Warren Buffett is 94 years old and the fifth richest person in the world.

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He’s been going at it for well over 6 decades now, accumulating a mass sum of $148 billion.

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That puts him in the company of people like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk.

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So, in short, he knows a thing or two about money.

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The only way to become Financially Free (according to wise old Warren) is to Find a Way to Make Money While You Sleep. Otherwise, you may End Up Working Until You Die.

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What he’s talking about, of course, is the allure of passive income.

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So, let’s break it down, shall we?

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How to Make Money While You Sleep

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Let me start by saying that we live in a very fortuitous time. Maybe not environmentally, socially, politically, or even health-wise, but because of the amount of opportunity that exists today.

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The internet has provided a playing field whereby ordinary people like you and I can (and are) become legitimate entrepreneurs overnight. Not only that, but they’re killing it, too.

 

Take Jeff Bezos, for example. Now I know he’s not you and I today, but 20 years ago, he certainly could have been considered one of us. After all, he founded Amazon 20 years ago as a second-hand bookseller from his garage in Seattle. Then he added a few more products and created an E-commerce platform, and the rest is history, as they say.

 

Then take cryptocurrencies as another. Many twenty-and-thirty-something-year-olds today don’t use their university degrees because a new opportunity opened up to them that didn’t exist while they were studying. They then took a chance and capitalized on it. Some have made millions from those early days, and others still are.

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To put it into perspective, 20 years ago, Amazon didn’t exist. 15 years crypto didn’t. Now, rightly or wrongly, both are an integral part of society. However, both were only made possible because of the technological age we find ourselves in.

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And because we still live in this technological age of opportunity, there’s really no reason why anyone can’t Make Money While They Sleep because the whole paradigm has shifted.

 

Here are some of the best ways that I know of:

• Write blogs

• Affiliate marketing

• Upload videos on Youtube and/or Tiktok

• Google ads

• Print on demand products

• Put stock in the Amazon, eBay, or Etsy warehouse(s)

• Invest in cryptocurrencies

• Become a self-published author

• Become a social media influencer

• Create online courses

 

A lot of people are even combining forces and quietly building their mini-online empires from the comfort of their own homes.

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How to Not Work Until You Die

Time = Money is dead. (Thank God!)

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The idea that we have to work a 9–5 job for a certain amount of money and continue doing that for decades is over. And exactly because of that, Entrepreneurship is Back on the Rise.

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With the plethora of opportunities that are available to us today, there are so many ways to become financially free and not work until we reach a certain age that deems us fit for retirement. This allows us Not to Work Until We Die and frees up the life we have left.

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Now, for a Harsh Truth

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Heads up, this might upset you… Passive Income is a Lie.

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There, I said it.

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Why?

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In today’s world, passive income has been made out to be this thing we do once without much effort and then get paid forever and ever thereafter. It’s also been implied that it should be risk-free, quick, easy, and give maximum output.

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But really — when does that ever happen?

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The trouble this has caused is that many people believe the hype and then feel let down by the reality. And rightly so. So, unless you’re a trust fund baby, doing something once and then getting paid forever and ever thereafter has been simply unrealistic.

 

Now, for some good news.

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As much as passive income is a lie, the notion of passive income is not. So, what makes it feel like its passive income is how much maintenance, upkeep, and work it takes to keep it going.

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Take creating an online course, for example. Even though a lot of the work is done upfront, once the course goes live, there are still enrollments, questions, and payments to attend to, and there’s still marketing, emails, and promotions to do. Even if all those tasks are automated, you’ve still got to set up the automation and watch out for any hiccups. Do you see what I mean?

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So, even though the maintenance is medium-low, there’s still work to be done. The course still needs feeding.

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Then, we take investing in cryptocurrency as another example. Since most of the work and research is done before choosing which cryptocurrency gives you more bang for your buck, all that’s left to do is wait for the perfect time to invest, sit back, and relax. Or is it?

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That’s one option for sure, but there’s still work to be done in terms of keeping an eye on market activity, watching for market trends, and staying up to date. So, even though crypto is super low maintenance, it isn’t nothing.

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That’s what I mean when I say Passive Income is a Lie.

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Imagine two passive income streams in terms of two very different houseplants (stay with me). One passive income stream is represented in the shape of a beautiful lily. The other is a cactus. Both need wildly different needs when keeping them alive and well.

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In terms of passive income, a cactus obviously feels way more passive than a lily. So, knowing what we’re getting ourselves into makes the world of difference.

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For me, I write here on Medium. That’s not exactly a passive income stream on the surface. But here’s the thing: As the blogs start to tally up, so does the amount of passive income. For example, the blogs I wrote in January, February, March, and April have earned me over $400 in May, and an affiliate marketing blog I wrote back in March 2020 still earns over $200 a month in commissions.

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This is my preferred pathway because it’s what I love to do. But every avenue has success stories, don’t worry about that.

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The only question is — do you want to be another?

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Another important question to ask

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Is It Scalable?

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By scalable, I don’t mean aiming for the stars or anything close to that. I don’t mean jumping on the hyper-commercialized bandwagon, either.

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All I mean by scalable is that it grows beyond what you can do.

After all, creating passive income is all about getting other people to earn money for you.

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Take my blogs, for example. I purposely chose to write on Medium instead of creating my own website because Medium has over 100 million readers every single month. That’s a boatload more eyeballs than I could ever have wished for in a million years!

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And because of my position on Medium, many people now share my articles on social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc… after I leverage in-house publications that help me reach even more people.

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This is what I mean by getting other people to help you scale and make money. After all, I can only promote myself so far, but with the help of others, my reach is infinite.

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The best Marketing Strategy is still Word of Mouth. And because social media is all about Word of Mouth, it’s changed the game entirely.

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Making Money While You Sleep is amazing, but making more is even better. That is the Power of Scalability.