It’s been a busy couple days for me.  I just finished implementing a new blog theme and catching up on my personal finance blog reading, which I had been neglecting for a few weeks.  It turns out I’m not the only one who’s been busy, as other bloggers have been hard at work writing some great posts.  Here are my favorites from the past week:

• Passive Income Idea and Affiliate Marketing Idea - The Passive Dad talks about a site he’s been using called BigCrumbs.  He’s having some success in starting a little passive income stream with it.  He reports that some members are earning $100 - $200 a month in passive income from the service.  Not too shabby.  Hmmm… I wonder if BigCrumbs would be better than Spree?  Especially if you do any buying or selling on eBay, this appears to be something worth a second look.  I signed up for an account today, and I’ll do some more digging into it.  I’ll report back after I’ve kicked the tires a bit more with it.
• Creating a New Income Stream - General Electric - Passive Family Income talks about buying GE, which is a dividend-paying stock, and hedging his bets using a covered calls strategy.  Interesting… I hadn’t heard of this strategy before.  I’m curious to learn more about it and his success with it.
• Multiple Income Streams - 10 Ways to Earn Extra Money - This post by The Dough Roller on MSN’s Smart Spending blog is packed with good stuff.  I especially liked the end of the article where he references other great blog posts.  In particular, he refers to an awesome post called 20+ Free Passive Income Resources by Donald Latumahina over at Life Optimizer. Donald begins that post by saying, “Passive income is our key to financial freedom. The more passive income we generate, the less dependent we are on our job. At one point, when our passive income exceeds our expenses, we can stop working anytime we want and still live the lifestyle we desire. That is financial freedom.”  Well said Donald.
• Ten Ways to Translate Your Passion Into Additional Income - Some of The Simple Dollar’s ideas here aren’t particularly passive, but I still like Trent’s post a lot because it talks about how you can make extra money from what you love doing.
• $434.86 in Absolutely Free Money - This is what Kevin at No Debt Plan has earned so far this year on his cash back credit card.  Awesome stuff.  Readers of this blog know I’m a big fan of cash back credit cards as a no-brainer source of extra income.
• The 8 Levels of Passive Income - The Amateur Asset Allocator has an entertaining read on the various types of passive income and came up with a “complex, sophisticated mathematical formula” to rank them.
• Should You Blog Anonymously? - Okay I admit, this has absolutely nothing to do with passive income, but My Small Cents raises a question I’ve been struggling with myself lately.  As I begin to share publicly the details of my financial life, I wonder about what kind of opportunists are out there looking for some mischief at my expense.  What do you think?
• Credit Karma Provides a Truly Free Credit Score and Credit Score Comparison Tool - Money Under 30 presents a service that boasts a free credit check with FICO score.  This is unusual, as you usually have to subscribe to a monthly paid service to get your FICO score.  Credit Karma appears to be the first of its kind, where you can get this score free-of-charge.  It’ll be interesting to see if they bombard their users with e-mail solicitations to make up for not charging.
• International ETF Dividend Investing - Dividends4Life takes a look at some overseas exchange-traded funds to help diversify his portfolio.  One ETF on his list really stands out… DWX.  Is its yield of 14.42% too-good-to-be-true?
• Are Dividend Investors Idiots? - Tyler over at Dividend Money has some interesting commentary on the differences between thrill-seeking stock traders and income investors.  My thoughts: the hare didn’t win the race.
• Personal Finance Buzz - I stumbled upon this while writing this post.  It’s a Digg-like site, except it’s coverage is exclusive to personal finance.  I hope it takes off.
• Thoughts on Retirement and Financial Independence - Get Rich Slowly discusses what the definition of retirement is.  His take: “If you’re financially independent — if you’re doing what you want — isn’t that the same as retirement, anyhow?”  I could be persuaded to agree with that…

Well there you have it… until next week!

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