I was living the passive income dream last week! I spent 4 days in Florida with my beautiful girlfriend in 85 degree weather, and made money while I vacationed!.
I'm going to brag a little bit in this post, because I dreamed for years of the day when I'd be able to make money while I vacation.
Stop for a second & re-read that last part.
The average person thinks of vacation as that time, once or twice a year, where they get together with friends and/or family and travel somewhere remote to escape the monotony of every day life.
They save up their money and go somewhere or do something within reason, based on "what they can afford".
I put that last part in air quotes because I see money differently that the average person, and hopefully you will too, as a person that understands the lifestyle that passive income enables us to live.
When Can You Afford Something?
What it means to be able to "afford" something has a different meaning to different people:
- I have friends who can "afford" things so long as they can cover the cost with funds in their bank account
- I know others who can "afford" things even if they don't have the cash to actually buy it, so long as their line of credit allows them to cover the purchase
(please don't do this)
And I personally weigh whether or not I can "afford" something based on multiple factors:
I think about money in terms of dollar per day: how much money do I make every day. If my gross annual income is $100,000 then my dollars per day is 100,000/365 = $273.97.
$273.97 = "1 unit" of income.
I let this figure assist me in my decision making when it comes to big purchases (I work hard to make enough money to not sweat the small things).
- How many units (1 day of income = 1 unit) am I spending on this purchase?
- If I'm financing the purchase (house, car) hat will my new dollars per day be? (accounting for this deduction to pay off the loan)
The magnitude of a purchase also should help shape your perspective on whether or not you can truly afford. Buying a house is often a great investment, and while mortgages SUCK to pay off, there are tax benefits to owning a home as well as historical data to support it as a good investment based on land value in the United States.
Buying a car can be a great investment if you don't have one. But use your head when you buy the car - if you buy a brand new car that loses a good % of it's value the second you drive off the lot, regardless of how much happiness it brings you, it's a poor investment.
I LOVE to talk about good investments, and I do my best to avoid losing investments. You get my point.
I aim to make enough money to not have to evaluate whether or not I can afford the vast majority of purchases, and my goal long-term is to sweat fewer and fewer financial matters, while also not having to trade my time for a pre-determined amount of money (by investing my time building scalable passive income streams!)
I don't know why I'm ranting about finance right now, the point of this article was to talk about what a good time I had with a very special girl, out under the Florida sun!
* hanging out on the beach around dusk
I never take selfies, but I was feeling inspired when I took that photo on the beautiful Florida beach as the sun was setting.
The smile on my face was justified by the KILLING I did on Amazon each day I was gone as well:
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$10,474.84 in sales over a 4-day span that I spent enjoying mixed drinks in 85 degree weather on the beach!
THIS IS WHAT THE PASSIVE INCOME DREAM IS ABOUT :)
February was a pretty slow month for me on Amazon Merch, but I did 29 sales over the 4 days that I was gone, for $627.61 in total revenue.
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While Merch didn't account for too much of the overall pie, it was still a completely passive income stream that ultimately contributed to the "big picture".
Diversifying your income streams is a good thing!
Double (& triple) down on what's working, but don't completely cast aside programs like Amazon Merch simple because it's getting more competitive & saturated over time.
While I was racking up sales on Merch, we were enjoying what has to be some of the BEST hummus on the planet:
* Our favorite hummus platter with a few adult beverages to wash it down
I shared earlier that I don't ever take selfies, and I swear I also almost never take pictures of food, but between the hummus & my strawberry lemonade cocktail (with an extra shot of vodka), it was too good not to share!
Not pictured: The lobster BLT I ate shortly after this was taken.
Oh yeah and somehow we lucked out and were sent two free drinks... the weighter overheard me talking about the Casamigos Anejo (the George Clooney tequila) that I recently purchased and brought us some for free!
Alright, I'll stop.
I made 10 sales on Etsy for $192.80.
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On Redbubble I sold 7 products for $126.21.
Using the Printful + Amazon integration to sell FBM POD products I did an additional $444.43 in sales
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The 3rd & 4th columns are from my Amazon.co.uk account which also got 1 POD sale (It's definitely slower than the US, but I'm operating at a profit so I will continue to build my catalog).
While I was making some extra income selling dropshipped print-on-demand hats and t-shirts, I was actually wandering over to the golf course where I hit the driving range & putting greens (my golf game needs work).
It was a beautiful day to play golf! (but I don't golf...)
I was swinging the driver a bit too low while trying to knock the golf balls as far as possible and got some pretty big blisters on both thumbs. Once I figured out to aim slightly higher, it was a much more pleasant experience.
Google Ads
My primary website that brings in 99% of my ad revenue (not this site) brought in $21.60. This wasn't much, but it falls into my favorite category of income:
What I like to call "FREE MONEY" - it was money earned for work I did literally YEARS ago, and almost never touch anymore.
I do allow for users to submit content which I then manually format and post... but besides that I have almost no interaction with the site & it runs itself!
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As my website (that I initially launched years ago while I was still in college) was being browsed by anonymous people from around the world, I was doing one of the most random things I've ever done:
Arial trapeze
Yep - that's your boy flying through the air on a trapeze
My girlfriend likes to try and scare me into doing these quirky things at least once a year.
Truth be told, it was actually a lot of fun! This ex-Cirque Du Soleil trapeze artist ran the entire operation from his front yard (which was probably the scariest part).
Aside from how hot it was, it was a great time.
And it definitely felt safter than when we went Flyboarding (the water hoverboard thing) the year before in a random Florida lake (where there had to be gators...)
The "water jetpack" thing is actually called Flyboard - it's awesome!
This is what the passive income / solopreneur lifestyle is all about!
