beau, has already reached this target and his goal is to now make $10,000/month! Unlike me, he’s chosen to generate this income solely from blog ad revenue.

Over the past 2 years, he’s created 23 blogs on various topics ranging from golf balls to pregancy (apparently personal experience or expertise isn’t a deterrent!). He outsources the content creation using sites like Elance, and pays between $3-$5 per post. After waiting for a few months, during which time he lets the traffic build up, he begins to monetize it using various companies like Google, Text Link Ads, Kontera and direct advertizers . He’s making $3,000 every month and his eventual goal is to have 100 blogs pulling in $10k every month.  Read more... (416 words, 8 images, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

Here’s another depressing story of some 17 year old millionaire who makes $70,000 per month selling myspace templates. Did I say depressing? I meant inspiring!

Ashley Qualls, founder/CEO of Whateverlife.com doesn’t actually make money from the templates, but rather from adsense ads! Apparently her first adsense check from Google was for $2800, which is more money than Google EVER sent me. Of course, I haven’t filled a need (which she obviously did extremely well) but atleast I’m getting some remuneration (if you consider minimum wage to be any form of remuneration) for voicing my irreverent & often irrelevant opinions.

You can read the entire article online at Fast Company. She’s a pretty amazing teenager.

Congrats to Making Our Way for selling his car on Ebay.

Of course, the first thing I did was check whether anyone was selling a Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren on Ebay. Turns it they were!!

The cheapest one is only $349,000.