Last year, my dream home was struck by lightening, and caught fire right above my 6-year old daughter's bedroom. Thankfully, we all escaped without injury.
I don't know how I could have survived that disaster financially if I worked for someone else, especially given the current state of the global economy.
It took so much time to deal with settling the insurance claim, replacing our worldly belongings, and finding a new home.
But because I own multiple businesses that generate recurring income, I was able to keep money coming in the door even while I was out dealing with the disaster.
And even today, I continue to generate recurring sales while the news media and everyone else complains about the recession.
Don't get me wrong. The recession is real. But you don't have to just sit back and wait for the government to help you.
You can create your own revenue streams that flow into your bank account even during a recession.
It doesn't take any more work to create something that is residual than it does to create something you are just paid for one time.
One of the easiest ways to create your own residual income stream is by selling information to others. People will always want information, and are willing to pay for good information products.
And with today's world of technology, you can start your own information publishing business even if you have no money to get started with.
Here's a simple 3-step process you can follow to get started.
Step 1 - Decide What Type Of Information Product To Sell
The first step is to decide what type of product(s) you want to sell, and on what subject matters.
You can do this by searching for the hottest trends on some of the most popular places on the Internet.
For example, you can use Google's Keyword Tool. With this tool, you simply type in the different key words that you think people would use to search for a product.
Then Google spits out the data on how many people are searching on that topic each day on Google's search engine.
Plus, Google also shows you other related key words that may be even more popular than the ones you initially listed.
Another great way to decide what types of information products to sell is by using Amazon.com. Amazon is the largest online bookstore in the world, and you can get your information products in front of millions of ready buyers for no up front cost.
For that reason, Amazon is also a fantastic place to go for your market research to learn about what topics are the hottest sellers.
Another popular place to search for ideas on what information products to sell is ClickBank. Clickbank gives you a lot of information about the digital information products that are currently the most popular.
You can use these tools to find some general subject matters that you find interesting - and that also have people buying that type of product.
Step 2 - Create the Product
The next step is to create your product.
You don't have to be a great writer. It is cheaper than ever before to hire other people to write good content for you, and/or to hire experts to interview.
If you don't want to create the information product(s) yourself, a great way to get them created is by hiring a freelance writer from sites like eLance or even Fiverr.
In fact, you can often get articles created for just $5 on Fiverr that you can then sell as an eBook.
Another way to create an information product is to interview an expert about a certain topic. You can find experts to interview on sites such as eZineArticles.
You can contact authors who have written a lot about your subject matter to see if you can interview them and record the interview.
You can then use the interview in various ways. For example, you could transcribe the interview into a report, and sell both the audio and printed transcript.
As another example, you could use the transcript from the interview as information that you then re-write as the content of your report.
Once you have decided what to create, just get something created that you can start selling. You can repeat this process later to create even more products.
Step 3 - Sell the Product
If you want to get started as quickly as possible, you should take advantage of the giant powerhouses such as Amazon, eBay, iTunes and Fiverr.
Each of these giant powerhouses allows you to sell information products, and you generally don't have to pay the giant powerhouse anything until a sale is made.
And even then, you only pay them a small commission (generally 10%-20%) in return for them basically giving you free advertising to their millions of daily visitors.
When you list your products for sale on a giant powerhouse such as Amazon, you won't have to worry about creating sales letters and order forms, since those are built into the platform of that web site.
You simply walk through their wizard to create the new product listing, and you're done. They usually make your product available to millions of daily visitors within 1-2 days of creating your product listing.
The other option is to have your own web site and sell your products there.
Once you have your sales process setup, you then have to drive traffic to your products.
If you have listed your products through the giant powerhouses like Amazon, you will get the benefit of their millions of daily visitors automatically without having to buy advertisements.
So that's the entire process. You can then repeat this process to create multiple information products if you want to add additional revenue streams.
Good luck!