One of my miniature income streams hit a milestone. Aim for this for passive referral income …
One advantage of having a lot of little income streams is that it reduces dependence on a single income stream, like a job. Have many little bosses instead of just one big one.
Any income outside of “normal working hours” brings you closer toward financial independence, and immediately improves your financial posture.
Direct income — money you earn for doing something — pays you once but building up indirect, automated income streams pay you over and over again. (Work towards these as you can, because we all are given only 24 hours each day.)
Making money online can be both direct and indirect
A lot of get-paid-to (GPT) sites will pay you for your direct effort. Things like watching videos, doing surveys, doing other tasks, signing up for trials, searching the web, and so forth.
The good ones will also pay you for the direct effort of people you refer to the site. (This payment doesn’t reduce the rewards for people you refer. It’s all baked into the reward structure that everyone gets.)
The best ones? They don’t require a whole lot of direct effort on your part to keep the indirect income flowing. This lets you work smarter rather than harder. (One GPT site I’m a member of requires you to earn at least $15 yourself before getting a $25 payout. That’s not automated income!)
The more indirect referral income, the better!
That’s why it’s a big deal when indirect referral income exceeds direct income.
I’ve been using the CryptoTab browser for some of my surfing. I surf as normal and it mines bitcoin in the background.
(I talk here about web browsers that pay you.)
CryptoTab does have a referral program, which means that as I refer people who use the browser, I get bitcoin based on their mining activity. (I don’t steal their mining activity; it’s all part of the payouts for everyone. People I refer earn exactly the same amount of bitcoin as if they went directly to the website.)
Here’s a snapshot of my referral bitcoin earnings over a month:
Right now, it’s only about $0.10/day, but this requires nothing on my part. No effort, no keeping my computer on, nothing.
Over the course of the entire time I’ve used CryptoTab, my referrals have earned more bitcoin for me than I’ve earned through my own mining:
Referral income milestone
It was a milestone the day that my referral income with CryptoTab exceeded my direct mining income.
At that point, it was a real (although smallish!) revenue stream that was at least 50% automatic.
It no longer was a task I had to do. It no longer was something my computer had to dedicate processing power to.
The income just came in, and I could more or less remove myself from the task.
It just works now.
Could it stop working? Sure, there are at least a couple of reasons.
The service could stop
Hey, it happens. That’s why it’s important to have multiple streams of income.
My referrals could stop using the browser
This happens too, but I work to bring on new referrals so that they replace the ones that stop. (Or, rather, my content does the work for me.)
This is the difference in where the effort lies in growing automatic streams of income: building the income capacity rather than earning the income directly.
Build referral income streams
In most cases, a single extra automatic revenue stream isn’t going to make a huge difference. A dime a day gives me a couple of cups of coffee a month.
But by diversifying and building up a bunch of these, it can make a dent, close a gap, make a difference.
And seeing one of them earn as much from referral income as from direct income is a great start.
