Pajama Paydays: How to Make the Internet Work for You

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Introduction

You’re about to create a personalized online income blueprint and learn how to make the internet work for you.

The reality is, what works for someone else will not necessarily work for you. Why follow someone else’s blueprint when you can create your own? This guide will help you assess your lifestyle and income needs and map out a customized online income blueprint that addresses your current circumstances, personality type, skill sets and interests—something most training and business systems fail to take into consideration.

I called this guide Pajama Paydays for two main reasons.

First, after three years of fully living the laptop lifestyle I had dreamed of for years, I discovered that some of my favorite days were those that I spend at home or a hotel room in my pajamas working from my laptop. Days when I have no appointments, no calls, and the luxury of working on projects I love and am excited about. Days when I don’t have to hear the alarm clock or stress about what to wear to work or what time I need to be at an appointment, event or the airport.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being surrounded by successful people, entrepreneurs, family and friends and love to travel the world in luxury, comfort and style. But there’s something about having quite, relaxed days in my pajamas, sipping coffee, hearing the birds chirp outside on a quiet morning and having no appointments or distractions—that makes me more creative and more productive. It’s on days like these that I get some of my best work done.

Second, as cliché as it sounds, yes I do make money while I sleep because I have set up my businesses to generate three income streams: active income, passive income and residual income.

There are many definitions of the terms active, passive and residual income depending on which country you come from or what industry you’re referring to. For the sake of clarity, in this guide they’re used as follows:

Active Income refers to income for which services have been performed. This includes wages, tips, salaries, commissions and income from businesses in which there’s material participation. It is income that involves your time and effort, which means unless you’re working, you won’t get paid. All services, consulting and coaching programs would fall under active income.

Passive Income is typically derived from business activities or investments in which you’re not actively involved. Even though you’re not actively working, you still need to make an investment to set that income in motion, as is the case in rental property income, purchasing stocks that pay out dividends, or setting up automated marketing campaigns that generate sales. Once the systems are in place, you can practically make money while you sleep, with minimal effort and supervision; but you still have to keep an eye on the processes and make minor adjustments and tweaks once in a while.

Residual Income refers to recurring payments that you receive long after the initial sale is made, usually in specific amounts and at regular intervals. This could include royalties from intellectual properties like books, movies, apps, games, songs and inventions, or licensing agreements that give you a percentage of specific sales even if you’re no longer involved in the process. For example, getting commissions on affiliate programs that generate monthly membership payments or multi-level systems that reward you with a percentage of the sales generated by members who joined the program under your accounts.

When you look at these definitions, you can see that residual income can be called passive income under most conditions, but the reverse is never the case. That’s why sometimes they’re used interchangeably even though they do have some differences.

While real estate and other investment strategies should eventually be part of your income portfolio, they are beyond the scope of this guide.

For now we’re going to focus on business income and explore the four key income-generating methods I call the Four Formulas For Success™ that you can mix and match to fit your needs. They can all be started and operated online by just one person and can easily be scaled to any business size you wish to operate.

The Four Formulas For Success

If you do a search online for the term make money online you’ll find a long list of blog posts, articles, books, e-books and video training programs listing hundreds of ways to make an income online. But when you take a closer look, you’ll find that eventually they all fall under four main categories:

    Selling Services: Make money as an employee, freelance contractor or services-based business. This includes any projects that require active participation on your part.

    Selling Products: Make money by selling products—either physical, digital or information products.

    Affiliate (or Referral) Marketing: Make money by promoting other people’s products and services and growing your business by allowing affiliates to promote your products and services.

    Licensing: Make money by selling other people’s products and services as if they were your own or allowing others to license your products, inventions and ideas so they can use, promote and sell them while you get royalty payments on each sale.

Ideally you would want to be tapping into more than one method so you can build multiple streams of income. When one area is not delivering well, you’ll have other sources of income to keep you afloat.

But we all have to start somewhere.

Right?

So pick one and go with it first. Once you master it and know what you’re doing, you can add more.

Now, which one you choose first will depend solely on your personal circumstances, current skill sets, resources and the lifestyle goals you want to achieve. By the time you have finished reading this guide you’ll have a much clearer idea where to start and how to mix and match income models that can work for you.

Remember this is about you. What works for someone else might not work for you. So we’ll start first by identifying what it is you want to accomplish and why, and then match you with the income blueprint that will get you there faster.

The information in this guide will save you years of wasted time and money trying to figure out an online income model that can work for you. But you still have to take action.

Once you map out your online income blueprint, you’ll still have to put in time and—in some cases money—to implement, like business setup, outsourcing, operational costs and marketing. So if you’re looking for a quick get rich solution of making money online, this is not it. All the suggestions and examples in this book require effort and action on your part.

When done right and on a consistent basis, you can expect to get results that you can grow and scale with over time.

If you’re tempted to give up before you even start, just do me a favor and read at least the first couple of chapters, especially if you’re wondering why you can’t find a job or why you’re so underpaid right now.

Cool?

So let’s get started!

Chapter One: The Changing Job Market And Why You Need To Adapt

I knew it was coming as half the company had already been laid off. The goodbye parties for other colleagues were becoming a standard Friday night weekly affair.

Still, there’s an element of surprise when it’s your turn. On February 7, 2013, after six very successful years as a creative director for a leading software company, I got laid off.

Now, no one likes to be told that they have a few hours to pack their belongings and leave. But somehow I felt a sense of relief. I had been thinking of building my own home-based online business for some time, but with a full-time job, personal obligations and other self-made excuses, I could never make it happen.

The idea of having my own online business started brewing years earlier when I got laid off at a previous company. Yes, this was not the first time I got to experience corporate restructuring as companies like to call them.

Last time it was more dramatic. The exact sequence of events is a bit fuzzy now, but I’ll never forget the way I felt.

A few weeks before the actual event, all employees at the company received a memo notifying us that the president, who also happened to be one the founding partners of the company, has been replaced.

The news was pretty shocking and I couldn’t wait for our next marketing meeting to find out from my boss, the vice president of marketing what actually happened, but he was away that day.

A week goes by and no one on the team has seen or heard from him and we start to wonder why he’s not even responding to any emails or voice mail. It was not like him to do that. He usually responded even if he was on a business trip or vacation.

A few days later when returning from my lunch break, I ran into one of my coworkers in the office building lobby.

Do you need help? I asked as she stepped out of the elevator carrying a heavy box.

I am fine. Thank you for asking she said as we swapped places. She was heading outside to an unusually crisp sunny day in downtown Vancouver; while I started my assent to our office located on the 26th floor.

We both worked together for over six years at the marketing department. I was the senior graphic designer, managing design projects for 15 office locations and she was the event planner managing all international conferences and trade shows for the company. So we got to work together very closely on a daily basis.

As the event planner, she was always carrying boxes and dragging trade show booth carts around. Seeing her leave the office building with a heavy box did not seem odd.

I arrive at my desk and see a yellow sticky note on my monitor saying Please drop by the Human Resources department when you get back.

The last time I was summoned to the Human Resources department I was told how wonderful my work was and I was given an increase in pay, so I was curious to see what they had to say this time.

The human resources manager informed me that the Marketing Department had been dissolved and that everyone on the team had already been notified and left the building. I was given an option to leave the office right away or stick around for a few more weeks until I finished the annual report project I was working on already. Either way, I had to take an envelope with legal papers and sign them as soon as possible.

I felt my heart sink with mixed emotions of fear, confusion and sadness.

All I could think of was why? We had been doing such a great job and had great feedback and reviews from the executive team. How could this happen?

The next few weeks proved to be one of the most stressful periods of my life. Going into the office each day and seeing the empty desks of my former coworkers was hard, especially knowing that my days there were numbered.

I made a decision right then that I would not let anyone make me feel that way again. I would start my own business and report to no one but myself.

My last day at the office was December 23, 2004. I went home and worked for three weeks straight building my own business portfolio website from scratch. That was before WordPress and all the current click-and-drag website tools started picking up traction. Now you can have a beautiful website up and running in a matter of hours or even minutes, but back then if you wanted to build a website, you had to know how to code one manually.

By mid January 2005 my website was complete and I was ready to face the world and take on contract work. Ironically my first client was my former employer, the same company where I got laid off. They continued to provide me with work on a part-time hourly basis while I worked from home.

Soon other clients followed.

Income Options Few People REALLY Know About

Just before I got laid off, I had attended an internet marketing seminar hosted by Corey Rudl, a pioneer in the internet marketing space located in Vancouver. I had even bought one of his training programs to take home with me.

I found Corey and his training programs while I was searching for courses on internet marketing, mainly to improve my job skills in the marketing department. It never occurred to me that I could have my own business selling products online and using affiliate marketing to supplement my income. Corey was the one that opened my eyes to that option.

But then a tragedy took place on June 2, 2005. Corey Rudl died in a car accident. I remember receiving an email from his company with the sad news and felt as if the idea of having my own product-based online business died with him.

Looking back, I now realize that I was just overwhelmed learning how to create project proposals, tracking my time and invoicing clients for my services business. As an employee, I never had to worry about that. Taking on another challenge and learning how to build a product based online business at the same time was too much to handle. So I stuck to what I know best: selling my services.

Just as I started getting accustomed to the ups and downs of contract work and building momentum, I landed a full-time job at a software company. It was supposed to be a contract job but after three interviews the company decided they wanted to sign me up full-time instead. Before I knew it, the idea of having my own online business was put completely on the back burner as I got dragged into the day-to-day activities of a corporate job again.

But once you know something you can’t unknow it.

From that point on I knew that a corporate job was only a temporary solution until I figured out how to get a business going. It was like planting a seed that’s germinating but hasn’t grown any roots yet. It will take time and nurturing before the roots show up and get strong enough to support a growing tree.

I spent the next seven years diving into personal development, business, sales and marketing training programs before I finally took serious action and made it happen.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because, if you’re looking for a fulfilling and stable career that provides a steady income that meets the consistent rise in cost of living, then I understand your struggle. Landing and keeping a dream job is becoming harder and harder. Even if you’re a top-performing employee, there are no guarantees that you’ll have your job long-term.

If you’re attempting to figure out the online business world so you too can tap into the millions of dollars generated daily in this industry, but you’re struggling to get started or see traction, I know the feeling too. I was in your shoes. It took me years before I finally figured it out, took action and made it work.

This is why I wrote this guide. It’s written with love to help job hunters and those who wish to start a home-based online business shatter previous misconceptions and realize their options when it comes to generating an income online. It’s about mapping out and creating an online business blueprint that you’ll be excited about, stick with and scale over time.

Don’t let the concept of being a business owner scare you, because the reality is you’re already in business, even if you’re looking for a job or currently an employee. You’re in the business of You Inc. You are your own brand and company. The sooner you realize that and act accordingly, the faster you’ll see your income skyrocket.

It still surprises me how many of my friends and former co-workers are still not aware that they too can create a side income or even a full-time income online. They hear about it but think it’s something beyond their reach, too complex or simply a scam.