The tenant finally has a new, working water heater. Hooray. The contractor was even did a temporary fix for the basement door, without me asking, which makes me happy. As long as he can respond to my calls timely, I will be using him for every repair I need. Turns out that he also is a landlord himself, so I’ll be milking him for lots of advice/tips, for sure.

After speaking to a good friend of mine, I’m going to give this landlording business a chance. It is passive income after all, and I don’t really want to give that up. I feel I have a good tenant, so as long as the property is decent, I should be okay. I think my rant yesterday was a result of momentary insanity caused by frustration. So let’s see.

On the vending business front, I’m in the process of signing up with a charity, and then I’m going to hire a locating service to place the machine so I don’t have to pay a commission every month. The service charges only $31 and they offer a money back guarantee with results within a week of ordering. They’ll even relocate for free if I get kicked out within 90 days for any reason.

On the perfume business front, I’m closing my Paypal account. They have instituted a new “policy” where they can hold your funds for whatever amount of time they please. The letter states that it is not because I did anything wrong, but because they want to implement a new policy to “protect” me. I received this information after receiving a new order for almost $100 from a new client through the iOffer.com store. So guess what? I told them, with a selection of choice words, that I don’t need to use their service anymore. So I instructed them to refund the transaction to the buyer and close my account. In the meantime, the buyer paid me via Google Checkout (with NO problems whatsoever, of course), and I’ll be processing the order today. It’s so nice to have a choice with payment processors.

passive income · Paypal sucks ass · perfume business · real estate rentals · vending business

Sooo, less than one month into being a landlord with a sub2 property, my gut feeling about not wanting to be a landlord has been confirmed. The tenant is great, but the property is already starting to get on my nerves. The water heater broke about two days after the tenant moved in, and I haven’t been able to get ANYONE to come fix it. I’ve called several contractors, who all reschedule or just don’t show. Even Roto-Rooter rescheduled, but at least I didn’t have to remind them to call me back. I’m not sure what upsets me more: that my tenant and her child haven’t had hot water for almost a week, or the fact that contractors are so freaking unreliable! Hopefully this water heater just needs to be fixed and not replaced. I also need to replace a rear basement door, as well as the front screen door, and have an electrician check why the ceiling fans aren’t working (since there were working last time I checked almost a month ag0). So yeah, landlording is not for me. I will continue with the shortsale of this property, and sell it with the tenant occupant in place. I think that at 35K property with a tenant paying $875/month will be an awesome deal. I should’ve just stuck to my gut and flipped this without getting into sub2. Oh well.

During my Memphis trip, I got the brilliant idea of starting a newsstand business at Greyhound bus stations. Well, they’ve shut me down. I contacted the person in charge, several times, and Greyhound just isn’t interested in having ANY vendors at their bus stations. So while it seemed promising, I’m not going to press the issue. Maybe they’ll change their minds in the future. In the meantime, I need to get crackin’ on other businesses, which leads me to…

I am finally starting a vending business! About two years ago, I’d read an ebook on how to startup a vending business, it had good information on pitfalls to watch out for, how to shop for machines,  etc. But I never followed up.  Then I started looking at starting an ATM business, but that requires way too much capital (more than what I have anyway), and there’s a safety issue with transporting large sums of cash by myself (a big NO-NO). Now that I’m serious about developing a passive income stream, I decided to get on the ball. I reread the book, and decided to start a bulk candy vending business. I found a NEW double-head candy machine on craigslist for $100, but I was able to talk to the seller down to $70. The machine still had the plastic wraps on it. This machine typically sells for about $200 brand new. He’d purchased it almost seven years ago to start a business himself, but never did. I tested the machine with quarters to make sure it worked, and loaded that baby into my car. Now I just need to buy candy at BJs and place it at a location. I made a post on Facebook asking my friends if they or anyone they knew wanted a machine at their place of business, and one of my real estate clients responded that her dad needs one in his detail shop. So I’ll call her today to make the arrangements. I want to have it placed by this weekend. Here’s the pic of the candy machine taken with my Blackberry:

I have two other shortsale deals that are progressing. The big one looks like it may close in the next month or so. The other one (a duplex), is just starting, and I hope to close on that by August.

I’m also going to change real estate brokerages again. This will (hopefully) be my last switch before I finally get my broker’s license. I’m taking one of my broker licensing courses online right now, with about seven classes to go. I’m sooo ready to be a broker already. There’s nothing like having total control over your money.

That’s all the updates I have for now.

passive income business · real estate investing · vending business

So I’ve decided that shortsale investing is not for me. I’m going to stick to wholesaling and buying properties sub2. The the time to get paid for a shortsale is just way too long for my taste. I’m still working on a deal that I started negotiations for in February. However, I will make shortsales a regular part of my business as an agent. The listings are easy to get, and my past customers make great testimonials for me. Plus, the more listings I have, the more buyers I can get, and the bigger potential to double-pop a deal.

Speaking of sub2, I’m going to try being a landlord to see how I like it. While I like investing and being an agent, I still need a source of passive income. And while I try my best to close every deal, I know that I won’t close them all. Being a landlord seems to be the easiest passive income stream to get into right now, so I’m going to try it. I already have a tenant for one property which is a single family home. The other is a duplex, for which each unit should be able to rent for $500/month. The plan with the sub2 properties is to get a loan modification to lower the payment (if necessary), and rent them out.

To summarize: I  have three shortsale properties under contract. I will be purchasing two of them sub2 with the intent of renting them out for passive income. The third will be a shortsale flip for cash profit.

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Fragrances: I thought my “professional looking” fragrance website would be up and running by now, but it’s not. I believe part of the problem is that I picked a bad shopping cart software package, then I selected a vendor who has revealed (after starting the project), that he’s never installed this particular shopping cart before. He just created a sample for me to see that he could at least do the basics. The problem with that is my project requires more than the basics. The only thing working is the Paypal module. I can’t import products or categories, and I can’t insert them manually either. Which has now given me great pause. While the site I created myself wasn’t the prettiest, it worked perfectly, and was easy to update. Now I’m thinking that I should’ve just left my creation in place, and hire someone to make it beautiful instead of hiring someone to do the opposite.

Real estate investing: One of my wholesale deals has run into a snag. I already knew it would have issues with liens, but the title report reveals that the liens are A LOT bigger than what the seller said (big surprise). There’s a tax lien of $16K, and a water bill lien of $25K (no, that’s not a typo). I’ve emailed the seller with no response so I’ll call her today. Thank goodness I have three more in the pipeline, because I have a feeling this one won’t work out.

elance · perfume business · real estate wholesaling business · wholesale properties

After taking the time to write down what I want and what I  need to do to have it, I have a much clearer idea of how I need to approach the rebuilding of my businesses. The two questions I realized I needed to answer are:

1. What are the activities that generate sales?
2. How can I automate those sale-generating activities?

I was able to create automation plans for the fragrance and notary businesses, but I’m having a much harder time with automating the sale-generating activity for the real estate business.  The reason for this is that I’ve used so many different methods to generate leads in the past, and I’ve never written them all down. So one of my to-do’s to complete for this week will be to write all those down and find a way to automate the activities. Whoa that was a huge brain dump.

I also discovered a new open-source shopping cart for my fragrance store. I’m waiting for my webhost to upgrade my version of PHP to install it. I expect to have to done by today and report results by the end of this week.

automating lead generation · open source software · reorganization

March is starting out to be a profitable month:

• Just when I thought the fragrance business was going kaput, I got a few orders this week.
• I had a real estate settlement yesterday, I have a rental commission check coming in the mail, and I’ll be receiving a referral commission next week. I also got a new buyer approved who appears to be very serious.
• A new notary service customer requested their third appointment in less than two weeks yesterday.

I like having inflows (money coming in).  My challenge for this month is to automate those inflows as much as possible. I’m not sure how automated the real estate and notary businesses can get, but I know I can automate the products I sell. I woke up early today just to start making notes about what I can change.

Since I’m streamlining and committing to keeping better records, I finally downloaded GNUCash to maintain my books. It’s a free accounting program (very similar to Quickbooks), and it’s awesome. Thank God for open source software.

accounting · automation · Notary business · open source software · pefume business · Real estate business

I started my perfume dropshipping business way before I read The 4-Hour Workweek as an additional income stream. I started it just over a year ago, and it’s not a real moneymaker. In fact, I’ve only had 57 transaction over the past year. That averages to just one transaction per week, with an average profit of $8 per transaction. After paying for a domain and webhosting for the year, it has provided a profit of $399 for the year. That’s just under $400 for a year’s work, and that doesn’t include the time spent on the occasional wacky international transaction. Barely enough for a mortgage payment!

This business requires time for marketing and management which I just don’t have. It also seems to be a very difficult industry to find a niche for. So this may be one of the ventures that bites the dust this year. I already retired two other websites earlier this year because they weren’t profitable, and I had no real desire to make them profitable. The perfume business has already started to head down that route. I’ve achieved great feedback on my iOffer.com store, but unless I can develop a way to automate it, it will be retired by the end of this month.

dropshipping · low profits · niches · perfume business · profitability

Even though I’m holding down a 9-5 job and an active real estate agent business, I recognize the importance of having passive income streams. I want to work at stuff I enjoy, and I want to have more time, money and freedom to do what I want (like travel to every possible food festival, but that’s another dream). So I’ve made a list of things that I could create to bring in passive income, and I believe I can make it happen. Here’s the list:

• Creating programs for mobile devices: Since I’m a programmer just three classes shy of a degree, I might as well use the skills I’ve got. I’ve resisted it for a while, but what’s the point of paying all those student loans if I’m not going to use the skills I paid to learn? It’s akin to graduating from law school and never practicing law. I don’t want to be wasteful of my talents. If I can teach myself PHP, I’m sue I can figure out the Blackberry and iPhone. I have two ideas for programs already: one to improve an existing program that’s pretty horrible, and the other is a utility that I believe lots of people will use. I have a Blackberry myself, so I already have a platform to test on. I can’t talk about the ideas until I do some more research.
• Writing articles that bring in money over time: I’m starting to experiment with eHow.com and other sites ever since I found this post at the Smart Passive Income blog. I’ve written two articles so far. I’ll be writing articles for the rest of the month and provide an update during the first week of April.
• ATMs: I connected with another agent who swears by her machines. She’s always looking to place more machines, and I think I can duplicate her success. I’ve already found quite a few places that would benefit from an ATM. I may partner with her on my first machine.  This will require some capital unless I decide to lease, so I have to make a decision quickly and get on it.
• Creating ebooks: this is an idea that I wanted to pursue for a long time. I’d written down in an idea book that I lost, but I never forgot the name I created for it. I’ve already reserved the domain name and will have my first item created by the end of April. This will be connected to the eHow business.
• Real estate rentals: I want to acquire as many condos as possible and rent them out. I don’t want houses because I don’t want to deal with fixing roofs, damp basements, etc. The properties can be acquired with a loan or sub2. This is my least favorite idea however, since it requires the most upfront investment.

This is my short list of passive income ideas to pursue. Time to get crackin’!

ATMs · automation · business ideas · computer programming · ebooks · passive income · real estate rentals · writing good articles