Everybody wants the 4-Hour Workweek dream of being able to make money whilst they sleep or travel around the world. Myself included, if the truth be told. But, lets face it – its pretty hard to do. The fact is, however, it used to be a hell of a lot harder than it is today, and I believe that as time continues to go by, it will actually become a lot easier than it is today, even. Here’s why…

I now make money while I sleep. There, I said it.

The new-age entrepreneur is a totally different breed of entrepreneur than we had 10, or 20 years ago. We are now a lot more tech savvy in general. We are also hungrier, I believe, than ever before to make money. And… We have this remarkable business partner just ready and waiting to get into bed with us and help us to start making money – perhaps not overnight, but nonetheless. That partner is called ‘The Internet’.

If you have an idea for a product or a service that you feel can genuinely help solve a problem for someone, get them to the next level in their career, or just make their life easier, then you can, utilizing the internet and all that goes with it (such as social media, etc.), start making money whilst you sleep.

How I am Now Making Money While I Sleep

A couple of months ago I set up a new consultancy service, Virtual Staff Finder (this is NOT going to turn into a plug for the service, I promise – you can read that here, if you like!). Since then, I have done very little SEO on the website, and absolutely no traditional marketing at all for the service. All I’ve done is focus on the community that I have been lucky enough to build online, and to utilize the power of incoming leads from the website of my outsourcing company, the Live2Sell Group.

I set up the Virtual Staff Finder service because every day we get a lot of inquiries from entrepreneurs all around the world wanting to hire virtual assistants, and other types of virtual staff (telemarketers, book-keepers, etc.) – but, want them to be based at home, for the cost saving benefits, obviously.

Although as a company, this is something that we didn’t used to do, the businessman inside of me finally came around to thinking that it was a real waste to a) not be able to help these entrepreneurs and b) make some money from doing so!

The Process of Building my Online Consultancy Business

I did my research and found out that there was nobody else out there, with the experience and reputation in the outsourcing industry that I have, that was doing anything similar. So, I got going with it.

Here’s what I did to get this ‘idea’ to market in less than 4 weeks:

• Brainstormed and eventually registered virtualstafffinder.com domain name.
• Plotted out how the process of the service would work, fine-tuning it to death to make it as simple as possible for both the entrepreneurs using the service, and us, too!
• Sat with my web developer (who works for me full-time, in-house) to come up with a concept for the website, and a minimum of 3 different designs. I also decided that I didn’t want the site to be a blog style, but rather a static website which didn’t very little attention, to save my time.
• Put together the written content, and shot the ‘welcome’ video clip.
• Set-up several different avenues, locally, within the Philippines to be able to find the talent needed from the virtual staff side of things (which is actually still on-going all the time, although is now done by my VSF Project Manager).
• Got going with an e-Junkie account, and linked it up via Paypal to be able to accept online payments.
• Tweaked and tweaked the website, until we were happy with it (we will, however, be making some changes soon).
• Went Live!

And that is it. Not a lot required, and to be very honest, if my web development guy wasn’t working on several projects at once, the chances are we could have got this entire thing up and running in perhaps half the time.

Since the launch we’ve had 25 people sign-up for the service (average of 3 per week) at a rate of $350 a pop. That’s $8,750 in around 8 weeks, or $4,375 a month – almost $220 per business day. And here’s clincher here, above and beyond everything else. I’ve made the majority of those sales while I was sleeping. Seriously.

Because I live here in the Philippines, when you guys are up and about in the US, I’m hitting the sack – usually by your lunch time. So, when I wake up in the morning (around midnight EST most days), I check my email and start the day with a smile.

Here’s a couple of instances where sales have come in at ‘odd’ times just recently… I’ve had 2 sales come through whilst at my Son’s playgroup (on separate occasions). I had 2 come in within the space of a 3 hour meeting with a client when I was in the US last month, one at BlogWorld and just yesterday I had 3 sales come through whilst working out and then having lunch with my wife.

Is This Truly Passive Income?

Simply answer, to a simple question – no. Not really. But again, I am now to the point where I know I can make money while I sleep. The ‘getting the order’ is passive. However, because its a consultancy service, once the order comes in, the work begins. First with a consultation call with the client, then with my project manager and her team sourcing, interviewing, testing the candidates, communicating with the client, etc. But, you don’t hear me complaining, do you..? That fact is that we service our clients well, and my company makes extra money. Money, that if I hadn’t of started the service, we wouldn’t be making.

Looking back into the archives of this blog a little, you’ll see I did a video post where I discuss 6 Different Passive Income Ideas, and lets face it, by definition, passive income should be earning whilst totally hands off, I appreciate that – and I am due to be launching my first ‘true’ passive income product soon. This is just a spin-off of the ‘passive’ idea of things.

Why I Wrote This Post

I wrote this post because I get so many emails every month from people that are interested in starting some kind of ‘make money’ venture online, but are either a) not sure how to get started, b) don’t have a solid idea, or c) can’t believe that its really possible and therefore never really go for it.

The whole thing here more than anything else is that I had an idea, I realized that there was a hole in the market and that the idea was going to be solving a problem for people (in this case, saving people valuable time more than everything else) and used the resources and people around me to make it happen – quickly. Can you do the same – YES!

FACT: Everyone has the chance to make money while they sleep, or get beaten up by toddlers at their Son’s playgroup (!). You just have to simply plan and execute. Stop procrastinating and get going with it. Start it up. Promote it. SELL it. And make money from it.

Had success with starting an online service or business? Need help, or got questions on how to do it..? If so, tell us all about it below. I’d love to hear what you all think on this topic. Cheers!