Timothy "Four-Hour Work Week" Ferriss has a concept he calls a "cash-flow muse". That's a little business that generates some monthly cash without taking up too much of your time. I think the idea is that with a couple of these running, you're pretty much free to do as you please most of the time.
Some desirable attributes of a cash-flow muse:
- You own it.
- The value proposition is simple enough to explain in one sentence.
- High margin: 4x to 50x.
- Easy to automate or outsource the selling, record-keeping, and whatever other businessy stuff is needed.
- Low capital investment.
- Takes no more than about 4 weeks to manufacture the product.
Ferriss often casually mentioned that generating this sort of cash flow is easy to do. It might take a month of real work to set one up, and you'll likely have to market-test a few ideas before you find one that's solid enough to commit to, but once it's up, it should pay your living expenses.
That sounds really good--when talked about abstractly. The main idea is really not that a cash-flow muse can free up your time, it's that cash-flow-muse opportunities are abundant and easy to find. I myself have little concrete idea of what sort of tiny product you could turn into a tiny business like this, and scarcely any idea how to begin searching for one.
My question: Has anyone actually done one of these?
Getting the site to this point took about two years, so I would counsel patience and perserverance. It also helps to really care about the project, even if you don't spend much time on it.
And it especially helps when your business partners are relentless insects who spread very efficiently and feast on the blood of people's sleeping children.