Premium rate telephone numbers have in the past attracted negative publicity because they were associated with fraudulent schemes such as bogus prize draws or premium services such as sex chat lines. But more recently, consulates and embassies have started introducing 190X numbers for incoming calls, and now individuals, communities and charities are discovering premium rate telephone numbers to be an ideal income generator for themselves. Here are some examples:-

Individuals – Register your premium rate telephone number with insurance companies, banks, credit card companies and all those other annoying people who call you up on the telephone and try to sell you something. You keep them on the phone as long as possible!*

For charities and communities, organize a free-ad web site or a news letter where the vendor’s telephone number is replaced by a premium rate telephone number which is linked to the vendor’s phone. This not only help to protect the identity of the vendor (who still deals with the incoming call and any transaction), but also raises valuable income for your organization.

Individually or collectively you could offer helpline facilities, host a recorded message service (for the weather, today’s horoscope, recent lottery winning numbers etc.) or simply form a community amongst yourselves where the proceeds generated from talking on the phone to each other are donated to a charity chosen between the participants of the group.

*Under current legislation, the maximum amount you can charge per minute is $5.50 with a ceiling of $38.50 per call. You will not get to keep all the $5.50 per minute for yourself, as income is shared with the service provider.

Details of premium rate services can be found by contacting companies such as www.mediatel.com, www.doatec.com or www.promotel.net or from your local service provider.

This is a guest article contributed by Melissa Tamura, who writes about online accounting degrees on the Zen College Life blog. She would love to hear from you at melissatamura@gmail.com

What are articles directories?

Article directories are websites that house free articles. These articles are usually put there by whoever owns the copyright to them as a promotion method. Each article has the owners byline placed under it so that those who eventually read the article will know who wrote it (or at least who owns it) and will be able to get in contact with or visit their website for further information.

How to make money from posting articles on article directory sites?

 Articles directories are a great place to put your articles so that they will make you money. By using this method, people who are interested in your product or service will see your article, view you as an expert in the subject, and will visit your website. Even if you cannot write or do not have any knowledge on the subject on which you are promoting (for example for you run an affiliate website), you can always hire a writer to do the work for you. Getting quality articles written will be expensive up front, but they will pay for themselves in no time, either through affiliate sales or selling your own services, and everything from then on is pure profit. Let’s take a real life example. Imagine that you are an accountant working from home. You write an article on an accounting topic and place it on various article directories. Those who are looking for the subject you wrote about will read your article, see that you have the knowledge and skill that is needed to do a job for them, and visit your website or contact you via e-mail. Your article just gained you a new client who may use your services regularly, but will definitely give you a nice profit at least once. Furthermore, since you have posted it on a free article directory, others who have affiliate websites about accounting will inevitably use your article for their website. Since they must attach your byline to it, this will bring you even more exposure for every website that re-posts your article. This because you will be benefiting of off the traffic that they get to their website. There are numerous article directories out there for you to utilize. Your best bet is to put a copy of each of your articles on every one for maximum exposure. It will eventually help to bring more traffic and customers to your website, which will lead to new orders and more profit.

Another way to make money from posting articles to article directory sites is to put affiliate links into the article. For example you might be a clickbank affilaite and write an article relating to a particular product on there. When people click on the link, they will be taken to a sales page and if they buy the product, you make money. It’s just that simple. Anyone can sign up to be an affiliate at Clickbank for free. There are also hundreds of other affilate programs to choose from such as Ebay, Amazon, Commision Junction, as so on. Making money by posting articles to article directories does not mean that you need a website.

People have all sorts of hobbies that they love to do in their spare time.  Scrap booking, knitting, sewing, painting, surfing the net, or even blogging.  There are of course too many hobbies to mention them all and I will just say “each to his own”.

I have always participated in a hobby in my spare time, and have always ended up turning my spare time into cash.  I always find myself earning money from not only my regular jobs, but also anything else I seem to be doing at the time. For example when I was young my husband and I didn’t have much money, we scrounged the local tip for furniture and household goods.  Sometimes we would pick up a couch, or maybe even a timber coffee table.  We would often hit the “ jackpot “, as we called it, when we actually found something that worked or was useful to us.

This sparked, not only an addiction to the hunt for treasures, but it also ended up being a great little money spinner. We ended up with an overload of stuff and started having garage sales to earn extra money.  People would look at us strangely when I told them what we were doing and my answer to that was “If you saw a five dollar note on the ground would you pick it up?” They always answered yes to this.  Then I would ask them, “well why wouldn’t you pick up an item that will be worth $5 in the long run?”

This is just one example of how to make money from a hobby.  I really don’t think they let you remove stuff from the tip now days, but there is still the curbside pickup and I am sure there are other ways to collect free stuff.  When someone says they are throwing something out, grab it.  Appreciate things that can be turned into even one dollar.  One day I picked up a steering wheel bar lock but it had no key. My husband told me to forget it because it was useless without the key. Well I took it home anyway and put it in the next garage sale.  A guy came along and looked at the steering wheel lock and asked where the key was.  When I told him there wasn’t one he offered my $2 for it. Ah two dollars for free.  He thought he was getting a bargain and I just wanted to rub it in to my husband.

We also used to make small timber boxes from scrap wood. That was fun. We would make boxes with hidden drawers and locks. They just got better each time we made them.  However one day when we were selling our boxes at a local market, a customer asked if we made bedside tables.  I turned to my husband and asked him if we made bedside tables and he said yes… Well that was the start of something big.  We started making bedside tables, which led to TV cabinets, kitchen hutches, coffee tables, CD towers, and more… We had a Sales rep on the road and 4 people working to try and get the orders out each week.  What once was fun turned into a factory of mass production. We were supplying shops and retailing as well. We did this for about 10 years, until we finally got into other businesses that we wanted to try.

One main hobby that I have had all my life is computers. Building, repairing, ripping apart, and more…This hobby turned into a huge website http://www.tips4pc.com which can almost earn enough money for us to live off.

We did not always just snap our fingers together and make money from all of our hobbies. We tried others and failed. But the thing is we realized that they were not going to work and moved on… Get over it quickly so you can concentrate on the next venture.

Maybe you have an old fashioned hobby that you can bring to life again by making it trendy or in vogue again. For example knitting was outdated but now is very fashionable because people adapted to the market and supplied something that people can use rather than look at.  They make cool scarves out of weird furry wool, mobile phone pouches, and way out beanies or hats.  No more kettle warmers or toaster covers please!!!

Quick tips to turning a hobby into a money making idea:

• If you are making craft, make sure it has a use. People have cut down on buying things that just look good. It needs to be useful.
• When turning a hobby into a money making adventure don’t expect to be paid for every hour that it takes to create your masterpiece.
• Be realistic when pricing your item. Being handmade and quality crafted does not give you the big bucks unless your name is Picasso.
• Find a niche and go with it.  Do not copy people’s ideas because you think they are making money.  They usually are not making much at all.  It’s the unique items that sell the best.
• Try and source the material you need to make your items from a wholesaler or even free.  I know people that used to make wallets and tobacco pouches from scrap leather and suede from out of factory bins. They made a great profit because they didn’t have to pay for materials.  Also you can make lead light glass charms from scrap colored glass.. There is so much you can do.
• If you do not know how to do something ask for advice when buying your materials.  One day we decided to put a lead light window into a bedside table and didn’t know the first thing about it.  So I went to the lead lighting supplies shop, and while buying what I needed, I drained the guys brains on how to do it… I was there for ages. He wanted a sale and I wanted to buy the stuff but get lessons along the way…  Free lessons 101.  Then I went home and made a lead light piece to go into the bedside table.

You can also watch this video to see how one person turned their hobby into a money making project.

Let me know what hobbies you have and if you think you can make money from them.

Personal finance gurus are always talking about how in order to truly become financially free, you must have enough passive income to exceed your expenses. That’s great, but what is passive income and how do you get it?

In its simplest form, income can be broken down into four categories: earned income, portfolio income, leveraged income, and passive income.

* Earned income, as you probably figured, is income that requires you to show up to get paid. Money is earned from your individual time and energy. This is how most people earn their living – as an employee.

* Portfolio income is the interest, dividends and capital gains that comes from the ownership of stocks, bonds and mutual funds.

* Leveraged income is created when one activity earns more money with larger captured audiences. A speaker at a conference, for example, may largely put in as much effort to arrange and give a speech to 20 people as 1,000 people, but can earn much more money with the larger group.

* Passive income is income that requires an upfront investment and keeps paying over and over while the required involvement dissipates. The initial effort creates a cash machine that brings money in many times over, though the participation becomes minimal.

As you can tell from above, earned income only pays you what you put in. In other words, it requires your time and. You can earn raises and promotions, but your income is limited because there is only one of you.

With passive income, on the other hand, you can create multiple streams of income that continues to bring in money long after you did the work once. As you continue to add more and more cash generating machines, your passive income streams increase along with your wealth.Let’s look at a few examples so we can get started making passive income streams.

* Cash Flow Positive Real Estate: Passive income can be generated from residential or commercial properties. Real estate is what most people think of when it comes to passive income. But, it’s only passive income when the rent you receive is greater than your mortgage, taxes, maintenance and expenses. Otherwise, your rental property is just a liability that costs you money – not makes you money. If this is the case with you, you are probably speculating to make money off the appreciation.

* License a Patent: Got a great idea or an invention? License it and get paid anytime anyone uses your licensed patent.

* Become an Author: Copyrighting materials that earns royalties, such as books or e-books, music or lyrics, and photos or images, is another way entrepreneurs create passive income.* Automated Fulfillment Websites: Build an e-commerce site that can effectively process and fill orders with little involvement in order to produce some passive income.

* Pay for Use Items: Vending machines, quarter car, coin laundries, washes, video arcades and storage units can all earn passive income.

* Build a Successful Business: A successful business in these terms means a business that can run with or without your heavy involvement. How often, for example, do you see the owner of a McDonald’s franchise on location? A franchise that is cash flow positive and has a team to run the business is earning passive income for the owner. Realize that passive income does not necessarily mean that there is no involvement on your end.

Creating passive income streams often involves a large investment up-front, but in the end it requires little or no interaction.Also, just because you make an earned income now (opposed to a passive income) does not mean you should quit you day job and open up a quarter car wash.

To start building passive income streams you will likely need to keep making an earned income in order to convert that income into passive income by purchasing rental properties, etc.Once your passive income is greater than your expenses, you can make the decision to stop making an earned income and live the rest of your life financially free.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/wealth-building-articles/what-is-passive-income-391925.html

About the Author:
Becoming a millionaire is easy when you know how. Increase your wealth by visiting Millionaire Money Habits: http://www.mmhabits.com/

Personal growth is like everything else, it takes time and dedication. This time can be hard to come by working 12 hours a day. So I wanted to take this opportunity to talk to you about what you are doing versus what you could be doing. Right now you are probably working your tail off trying to support yourself and your family. Going to that 8-7 job can be a huge grind on you and your loved ones. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why you put yourself through that? I bet when you do ask yourself that the next question your inner self asks is “what else can I do?”
Well, you could keep grinding yourself down year after year, you keep going to the same job day after day, doing the same thing hour after hour and then start the process over again. Or, you could go a different route and that route is creating passive or strings of income. Supporting yourself doing the things you love isn’t as hard as you might think.

Let me first explain a passive income. Imagine if you will a thread and the thread is over a bottle. We can fill up the bottle by letting water drip down that thread into the bottle one drip at a time. It is a very slow process but looking at the positive side, we are indeed making some progress. But, what if we added another thread and did the same thing? Now we have two strings and we are adding twice as much water as we were before. So to get the bottle filled up we just need to keep adding more and more strings until we have a nice flow. That is strings of passive income and great financial opperatunity.

Don’t get me wrong, we have to have little worker bees out there and we always will. There will always be people who just go along the same path as everyone else. I will never frown or look down on these people because they are the reason I can do what I do. They will never venture off and they will always stay the course they were raised to head. . But people like you and I think differently. Some people may say we are lazy, I disagree. I simply say we are better than that.

When you talk to friends and family about strings of income most will say doing that is pretty risky. Hmmm, let me share a scenario with you. So you decide you are going to take the safe route of life. You are going to get that 9-5 job and collect that steady $1,000 a week paycheck. You have a nice house, nice cars and everything is great. One day you go to your 9-5 job to find out you have been down sized. You just lost every source of income you had just like that. Now, being logical…how logical does that sound to you? Does that sound like a safe plan to you? You have put all your eggs in one basket and the basket broke.

Tomorrow you will go to work for 8 hours and bring home say, $100. The next day you have to get up and do it all over again to bring home the same $100 and this happens every time you want to make $100. What if you want to take a day off? How much money will you then bring home. If you are like most people you don’t make anything on your day off. But what if you do it the smart way? Say you have the ability to sit down for 8 hours and create an Ebook and sell it for $10 a copy. Now your Ebook sells one copy a week. You might think that is not a good investment for your time but I did say one a week. After a year your 8 hours of work turns into $520. That is more than 5 times what you were making at your 9-5 job. Guess what, you can sell that book for years and it could easily turn into thousands of dollars from just 8 hours of work.
I know it is tough getting started, after all you are working 50 hours a week. Lets look at a productive vacation and a motivated year. On your vacation you could spend 8 hours a day creating little projects that could more than likely make you $10 a week. So you create 7 projects and for the rest of the year you spend 8 hours a week creating a new stream of income or finish another project. At the end of the year you will have made over $16,000 for 408 hours of work and that is the equivalent to $40 an hour. The best part about the whole thing is if you took the entire year off next year you will still make over $16,000.

So now you have quit your job because you now see you can do it on your own. Now you can take that time and keep generating more passive income. This truly has limitless potential for earnings. After a while you would take your strings of income and twist them into rope to manage them easier but then start working on making more money again.
The safety in this process is that if something went wrong with a flow of income how much will you be out? The most you would be out is 10% of your income but then all you have to do is replace that stream. Seems to me that that is a lot safer than getting fired from your job.
Now that I have given you the scenario let me tell you about all the benefits of passive or strings of income.

1. Invest some time in the beginning and then let the project generate income on it’s own.
2. You pick the projects, you pick the time and days you want to do them.
3. Your passive residual income will work for you 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
4. If you want to make more money then all you have to do is create another string.
5. The sky is the limit for your earning potential.
6. Have more free time to spend time with your family,friends or go on vacation.
7. You can create passive income that is not dependant on another company or the economy.

I know you are thinking “Wow, that sounds great but I need some examples of this passive income you are talking about.” Well, simply those incomes are anything that can generate themselves after they are set up. Here are some things to think about…

1. Information Products – the Internet is great place to createan Ebook that explains ‘How to” information ie. How to Startan Online Business, How to Buy a Car Without Getting RippedOff..anything that makes life easier for people. People arestarved for knowledge, therefore if there is a need all you have todo is fill it, you can create an ebook and sell it on the Net.

2. Creating software products – If you have the ability andif you have a good idea for a software product that will help people do something faster, easier or teach them something, then you may have a gold mine. A friend of mine created a game that educates kids about math. He then sells the game on a CD to parents and schools all over the world.He makes a nice passive income each month fromhis initial investment of time, effort and money. The bestexample is Bill Gates who created the Microsoft Corporationselling the Windows Operating System.

3. Advertising commissions – if you have a web site thatattracts 1000s of visitors a day from the search engines,you can offer to place a banner or link on your site for afee that you collect each month. You set it up once, thencollect the passive residual income.
Newsletters,or ezines – offer advertising space in yourezine. The greater number of subscribers you have the moreyou can charge every time you publish.
eBooks – offer advertising space in your ebook. Give theebook away for free or even place links in it fromaffiliate programs.
Google AdSense – place Google Ads on your web site. Whensomeone clicks on the ad, you get a commission for everyclick. If you have 100s or 1000s of pages on your site, youcan earn a substantial monthly income.

4. Create a membership site – if you are an expert in yourfield and can provide the resources, knowledge and support, you can charge a monthly fee to gain access to your membership site. The more members you gain, the more moneyyou make. Because you are an expert in your field, you canalso recommend other products and services to your members,from which you earn commissions.

To summarize everything you just read please understand that there are a lot of things one can do to generate more time and money in your life. You just have to evolve your way of thinking from the normal person. Once you do that the sky truly is the limit.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/wealth-building-articles/creating-passive-income-finances-467846.html

About the Author:
Visit Scotts self help website “The Evolution of a Man” to get his take on what it is to evolve.