Why Making Money Online Is Ridiculous…To Our Parents

Every morning I wake up, check my email, brush my teeth, and go downstairs to have a nice breakfast with my parents. And every single morning my retired dad asks me the same question: “So how much money did you make while you were asleep last night?”

I usually answer with a number between $75 and $150, which means I usually sell between 4 to 8 books while I’m asleep. He always responds with the same phrase:

“That’s Ridiculous.”

Now, I’m not quite sure what he means by that. He usually shakes his head a little, but he adds a little smile. I can interpret this in a few ways. One, maybe he’s using the word “ridulous” in the sense that it’s FREAKING AWESOME, like when I sit on the beach and watch a surfer catch a massive wave and I say “that’s ridiculous.” Or instead, he could be saying to himself “How could it be that easy?” I was curious, so I asked him.

This morning I woke up, checked my email, brushed my teeth, and went downstairs to have a Denver omelet. Yum! My dad asks me the same question, and I actually sold 7 this morning, so I told him. “That’s ridiculous,” he said, and then I asked him “why?”

This was his response:

“Well, you got laid off, didn’t even look for another job, you go to bed late, wake up late, and now you’re making more money than you did when you had your job. I just can’t believe it, and I don’t know how you do it, but I’m really proud of you.”

That was nice to hear, and it let me know exactly what he was thinking.

The Generation Barrier and Work Ideology

My dad is retired, and he’s a little before the baby boomer generation, but their ideology of work is generally all the same: you work for X hours, you get paid X dollars. It’s that simple. You work hard, you climb the ladder, and you get paid. My dad worked for the same company for 45 years. 45 YEARS! Now that’s ridiculous, and not in the wake up with money in your pocket kind of way.

I respect my dad, and he’s worked really hard to keep the family afloat. I know exactly where my dedication and hard work came from, and it was from him. But I cannot imagine working in a single company for that long. Now, I can’t even imagine working for anybody but myself.

Passive Income is no longer just an interest rate in a bank account, it’s being able to monetize websites, write ebooks, become an affiliate, advertising – all on autopilot once it’s done. It’s a totally different era now.

We’re now in the Information Age. There wasn’t a computer in each and every home back when people my dad’s age were working, but now there are 2 comptuers and a laptop in each household. The world is changing so fast, and that’s why I think my dad responds each morning the way he does.

What This Means to Us

My point of this post is this: you shouldn’t have to think that working 9 to 5 each and every day is the only way to live – because it’s not. I’m not trying to put down those of you who have 9 to 5 jobs. I mean, I had one just a while ago and I was basically making two incomes simultaneously for a brief period of time. I would have loved to keep it, but I got laid off, and luckily my other form of income is what kept me from breaking down.

But what I’m trying to say is that you should begin to explore the kinds of opportunities we have in the world today. I may be preaching to the choir here, but there are tons of things you can do to earn money online, you just have to almost “snap out of it,” get out of the rat race and create the lifestyle you want to live.

Now that I’m living a passive income lifestyle (although I’m still working on new projects), I’m able to set my own hours, make my own decisions, be stress free, plan other things, and if I ever just wanted to make even more money, all I would have to do is create another product online. It’s ridiculous.

Ask the Reader

If you’ve ever made money online, have you spoken to anyone who may have doubted what you do online and how you make money? I was talking to one of my online friends who makes great money online (over a million a year actually), and whenever he brings it up with his parents, they think he’s running a porn site. Hah.

Posted on : November 19th, 2008

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3. The Methods of Making Money From an Informational Product
4. On Deck Money Making Ideas Part 2 – iPhone Apps
5. A Reader Asks: “Why Can’t I Make Good Money Online?”

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