My January 2016 Monthly Report

Each month I give a report on the passive income ideas that I am using to quit my job. Over the years I’ve tried many different ways to earn passive income.

Now, after almost 10 years, I am five months away from actually quitting my job because of the passive income that earn!  There’s been a lot of things going on for both my real estate and online businesses.

Here is a quick recap of the passive income ideas I use my job:

1. Real estate rental business
2. Book and e-book publishing
3. Online blogs
4. Podcasts

As all businesses do, each one of these businesses take time to grow and become established in passive income generation. My rental property business has been a running for over nine years now and the longer I run my business, the more money I make.

Think of a how a snowball, once started down a hill, grows in size and velocity.

Each property that I buy, beginning with the first one, began a small snowball that I rolled down a hill that has now turned into a very large snowball bringing passive income every single month. I now have so much passive income that it has actually replaced my income from my job as well as brought in much more.

Another part of my passive income strategy is my online businesses and book publishing. These have only been around for nine months but will grow just like a snowball does.

Starting a business is like planting a tree. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the second best time is right now. The first step in starting an online business is to get it going. The longer you wait, the longer it will take for it to sprout and blossom into a full-fledged tree that produces fruit.

Let's go through each of these passive income ideas and see where they are.

Ohio Rental Properties

The majority of my rental properties I own are in Ohio. Since I live in CA, this is a business that I do remotely and rely on professionals to get the property fixed and rented.

I currently have 17 properties there that generate over $8500 in income each month. My take home amount is usually around $5000-$6500 a month after expenses.

All the properties are in one area and I have a strong team behind my business who does all the work for me.

With these properties, I feel comfortable with quitting my job because of the income they bring in.

My new property manager is working out very well and I am excited to see how my business grows with him.

Houston Property Update

This month is very exciting because I actually got to see all of my projected numbers for my recent rental property come true. The biggest concern was how much I could actually rent the property for.

As I stated in other posts, if I was able to rented over $1700, I would be making at least $300 a month in positive cash flow. Anything above that would just be gravy.

As it turns out, I was able to get an 18 month lease with the tenant at $2100 a month! With that rent, I will earn close to $800 a month in passive income!

In order to get the $2100 a month, I had to use some negotiation skills in order to get the most money out of property and help the tenant feel like they won the negotiation process.

The property was listed for 15 days, before it was even ready to be rented when I got the offer from the potential tenant. Now the offer was not my full asking price of $2300 but was for $2000 a month. Honestly, I was a little skeptical at the $2300 a month rent but when I got the offer for $2000, that affirmed my research that I would be able to get over $1700 for the property.

How I Negotiated Higher Rent:

For the Houston property, I used a leasing agent to find the renter. He suggested $2,300 for the rent and since I live in CA and invest in another state, I took his word for it and marketed it for $2300.

After only 18 days, I got an offer for $2000!

I would actually be fine with $2000 since I had my projections set for $1700 as a conservative worst case scenario. At $1700, I would still make $300 a month so anything above that would be icing on the cake.

This is a negotiation and I didn't want to accept the first offer so I countered back with $2150. The reason why is if I would accept the tenants first offer, they may think, “Shoot, I should have offered lower…”  I know I would think that. Plus, I wanted to see if I could get more out of them.

Now, since I gave in a little by coming down on my price, I showed them I was willing to negotiate but not giving in. They would have to bend a little just as I did. The tenant countered back with $2100 and said they wanted to stay at $2000 but really like the place so they are willing to go up $100.

I countered back with $2100 plus a 2 year lease instead of the usual 1 year lease. This would make them bend a bit more.  They countered back with $2100 for 18 months and I accepted it. So I got them locked in for $2100 for 18 months. I gave in a little, then they did, then I did, and we settled in the middle.

All sides feel they got a good deal and they had buy in once they started negotiating with me. They had skin in the game because of the time, thought, desire to get the property for themselves.

It all worked out well and I am very blessed.

So, I personally like to start at the high end and work your way down. My plan was to start at $2300, stay there for 2 weeks, then reassess the market. If you did not get any bites at that price, I would lower it to $2150. If none then, lower it again to $2000.

It all worked out very well and this is a successful addition to my real estate portfolio.

eBooks

Another way I have found passive income is through writing books. With my current e-book “How to Quit Your Job with Rental Properties” , I have made almost $300 from sales in 4 months. It is not much but as I continue to write more books, their popularity/sales will grow.  The more sales, the better the search results ranking which brings even better sales.

There are some great things I’m learning about the book business. Not the entire book industry but how to have a business that is centered on selling books.

I’m currently writing another e-book that I will place on Amazon.com for sale as well as self publish into print paperback books. This book will cover something totally different than real estate or passive income in that it will cover marriage. Marriage is a very big passion of mine and I have taught for over five years on the subject and decided to turn it into a book.

I’m soaking as much information I can get from free content that is on the web, and I even paid for a $600 training course on how to successfully launch and e-book business. I must say that the training course is very good but I already figured out three quarters of it myself as I self published my book.

The upside for paying $600 for the training course is:

One is that I am learning a lot more about how to actually market the book once it’s already published. Two, how to create an online course to help people learn things that I have already learned and done.

I will look at this model uses as a guide to help create my online courses that I will sell online and produce great content that will help other people quit their job as well as create passive income for themselves in the family.

Blogs

Obviously, this blog fits in the category of my businesses that will eventually earn passive income. This is another snowball that will grow over time.

Right now, I am trying to put out great content for free to help others.  I do not plan to charge any money until I come out with some premium courses/content for those who want to dig deeper into real estate and passive income.

I don't plan on ever posting Ads on the blog or anything that may detract from the free content from the site.  My desire is to help as many people as I can because I have been very blessed to have the ability to quit my job with my passive income.

Podcasts

In the next few months, I’m plan on starting a new podcast where I highlight others who pursue passive income as a career.  I have a general plan for the show as well as the direction for producing it but will save most of the work for after I quit my job.

This podcast will hopefully help you and many others to inspire you to stop working for money and start earning passive income. I plan to interview as many big-name people as I can to show how they utilize passive income to sustain their lives and even enhance it.

Currently have another podcast that I’m doing with my brother called “The Walking Dead Bros”.

This podcast has a decent following and we really only created it to learn how to do podcasting and work out all the bugs for our personal podcast for all my businesses.

This podcast is doing very well and we figure we might as well keep on doing the podcast because it’s a lot of fun and hopefully soon you’ll start making some passive income from it. The plan is to have sponsors for the show to generate income as well as have another avenue to reach people and share with them our brand and other businesses.

Thanks for checking out my most recent monthly report!

Leave me a comment below about how you are using passive income to quit your job.