So what is a residual income

Are you really happy working 50-100 hours a week knowing that you could be laid off anytime!

A friend of mine emailed me today to say that she has just been made redundant after working long hours each week in a job that she found very boring. She has always said that I should get a proper job so that I would be certain of receiving a wage each month. It seems that she has found out the hard way that there are no guarantees anymore!

She now sees that what I have been doing is building up an income that will continue no matter what happens to me. Yes, I did work long hours trying to fit it in with my employment at the time. Yes, most of the time I went down dead alleys and wasted money I could not afford. But, yes, I did enjoy it and eventually it paid off because I found out the correct route to follow.

So, what is residual income? It is income that does not require you to do anything, that’s right, nothing. All those adverts you see of people lazing on the beach looking silly might be true, and wouldn’t you like to be one of them?

But there is a catch, where the adverts do tell fibs is that you DO have to do something initially, and a fair bit of it. It is not hard if you receive good advice and training but you have to do something – sorry to disillusion you!

The good part it that with residual income there is no limit to what you can earn, unlike a job where you only have so many hours in the day.

What types of residual income are there?

· Well I am a mortgage broker, not for much longer as the market is somewhat volatile, but I first learnt about residual income selling building and Life assurance. As long as the client keeps renewing, I keep getting paid. Great.

· Rental Property

· Royalties on Music, books

· Network Marketing or MLM

· Photographer who sells reprints

· A business owner who can pass the day to day work to a manager

· Interest on Capital

· Film royalties (Could just be a “How to” video)

If you want to earn more, work less, and have a decent retirement, you are going to have to think about creating one of these residual income streams sooner of later. The sooner you start the sooner you will achieve the personal and financial freedom you require.

As you can see from the above and the list is not exhaustive, there are many different ways to generate residual income. It may be come from the same customers, or new customers. It may require no personal involvement whatsoever, such as an e-book sold on a web site, or it may require some personal contact, such as an insurance agent calling their client to remind them about their renewal.

The best way to achieve residual income is to Leverage it. I.e. get someone else to do it for you.

Here are some examples:

• Selling your e-book through affiliates who promote the product.
• Selling your software through affiliates who promote the product.
• A Multi Level marketer who builds a downline and receives commissions on the sales made by people in his downline
• A builder who makes a profit margin on the work done by sub-contractors
• Franchising your business.

Again, there are many more ways than this and can vary with different businesses. The key is that you must make money off of other people's labor, rather than your own.

Unfortunately, most methods require capital, a product, a business or experience, but not all. Network marketing has got a bad name over the years but it still produces more millionaires from ordinary people like you and me than any other method. It can and does work, and amazingly cheaply but only if it is done correctly, and with the right company.