While the commonly cited statistic is that 9 out of 10 businesses fail, it those who have an entrepreneurial mind who will try 10 times in order to succeed. Not only do they enjoy the risk, but the opportunity is what drives them. Typically after goals are reached, these people don’t stop. It’s not so much about the amount of money that is obtained, but the challenge and the thrill of producing such large income streams.

So what is it that allows these people to become so successful? There are very few opportunities in the workforce to produce $100,000 in a single month, but entrepreneurs around the world are capable of creating that kind of income, and more. All it takes is a system that is scalable, and an ability to manage money properly.

It doesn’t necessarily matter what the system is… it can be an ice cream stands, a neon sign shop, or a landscaping service. There are many ways to build an large income stream, but it takes your initiative in order to find what works best for you. What works for one person does not necessarily work for another, and the quickest way to find that out is to try.

Once you see how the inner parts run in order to make a business profitable, and you bring your business to a certain level or profitability, then you scale. That may mean more advertising, hiring more employees, or buying more equipment. Whatever it takes to make your business run smoother and grow quicker. Manage your money properly and your business can grow at an exponential rate — doubling in size and income month after month. Of course with growth comes more expenses, but so do opportunities and tax breaks.

So what are some of the best industries or businesses to start with? Regardless if you are looking to produce a little part-time income or want to build massive income streams, here are a few things to consider. These options can be done from home, around your busy schedule, and with little or no start-up capital. Because of the low barrier of entry and the low risk involved, these may be some good places to start — depending on your interests:

1. Trade Penny Stocks: The penny stock market is a high-paced, exciting business to be in. You can make money incredibly fast, but you can lose it just as fast. Because of the nature of this market, a small investment can potentially turn into a 4,000% profit, or more in a matter of minutes. A stock valued at $0.10 that later in the day becomes worth $2 can make someone an overnight success. Reinvest those profits carefully, and you could strike gold. This is a high risk game that can be started with little money, and having access to penny stock email alerts, you can be notified exactly what to buy, when to buy, and at what price — making it easy for anyone of any skill level to start trading.

 

2. Make Money Online: If high risk is not your style, then an online business may be something better suited for you. With over 2 billion people online at any given time, there are many ways to generate an income. There’s no selling, you can work on your online business from anywhere with an Internet connection, and there’s incredibly low risk. With social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter becoming an everyday part of life, it is becoming easier for individuals to make money online. These popular tools allow everyday people to make money without having to own a website or needing any technical skills. A single message from your Twitter account can be instantly broadcasted to millions of people and pull in thousands of dollars at the push of a button. Learn how to get started making money online in your spare time.

 

3. Turn Hobbies Into Cash Flow: Take a moment to think about the hobbies or skills you have that are unique to you. They may be such ordinary and easy tasks to you that you may not even realize that it is a valuable skill. What do you find yourself doing in your spare time, or what do people regularly ask for your advice or help with? There is a high value placed on specialty skills, which can often times be turned into profits. It could be baking, design, training… whatever it is that you do best can be turned into a revenue generating business. You just need to identify what that is and how you can mold it into a product or service.

These are by no means the only ways to produce a large amount of wealth, nor are these methods guaranteed to make money for you. These methods, however, are relatively low-risk, have a low barrier of entry, are scalable, and have incredible profit potentials. Unlike opening your own brick in mortar business, you don’t need hundreds of thousands of dollars to start, you don’t need to quit your day job, and you can grow your business at your own pace. That’s what makes home-based business opportunities a good starting point for anyone who’d like to produce a part-time income that could potentially balloon into a multi-million dollar income stream.

You’re not going to get rich right away.  In fact, you might not ever become rich as a freelancer, but you can pull in a comfortable salary.  How much you make is dependent not only on what people in your field tend to be paid but also on how much time and effort you are willing to put forth.  The beginning may be uncomfortable and scary, but you have to realize that you are really starting your own small business.  You don’t have to register yourself as such unless you want to, but you are now a business in the start-up phase.

You’ll need some tools outside of the obvious requirements for your field (camera for a photographer, internet access for web developers, and so on) and there’s a variety of help on the web.  If you’re more comfortable with a hand to guide you, you can start with websites like GoFreelance, odesk.com, elance.com, and sologig.com.  These are trusted and proven sites for freelancers.  They not only offer jobs for you to apply for and/or bid on, but they offer secure payment.  This is especially helpful when you are getting started with little to no business contacts.  You can be sure that you will be paid by your temporary employer, and they won’t have access to any of your personal account information that could open you up to being scammed.

No matter where you look for work, whether it’s on these sites or with people you networked with while in your previous job, make sure there’s a contract in place.  Don’t respond to vague job postings and/or people that refuse to tell you basic information like the company name and location, a full and honest description of the job that is to be completed, and how and when you’ll be paid.  You don’t want to be left in the lurch after committing serious time and energy to produce a good product.  And don’t pay anybody for the opportunity to work for them.  That defeats the purpose.

Regarding pay, don’t be afraid to negotiate for what you know your services are worth.  You have to be your own advocate.  If you accept low pay or agree to do the work in exchange for “building your portfolio,” you’re devaluing yourself and hurting the market for other freelancers in your field, as the employer will know they can find someone who will do the work for cheap.  If anything, start with a price that you know is a bit too high and let them talk you down.  You never know…they might accept your high price immediately.  At worst, you’ll end up receiving average pay.

Treat yourself like a business all the way.  Have business cards handy for potential prospects.  Set up a website as a way for people to find you, read about your services, peruse your portfolio, and hopefully hire you.  Network and establish references just like you would with any other job.

A couple of helpful websites I’ve found are VistaPrint and dawnaturservice.wordpress.com.  VistaPrint offers numerous deals on supplies for your business like free business cards, pens, postcards, car magnets, websites, etc.  You can use their templates or upload your own.  Dawnaturservice offers advice for virtual assistants that really applies to all freelancers.  You’ll find helpful hints and lists of other helpful websites to help you keep track of hours and accounting, maintain your own website, store files, create a successful blog, etc.

You can be successful working at home.  Utilize every tool at your disposal and invest yourself fully and you can get yourself off the ground and living the dream before you know it.

There are legitimate ways to do this, but let’s start with an option you’ve probably seen or perhaps even fallen for: the classic internet work-at-home business opportunity.  These generally show up as an ad on a website you’re visiting, or even as a job posting on sites like careerbuilder.com.  You’ll find lots of exclamation points!  Work from home!  No selling!  No experience necessary!  100% legitimate!  You read a long, repetitious testimonial about how easy it is and how much you’ll make, only to reach the bottom and discover you must first pay a subscription or “materials” fee.  While there are many legitimate work from home opportunities, ways to make money on the internet, and real coaches that can help you develop the skills to successfully produce an income online, there are plenty of marketers who prey on those who are easily persuaded.  Be careful not to fall for these scams.

If you want true passive income, there is work to be done first.  You need an idea and a business model for it.  You could buy stock and hope the market improves, but you still need to be involved, knowing what to buy, when to buy, and when to sell.  You could join a subscription service that hosts your product for you.  For example, sites like shutterstock.com and istockphoto.com let you upload your photos (pending approval) and pay you when someone downloads them.  You still have to stay active and learn what works and what doesn’t, as the pay per photo is small (around $0.25).  You could start a blog and ask for donations or use applications like Google AdSense that will post ads relevant to your site’s content and pay you per click.  You still need a product, or at least a good cause.

Better still, you can create your own product or service and design a business to sell it.  The next step is to build a website either as your main business location or as a partner to your physical store.  Either way, your business is not the internet (unless you created the internet).  It is a tool to help your business.  If your goal is passive income, you first need to put some up-front time and effort into your idea and stay active.  Modify what’s not working and expand on what is.  Use those other ideas, such as a blog, to help build your customer base and build their confidence in your product and your expertise.

It is possible to reach the point where you can make money while simply sitting on your couch in your pajamas.  To get there, you need to earn it with time, effort, and money-and spending fifteen minutes reading that over-excited yahoo’s webpage and paying him $69.95 to start doesn’t count! If you’re going to spend the money on a “get rich on the Internet” system, at least put  the strategies they teach you into action. Create your own idea or product and get moving.

It starts with having a mindset to actually not work and to do absolutely as little as possible. Sound impossible?

Think about this. How many people do you think want to have their house painted? Probably a lot, but we’ll assume through your own research that there is a lot of business to be had in your area, so you do the following:

1. Find a reputable painter that charges $20 an hour + materials
2. Find a college student willing to build a website for you for free, which he is happy to do to add to his portfolio
3. The website advertises your fantastic painting service at $50 an hour, and has a registration form to hire you for your services
4. That order is automatically routed to notify the $20/hour painter about the job
5. The work is complete, and you are paid $50/hour, and you pay the painter his $20/hour fee

This is a simplified version of what people are doing everyday to make millions of dollars. The system is set up once, and it brings in money over and over again.

Rather then working to make money, self-made millionaires spend their time creating systems that earn money for them. In other words, when you stop spending time trying to make money and start creating systems that generate income, the amount of money you can make is endless. This is the power of leverage. In this case, using other people’s time.

There are many ways to do this: through real estate, trading currency, outsourcing, and creating online income streams.

Take the online income stream example. There are many ways to make money online, one of which is to sell affiliate products. Basically it is earning a commission for recommending people to purchase a product. Let’s say you know a bit about exercise or had some experience with a particular piece of exercise equipment.

1. You visit the company’s website and sign up for their affiliate program, which provides you with a unique link and pays you $50 for every sale you refer.
2. Anytime anyone clicks your link to visit the exercise equipment site and makes a purchase, you are credited with the commission.
3. You write an article or review about the equipment and post your article for free online.
4. Now your article is online forever, and about 5 times a day someone reads your article and visits the site. About once a month one of those visitors actually purchases the equipment and you make your commission.

Because you spent a little time building your own min-income system, you are making $50 every single month as long as the internet and that affiliate program exists.

That’s not a lot of money, but considering the whole process maybe took an hour, it makes sense to spend your time writing more articles or promoting additional affiliate products. After 2 months of spending 1 hour a day creating these income systems you now have 60 articles promoting affiliate products, and you are making about $3,000 a month whether you do anything else to promote the products or not.

In this example, you’re creating streams of income through leverage by using the Six Figure Yearly system.

Learn to develop a skill that can provide value, and you will be capable of creating income producing systems that can make you a comfortable living without working at all.

When you figure out how to create a system that makes even a small amount of money, simply repeat the process. Eventually your automated system will bring in a healthy stream of income for you.

Historically during slowdowns and economic slumps, people tend to do one of two things:

1. Go Back to School
2. Make Their Own Money

During the last Great Depression, more than 25 percent of the nation’s workers were jobless. Those who managed to keep their jobs on average lost 43 percent of the wages. The difference back then is that people did not over-extend themselves like they do today.

Siblings shared bedrooms in reasonably sized houses, and credit cards were not used as another source of spending money. Unfortunately those statistics today would cripple most American families.

The good news is Americans are resilient, we are survivors, and our economy is designed to allow anyone and everyone the opportunity to create their own wealth. As Branson suggested, it is the small businesses that are nimble enough to find an opportunity and act on it.

A company like GM, for instance, can’t decide one day to close hundreds of plants and become an education company. But the teenager in his dorm room making hundreds of dollars online can suddenly decide to offer a service creating YouTube videos for local businesses.

Individuals and small business owners have the flexibility to come up with an idea, act on it, and profit from it that very same day.

Just by doing a search for “layoffs” on Google News, I found headlines from KB Toys, Volvo, CBS, DHL, npr radio, GM… the list seemed never ending. My family has been hit, and so have my neighbors. Everyone from business executives to the warehouse packer is losing their job, and with no hope for a new job in sight.

My brother, who I wrote about a couple weeks ago, finally ran out of options and had to move back home. Having lost his job, house and car, he was literally left homeless. My sister is about to have a baby, but her husband is unable to make any money in the mortgage industry and can’t find any other job.

Both of them turned to me for advice on how to make some extra money, and literally 3 days later my sister made her first $80. While this wasn’t a lot of money, it was evidence to her that it really is possible to make your own money.

Now rather than just being a stay at home mom, my sister spends part of her day “printing money.” It’s a bit frustrating for her husband because he puts in the long hours, but she’s more money without leaving the house.

The sad part is that it took a recession for my sister to realize that a “safe, secure” job was not the only way to produce and income for the family. But now they are able to sleep at night knowing there are ways to write your own paycheck, so to speak.

It’s funny because my sister always shook her head at the idea of owning a business, but she really enjoys making money online. I haven’t told her yet that she in effect started her own business.

See How to Make Money from Home…