how to retire early with no money

My 12 Income Sources by Age 29

Sharon Tseung Design Your Life, Personal Finance Leave a Comment

In this episode I talk about how I now have 12 income sources! This video is to give you inspiration and ideas for passive and active income sources you could attempt, even while having a fulltime position.

My 12 Income Sources by Age 29

Transcription

Below is a transcription of the podcast. This transcription was taken from Otter.ai so it might not be completely accurate:

Sharon Tseung 0:02
This is the digital nomad quest podcast with Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design their best lives.Hey guys, it’s Sharon from digital nomad quest, and today we’re going to talk about my 12 income sources at age 29. Now, if you guys are new to the channel, welcome, I’m all about teaching how to build passive income, become financially free and design your best lives. So if you guys are interested in that, make sure to subscribe and hit the bell button to be notified of my latest videos. So when I first graduated from college, I had already started thinking about income streams. So I had a W two, I had my full time job and I also purchased the property when I was 22 years old for rental income. I also had a stock portfolio working for me. And then in 2016, I decided to quit my job travel the world for two years as a digital nomad and started building passive income streams as well. So I started building all these online businesses that cashflow me to this day, I also took part time remote positions while I was transitioning to passive income. So I started understanding how to take part time remote positions and freelance and stuff like that for different clients. So this leads me to now where I have over 12 income sources. And the reason why I like having multiple income sources is diversification, it’s very important to have multiple income streams to make sure you are safe during quarantine, so many people were laid off, and a lot of people are suffering. Because of this. If you have multiple income sources, it helps. So you’re not living paycheck to paycheck, it also makes sure that you’re okay when things go south, and maybe you lose your job and stuff like that. So it’s important to have these income streams. And ultimately, my goal is early financial freedom. So you know, I have more time with my loved ones with creative projects that I want to do. So financial freedom would create that worryfree life where I don’t have to think about money. So in order to achieve this, I want to make sure I have multiple income streams that are working for me right now, as you know, I am currently working a full time job. And I actually really like it. I’m learning a lot from it. And what I like about it also is that we’re kind of building this product together. So it really feels like another entrepreneurship endeavor. So a lot of people ask me, like, why are you still, you know, working when you have all these passive income streams working for you. So this is really why because I am young, I want to build these skills more. And you know, having that extra income also allows me to invest more, as you see I have multiple properties now that cash flow for me as well. And I’m able to put my income into purchasing more properties like this. So that’s why I actually really like this job. Now, a lot of people on my tic toc video that talks about this, they’re like asking me, you know, do you sleep? Like how do you have time for all this stuff, the truth of the matter is, a lot of these don’t require much time, a lot of them I haven’t touched in a while because they are passive income streams. So now let me dig into these income streams and talk about what they are. So first one is my full time job at a Silicon Valley startup. So the startup is called VISTA and I am a general manager there, I basically drive the product direction. I also work on the marketing for this product actually came in as a marketing manager. And now I was promoted to General Manager. So my day to day usually looks like I’m working with the marketing consultant where we talk about what the marketing needs are for the product. You know, some of the things I driver like the paid ad side as well as you know, overseeing the social media, as well as our influencer campaign initiatives that we’re planning to execute on. And also the email newsletter, the blog, basically all the different marketing initiatives to get more users on the app. That’s what I’m constantly thinking about and trying to drive and execute on. This also requires me thinking of these campaign ideas and creating presentations around them. I’m also talking with the product manager and talking about product market fit. So I’m on the ground, you know, talking to our focus group and things like that to figure out what the product needs and where we’re supposed to go. So my full time position does give me a sizeable income. However, because I’ve talked about it, where if you lost your job, you don’t want to have a ton of financial difficulty, you want to make sure you have multiple income streams, right. So that’s why I have a bunch more. So number two, I have rental income from my six rental unit. So as I’ve mentioned before, I have purchased five rental units during quarantine, I also purchased the property when I was 22. So in total, I have six units that cash led me to this day. So what I mean by that is, first of all, there’s appreciation. So with real estate, as you purchase these properties, you don’t actually lose the money, right, you could sell those properties and get the money back and possibly profit. Because if it’s appraised for more than what you buy it at, you can make more money. And with real estate cycles, usually real estate does appreciate there are risks to this. But if you do your analysis, and you do your due diligence of researching the market, making sure your deal is good, usually you’re going to be able to bet on properties that are going to appreciate. So that’s one part of my income, but obviously I’m not cashing out on that, like I’m not going to sell my properties anytime soon. And the reason is that I’m actually you know, making money from the cash flow that the tenants pay me for these rental properties. So I have tenants in all these six units, and they pay me rent and I make income from it. After my expenses and everything like that I still profit so I talked about the numbers in my other videos, make sure to check those out but real estate can be really lucrative. Here’s the thing with real estate though you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. If you don’t have a sizable income, you don’t want to put all your money into real estate. You want to make sure you have savings, maybe stock investments before you purchase any real estate. That’s what I think because I’m more risk averse. If you are looking for more low capital or no capital ways to make money online, keep watching because we’re going to talk about more methods that don’t require much money. Number three, I sell digital downloads on Etsy. I’ve talked about this many times. But essentially what I do is I sell these digital products like Photoshop templates, and Microsoft Word templates. I put these on my shop and whenever people purchase my listings, I make money. The great thing about it is most of this is profit, because these are digital products where you don’t need to purchase inventory or hold inventory, or ship out these products, right. It’s very passive, and they get their digital files automatically. The thing about this is I started my shop maybe in 2015 or 2016. around when I started digital nomadic and I spent a lot of time building this shop up I probably spent one to two years on the shop. So passive income is a long term game, don’t expect to cashflow right away. Once you make your shop you have to spend time on it. You have to keep building it and improving your listings and shot. What that means is you might work on keyword research or social media and you want to keep pumping out listings. The great thing about Etsy is you know, I haven’t touched it from 2018 to 2020. In terms of adding new listings, I’ve mainly just been doing customer support with Etsy but I’m still cash flowing on my Etsy shop to this day number four, I sell apparel through merch by Amazon. So merge by Amazon is pretty much print on demand where you can upload designs, they will print and fulfill your orders for you. So whenever a customer purchases your product, they will ship it out for you. So basically, I’ll upload these designs on merch.amazon.com. And every time I get an order, Amazon puts that design on like a shirt or a hoodie or whatever that they purchased and then they’re gonna send it out to them. This method is super hands off. And it’s very passive because Amazon deals with everything and then they pay me out in royalties. I still cashflow To this day, I haven’t touched it since 2018. However, I’m going to work on it more with my boyfriend because I think this is still a very lucrative method and we want to build it out even more. Number five is Amazon FBA, you’ve probably heard of Fulfillment by Amazon. But if you haven’t essentially work with manufacturers on products that you want to create or sell, and you might want to private label these products and send this over to Amazon’s warehouse and whenever people purchase your product, they will ship it out for you. Amazon FBA does require more capital than the other two methods I mentioned earlier, because you do have to purchase the inventory and you have to work with these suppliers also, you have to ship that product over to the warehouse and whenever people buy. There are also some sizeable fees when it comes to shipping the orders from Amazon as well as storage fees. Also, on top of that, you have to pay $40 a month to have a pro account which is what you should usually get when it comes to Amazon FBA. So with Amazon FBA probably started around 2017 or 18, and is still cashflows me to this day, Shawn and I did work on it more a few months ago. And we’re planning to start it up again and work on it more. So as you can see, we’re trying to work on more of the Amazon stuff, including March my Amazon and Amazon FBA because we think they’re great business models. So with Amazon FBA, you usually want to work on your keyword research, you want to make sure that you have a product that people are searching for, and it’s not too competitive. And you also want to make sure you’re getting ratings on it, you want to make sure it’s rated highly as well as you want to learn how to do PPC where you are promoting your listings number six, I’m also a part time real estate agent now. So I got my license recently and I’m with a Realty and loans you can check it out at E Realty and loans calm. So I am still learning the ropes to it. But I’ve gotten a commission from it. But I’m really excited about this because I feel like I can bring my digital marketing experience into the real estate world and hopefully get more eyeballs on our brokerage. It’s also been really fun to work with different buyers and different clients. So it’s exciting to put more time into this business and basically helping out Sean’s dad because this is his brokerage and it’s really cool to do this as a family business. I also feel like being an agent is pretty lucrative, especially if you’re working with more expensive markets like the bears pretty expensive. And if you’re getting a 2.5% Commission on a $1 million home you’re getting like $25,000 and that’s actually pretty common and maybe even on the low end actually for Bay Area homes. Number seven, I also get course sales. So you can check out the Etsy entrepreneur as well as blog launch profit, where I talk about how to make $1,000 a month through Etsy or through blogging so I sell courses through teachable I really highly recommend teachable if you are building up your brand and want a place to host your courses. I also have courses on Udemy but I actually feel like teachable is more lucrative. We’ll see maybe I will upload more on Udemy. But right now I really like teachable I love how easy it is to put files like videos up as well as text files and audio files as well as being able to use their affiliate program and their coupon code generator so that you can have affiliate promoting your courses really easily. So if you want to try a way to make money online without spending too much money teachable, or Udemy are great ways to start making money through selling courses. Number eight, I also do affiliate marketing. So what that means is you might promote a product that you recommend that you’ve used before. And if people purchase through your link, you get a commission. So these companies are making money when you promote their stuff, you also make money and then the buyer gets value as well, because they’re using a tool that you recommend. So I love affiliate marketing, it’s a win win situation. And you can actually make a lot of money, check out my interview with Ryan Scribner, because we talk about affiliate marketing and his strategies around affiliate marketing. And he makes a ton of money every month doing this. So number nine, I make money through YouTube and blogging, ads pretty self explanatory. Basically, with YouTube and blogging, advertisers can put their ads on your content, and you make money from that I was pretty recently monetized with YouTube. So I’m starting to see how you can actually make a decent amount of money through it. So I’m pretty excited about that. And also my blog, it’s been there for five years now. So that’s been kind of giving me income, but it’s definitely not as high as YouTube. So it’s actually very surprising how much more YouTube pays you for this. And also, luckily, with YouTube, the niche I’m in actually is more profitable. So it actually really depends on the niche you are trying to make videos on in order to make an income through YouTube ads. For example, with entertainment, it might not be as high as what I’m getting paid for ads in my niche number 10. I also make money through stocks and ETFs. And dividend ETFs are exchange traded funds. And it’s a basket of securities you buy or sell through a brokerage firm on a stock exchange. So qq has like a piece of 100 different stocks. And there’s a bunch of top tech companies are in qq q. So when you’re purchasing qq Q, you’re getting a piece of a bunch of these tech companies generally, it’s a pretty safe investment. I’m not a financial advisor, though, so make sure you consult with a financial advisor when it comes to investing in this. But I’ve held on to qq q for a long time. And it’s been very profitable. I also have a bunch of tech giants, I even have mining stocks, I make sure to diversify my portfolio when it comes to stocks. And it has appreciated a lot our number 11 I do part time freelance work. So currently, I’m doing some design work for a client that I’ve worked for before. I don’t normally do these part time assignments, but he approached me and I was like, Alright, let’s do it. So back in the day, I did take multiple part time remote positions, like I mentioned before, where I handle Facebook ads for people as well as creating the creatives for ads for people. I’ve also designed web pages. So at this position, I’m helping Photoshop a home page for a client. All right. Lastly, my number 12 is a combination of different income sources. Because these different income sources Don’t make me a ton of money. Some of them are more sporadic than others. So first of all, I make money through sponsorships. So sometimes companies will come up to me and want to promote a product and I might shout them out or like Currently, I’m working with a partner where I’m uploading videos to their app, and I’m making money that way.So that’s kind of a sponsorship as well. And then there’s also other print on demand websites like red bubble and T public that I make money from. And what that means is I upload my designs on their websites and their marketplaces. And then they print and fulfill the orders for me just like merch by Amazon, but on smaller marketplaces. And then I also make Kindle and audiobook sales is very minimal. But I had tried the Kindle book thing and I stopped doing it ever since I started nomadic because it wasn’t my thing. But basically, I would hire these writers and kind of give them an outline of books that I wanted to create. And then I would edit the writing and stuff like that and put these Kindle books under a pen name, I realized that I didn’t really feel comfortable with that I didn’t really like it. So I stopped doing that. But it still makes me money to this day because people are purchasing those books as well as the audiobooks for it. And lastly, there’s a tick tock creator fun So essentially, I make money through putting up these Tick Tock videos and getting views on them. It’s not that much as well. It’s way less for example than my YouTube revenue. But I just want to include that here as well. So these four things I didn’t break them out into multiple income streams. I just decided like these are my smaller things that I still cash flow from so I’m happy with the income I get from them now. I hope you guys enjoyed this video of my 12 plus income streams. There’s a bunch of different ones you guys might be like, how are you handling all of these but again, I don’t spend that much time on it. I literally spent a lot of time watching TV and like cuddling with my boyfriend. I’m not like a workaholic, that maybe some of you guys might think I am I actually advocate you know enjoying your life and living your life. These passive income streams are all towards the goal of financial freedom where I’ll have the time to create things I love and spend time with my loved ones. So don’t think I’m workaholic. I’m not about that life. I’m not like Gary Vee where I’m like hustle, hustle, hustle. That’s cool if that’s for you, but I mean I work hard but I definitely don’t think I work hard enough. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Please make sure to rate review and subscribe. It really helps our podcast grow. And thanks again. I’ll see you guys in the next one.Transcribed by https://otter.ai

About the Author

Sharon Tseung

Hi, I’m Sharon Tseung! I’m the owner of DigitalNomadQuest. I quit my job in 2016, traveled the world for 2 years, came back to the Bay Area, and ended up saving more money and building over 10 passive income streams on my digital nomad journey. I want to show you how you can do the same! Through this blog, learn how to build passive income and create financial and location independence.

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