Journey to Financial Independence with Passive Income Part 1: Introduction and my Methods

Hello, my name, for the sake of this series of posts, is Passive Pete. I’m 22 and just graduated from university. Right now I am working a standard 9–5 in software development. I can’t see myself happily living this lifestyle for the foreseeable future, especially when I’m young and have the yearning to travel around the world and try pursing many wildly different interests. There’s simply no way I could do such things working a standard job for 40 hours a week.

The purpose of my account here on medium is to document my journey building passive income sources in order to escape my 9–5 and gain financial, location, and time freedom. Here are the current passive income sources I plan on building in the order I plan to pursue them (note that the first two require a significant amount of money to start, so I will be using money I saved up most of my life from summer jobs, allowance, and so on):

Investing in Stocks

Since researching stocks and day trading are incredibly time consuming and a whole discipline on their own, I decided to purchase a subscription to the Motley Fool Stock Advisor and buy the stocks they recommend. I will purchase $250 worth of each stock when it is recommended, and each month I will put $250 in each the stocks that appreciated over the last month in an effort to reduce risk yet keep the growth compounding. I plan on holding all of the stocks indefinitely unless Motley Fool issues a sell alert.

YouTube Automation

The idea behind YouTube automation is that you assemble a team of freelancers to create the videos and manage the channel. None of the videos would show your face so it doesn’t matter who actually creates the videos. Even if you don’t have money to hire freelancers yet, you can still learn the skills and make videos yourself until you make enough money in ad revenue to hire freelancers. Since it’s quite an open field and easy to lose footing, I decided to go for Caleb Boxx’s YouTube Automation mentorship. It costs $20,000 plus $70 per video, so it’s a huge investment, but hopefully it will be worth it because he and his team setup the YouTube channel and create the videos over a one year contract. To be honest, I’m still a little bit hesitant about online mentorships for passive income since there are so many of them, but it seems like Caleb’s clients get serious results. Ultimately I decided to purchase the mentorship for the close guidance and opportunity ease my way into running a business without throwing myself into the deep end, so if I decide to create multiple automation channels I’ll know what I’m doing. So far I have selected my niche and channel name, but I will update as the process continues.

Teespring/Redbubble

This source is relatively simple and requires no cost. The idea is you upload T-shirt designs to Teespring, Redbubble, or a similar website, and when someone buys a shirt with your design, you get a commission. I have used GIMP, a free photoshop alternative, in the past quite a bit so getting started here shouldn’t be too hard. Similar to YouTube, all your designs can make money, so the more designs you upload, the more potential income streams you have, and you could hire freelancers to create the designs as well. I will most likely start this endeavor after the YouTube Automation channel takes off.

Blog

I’m really into ancient history, so why not create a blog about it? The two primary methods I would use are ad revenue and affiliate links. Many websites have affiliate programs that are simple enough to join. Again, I would need to do a lot of research for starting up a blog, so this one will certainly be pursued later down the line.

Stock Photography

I’ve been thinking of dabbling in photography for a while, and there are many websites that pay commissions each time someone purchases a photo you upload. This pursuit is not a huge priority for me currently, but it’s still a potential opportunity.

Video Game Development

This one is more of a passion project if anything, although it will take by far the most work to set up. I have used Unity and practiced coding for a long time, therefore I plan to assemble a team and create a game to deploy on Steam over the course of several months or a year or two. It would be quite difficult to develop a full game while still having a full time job, so I will not start until after I quit my 9–5.

These are all of my current plans, and I expect the whole process to take a couple years. I will write a new post at least once a month depending on how many new developments I have. If you have any tips, advice, or any other passive income ideas, please let me know in the comments!