When I first realized that I had to find a better way to make a living, I didn’t rule out anything. I looked at real estate investing, stock market investing, and any conceivable method of making money. After each one, I evaluated each opportunity based on the following four criteria:
- Can the opportunity make a great deal of money? (By design, certain niches, and ways to make money can only make a small amount of money and are not easily able to scale up from that.)
- Can it create passive income? (Passive income is where money comes in over longer periods of time without me actively having to do anything.)
- Can I do this remotely? (Remember that I had to travel for my job from Sunday to Friday each week, and I never knew where I would be three weeks into the future).
- Can it be done part-time? (For residency reasons, I could not yet quit my job).
Use similar guidelines for evaluating any money-making opportunity that you are presented with to see if it will be worth your while and if it will get you closer to where you want to be.