Extreme Success Stories. Fact or Fiction?

Lately I’ve seen a lot of stories in financial media with headlines like, “This Millennial Makes $12,000/Month With Only 2 Hours Per Day of Work on Her Side Hustle,” or, “This Gen Z’er Earns $60,000 Per Year in Passive Income on Etsy.” There sure seem to be a lot of people making a boatload of money with little effort out there. Generational profiling and click-bait headlines aside, are success stories like these reliable? Replicable for the average person? Fact or fiction? Let’s unpack these “miracles” of easy money a bit.

First of all, yes there is often some truth to these stories. There are people out there who make an insane-sounding amount of money with (seemingly) very little effort on a daily or monthly basis. They aren’t wage slaves like most of us, working for a salary or hourly wage. They don’t have defined work hours or salary caps that limit their earning potential. Sounds great.

However… As with anything, there is often more to the story that the media fails to report. 

First of all, no one wakes up one morning and starts making $12,000 per month with a side hustle. You don’t just launch a business or take a part time job and start making that kind of money with no effort. What the media doesn’t talk about is the effort that goes into the side hustle on the front end, and the continuing effort to keep it running.

Anything that generates passive income, whether it’s “influencing,” writing, Etsy sales, or content creation takes real work to start. You have to make a lot of videos, write a lot of books, or create a lot of crafts, before you open a firehose of cash. Few people notice the first thing you put out and a following is built over time. Often, unless you are very lucky to somehow hit a cultural nerve and go viral quickly, there’s also a lot of marketing and promotion to find an audience. You have to hustle, promote, push yourself, and work really hard to find people willing to pay for whatever you’re offering. It’s real work, and it’s often harder than a day job. 

In addition to the hours of work on the front end, you have to continue to put in more work to generate ongoing income. Once people start looking to you for content or nifty craft items, you have to keep it up to stay relevant. Otherwise, people move on to the next thing. Perhaps you can slow down a bit after you reach a tipping point, but if you want to stay relevant, you need to keep producing content. 

And since the media likes to profile incredibly young people making huge money, remember that most of them have been working at this for years. They may be twenty-five and raking in cash, but they may have been building their YouTube brand since high school, or making printables since college. You can be young and make a lot of money but, again, it usually means the work just began at a very young age. Or that they worked harder than the average, producing content or items at an accelerated pace.

Very often you need some capital, as well. This is a fact that the media likes to gloss over. You aren’t going to pocket every cent you earn. Sure, you can start a YouTube channel on a shoestring, but eventually if you want the big bucks you’re going to have to invest in better equipment, possibly some training on how to use it, etc. You either have to finance that stuff somehow, or build your business slowly while you have a “real” job so that your intake of money equals your outlay. Either way, you’re going to have to do a lot of work to pay back the debt and/or work two jobs while you build the business. 

And if you get really big and start generating huge amounts of money, some of your income might have to go to employees to help you with things like social media, accounting, etc. Either that or you’ll have to do that work yourself, meaning you definitely aren’t just sitting back raking in cash with no work. 

These articles focus on the work put in today on just producing content or sellable items. It may take two hours to make and edit that video or create that new item this week, but the article doesn’t account for all of the work that went in prior, or the ancillary work (accounting, marketing, property management, learning new equipment, etc.) that goes on every day, week, and year. 

All of this boils down to this point:  When an article talks about a lot of money with few hours of work, the writer is (usually) only focusing on the earning part of the equation. They’re conveniently leaving out all of the early/ongoing work and time involved, the cash outlays and debt management, and all of the costs associated with running a business. Of course they are. Throwing around large numbers is sexy and click-worthy. Reporting on actual work is not. 

So can you achieve these results on your own? Yes, possibly. If you are willing to put in the work over a long period of time, and you have the capital (or patience to build slowly) to invest, you can build a successful passive income stream. However, it will never be completely hands-off. You will still have to work (or pay others to work for you). Nothing in life is free, and anything that sounds too good to be true usually is. Words worth remembering when reading click-bait articles suggesting easy money. 

Read More:

• Earning More: 7 Ways to Launch a Successful Side Business
• Success Is Not Event Driven. It’s Habit Driven
• 40 Careers That Pay Better Than a YouTube Channel

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Jennifer Derrick

Jennifer Derrick is a freelance writer, novelist and children’s book author.  When she’s not writing Jennifer enjoys running marathons, playing tennis, boardgames and reading pretty much everything she can get her hands on.  You can learn more about Jennifer at: https://jenniferderrick.com/.