This is part of our series on Leo Babauta’s Simple Living Manifesto. We invite you to join us on the journey.

The 64th idea in the manifesto is:

Strive to automate your income. This isn’t the easiest task, but it can (and has) been done. I’ve been working towards it myself. Article here.

Gibson guitars on the assembly line (bindings drying) | Photo by Jonathan Blundell

Automate my income? Yes please!

It’s a simple business principal — automate your process so you can spend less time working and more time enjoying life.

Yet so many of us are tied to a 40-hour work week, working for others, where we’re required to be in our office 8 hours a day for 3-4 hours of productive work.

Meetings, interruptions and sometimes seemingly pointless busy work may take up the rest of the day.

I would love to be at a place where I felt comfortable leaving all that behind — especially with the twins on the way — but I’m no where near that yet.

I’ve automated a few things but they’re no where near paying the bills yet.

• Between my two blogs I bring in $5-$10 a month with affiliate ads or other advertising.
• Web hosting for a few clients brings in $50 a month.
• My novel is still selling a couple copies a month, so $5-10 a month.
• And I do freelance work on the side, which brings in an average of $50 or so a month (its usually just minimal updates for sites already built).

Add it all up and on average, I may bring in $150 for my various side projects. That’s better than nothing — and more than I was doing a few years ago — but to be totally honest I spend 5 hours or so a week writing blog posts or doing freelance work, so right now it all averages out to around $7.50 an hour.

And for me, the key has been to diversify and keep the work from overwhelming me along the way.

I don’t want my blogging or freelance work to steal time away from the things that really matter to me. I also don’t want either of them to become a burden where they’re no longer enjoyable.

But it’s an ongoing process and I’m always making improvements.

A year ago, I didn’t have any income from the novel or the web hosting. Now they’re a decent percentage of what I’m bringing in each month.

And it’s automatic income.

The hard work is completed. Other than a little maintenance here or there, I don’t have to spend time worrying about it or working on it. The work is done and now the money comes in as automatic income.

Of course these aren’t the only ways to automate your income.

Find your passion and something that excites you and then create a product or service around it. Some may succeed, some may fail. And some may fall somewhere in between. But you’ll never know until you get out there and try.

Get out there and do what you enjoy… and live life.

The world is changing and the Internet makes so many more things possible — like self-publishing a novel or e-book, or selling 100,000 copies of your songs online (without a record label middle-man taking a massive cut).

And of course it doesn’t hurt if you’ve already simplified and realize you don’t need millions of dollars to make yourself happy.

What does it mean to ‘need a (record) label’? We’re making a living. We’ve got a sustainable business. We’re growing every year, as a good business should. We’re happy. We don’t have to do things that we don’t want to do. We don’t have to please people that we don’t want to please. We get to make the music that we love. Yeah we’re not on the front of Rolling Stone Magazine and we’re not getting $10 million checks in the mail but we don’t need that to have a nice life. – Jack Conte

And Everett Bogue writes:

The longer I’m free from the system, the day job, the mundane trek from the train to the city to the desk, and back again, the more I realize that wasn’t very necessary in the first place.

We’ve been trained by the system, society, the employers, to believe we need to make more money than we do.

They tell us to do this so we can buy more than we need.

When you opt for a minimalist life, you suddenly don’t need to be making 70k a year anymore.

You can be fine doing two hours of important work a day, if you choose to do work that matters.

So the avenues are there. The opportunities are there. It’s just a matter of stepping up and doing.

If you want to read more and get some great tips from someone who’s actually built a minimalist business with automatic income, be sure and check out Everett Bogues book, Minimalist Business. And yes, purchasing the book through WeLiveSimply not only support’s Everett’s writing, but mine as well.

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Simple Manifesto #65: Automate your income

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