An asset is something that you own that has a cash value.  It either creates passive income or can be traded for cash.  So let’s start in the most obvious place: you are your own asset.  You have skills, and you have a job that pays you to use those skills.  This creates income, or cash flow, for you.

To delve a little further, you can build assets as well.  For example, if you start a business or an online blog, etc., and it puts revenue in your pocket, this is an asset.  Of course, its true worth has to be measured against any expenses (known as liabilities) that you have to pay to keep your business or blog running.  If you have an interest-bearing savings account, or a 401(k), or you’ve invested in stocks, these are assets that can create passive income.  You can also access them relatively quickly in cash form.

Some people do not consider their homes or cars to be assets since they do owe money and make monthly payments on them, but they can be listed as assets.  They obviously do not create any immediate cash flow, but they can be sold for a cash value.  What makes people not consider them to be assets is the fact that they will likely use this revenue for a new home or car, so it will not stay in their pockets for long.

If you create a new product or write a song, you’ve built an asset.  Your product will likely be trademarked and/or patented, your song will be copyrighted, etc.  It doesn’t matter what you’ve produced in this example.  If it will be sold to multiple people and continue to generate income, it is an asset.  The amount of income may decline over time, however.  A new and better product might be created by someone else, your song gets lets airplay every month.  In order to keep the cash flow high, you need to either make occasional improvements to what you’ve made or make something new.

Your debts take away from the value of your assets, so in order to maintain a positive cash flow, you need to ensure that your assets are working to their full potential.  Is your product selling well?  Is your blog getting enough hits?  Are you getting the best interest rate on your savings account?  How risky are your stock investments?  Make a list of your income versus your expenses to measure your cash flow.  You’ll see how close you are to your money-making goals and where you may need to make some adjustments

Here are 3 Quick Money Making Ideas

 
1. Make $3,000 From Home a Week: GoFreelancer will hook you up with jobs you can do from home. Everything from posting on discussion boards to writing blog content for travel magazines and recipe websites. If you can spell, type and have a computer, this is a quick money making method that will get you cash in hand.

 

2. Become a Virtual Assistant: Search Craigslist and you’ll probably find hundreds of posts for both people advertising their virtual assistant service and business people seeking personal assistants. More and more companies are saving money by downsizing their offices and outsourcing more of their work. As a virtual assistant you can return phone calls, answer emails and manage other requests for your client from home.

 

3. Clean Out the Garage: Probably the most popular quick money making idea is to sell your stuff. You’d be surprised how valuable the things collecting dust are to other people. Just because it is old, broken or worthless to you does not mean it isn’t valuable. The only problem with selling your items on eBay in order to make money is that eventually you don’t have anything left to sell. But at least you’ll have the experience and reputation to be able to source your own items and build a small part-time business.

As an employee, like most people are, you are at-will. That means at any time, for just about any reason, your company can let you go. But even if you believe your job is secure, imagine if things changed. What if something happens to you medically and it would be impossible to do your job? What if new management came in and corporate politics pushed you out?

Create your own income insurance by supplementing and diversifying the money you bring in so you and your family is not so reliant on your job.

One of the greatest myths is that income is directly related to the time you spend working. That may apply in the workplace, but there are countless ways to make money. Of course anything will require some of your time — at least when you are in the building stage, but there are ways to build systems so other people make money for you.

Most people believe you have to work in order to make money, so pay those people to work in order to help you produce and income. There are millions of people searching online every day for ways to make extra money. With the right idea and a free ad on a job board or Craigslist, you can virtually have someone immediately making money for you. Here are a couple ideas just off the top of my head…

• Find businesses that need some fact checking done and outsource the work
• Search for businesses looking to have a website built and hire a college student to do the work
• Hire someone to write a piece of software and sell it online
• Advertise your new marketing business and hire freelancers to design ads and sales brochures for your clients
• Provide a “voice talent” service for advertising, audio books, and voice mail

There are a million different ways to make extra money to diversify your income. Find and fulfill needs, and figure out  a way to automate the process so you can create additional income streams. That way you’ll never have to let money be a concern.

I’ve heard this idea come up in a few recent discussions, and wanted to find out what it is myself. I’m no expert on the topic, but from first glance it screams “SCAM.” Maybe there are some legitimate cash gifting programs, but I don’t see anything legitimate about these programs at first glance.

There may be some loopholes that make it completely legal, but that doesn’t make it safe or necessarily a legitimate way to make money.

What is Cash Gifting?

Interestingly, when you search Wikipedia for “cash gifting,” it redirects you to “pyramid schemes.” That’s no good.

With some further research, here’s how I think cash gifting works…

• Legally, cash gifting is a tax strategy to give money away in order to reduce your tax bill. In a calendar year, you can give $12,000 to as many individuals as you like, and the receiver does not have to pay taxes on the gift.
• Now for the shady approach: You join a “cash gifting program” by paying an enrollment and monthly membership fee disguised as cash gifts to the people who joined before you. As a member, you receive money from any new members that you recruit.

Typically, members get roped in by the hype. They probably know it is a risk and not exactly legitimate, but the “what if…” factor makes people act irrationally.

These programs are doomed to fail from the start. Once the program begins to grow, the number of new members required to sustain the system cannot be achieved. Managing who gave how much money when also becomes increasingly difficult. As a result, the most recent members “gifted” money, but never receive any. There goes the life savings.

Do you see why Wikipedia simply refers to cash gifting as a pyramid scheme? There can’t possibly be any good that comes out of this other than learning a lesson the hard way.

I can be sympathetic to the people that get caught up in this program, as the people recruiting can be very good “marketers” (eh hem, scammers) and play on hope and emotion. Sadly, it seems like they prey on the desperate who risk everything they have for a chance to fix their lives.

If these cash gifters just put this amount of energy into building a real business, they wouldn’t have to worry about destroying people’s lives or worry about how long the gravy train will last.

That being said, this is my interpretation of cash gifting programs. If I’m completely off here or missing important details, please do correct me.

I think that it was Stephen King who said he liked studying serial killers and criminals not because he wanted to become one, but so he knew how to avoid them. If you ever get approached about this or any other money making system, remove yourself from the emotion involved in your decisions and think about what your gut and logic tells you.

This is accomplished by building businesses and income producing machines that produce and income over and over. How this is accomplished is not really a big secret. It is the same things that you have probably heard before. “Build multiple streams of passive income.”

• Real Estate
• Internet Incomes
• Stock Trading
• Network Marketing
• Vending Machines
• Franchising

Any one of these opportunities can produce millions of dollars a year, but the possibility is by no means limited to these ideas. Multi-millionaires are also business owners of print shops, lawn care, fashion designers, home schooling, antique collectors… the possibilities are endless. Just about any idea that you have that can create value and has a market has the potential to generate a comfortable income.

Of course most people fail at building their wealth creating systems, which tends to be a result of lack of vision or lack of planning. Particularly in the popular wealth building methods, opportunists get excited at the idea of making millions of dollars, but they quit to early because of lack of quick results.

The misunderstanding is that creating passive income streams is easy. The belief is that you set up a system, walk away and enjoy fat profits. More likely, however, it requires a significant amount of up-front work and some ongoing maintenance. Passive income by no means mean easy.

If, however, you go in with dedication, determination and a clear vision, financial freedom is within reach. Don’t expect to become an instant success, but take building your business one step of a time. Those who do will enjoy watching their part-time business flourish into a cash producing machine.

For ideas on how to start building your business online, from home, visit Profit Lance.