The Art of Making Money While You Sleep... A Self Taught Passive Income Journey

Just the other day, I wrote about creating passive income through a partnership using short term vacation rental services, such as Airbnb. While I'm still very much interested in building our eco-village/intentional community, I realize that to create such a life, I need a lot more capital than I originally thought.

There are many forms of capital, but when we talk about having the funds to build a community from the ground up, there really are only two ways to go about it. There's money, and sweat equity. There's a ton of work to be done, and the energy needed for it all is in the hands of investors who believe in me, the workers and doers who are willing to sacrifice time for this dream, and my ability to orchestrate the multitude of parts involved.

Looking for opportunities

The first step we took to bring in capital for this community was accepting an offer from a friend to store his art material. He was in need of a space he could come to whenever he wanted, and eventually work on his art without bothering any neighbors.

The second was taking in a family member with his travel trailer. He simply wanted out of NYC when the pandemic started.

The third was another friend looking to store things in a trailer in order to save on the overpriced self-storage of New York City.

It's been great to actually make a little extra something while we sleep. We're not talking about huge numbers at all here, but it's great to know something is coming in!

The next opportunity that came across my field of vision was from a podcaster who talked about renting camp sites as a side hustle. We gave it a shot, and without much effort we created one site, and eventually a second, then a third.

Turns out it's a great side hustle, with really good potential too.

Opportunities are floating around all over the place, the key is to first recognize what constitutes an opportunity. But seeing is not enough, you also must be able to take the opportunity... You have to pull the trigger, or it'll float away.

Today, we still have quite a bit of room to keep scaling up, but we are looking for more capital to bring in for this project. That's what my last post was about. Another opportunity has presented itself, and it happens to coincide perfectly with my vision for natural buildings and alternative dwellings. Like I was saying before, when opportunity knocks, you better answer... and that's exactly what we did, we pulled the trigger!

The next piece of the puzzle is figuring out how to scale this passive income. I can build multiple dwellings like this first one that's coming up now... but first, I need to make sure it works, I also have to find an interested party, someone willing to build a cabin specific to this Off-Grid niche rental sector.

Assessing Risks

While in my area it seems like the price of real-estate is finally going through some kind of correction, rental prices aren't falling. That's great because that means we could potentially buy a rental property, but New York state leans heavy on the side of the tenant, and I have seen people whose renters have been forced out for not paying since 2020, only recently. It's too much hassle, the point of entry is still very high, and the state is too tenant friendly. I have a piece of property where I can use other people's money to build passive income with... for now that's what we'll do!