Ask any hundred people whether they’re interested in increasing their wealth, and all 100 of them will say yes. But ask them if they’re ‘serious‘ about it, about half will shrug. Heck, most people aren’t even „serious“ about their health, let alone their wealth, but it’s those people who are truly committed to action that make a real difference in their own lives. The major difference between the wealthy and the poor is that wealthy people take action (since they are committed to their wealth), whereas the poor are people who tend to think about change, but rarely take the actions necessary to make it.

If you are serious about increasing your wealth, then you are going to want to read this article, because it’s the starting point – this is where it all gets very serious, and where change will follow.

So you are committed, right? Since you still reading, you must be. Okay, let’s get to the meat of the issue.

Many people have heard of „passive income“ but very few fully understand what it means. Passive income is defined as income that you do not have to work for. In other words, if you are on a sunny beach vacationing with your family, you can still be earning money. The key to generating ongoing and growing wealth is to work for passive income, instead of working income.

For example, if you are a Doctor, Lawyer, Waiter or Astronaut, once you stop working, you make no money. Your working income is gone. You may have plenty of money, but you don’t make more unless you put on your work clothes, get in the car, and go to work. The rich tend to focus on earning passive income instead, so that their wealth grows each day, whether they go to work or go to the Riviera to work on their tan. And that is why the rich keep getting richer while everyone else gets poorer. And poorer. And poorer.

Fair warning! Do no think that building passive income is easy – it’s not. It takes some work to establish your base, and it takes planning and commitment to build that base, and unless you build your base, that passive income will never come.

Let’s think of it another way – you could spend 40 hours this week working for an insurance company as an office clerk, and you’ll only make $10 or $12 an hour at the end of it. But spend 40 hours working on building your passive income and you can get that $10 or $12 an hour (or much, much more) rolling in all day, every day – even on weekends!

Imagine earning $400 before you even get up in the morning. Imagine earning $50 as you eat breakfast. Imagine going on holidays for a week and coming home to find a check for $2000 in the mail. That’s passive income.

So how can you make this happen? Well, step one is to not quit your day job, as it will take some work before you are able to live off of your passive income and quit the 9-to5. Building passive income is long term thinking – not short term, so in the meantime you need to keep your bills paid. But remember, the wealthy are those that take action. The poor are those that come home from work and ‘switch off‘.

Real Estate is one of the best ways to achieve passive income. For example, if you buy a nice property or commercial building and lease it out, and your mortgage payments are less than the rent you bring in, then you have just generated a passive income. The big problem is, of course, that most people do not have the massive amounts of capital required to buy real estate. So you may have to lower your sights a little to ways to make smaller amounts of passive income, with a much smaller investment, so you can work your way up to property investment later.

MLM, or Multi-level Marketing, has long been a source of passive income for people that do not have the big money to invest upfront, and while some people shy away from MLM systems, you must understand before going in that the way they work is not like it is in the infomercials. You don’t just join an MLM system and instantly start making hundreds of thousands of dollars – you have to work at it. If you know anyone that has made it big in anytime of MLM business then chances are they put in long hard hours selling. This is a major downside since most people do not like selling. The best way to generate passive income is to find a real business that requires no selling.

But there are successful businesses out there that will generate a consistent and strong passive income without the hassle of selling, and without hundred of thousands of dollars needed to get in on the ground floor.