But here is the challenge – Whatever the urgency of our need, it is really hard to save money from our monthly pay checks.

By some kind of cruel magic, every penny we earn gets swallowed up to pay for all our regular monthly bills. Even if we get a pay rise, there still doesn’t seem to be any money left over at the end of the month.

In fact, all too often, we find ourselves slipping deeper into debt a little further each month.

At the same time, we all have reasons to really WANT to put aside some money each month.

Here are some of those reasons.

1. For a big expense, like the down payment on a home or a car.

2. To send your children to college.

3. To make improvements to your home.

4. To pay off debts.

5. To pay medical bills.

6. For your retirement.

7. To spoil yourself.

Having raised four children myself, and now being not so very far from retirement, I have experienced most of those reasons. I have also experienced the frustration of never having enough money at the end of each month to make a difference.

Until just a few years ago.

What I started to do about five years ago was to create a second stream of income that was outside of my regular pay check. I make that money separately, and don’t add it to the pile of money I use to pay my bills. It is earned separately, and I spend it separately…for one or more of the reasons listed above.

How much do I make through that second stream of income. Approximately $4,000 a month. It varies from month to month. But that’s the average.

No, that money isn’t going to make me a millionaire. But I don’t have to work very hard for it, and it does make a difference.

How do I do it? Well, that’s the subject of my book, New Path to Riches.

It shows you how just about anyone can make some extra money each month simply by writing and publishing a website on a topic that interests them.

If you enjoy writing, you can do this too.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com

Get Chapter One of New Path to Riches free…

Here is how to article opens:

“In four years, more than 4 million baby boomers annually will reach the normal retirement age for full Social Security benefits. Some of them will have taken early retirement at 62, though because of the lost decade in the stock market, far fewer will have chosen that option than was expected a few years ago. Unfortunately, as they begin to retire, the early baby boomers will feel the impact of four financial tsunamis.”

It goes on to explore a variety of challenges faced by retiring boomers – from insufficient savings to the crash of 2008.

It is precisely because of this scenario that I wrote my bonus chapter, “New Path to Retirement Riches”.

The model I describe in my book is ideally suited to anyone who is either retired, or getting close. This is a way for boomers to share their knowledge, help others and make a second, passive income.

Does it work? Yes, it does. Hundreds of people have now either read my book or taken my course on writing money-making websites – and they are already seeing more money flow into their accounts each month.

Learn more about the free, bonus chapter, New Path to Retirement Riches…

Traditional ways of funding our golden years have either lost value over the last three years, or simply can’t deliver sufficient income to pay for a decent standard of living.

To quote the CNN article, “Seventy-two percent of workers over the age of 60 who are putting off retirement are doing so because they can’t afford it, according to a survey by Careerbuilder.com, a career resources website. The results from the survey indicate more pessimism than in 2008, when about 60% of retirement-aged workers blamed the economy for delaying retirement.”

This is one of the reasons I wrote New Path to Riches. I’m not so very far from retirement age myself, and don’t intend to depend on my meagre retirement investments. Instead, for a few years now, I have been writing content-rich websites that provide me with a passive income every month, and will continue to do so for years to come.

The model and process I describe is ideally suited to anyone who is retired, or getting close.

In fact, I recently wrote a bonus chapter for my book, focusing specifically on why the New Path to Riches model works so well for people who are retired, and are looking for additional sources of income.

This bonus chapter is free.

If you or someone you know is either retired, or getting close, it’s worth reading.

If you connect with other people of the “golden age” through online groups or networks, feel free to share the chapter with all of them.

You can get the New Path to Retirement Riches bonus chapter here…

But I don’t like following instructions blindly. I don’t just want to know WHAT to do. I also want to know WHY it works, WHY I should trust the process, and HOW the whole thing hangs together.

I guess I was one of those kids at school who was never satisfied with being told WHAT to do or learn, but wanted to know WHY and HOW.

I’m certainly not alone. There are a ton of studies that demonstrate how kids and adults alike learn better when they understand the broader context around the topic they are trying to understand.

Here are some of the WHY and HOW questions you will find answered in New Path to Riches.

How is it possible for someone sitting at home to create a website that attracts a large audience, and makes thousands of dollars a month?

Why now? Why is now such a perfect time to become a one-person publisher, sitting in your pyjamas?

Why are one-person websites able to compete so successfully with large, big-media websites?

How is it possible for a one-person website to do better than its larger competitors in the search engine results?

Of course, I also tell you WHAT to do. But because the book starts with answers to the big WHY and HOW questions, you can execute on WHAT to do with a complete understand of WHY and HOW it works.

To my mind, that’s a much smarter way of moving forward than simply following someone’s instructions blindly, and hoping for the best.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com

Give New Path to Riches as a gift this Christmas

Maybe you already have your own copy of New Path to Riches. Maybe not.

Either way, I bet you can think of some friends, family members or colleagues who would love to find a way to make some extra money.

Maybe you have a teenage son or daughter who wants to save money for a car.

Or a close friend who wants to make money to send their kids to college.

Or a parent who is looking for a way to supplement their retirement income.

Or a colleague who needs extra money for medical bills.

Give them a copy of New Path to Riches this holiday season, and you’ll be giving them the opportunity to make a big second income from their own money-making website.

Yes, they will have to work hard on their website. No, they won’t make a million dollars.

But if they follow the model I describe in my book, they will start making a nice passive income each month.

In today’s economy, giving someone the chance to make some extra money each month, without even having to leave the house, is perhaps the most generous and thoughtful gift you can give.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com

There are plenty of ways to choose a few potential topics, the first being to think about your own areas of interest and expertise. It’s always easier to write about a subject that interests you.

Another lens through which you can study potential website ideas is to look at topics through the eyes of a beginner.

I say this because beginners in many areas of interest are not very well served online.

My own money-making website, CoffeeDetective.com, is aimed at beginners – people who are just becoming interested in brewing quality gourmet coffee at home. When I started with the site there were plenty of existing sites for “coffee geeks”, but almost nothing for people with a very low level of knowledge on the subject.

Look online and you will see that many information websites are written by experts either for other experts or for people with more than a rudimentary level of knowledge.

For example, go check out the websites and blogs that talk about high-tech gadgets. Few that I can find are really aimed at beginners.

What if I want to choose between an iPhone and one of the new Android smartphones? When I go to sites like Engadget.com and TechCrunch.com, their writers assume I already have a reasonable level of knowledge. What if I don’t? What if I don’t even know what half the terminology means?

The same goes for many subject areas – cycling, baking, making wine, brewing tea, traveling to Australia, playing jazz guitar, choosing a mortgage, buying gold coins, breeding cats, restoring furniture and so on.

Make a list of three or four topics you might like to write about, and then check out the existing websites online. Are the needs of beginners well served? If not, you might have just found the perfect focus for your own, money-making website.

You‘ll find more on this topic in my book, New Path to Riches.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com

That translates into about 5 million households having serious trouble making ends meet.

Life could get a little easier for every one of those households if someone in each home was writing a hobby website that brought in some extra cash.

Just one of my own money-making websites covers my mortgage, care payments, utilities and more, each and every month. And it is income I don’t have to ‘work” for. I just spend a couple of hours a week adding new pages to my website. The revenues from advertising and affiliate programs just keep flowing in.

This isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme, so if you start writing your website today, it won’t be helping with those mortgage payments for several months.

But that’s not a reason to delay getting started. The sooner you start building your own money-making website, the sooner it can start contributing to those monthly bills.

Is this something that can be done by someone with no sales or marketing experience? Absolutely. There are only three things you need to bring to the table.

1. You enjoy writing.

2. You are willing to learn.

3. You are stubborn, and will keep working on your site until the money starts coming in.

All this and more is explained in my book, New Path to Riches.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com.

The bottle of cheap wine has its advantages. It can take the edge off the day. Relax you. Make you feel that all is good in the universe.

In the morning you may find yourself running for the coffee a little more urgently than usual. But more or less a feel-good experience.

And it will only cost you $14.95.

Or you could buy my book, curl up on the sofa, and discover that by spending an hour a day you can write your own money-making website.

After a while you could be earning a few hundred dollars a month. Then maybe thousands of dollars a month. All of it passive income. Best of all, you’ll be picking a topic for your website that interests you, so that hour a day will feel more like a hobby than work.

The bottle or the book? Well, if you buy the book (also just $14.95), you’ll soon be earning enough extra money to buy a much better bottle of wine.

Win/Win.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com.

If the meltdown over the last 18 months has taught us anything, it’s that we are not in control of our wealth when we invest it in stocks and bonds. Bad things can and do happen.

But…I’m not in the least nervous about investing a little time in my own websites.

Let’s take a look at my best-performing website so far, CoffeeDetcetive.com.

Back in 2006 I spent quite a bit of time on research and getting the first twenty pages written and online.

Since then, I spend maybe one or two hours a week on the site. That’s nothing. It’s the time we spend on watching a couple of TV shows.

But today that site earns me close to $50,000 a year in revenue.

And that’s not all. A website with a proven track record of revenues is also quite easy to sell. A site like mine could sell for two or three times its annual earnings. That’s $100,000 or $150,000 dollars.

That’s a pretty good return on two or three hours a week doing something I enjoy anyway.

That’s as asset. Like a house or a retirement fund.

In any event, I won’t sell the site. I’ll rather keep adding new pages and increasing my monthly earnings.

Do you think you can beat that kind of return by investing a portion of your hard-earned salary? I doubt it.

Instead of investing money, invest a little of your time. And make you site about a topic that already interest you. Do that, and adding more and more pages feels more like a hobby than work.

If this sounds interesting to you, you’ll love my book, New Path to Riches.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com.

Then I ask them a sneaky question: How many hours a day do you spend watching TV?

Let’s say you’re not a complete TV fiend and spend only three hours a day watching the box. And let’s say that one of those three hours is spent watching a rerun of a show you have seen before.

Why not skip the rerun and spend that time writing a website that will pay you back in cash, month after month and year after year?

That’s the thing about the model described in my book, New Path to Riches. It’s not like launching a new product or service, or even starting a business. You don’t have to put a vast amount of time into the project before you have anything to show. You simply get started and then write the site one page at a time.

This is a long and easy walk, not a frantic sprint.

Maybe you first publish the site with a total of fifteen pages. Your site is up and running, and worth visiting.

From that point on you simply add pages as and when you have time. And if you use an hour of your TV time each day, you will have time to add a new page each day. Even allowing for a few skipped days, that’s over 300 pages by the end of the first year.

300 pages of great content on the topic you’re writing about. 300 pages for Google to find. 300 pages on which you can place AdSense ads or affiliate links. In other words, after a year, you’ll have 300 pages which will be generating you a monthly income.

Now add a second year, and so on.

Even after that first year you’ll be able to look back and say, “Wow, instead of watching so much TV, I have created a long-term asset which will pay me a monthly income indefinitely.”

The same applies if you spend hours a day playing World of Warcraft, FarmVille or any other online games. Can you spare an hour? If you can, you’ll have the opportunity to make yourself a significant second income.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com.