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What was your first "cash flow positive asset?"

Fox

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I thought it would be cool to have a thread about the first steps people took to start getting their money working for them...

- Did you buy a rental property?
- Was it a small franchise or self managed business?
- Was it stocks?

Even if it was only cash flowing $10 or $100 a month I would love to see what people started with when it came to hands-off cash flow. Sometimes it can seem intimidating for people to know where to start but I am sure there are many great examples on here of people making a few dollars work for them in a smart way.

(Also please link to any individual threads you might have on the same topic)

Thanks!
 
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Timmy C

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Had a video camera at home and made some courses last year.

Still brings me between $100 - $200 a month.

I honestly do nothing for this.

No marketing.
No replying to students.

Nothing.

Working on my next business that is content related, and there is alot of writing involved.

Audience first strategy, and this time I'm going bigger.

Alot bigger.

Pretty sure I have a thread on the inside on it but alas.

I'm no longer an INSIDERS.
 

Photool

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First ever step for me created a ripple effect of habits and mindsets . That first step was creating a capital account in a "high interest" savings which acts as my bucket for investing & making more money. When I first saw $1-2 drop in on its own it got me so pumped.

Definitely not a get wealth factor but looking back on it and in the macro it helped me realize the potential of having money grow, having money work for me as well as building a powerful habit saving money for investing. That then got me excited to find ways to make my money work for me . I think any "beginner" would benefit from that alone as a starting point even as basic as it is.

Personally, It allowed me to begin to see money as a token to be used to gather more tokens which I continue to apply on a bigger scale each year. After that I found a way to sell videos I created and generate royalties for video works through distribution networks.
 
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Merlox

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Selling an ebook I wrote after one massive guide I wrote got A LOT of attention. Made me about 5 thousand total over a year

Now a good ol investment with a 10% profit per year
 
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fastlanedoll

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A 1 page affiliate website I built & ranked with SEO, I was promoting a $30 app for MAC users.

$100/day.

May I know where you learned SEO?

Were you ever in the first page?
 

fastlanedoll

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Selling an ebook I wrote after one massive guide I wrote got A LOT of attention. Made me about 5 thousand total over a year

Now a good ol investment with a 10% profit per year

May I know whether you already had a huge following before the book was launched?
 

100k

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May I know where you learned SEO?

Were you ever in the first page?

I learned from blackhatworld, and the courses they ripped from gurus and shared on there.
I was on 1st page, but then there was a Google panda/penguin update and lost all my ranking.

That was the day I got a lesson in the importance of having CONTROL, damn you Google, damn you Matt.
 
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fastlanedoll

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I learned from blackhatworld, and the courses they ripped from gurus and shared on there.
I was on 1st page, but then there was a Google panda/penguin update and lost all my ranking.

That was the day I got a lesson in the importance of having CONTROL, damn you Google, damn you Matt.

I think this illustrates the importance of being in more than one 'space' at a time.
It's not too late to start an instagram / twitter / facebook etc. account for your blog. You can gain traction from these venues which lead readers to your blog, and you won't be as reliant on SEO.
 

YanC

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Got started in business with real estate doing short term rental. Used to do it all on my own (rehab, listings, cleaning, check-ins...). I'm now up to 3 apartments and working on a 6 units building (very heavy and challenging rehab). I slowly learned how to work with people and get myself to work ON the business rather than IN it, and I'm now managing contractors for rehabs and cleaning. Check-ins and out are automated.

I mostly only manage my listings which takes on average 15 mins a day. Rental income is up to 6000€ for August. Slowly growing into something significant...
 
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Merlox

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May I know whether you already had a huge following before the book was launched?

Nope not a huge following. Just that 1 big article. It took me 3 days to write and somehow it ranked super well on google where all I did was post it on 3 or so subreddits. It's like a mini-book in size. Basically the largest and most detailed article about the topic since I couldn't find proper alternatives.

I also did a few more articles that got about 1/3rd of the attention.
 

Wil22

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Stock purchases, sold at a profit which lead to buying a condo, sold that at a profit then bought a larger house on a lake..Rinse repeat, 2x. Now back in another condo purchase in 2009 during the RE contraction. I have one client that keeps the lights on while building my online business, helping SMBs. Fun exercise, I never reviewed my pathway to where I am now.
 
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zackg1123

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I thought it would be cool to have a thread about the first steps people took to start getting their money working for them...

- Did you buy a rental property?
- Was it a small franchise or self managed business?
- Was it stocks?

Even if it was only cash flowing $10 or $100 a month I would love to see what people started with when it came to hands-off cash flow. Sometimes it can seem intimidating for people to know where to start but I am sure there are many great examples on here of people making a few dollars work for them in a smart way.

(Also please link to any individual threads you might have on the same topic)

Thanks!
Partnered with a small business locally as a passive owner. Could bring in anywhere from $80-$500/day depending on sales.
 

Jiersk

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Does a miniscule amount of stock that pays a quarterly dividend of about 1€ count as well? Lol.

I bought a bit of stock around may, thinking the market crash would make me rich. (This was before reading TMF )

However, it's still really cool to see that 1€ just coming to me without really doing anything for it beyond clicking buy on a stock. This whole thing kinda reminds me of those strategy video games, in which you build facilities that gather resources for you. After creating them you don't have to do much about them anymore but they still bring in those resources
 
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mr4ffe

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I'm a rapper, so I have a few songs on Spotify, Apple Music etc that net me 50-100 dollars a month. So my first asset was my literally my mindset lol.
I write/rap/produce myself but I've been thinking - is it really a scalable career? What I mean is, do people really listen to older albums or do you need to actively release new content, does it even pay that well, and can you hire a team to do most of your work? Regarding that last point, there's this old story of MF DOOM hiring others to dress up like him and "perform" at shows, so he himself wouldn't need to attend. In a similar sense, I could see someone like will.i.am or Trippie Redd use 2Pac-esque holograms, so there's possibly some untapped potential there (maybe something for you to look into?). There are also stories about Drake's "factory-style songwriting camps", which I would accept for some genres but seems disingenuous to me when it occurs in Hip-Hop.

From what I've heard from reliable industry sources, streaming and touring barely pays anything unless you hit the top charts or license your music for films and video games. Most artists seemingly make money off merch sales and product placements.

I love music, but releasing my own is more like a hobby to me, or at least a secondary stream of income. For my primary career, I'm focusing on audio engineering. One of my plans is to write a couple of audio plugins that I can make money off for the rest of my life. Some other plans are to release sample and preset packs, courses, and books once I've got some skin in the game. I'll probably produce and engineer for other artists and make/release my own music on the side, just for fun.
 

steelandchrome

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My last home I couldn't sell for what we wanted so we decided to just keep it and turn it into a corporate rental. We signed a 1 year at a time lease with option to extend up to 5 yrs (they say they want all 5 if not more) and put in 6.5% rent increase each year. Year one we are positive cashflow $538 a month not counting the principle paydown of almost the same.
 
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Matixpilot

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Single family rental property with a cash flow of $1,000 a month.
Affiliate marketing website at ~$200 a month.
 

rockit11

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The first house I bought, in Utah. Currently $500/mo cash flow roughly. Appreciation has been the main winner there though.
 

Tom H.

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A library of Kindle books. Took me basically one weekend to create and brings in around $50/month (for now).

It's only a small amount, but it's still going strong with zero work and it was an incredible feeling when I first started seeing that passive income hit my bank account.

Around 7 years ago I reached the goal I had for a couple years of having a 4-hour work week. Actually doing it felt like leveling up, even though I wasn't making much money at the time. Same thing with the passive income, it feels like leveling up, even if it's only a little bit of money.
 
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mayana

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A library of Kindle books. Took me basically one weekend to create and brings in around $50/month (for now).

It's only a small amount, but it's still going strong with zero work and it was an incredible feeling when I first started seeing that passive income hit my bank account.

Around 7 years ago I reached the goal I had for a couple years of having a 4-hour work week. Actually doing it felt like leveling up, even though I wasn't making much money at the time. Same thing with the passive income, it feels like leveling up, even if it's only a little bit of money.


This is similar to what I did to get my first passive flow coming in. It took me one week to write each book, I wrote 14 and published them all under different names (different niches) on Amazon. That was six years ago, and has made me almost $10K since then.

I had/have done many other things for business, but that was my first taste of creating something that continued to earn for years afterwards.

And there is always a little thrill when telling the accountant "and this is for my book royalties.".
 

Andy Black

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A little rental property back in about 2001.
 
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G

Guest1413tpa

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Mine is still ongoing. Which is shocking...

I charge one client a monthly retainer of $175 a month for Salesforce 7 Revenue Operations services. (Should have boosted it up but!) 95% of the time, I do nothing and pocket the money, sometimes I have to do work but this client has been nothing but profitable and awesome.
 

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