Residual Income Web Blog

Being paid by the hour, buying wholesale and selling retail, offering a service for a specific pay, or running a company

I've punched a time clock.

and taking a share of the profits as salary, are all common ways to make money.  And when you’re still thinking inside that wages-for-work box, your only options to increase your income are to find higher-paying jobs, charge more for your goods or services, or increase your company’ bottom line through increased or better-targeted efforts.

But what if there was another income model, one that required upfront work but would continue to pay months and even years down the road, with time netting a higher per-hour return on your time investment than you imagined? For example, would you be able to earn $500 an hour planting cherry trees? Certainly not … unless the trees were your own investment and you were growing them for the long-term profit of a cherry orchard. It would take years, but eventually that time and money investment would pay itself back in spades. More related to my line of work, do you think anyone would pay me $1,000 to write a simple content article on the web? No way; the going rate is $10-$30 for the type of article I’m talking about.

And yet, I’ve earned over $1,150 on one of these how-to articles. I wrote it 14 months ago, and last month it earned over $100 … I’ve been more than compensated for my time, yet it keeps on earning. This success is not typical, nor did it happen overnight. But it gives you a glimpse of what is possible when you change the model. Here’s an overview of my journey, and how I’ve changed the paradigm for how I earn.

I’ve been making money online since 2003, and have done freelance writing off and on for a decade. Over the years, I’ve tried lots of different ways to generate income, all very legal, including traditional 9-to-5 jobs such as my first post-college employment as an editorial assistant making something like $15 an hour.

I sold stuff on eBay (photo by pd_THOR)

Starting in 2003, I made some extra cash buying things cheaply and reselling them on eBay at a profit, but as competition grew and fees increased I eventually moved on from the site altogether to look for better opportunities.

As I transitioned into life as a stay at home mom after the birth of my son, I was making a decent $20+  an hour both as a W-2 employee for an industry publication and as a freelance writer. But after I moved and let go of my employment while our family grew, I found myself looking for work at home opportunities again when my first two babies were toddlers.

I finally found a position grading English papers from home online, for a homeschooling curriculum with students all around the country. The pay was low — around $11 an hour when I started — but I was grateful to have steady work, especially after losing confidence in my employability following a couple years of not working much except for a few freelance gigs. The grading soon became tedious, but I kept it up simply because we needed the money.

I graded papers from home

In 2007, I began writing online content alongside my grading job, which I eventually quit because online writing paid better and was more enjoyable. I wrote articles for a flat fee and signed away my rights to each one. As a ghostwriter, I didn’t have the fame, or the fortune, as it turns out. Little did I know the real worth of those articles — I was happy with my new hourly income because I could write faster to earn more and in that way increase my income.

But as a work at home mom, it’s hard to be consistent with the time I have to put into my writing. One week might be great with a dozen hours slipped in before kids wake up or during playtime when Legos are more interesting than Mama. But still, take a bad week — sick, cranky kids or a too-full agenda — and income drops dramatically as work effort lessens. So I always had this pressure to get a certain number of article written so that I’d meet my income goals. If I didn’t write as many, I had less for my debt snowball or had to cut spending in some part of the budget.

Now I write & market online for residual income.

Earning residual income has changed all of that for me. Since I’m earning money from the past 14 months’ worth of efforts, my earnings don’t suffer a bit if I take a week off or am only able to write about half as much as normal because of particularly busy month. They ebb and flow because of a variety of factors, but overall remain just above or below average on any given day.

In fact, I work fewer hours than I did working 15 hours a week to earn $700 a month … and I earn many times what I used to. I work less, earn more and am building up a residual income base that will increase my earnings over time.

Learn how I did this in my next post, From Hourly Wages to Wealth-Building Residual Income, part 2,  in which I’ll share how I transitioned from working for wages to working for long-term income, and how I intend to build up to earning a full-time residual ncome of $50,000 or more a year by the time I am 30 … while working very part-time, still focusing on my kids and enjoying the stay-at-home-mom path I chose to take.