Stop Trading Your Time For Money
If you’re reading this, there’s a pretty good chance that you work a day job selling your time for money.
If you’re like the average person you most likely work eight or more hours a day, for five or more days a week. Probably doing something that you don’t at all enjoy.
And for what? $80 a day after taxes? Maybe $180 a day if you’re lucky. You see, growing up, we were sold the dream of following the traditional career path of working 40 to 50 hours a week to receive our stable paycheck then you save as much as you can and retire at 65 (or 67).
Trading your time for money like this isn’t the only way to play this game. You have other options. If you are looking to make an easy income and change your life, which is what I did, you can do some truly amazing things once you disconnect your value from being directly tied to your time.
And that’s something you need to change.
Your Income Is Limited By Time And There’s Only So Many Hours In a Day
When you’re trading time for money, your income will always be limited; Whether you’re paid $5 or $500 per hour, your income is limited by the number of hours you can put in working. And most of us need at least six hours to sleep, a couple hours to commute to and from work and then we need some time to eat food so that we don’t starve to death. We’d also like to have at least a little bit of time to spend with friends and family (or play videogames).
That really doesn’t leave us with a lot of time to trade for money, maybe 12 or 14 hours a day at most. The dark truth is that no matter how much your time is worth to your employer: $20, $30, $500 per hour, there will always be a brick wall in the way of your financial goals: time.
Even being a salaried employee is still trading your time for money, it just trading it by year instead of by hour. The quickest way to calculate your hourly rate, is to take your annual salary, divide it in half, and take off three zeros.
- $30K/year = $15/hour
- $50K/year = $25/hour
- $80K/year = $40/hour
- $120K/year = $60/hour
This is assuming a 40-hour work week, many salaried employees work far more than that and therefore your hourly rate may be much lower.
How Do You “Stop Trading Your Time For Money”?
The number one way to stop trading time for money is to build an income-producing asset. Entrepreneurs have known this for forever, but traditional entrepreneurship wasn’t easy:
- Huge Startup Costs & Overhead – Renting office space, purchasing inventory, utilities, employees, setting up payroll.
- Requires Lots Of Help – Traditional businesses could very rarely be done on your own.
- High Risk – If money isn’t coming in to cover the costs of running the business, you will likely go in debt.
- Tough To Scale – Getting new clients can cost a lot with the need for constant marketing.
Thankfully, we’re the first generation to have the ability to pursue entrepreneurship through the internet with very little cost or risk.
We’re in the era of online business which have low start-up costs (relatively, that is. In comparison to a standard business, there are still some expenses in starting an online business).
Learn more about creating your own online side-hustle with this free training video.
Focus On Creating a Product Or Developing a Service
Is working more the only possible way for you to make more money?
What if instead of just working more aimlessly trying to figure out how to increase your income by selling your time for just a little bit more each year you could develop your own product or service.
This could be an ebook, a training program or e-learning course based around something you are particularly skilled in, it could be a helpful software or phone app.
You could also sell physical products online and start your own E-commerce store with a platform like Shopify or by getting your own web hosting through Bluehost and using WooCommerce to sell the product , but you’ll have to find someone who can manufacture and deliver the product to your customers which adds additional costs to the business.
Once The Business Is Up and Running, Automate As Much Of The Business As Possible
There are aspects of running a business, particularly an online business that can be heavily automated. For example, once you create a sales funnel with automatic delivery of a product or service on completion of an order you no longer need to be directly involved in the process of selling the movie.
Another example of this, is an automated email list – you can pre-write months worth of emails and then when someone signs up to your email list everything from the introductory email to the email they get from you in six months could all be in the chamber ready to go on schedule.
Consider what elements of your business can be automated and get started on automating them that way you don’t have to spend time redoing things.
Final Thoughts On How To Stop Trading Time For Money
Time is limited so having your income entirely tied to how much time you can spend on something keeps you from being able to make the money you would need to lead the life you actually want.
That’s why we need to flip the script and disconnect your income from your time, you can do this through many ways, from affiliate marketing to creating your own product or training course or designing and selling merch. Whatever it is, if you do research and put the work in you can find success as an entrepreneur.
If you’re looking to launch a business check out Great Plan Rays quick business launch guide, and if you’ve already started a business and are trying to figure out how to get the word out on a low-budget take a look at our strategies on marketing a business with no budget.
Let us know in the comment below on what you think about trading your time for money.
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