Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Passive income is it possible

Passive Income Dreams
I don't really know the answer to that question but I am going to work really hard for the next few months to try and figure this out. I hate the idea of a behind the desk 9-5 job. I really want to work at home but it is more than that I want to pick my hours daily. I would like to learn techniques that can earn me money at least 95% from home during hours I am at home. That means if I want to take another dance class and can afford it I don't want to have to worry about being gone for 3 hours in the evening and missing a call from a potential customer. Worse yet is having to opt out of class that I have paid for to make a delivery for a customer who can't get the product at any other time.

I don't want to be down on my sales jobs but I do want to say they really are not work at home jobs like they claim to be. You have to take a lot of your work to the customer and they feel put out if you ask them to pick something up. I am done with Avon for many reasons but I am still selling Herbalife and Scentsy and I have no big complaints about any of the companies in general. If you want to make money with them you can not do it all at home unless you have good website promotion of some sort. I am looking into that for my businesses but I am very worried about the legal stuff involved in creating your own websites and other things such as that.

New Blogs

The big thing I am doing right now to generate a passive income is writing and joining sites that get paid for referrals and other easy tasks. I have a new blog that details my online income from various sources but that is taking up a lot of my time. I realize that I have to start out small and build up and that means a lot of time for a little pay as I work my way up. You can read the details at Extra Cash From Home my new blog. I have many ideas on how to earn from this one I just have to keep working learning about making money from blogging.

I have also created a fun website and hope to monetize it with some local ads in the future. It is all about where to go to dance in my home town. It is called Dancing in Toledo and it is more of a way for me to get to know what is going on in my area and share it with others who love to dance. I just thought since I love my classes so much it would be great to share it with others. On that same note I have a local Examiner account now for the club scene in my area and I think it will be a nice compliment to my website. Now I just have to get out there and explore what Toledo has to offer.

Goals and Things of the Past


I would be perfectly happy being a housewife that spends all her free time at the dance studio and taking care of pets and the house but sadly my hubby is not on the same page so we sat down and talked about it. I need to make around 650 a month one way or another. He wants me to make that much or more so it will be easy enough to get a part time job if I can't make this work. I have until September to at least show significant progress. I am pretty sure if I am progressing each month he will be fine with that as long as it is goes up each month. Right now I am looking at about 100 a month or more from multiple sources and increasing each week. So if I book a few Scentsy parties after my big dance show then I should be able to make the money with no issues.

I would like to work a little harder though at creating the passive income. Considering I love to write and can spend hours writing journal entries about my life and things I have done I am looking to find a more constructive way get paid doing that. I need to take my life and passions and find a way to write about them that puts a pay check in my hand.

If I could earn half from sales and half from passive means and writing jobs I would be very happy. I think this is a reasonable goal I just have to learn to marked all of my skills and get others on board. I need to take the confidence I am getting at the dance studio and put it to good use in marketing myself and my products.

I am done with Avon because it takes too much of my time and energy and I end up loosing my customers to someone who gives 40 percent off and considering I usually only get 20 percent off  I just can't do that.  Then when I drive out to deliver products that I only made 1 dollar on I am pretty sure I lose most of the profits I am making in gas and car repairs. Now that is not to say you can't make money with Avon but I was just having too much trouble with it and found that for sales jobs it was quickly becoming my least favorite in every way. Still love the products just don't want to sell them anymore.

I think I have mentioned this before but I am also done with the idea of moving anytime soon. The idea of having a farm is out of the picture too. I am so glad things happened the way they have because I am realizing there is no way I want to take care of a farm and a bunch of farm animals. I am good with a few hens and maybe an acre or two of property. Two dogs and a maybe a couple small goats for my hubby in the future will be more than enough and that would only be if I didn't have to leave the house to work.

Well I hope you visit my other blogs and have a great read. Let me know what you think about them and what I can do to improve them and thanks for all of your support.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Pole Dancing for Self Esteem

My Life Changes
Well I took the plunge a little over two months ago to learn to dance. I was looking for something fun but also something that would help me get fit. Pole dancing combines dance moves and strength training so I decided on a local studio that offers pole dance for fitness classes.

Let me tell you it is the best experience I have every had. I am getting in shape. I know you always hear me complain about my weight but not any more I am down to a healthy weight and the inches are melting away. The impressive muscles in my arms have built so fast it is hard to believe.

The fact that the class is fun and challenging keeps me going 4-6 days a week and I even entered myself into the student show case so now I  have rehearsals on top of that. Once that is done I am going to try a little Latin dancing.

The best thing about these classes is they are really helping me feel better about who I am. I feel like I have found a part of me that I lost when I felt like I just had to grow up. I kind of thought having fun was just for kids and I just had to grin and bear whatever life threw at me. I also felt like I was never going to be able to get fit and stay fit if it meant just going to the gym because I hated the gym. I liked how I felt after a good workout but I really hated going. So I felt I doomed to the up and down cycles I fall into.

Shift in Priorities
To accommodate my new love for dancing I have had to rethink the things I really want in life. If you have been around here for awhile you know that I had this desire to live on a small farming property and have farm animals and do things close to natures way as I could. I can't say I don't care about these things anymore but I am learning that some of them are not as important or as urgent as I once felt they were. I actually believe it was a severe dissatisfaction with life and myself that made me think these things would make me happy.

I no longer want to move to a big property although someday I would like to move to a nicer area with a bigger yard it is not urgent and I don't need acreage. Our current situation has low monthly bills and selling this home is near impossible in this economy so we are going to make it work.

The other factor in this decision is that I don't think I want to take care of farm animals and acreage. It is enough to take care of this house, a dog, six chickens a cat and a small yard. With dance classes and trying to work part time there really is no time for a farm type life.

Onward to a New Destination
All of this has had me questioning all of my behavior over the last few years. I have been seeing a counselor to help me with my ADHD and I think I am making a lot of progress with my organizing and reasoning skills. I also think it is helping me to realize that I need to stop living in a dream and start learning what things I can change about myself and my life that can make that dream a reality. Before I do that I have to stop lying to myself about what my dreams are. I want my dreams to be accepted by my friends and family so I will change them to fit my social network at the time.

Right now I can tell you that my dream job would be to learn to dance well enough that I could teach it. I know that would be far off in the future but if I keep working at it who knows. Some of the other things I wish I could do to make a living are write and blog but it seems impossible and stupid so I say things like I am just trying to make some extra cash doing it. I give on many of my dreams because others tell me they are stupid. Now the people I am around don't actually flat out say they are stupid they just give you the looks that make you feel like you should go get a "real" job.

I am not sure where life is going to take me now but one thing I do know is I am going to stay in dance as much as  I can and learn as much as I can because it is the highlight of my life right now. There are so many positives to being involved at this dance studio that I will likely be there for the life of the studio.

I am also going to start writing on a few of my blogs regularly and look for small writing projects I can work on. I have found a few legitimate work at home type opportunities to fill in the gaps but they are low paying and they are inconsistent. They also don't require a lot of skill, time or energy and can be done while watching television or when I don't feel like doing anything but sitting on the couch after a rough workout.

The last thing I am going to be doing is working on a list of ideas to make money that do not require me to sit on my ass all day. If I have to get a regular job I would like to be active. Hopefully it won't come to that but if it does I don't want to sit on my booty all day and get fat again. I only need to work part time so I need to figure out what I can do that does not sedentary.