Wouldn’t it be nice if you made money in your sleep? Wouldn’t it be nice to build something online and it continues to make money, regardless of what you’re doing? You may be taking a vacation, or spending time with your family members, or you may be working at your primary job. Whatever the case may be, whatever it is you built online continues to make money. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month.

This might seem like the stuff of fantasies, but I’m telling you, this happens all the time. In fact, thanks to the internet the once elusive dream of a passive income machine has become a solid reality for many people. The only question left is whether you want to become one of them. You have to remember that if somebody can do it, you can do it, too.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that somebody just gave them their businesses. It’s not like their passive income system fell in their laps. I wish that was the case. I wish there was some sort of magic bullet solution to make all our income problems go away. If only there was some sort of online income system where you can buy a product or something off the shelf, and you just need to add water to it for it to generate dollars day after day.

Unfortunately, if I were to say those things I would be flat-out lying to you. An online income business is precisely that. It’s a business. What’s a business? It’s something that requires your attention. It’s something that requires you to study different inputs so you can put together a working strategy that can service the needs of your customers.

If you want to make money online, you have to think of it as a business. It’s not a hobby; not some sort of lottery; and definitely not a pipe dream. It has to be a business. Otherwise, you’re not dealing with reality.

What you’re doing is engaging in wishful thinking. I’m sorry to be the one to report this to you, but wishful thinking doesn’t put money on the table. It did not in do it the past. It’s not going to do it now. And, it’s probably going to fail to do so in the future.

Focus on what works. This Quick Start Guide to Online Income Systems helps you get a realistic view of what’s needed for you to make money online. I’m not going to go into hype. I’m not trying to sell you a product or a system. Instead, I’m trying to open your mind to doing whatever it takes for however long it takes for you to develop a solid online passive income system.

 

Rule #1 Don’t Wait

It’s really important to work under a tremendous sense of urgency. I’ve seen it happen continuously: People who would study all sorts of online income systems and never take action. You have to understand that just because you study all these different ways of making money online and you research all these information, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be successful.

Unfortunately, that’s what people stuck in a pattern do: They think that the more books they read and the more information they process, eventually this would translate to them increasing their chances of success. I wish that was the case. The problem is, the only thing they are achieving is analysis paralysis. They never get off the fence. What they do is spend dollar after dollar getting more information. These people often go from one method to the next hot method. As a result, they never get anything done.

 

In many cases, the only way they could say to themselves that they started on the road to an online passive income system is that they’ve spent money on books. I’m sorry to say this but spending money on online products is not progress. Not even close, because it’s not taking action.

Taking action means implementing the information found in the products that you bought. Simply buying a product isn’t going to do you much good. It’s like trying to become a great French cook, who can cook up all sorts of amazing French cuisine, by putting a French cookbook under your head. It doesn’t work now, does it?

 

Rule #2 Analysis Paralysis is Not Progress

A lot of people who find themselves in a pattern where they’re just buying product after product, researching every single day for a “magic” online business that would produce solid money are simply wasting their time. The worst part of it all is that they’re deluding themselves into thinking that they are somehow, someway, making progress towards their dreams of financial independence. The only person they’re fooling is themselves.

When you’re caught in a situation where you constantly go through different analyses because you’re thinking that once you get the right information, and you make the right analytical discovery, everything will become easy, is a waste of time. You have to understand that ideas only become reality if you take action on them. Up until that point, they’re just going to stay stuck in your head. They’re just going to be the stuff of hopes and dreams.

Unfortunately, hopes and dreams don’t put food on the table. Hopes and dreams don’t put new cars in your garage. Action does. The world doesn’t care about what your intentions are, all your could haves, should haves, and would haves. All it cares about is what results you produced.

I hope this is clear. You have to take action if you want to get results. Stop waiting. Stop Analysis Paralysis. Pick a method and put it to use.

Four Online Income Methods

While there’s actually a huge number of ways to make money off the internet, you can pretty much whirl them down into four general clusters. There are other general clusters out there but these are the most familiar.

 

1. Online Publisher

The first and easiest way to make money on the internet is to simply publish content online. When people see your content and they see the ads, you make money when people click that. Either you make money through actual sales the ad generated or through the simple clicking action of your page’s visitors. Regardless, online publishing requires that you produce content and present that content to visitors that your online publication attracts.

 

2. Link Promoter

Promoting links doesn’t require that you own a website. In fact, even if you don’t know how to blog or you don’t even have a website, you can still make money promoting links. You can go to places online where there is traffic, like Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

You can also poach traffic off blogs and forums. As long as the place you’re on allows you to post a link and people can click live links, you stand to make money. Why? When people click on the link you’re promoting, they go to a landing page. If they do what the sponsor wants them to do, which is to either buy a product, or enter their e-mail address, you get paid a commission. It really is that simple.

 

3. Product Creation

If you’re thinking of selling your own products, you’re stepping up quite a bit in the online income food chain. Creating products is not easy. However, if you create the right book, or the right software package, or other online digital products, you stand to make quite a bit of money.

Why? Because you are near the top of the food chain. Instead of settling for just a piece of the action like a typical affiliate marketer link promoter, you pretty much get the whole amount, or you can set the amount that remains with you. Instead of working really hard to push other people’s products, you can set up an affiliate program where other people push your product. Like I said, this method is right near the top of the online income food chain.

 

4. Arbitrage

If you spend any kind of time online, you would know that there are many people who needs certain types of services and products. Maybe you hangout at a particular Facebook page and you get its updates. When you read the comments, you can see that these people suffer from a particular need. By simply buying the solution to their problems from a place that sells it at a very affordable rate, you can make money.

It’s all about the classic equation of “buy low and sell high.” You just need to do a lot of research online where you find areas where buyers congregate. The next step is to find areas where sellers sell services cheap. This doesn’t just apply to products and services like e-books, and software, and freelance services. Arbitrage also applies to exchange platforms. You can hire a programmer to set up a website where you can monitor the buying and selling of services or digital products, and you make money from each sale.

This can take the form of either online information products like books, software, or domain names, services. You name it. The only limit really is your imagination.

 

Important Reminders:

 

Now that I’ve gotten you excited about the four general methods of making money online, keep the following in mind. These can make or break your success.

 

1. Draw a line in the sand as far as research is concerned

I’m not saying that you should not do any research. What I said in the section about analysis paralysis is never my intention to say to you that you shouldn’t do any research. What I am saying is that you should know when to stop. Draw a line in the sand as far as research is concerned. Don’t do any further research once you’ve reached that point. You need to start taking action.

 

2. Focus on what you can get good at, not what you’re passionate about

Just like with any kind of relationship, passion eventually runs out. I know I sound like a villain for saying that but that’s the harsh reality. Don’t pursue a project because you love it. Instead, focus on what you can get good at because passion can burn up overnight. However, if you become skilled at something you can continue to scale up that skill, because it’s all about business and your emotions are not part of the picture.

 

3. Take baby steps

This is crucial. You might think that you have a long road ahead of you-and you would be absolutely correct. The good news is that you don’t have to race through that long road immediately. You can just take baby steps. Learn from each step. Feel your way around. Conduct lots of experiments and scale up the things you’re doing right as well as improve the things that you’re doing wrong.

There’s always room for improvement so take baby steps forward. As long as you’re moving forward, regardless of how short the distance, you’re making progress.

 

4. Make the process your reward not the big money

A lot of people looking to make money online are fixated about the thousands upon thousands of dollars they could be making every month. While I am saying that it is possible, don’t focus on that. Focus instead on what you’re learning along the way. Fix your attention on what the process of building an online business teaches you about yourself, your personality, and your personal capabilities. Look at it as some sort of personal challenge for a greater skills transformation. The more you change your mind, the more you become a better person through the process, the sweeter the reward is at the end. Don’t be fixated on the money, instead focus on the person that you become.

 

5. Scale up

This is crucial. I’ve seen a lot of otherwise brilliant online entrepreneurs hit a particular wall and never make progress after that point. Maybe they made $10,000 a month, maybe somebody made $200,000 a month. Whatever the case is, don’t settle.

If you’re able to make $100 a month, you can make $1000 a month. If you can reach $1000 a month, you can make $10,000 a month. It’s all a question of scaling up. You start with a small basic unit and that adds up to maybe $100. But if you’re able to do that, you keep in mind that as long as you have the right process, you can scale that $100 up into maybe even a million dollars a month!

The focus should be on always adding value to the lives of your customers, adding volume to scale up your operations, and networking more with people who share your vision, or can point you to resources that you can use for the further success of your venture.