The world always responds to the one who has a vision and deep ideas, the one who knows what he wants
HH Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum (Prime minister of UAE)
Wealth is the accumulation, in abundance, of valuable resources or materials; this may be in the form of human resources or physical assets, health, peace and love. Today’s world presents to us more opportunities for wealth creation and expansion than ten years ago. In this golden age of information and technological advancement, there are thousands of job opportunities one can engage in to create and expand wealth to be successful. Things are changing real fast in our society and with every ounce of change, come a new opportunity to create and expand wealth. The only thing required of you to do is to simply decide upon yourself what it is you want to do and seize any opportunity that comes by. Don’t wait until tomorrow for tomorrow never comes and if you wait too long, the opportunity will soon be gone.
When choosing a career path, choose a path of financial independency. In other words, choose to be financially free regardless of the nature of the job you are doing. Don’t let any temporal obstacle you might encounter along the way to shift your focus away from financial freedom, always have it as a focal point on your way. A spark of light can turn into a mighty flame so also a journey of one thousand miles begins with a step in the right direction. Nothing ever happens by chance, you must walk yourself to freedom. If you don’t make an effort, nothing good will come your way. The capacity of human beings for development are limitless, we must sustain our own lives by our own efforts. Stephen Richards in his book Think Your Way To success: Let Your Dreams Run Free said “You are essentially who you create yourself to be and all that occurs in your life is the result of your own making”
If you are a salary earner, your paycheck is not the only way to expand your wealth. In truth, you can’t be financially secured working for someone else only; instead you are helping your boss to fulfill his financial goals. Your job is only for a period of time, a stepping stone, you must therefore expand your income if you truly want to live a life free of financial worries. Having multiple streams of generating passive income is the only surest way to actually be financially secured. Passive income is an earning received by an individual on a regular basis with little or no effort required to maintain it. Below are some of the most proven ways to generate passive income to expand your wealth.
Blogging and Affiliate Marketing
Stock Investment
One of the proven ways to be financially independent is through stock investment. Investing in stocks enables you to establish a platform, a base, a foundation for a generational wealth. Most of the wealthiest families across the globe have their financial roots traced to the secrets of unrepentant stock investments – the result? They keep getting richer and richer, generations after generations. Build a legacy for your children – invest in stock today.
In as much as stock investment appeals to you, it is overtly important to know that money can be gained and as well be lost. It is therefore imperative that before you delve into the world of stock market, you must be familiar and well grounded on how the stock market works. It is imperative to know that many companies pay dividends to their shareholders why some do not,there are basically two ways to invest in stock, the long term and the short term trading, there are gains and there are losses, but as a rule, each demands a sound knowledge of the market.
Long Term Investing
Long term stock investing is the buying and holding of a dividend stock for more than one year, often as long as ten, fifteen or forever. This type of stock investing is based on the idea that a good company with a staying power will continue to grow and the stock price will continue to appreciate, regardless of any momentary decline in stock value it might encounter in-between. As a company grows, so also the gains, but it should be worth noting that the longer you hold a stock, the higher probability of it going through the volatility of the stock market.
If you are a long term investor, look for a quality company with a strong staying power. This will minimize the risks and boost your confidence and comfort. As Warren Buffett said “If you don’t feel comfortable owning something for ten years, then don’t own it for ten minutes” Buffett is an advocate of long term investing as he prefers to hold his stocks forever.
Long term investing offers a relative stability than a short term trading, and investors can benefit from that. If you are new to the stock market and have a minimal knowledge of how the stock market works, it is highly advisable to go for the long term investing as it requires less trading skills and reduces the problem of watching your stocks for every little fluctuation in the market. Long term investing can be pretty boring as it takes long time for you to actually start seeing profits, but for most investors, that is perfectly fine. It offers dividends to its shareholders and as the stock prices go up, so also is the dividends. Long term investing is good for a long term project like funding your retirement and paying your children’s school fees through to college or university levels. Let’s take a moment to ponder over the words of Suze orman, an internationally acclaimed financial expert, a onetime vice president of investments at Prudential Bache Securities and the founder, Suze Orman financial group “Cash – in savings account, short term CDs or money market deposits is great for an emergency fund, but to fulfill a long – term investment goal like funding your retirement, consider buying stocks. The more distant your financial target, the longer inflation will gnaw at the purchasing power of your money”
Short term investing
This is a type of stock trading where the stock purchased, is sold within a year of purchasing. This type of stock trading includes the extremely high risk form of trading called day trading. Day trading is the selling of stock within 24 hours of purchase. This is a high risk and specialized form of trading, before engaging yourself in this type of trading; you must possess the discipline, skills and knowledge. It is not a recommended form of trading unless you are highly experienced.
The goal of short term trading is to take advantage of the quick gain produced by short term market volatility. Whether you are doing day trading or the nominal short term trading which takes from several days to less than a year, you must understand the market and how it works.
Check these useful tips before investing in stocks:
Penny Stocks
Penny stock is a stock of a small company traded at relatively very low price and market capitalization. This stock is usually traded below $5 and it is not listed on a national stock exchange. It is highly speculative and volatile due to their lack of liquidity and may be subject to manipulation.
This type of stock can be traded over the counter using services like OTCBB and Pink Sheets, and because of their low price, they often attracts huge buyers. They are susceptible to high volatility, and have the capacity to spin off huge profits, but at the same time, the associated risks are much; they are not listed in the major stock index and therefore not tracked, they are highly prone to all sorts of market manipulation and fraud, as a result, there are a whole lot of worthless stocks out there and an investor may end up buying some of those.
- Before investing in penny stocks make sure to check out these must-know tips
Forex Trading
Forex, which stands for foreign exchange is simply the trading of global currencies. Forex market, according to the Bank of International Settlement (BIS), has a market trading volume of $5 trillion per day. It opens 24 hours a day, only closes on weekends, and is the largest liquid market in the world. Why is Forex the largest market? Because, we are in a global world, we import and export our goods and services across the globe, we travel to other regions of the world, and currencies must be exchanged in all these. Forex, like stocks, is not for everyone, it is a highly profitable business, but comes with high risk. It is possible to triple your initial capital within a single trading period, but you can also lose all your investment capitals in the same period.
Forex trading requires a very sound technical knowledge of how the market works and tactical discipline needed to excel in any venture. Forex trading is usually done through a forex broker or a market maker. It is traded in pairs, for instance, JPY/USD, this means buying Japanese Yen while you sell US Dollars. You buy when it s low and sell when it goes up.
Foreign exchange market is a decentralized market, which implies that it can be transacted over the computer network between traders regardless of their locations. Currencies are usually traded globally in the world’s major financial centers across the globe, in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, Sydney, Zurich, Frankfurt and Singapore. What this means is that it can be traded across all the time zones around the world, for instance when trading ends in one time zone, it begins in another. Major players in currency trading are usually big international banks while smaller banks and financial institutions act as dealers or anchors.
In every aspect of human endeavor, there are associated risks; benefits and loses, and forex trading is not an exception. Therefore, when trading forex, caution should be applied. Avail yourself with the necessary tools and knowledge first before embarking on forex trading.
Real Estate Investment
Real estate investment is the buying, management, ownership, rental or sale of real estate for the purpose of making profit. Real estate market offers many opportunities for investors to make huge profits; but its process is a little more complicated than other investment markets (stocks, foreign exchange and bond market).
When you hear about real estate investment, so many disturbing questions will come to your mind – “how can I invest in real estate? Does it mean I must have millions of dollars before I could invest in real estate? Does it mean I will wait till eternity before recouping my initial investment capital? In the days gone, it required that you have enough money to invest in real estate, but over the years, real estate has evolved from just buying a home or building one for rental all with your money, to a very large market where you can make lots of gains, with or without huge amount of your personal money as the startup capital. If you have your money, fine, but in the recent time, people usually opt to leverage their capital from a mortgage bank and within a short time, pay off the mortgage.
Real estate has a limited liquidity compared to the other investment options and although it is often capital intensive, understanding the market will help investors to minimize the risks from errors due to lack of technical knowledge. Real estate is a low risk market, but some factors, if not well understood will turn it into a high risk market. In order to avert running into great risk, most investors will employ the services of real estate attorney and agents to assist with the purchase and management.
Bonds and Securities Investment
A bond is a debt investment where a corporate (corporate bond) or governmental (Treasury bond) entity borrows money from an investor for a specified period of time. When a governmental or corporate entity wants to execute a project, they usually issue bonds to the public instead of going to the bank to borrow.
The borrower is referred to as the issuer while the investor is known as the bond holder, debt holder or creditor. Typically, the issuer owes the creditor a debt and therefore pays him / her a periodic interest at a fixed or variable rate and at the maturity of the bond; the full value of the bond will be repaid. The interest rate (coupon rate) in a bond is usually higher than in stocks and other money markets. Bonds are a great way to grow your wealth and investment portfolio.
Information Marketing
What the heck is information marketing? How can this business be done? All these questions must be running through your mind, don’t worry, it’s an easy thing to do. To start with, what is information, information is simply that which informs i.e. an answer to a question, as well as that from which knowledge and data can be derived’.
Human wants are unlimited and in every second, there is an urgent call to fulfill one need or the other. Steve Ballmer – Owner of Los Angeles Clippers and CEO of Microsoft (2000 – 2014) captured the benefit of information marketing perfectly well when he said “the number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative, it lets people be productive, it lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense, it is all about potential”
Every individual is good at one or two things; no man is without a talent. Discover your talent and find a way to make a living out of it. So many people are endowed with different talents such as the ability to analyze situations, solve life’s issues, creativity in so many different fields like music, arts and science, etc. Everything you need to excel as an individual is inside of you, and the question remains “what do you do with what you know?”
Information marketing is about creating a product in the form of information that will benefit the people, packaged in the form of a book (e-book or hard cover), audio (talk or music), podcast or video and sell to those who may need it. The best career advice remains “discover what you like doing best and find someone to pay you for doing it. Use your talent to make a living for yourself either in the form of service provider or put down what you know in print and sell. You will continuously be earning royalties on the sales of your intellectual property as long as it takes, there is no limit to how much you can make through information marketing.
Blogging/Affiliate Marketing
A blog (short term for weblog) is a site published on the web mainly for informational purpose. It is a place where people share information, hobbies, interests, news or their businesses to the wider world. Blogging is therefore the act of adding information on a blog. People blog for different reasons, but whichever is your reason, blogging can serve as a source of income.
The world has become a global entity and the world wide web has become a focal point, a unifying world where all and sundry converge to carry out their daily duties, either in the form of sourcing for information, new products, or to give out information, promote old and new products or simply to meet and interact with people of different colors, age and gender. Tapping into the vast opportunity blogging offers can greatly aid you in the quest for financial independent.
Affiliate marketing on the other hand is the act of sending visitors to an affiliate’s market with the sole aim of earning a reward for each product or service sold. Though you are mostly required to own a site, but recently some platforms like HubPages, Squidoo, Facebook landing page, etc will enable you conduct your affiliate marketing without the hassle of owning a site.
There are so many ways you can monetize your site:
- By creating a membership site on a particular niche you are good at such as coaching courses, consultancy services, health programs, summer / educational programs for both adults and children, etc where you can offer services to your members. Just get some people to sign up for free for the program you offer, and then offer some exclusive services to premium members who can pay for it on a monthly basis.
- Sell your knowledge via your website / blog. Create an information product in the form of an e-book, podcast, audio or video and sell.
- Sale of advert: You can sign up with some advertising services such as google adsense, adbrite, contextweb, project wonderful and so many others. Some of these service providers, when signed up with, provide you with a code you will place on your site, through which you can earn commissions when a visitor clicks on the link. Some also allows you to sell your ad spaces to people directly.
- Affiliate marketing: you can incorporate affiliate marketing on your site.
- Product review: you can be paid to review products on your site. Always go for good and quality products, to maintain your integrity and trustworthiness in the market, through this way, you can gain people’s trust and loyalty.
Freelancing
Freelancing is a type of self – employment or independent contracting job whereby a person is not committed to any employer on a long term basis.
Freelancers engage in almost all fields of human endeavor – graphic design, proof – reading, article writing, journalism, video editing, screen writing, music, web development, programming, events planning, contracting jobs etc.
Some freelancers work independently by advertising their services through their websites if they have any or through an advertising media, while others may prefer to work through a medium who will act as a link between the vendor and the customer for their services. There are so many leading freelance platforms out there – elance, freelancer.com, odesk etc.
Freelancing is a great way to add more money to your purse. It can be done as a full time job or a part-time job while you retain your normal job.
Getting a job as a freelancer could be highly competitive, but then, the rsult is worth the effort. To have an edge and a better chance of getting hired over thousands of others, you have to stand out in your bidding methodology. So many freelancers are being rejected simply because of their bidding style, to start your bidding proposal, consider the following tips:
- Do a thorough research on bidding proposal samples of your competitors: to start with, check other freelancers’ proposals, study their strategies and styles of writing, then come up with something unique and better. Improve on their weaknesses and you will stand out from the rest.
- Personalize your proposal: there is no better way of attracting the love and affection of someone than to treat him / her as an individual rather than as a general figure. Bring the proposal down to him as a person and he will give you his attention; treat him as a general figure, he will treat you likewise. Do a research on your prospective client, understand what the person stands for, understand the job and the history of the client and use the information gathered to personalize your proposal. Again, make sure to include the name of your prospective client in your salutation. For instance, if UDK is hiring, make sure you “dear UDK” or “dear Mr.UDK” if you know the gender. Once you reflect something personal in your proposal, be sure that it will be given a kind of preferential treatment.
- Send a personal message: after writing your bidding proposal, send your prospective client a personal message highlighting more on your capability to deliver a quality job for him. In the message, show some proofs of your previous jobs by attaching a link to the job. You can also add a link to an audio or video file of yourself telling him more on why you should be hired.
Establish an Online Store
An online store, like the physical store is simply a market place where people can go to, in order to make a purchase. The difference here is that, it is done online. You will have a greater advantage, if you establish an online store in addition to your physical store, in this way; you can reach millions of customers in a short period of time which, ordinarily, you cannot reach with only a physical store.
It may require you to have a website, which will also require paying for the domain name and hosting. Even at that, it’s cheap to set up in relation to physical store. If you own a retail store, creating an online store will greatly boost your sales and increase profitability. Even though it is good to have your own website, but if you are unable to do that, there is nothing to worry about as there are platforms that can allow you sell on their sites. E Bay, Amazon, Threadless are some of the big players in the market who provide platform for people to sell on. If you are a graphic designer and you are creative, threadless can offer you an opportunity to submit your designs, which will be subjected to approval through voting, if you are lucky and your design chosen, you can earn an initial price of up to $2500 and as well as residual income as your design is selling. Using any of these services, you don’t need to do all the dirty works of business such as printing, shipping, handling orders, etc. they will do all the work for you, all you need do is just to sign up and then provide the material.
