Real estate offers huge payoffs to the creative investor who works hard. But that’s just the problem. In order to get paid with real estate you always have to be working. If you stop looking for properties and writing offers the money stops too. There is an exception if you have the luxury of buying large pieces of property and having someone else manage them. But for the rookie investor this isn’t an option.

So what are the experts doing? What are Robert Allen, Ron LaGrande, and Carlton Sheets doing with their expert knowledge? Let’s discuss what they aren’t doing. They aren’t scouring the newspaper looking for public notice foreclosures. They aren’t knocking doors making offers to desperate sellers. They aren’t sending form letters to out-of-state property owners. Do you know why they aren’t doing any of the things they know so much about? Because it requires too much work.

Instead of being knee deep in real estate they are making their money teaching people how to invest for themselves. They aren’t real estate investors anymore, they are information marketers. These experts moved from real estate investing to information marketing because there is easier money in selling information.

Selling information gives you many advantages over any other business model. The first advantage is that selling information has great margins. This means for every dollar you spend on expenses you can get 2, 3, or 10 dollars of return. They wrote their material one time and sell it over and over again. It doesn’t cost them any thing extra after they get the system up and going.

The easiest and fastest way to sell information is through the internet. Setting up an internet business requires very little risk and investment. Unlike real estate investing which requires a lot of personal risk. If one real estate deal falls apart you could lose your home or destroy your credit. If your internet business fails nothing major is at risk.

The chance of your internet business failing is a lot lower too. If you do your research and avoid spamming techniques there’s little that can destroy your little business. With real estate, on the other hand, there are hundreds of ways for a deal to fall to pieces. Things like shifts in market, unexpected expenses, and people flaking out can all cause your real estate investing to sour.

The real clincher for an internet business being better than real estate investing is this: passive income. Passive income is a powerful force. Your internet business will make you money while you sleep, while you’re on vacation, and while you’re doing other things. Some real estate investors will probably bring up rental properties. Isn’t that passive income? My wife’s parents have a lot of rental properties and they are always chasing down payments, fixing things, or paying the bills. It’s really not as passive as it first appears.

So, let’s leave real estate investing to people that don’t know better and do what real estate gurus are doing instead; selling information online.