In a recent article (What is The Ultimate Lifestyle), I talked about 8 core components that define "The Ultimate Lifestyle."

The first component was income streams, and reason it was listed as #1 is because if you want to live ultimate lifestyle (as you define it), you must:

- Have total control over your time (i.e. you're your own boss, not an employee)

- Have numerous income streams flowing, with as many of them as possible being "passive" or requiring minimal time and effort from you. To truly live ultimate lifestyle, you must have income that flows whether you "show up for work" or not. These income streams are "fuel" that drives The Ultimate Lifestyle.

In this article, I'm going to discuss "Top 10" income streams you can setup. There are actually many more than 10, but we don't have we room to discuss them all here.

You may be in a position to take advantage right now of many or all of streams I discuss, or it may take some time and effort to get one or more of them flowing. There's no hurry. Creating ultimate lifestyle takes vision, time, planning and effort.

All streams I discuss may not interest you or match your preferred lifestyle, and it isn't necessary to have all of them flowing at once (or at all) to live your own ultimate lifestyle. I'm just giving you food for thought.

Here are "Top 10" best ways I've found to generate streams of income required to truly live your ultimate lifestyle:

1. Start/Run Your Own Business

We're living at a fantastic time in history if your goal is to start your own business and create passive or "low effort" income streams from it selling products or services.

With many benefits of Internet, power of direct marketing (online and offline), and large number of top- notch contractors and third party companies you can offload day-to-day "grunt work" to, today's entrepreneurial environment a dream come true if you know how to set things up to take maximum advantage of many tools and resources available.

In addition, it has never been easier to set up a strong flow of income doing something you love or you're really passionate about - no matter what it is or how "obscure" it may be. Again, Internet and direct marketing create unprecedented levels of opportunity.

Finally, there are numerous tax advantages to having your own business which enable you to put much more money in your own pocket -- if you know how to set things up and take maximum advantage of many tools and systems available.

If you want to live your ultimate lifestyle, your own business will be at core of it. It's my #1 choice for creating ultimate lifestyle.

2. Royalties

If you have a specific area of expertise and you know how to turn it into a book, audio, video or multi-media course, you can get other people to manufacture it, sell it, manage all details, and send you a royalty check for a percentage of sales. This is a great stream of passive income and one I'm currently pursuing aggressively.

You can also generate passive royalty income from inventions or other marketable ideas of various kinds.

You make less money "per piece" when you go this route, but fact that you don't have daily responsibility for managing production, sales, accounting and other details has a lot of value, and if you set it up right, products that generate royalties for you also cause people to come back into your orbit to buy and do other things that end up benefiting you in many other ways in long run.

Do you feel this is a good idea but you don't think you have expertise that could translate into a royalty stream? That *might* be true, but I can almost guarantee that you have expertise you don't know you have, you could easily create it by following a passion and/or create a potential royalty stream from knowledge you have or could get if you got some right kind help.

3. Licensing Fees

This income stream is similar to royalty stream, but has many notable differences. Licensing involves charging a fee to allow others to sell products you create (books, tapes, videos, etc.), or to use your likeness, logo or other very visible aspect of your work, business or "brand."

Licensing can also take form of allowing others to present a seminar, workshop or talk you've designed that provides many benefits to audiences receiving them. I have two friends, Charles and Will, who've licensed rights to one, two and three day seminars with their material, and they receive HUGE checks every month.

Will actually has 5000 people licensed to present his one day seminar, and tens of thousands of people are getting benefit of his work, and he's getting big checks without lifting a finger.

There are other forms of licensing, however, that don't require expertise on your part, just visibility and a "brand."

One example includes Disney who licenses their logo, likenesses of Disney characters, etc. Another example includes Harry Potter merchandise. Another example includes use of Coke or Pepsi logo.

While it's true that these examples center around huge companies, there are a variety of licensing opportunities for "little guys" like you and me if you get creative and set it up right.

4. Real Estate

I've only dabbled in real estate over years, but I'm gearing up with my wife to get very involved with Real Estate in 2004 and beyond.

Passive income streams can flow out of Real Estate in many ways, including:

Buying and then re-selling foreclosures and other "distressed" properties

The designer community is group that are harvesting maximum benefit in this global market. To keep with pace, every business concern, big or small, are putting in resources to create their cyber identity. They need websites for business, banners for advertisements, corporate logos to establish their brand identity and for all these they need designers.

Given this market scenario, and advantage of having a global market in cyber world, distance is no longer a factor for right person, neither are companies concerned to assign there designing projects to people living a few thousand miles away from them.

From perspective of a client, it is quiet natural to be a bit shaky and anxious about paying someone they would never see, to do something so important, that might affect companies business. Going traditionally, most companies would like to work with employees working in front of them. However, these things will never be a factor, once you think of benefits that you get out of it.

Internet allows you to look into best design services available all across world. You need not have to limit yourself to designers in your own city, state or country but free to assign project to anyone that you see fit, irrespective of physical location of person. You also save on cost, as you might find that there are many equally competent individuals providing wonderful designs at a much lower rate compared to some small business house attaching a big price tag for that work. But this is just one side of coin. The designers are also happy with situation. They are getting a global market to sell their service and some of them who are able to do a real good work are also developing good global reputation, seating at their home.