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Why More Sleep Equals More Money

January 19, 2018

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Who would have thought that more sleep could lead to bigger incomes?

Time Use and Productivity: The Wage Returns to Sleep is a research conducted by economists Matthew Gibson and Jeffrey Shrader investigating the impact of sleep on productivity and financial gains.

The study explores the effect of sleep on wages by analyzing the relationship between sunset time and sleep duration. As it turns out, a one-hour increase in long-run average sleep increases wages by 16% – that’s the equivalent of more than one year of schooling.

While many researchers have sought to uncover the determinants of productivity and what enables workers to be more efficient, very little attention has been paid to a certain key factor that plays a significant role in achieving our day-to-day productive scores: the amount of time we spend sleeping.

As the research suggests, the lack of proper sleep has a direct impact on productivity, impeding the development of human capital and imposing direct costs on society.

“Were the average worker in our dataset to sleep one additional hour every night without changing her number of hours worked, she would receive an additional $6,000 per year,” according to the research.

 

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Motivated by medical research on circadian rhythm, Gibson and Shrader examined cities on opposite ends of time zones (i.e. Huntsville, Alabama on the eastern edge of the Central Time Zone, and Amarillo, Texas on the western edge) and came to the conclusion that even though cities like these are on the same clock, people in western cities tend to go to bed later because they get an extra hour of sunlight. However, they still have to wake up the same time as people in the eastern cities, which means they get less sleep. Gibson and Shrader then analyzed the wage data in these places to see how an extra dose of sleep could impact earnings.

“Our study demonstrates that sleep is not just an economic curiosity but rather a vital determinant of productivity. A one-hour increase in a location’s weekly mean sleep raises wages by roughly half as much as a one-year increase in education for all workers. These results point to the large impact that non-labor market activities can have on labor market performance. They suggest governments and schools must account for the productivity impacts of sleep to design optimal scheduling and time-use policies,” said the researchers.

So there you have it – more sleep literally equals more money. Unfortunately, the amount of time we get to spend sleeping is not entirely up to us. So I’ve listed a few passive income ideas that could help you make money – while you sleep.

How to make money sleeping

A quick internet search will bring up at least a dozen articles on how you can make more money while sleeping. Here are a couple of things you can do to generate income when you’re not working.

Start a blog

Setting up a wordpress page is free – you just need to find something interesting to fill your blog with. It may be one of the easiest ways to earn a few extra bucks. And while you may think that blogs are overrated or that you have to be some kind of celebrity to actually make money with a blog, you’ll be interested to learn that a lot of people still make money from blogging. Granted, there are a few simple steps you need to follow on your path to becoming a certified social media ninja, but it’s no rocket science.

You can earn commissions as an affiliate, sell advertising or even find sponsors for your content. Once your blog begins to generate serious traffic, you can start charging advertisers to purchase ads on your site – you may start off small earning under 20$ per ad, but as your readership increases you can end up charging up to three digits (provided the content you promote is highly qualitative).

Flip websites

It’s like flipping houses – without the giant market expenses. Basically, if you’ve already put a lot of time and effort into building a blog/website and you’ve managed to attract a high amount of quality traffic to your site, you can then sell it to an interested party by listing it on marketplaces like Flippa. Or you can start investing in domain names – buy a good domain then sell it to someone who is willing to pay more for it. Apparently, a lot of people are doing it, and you can earn thousands of dollars in just a few days.

“Start small. I see so many people making bad decisions when buying domain names. Don’t jump into something that you couldn’t lose altogether and be just fine. Get to know how it works and start small. Buy a smaller domain that doesn’t cost a lot — same thing with selling a domain. This will teach you how it works. Over time you’ll get really good at it. There are thousands of people that make a living buying and selling domains, are you one of them? ‘Cause it’s not rocket science, but there is an art to it!” says John Rampton, Entrepreneur VIP.

Sell your own information product

According to entrepreneur.com, if you’re knowledgeable in a certain area, you can start creating your own products, such as eBooks or videos, and start selling them on your blog. First you need to decide which type of information product you want to sell, based on the current hottest trends. You can use Google’s Keyword Tool to see what types of information products people are likely to buy. Clickbank is also a great source for inspiration – it provides a lot of information about the digital information products that are currently the most popular.

Then you need to actually create that product. If you’re thinking about marketing an eBook on Amazon and you’re not much of a writer, you can hire other people to write content for you. Sites such as Upwork and Fiverr are great for sourcing freelance writers. In fact, you can even get articles for as little as $5 on Fiverr, which you can then comprise and sell as an eBook (according to huffingtonpost.com).

The next step is selling your product – Amazon, eBay, iTunes and Fiverr are giant powerhouses that allow you to sell your products and generally don’t require any pay upfront (until the sale is made). And even then the commission (10% – 20%) you’d be paying them is nothing compared to how much it would cost you to publish a book in print. Plus, your product will be exposed to their millions of daily visitors.