How to Make Passive Income
Making Passive income no longer takes a massive financial investment with the advent of the internet. Anyone that is motivated can start generating extra revenue every month if they put their mind to it. If you are reading this then you are probably wondering exactly how to make passive income yourself.
I am going to give you, in detail, exactly how I do it myself. If you want you can simply copy me or you can come up with an idea of your own. You decide how you want to approach it. What I decide to promote might be quite different than what you want to promote.
I will provide a “Quick Tip” from time to time. These tips are going to be important to your progress if you want to learn how to make passive income.
What is Passive Income
Passive income is by definition, any income you earn without being actively involved on a day to day basis.
Some examples of passive income include:
- Rental Property
- Dividend income
- Renting out rooms in your home
- Affiliate Marketing
etc…
My personal favorite is affiliate marketing as a passive income revenue stream. I am going to tell you why.
Why Affiliate Marketing for Passive Income?
1st you get to pursue any topic of your choosing. This includes hobbies, sports, subjects you have knowledge about, products you use or anything else that might tickle your fancy.
2nd there is nothing to buy! You do not have to have a standing order for a product, you don’t need to invest in real estate or stocks and if for some reason the market goes south for a while, you don’t lose your initial capital. That said, I DO tend to use what I promote at least once. The reason is, it is easier for me to discuss a product or service if I have had the chance to use them. I will provide examples later.
3rd the internet never sleeps. You can go on vacation or even be in bed asleep and your site and the products you promote could be earning you passive income.
4th you can scale up easily. If you are writing about a hobby you enjoy, its easy to scale up. Let’s use travel as an example.
If you create a travel blog you can talk about a city, a state, a country or even multiple cities, states and countries. You can make it as broad as you like OR you can make the subject narrow. For instance, you can talk about a specific beach, hotel, resort or even excursion in a certain area.
Passive income is revenue you generate without being actively involved on a day to day basis. My favorite is Affiliate Marketing.
How to Make Passive Income- Example
Before we move on, I would like to show you an excellent example of someone that created a site and made so much passive income a major company bought him out.
Thewirecutter.com is a site that was created by Brian Lam in 2011. Brian moved to Hawaii to surf and in the meantime he created that review site. The site itself generated revenue through affiliate marketing. He would provide amazing reviews, people would click the link and purchase the product.
By 2016 Brian was generating $10 million per year in revenue from his site and then the NY Times bought it from him for $30 million.
While this is an amazing and extreme example, it proves that with effort and a plan you can generate revenue from your efforts. Even when you have NO PRODUCT to sell.
Not everyone will get to millions per year, but it is entirely possible to earn thousands per month! I believe anyone can do it, if they make an honest effort.
Anyone can earn passive income online, IF they make an honest effort.
How to Make Passive Income- Step One
Step one is important, but just remember you can switch gears at any time. This step involves picking what your niche or industry or subject matter is going to be.
I chose travel and health/fitness. Why? I picked those categories because A- I like to travel and health/fitness interest me and B- I do travel often and I am knowledgeable about certain aspects of health and fitness. I am also a good researcher.
You might have entirely different interests or specialties so you should brainstorm and decide what fits your personality.
Do you like and have dogs? You can create a dog blog.
Are you a Yoga instructor? You can discuss Yoga.
Do you enjoy hiking and Camping? There is another idea for you.
Are you a history teacher? You can create a blog all about history.
I explained that this step is important but if you try something and discover you want to try something different, than do it.
This should not feel like a “job” that you hate. You should approach it as a job, especially at 1st, but if you loathe the topic you are writing about…switch it!
Pick a topic you love and have knowledge of. This is going to be what you discuss every time you create a new article.
How to Make Passive Income- Step Two
You have found the perfect subject. What now? Step two is simple creating a website. You are going to need content to discuss all of the things you are going to discuss.
For this step you should get a hosting account. Hostgator is very inexpensive. For $2.75 per month you can setup the host and install WordPress through their control panel. You don’t have experience doing that? No Problem! They have 24/7 support and can walk you through. They also have tutorials if you are good at following directions.
This site is a WordPress site that is using HostGator as it’s host. What did I do before doing Internet Marketing?
I was a retail and restaurant manager. As I said, anyone can do this!!
If you want to try Hostgator You can get your first month for ONE PENNY!!!! Click the banner below to get the deal.
Pick a web-host and your Website name then install WordPress! HostGator is a low cost and reliable option and you can start for One Cent.
How to Make Passive Income- Step Three
By now you have decided what you want to talk about and you have your site set up. What is next?
Research!
You will save yourself time and effort if you do your research first. Why do you want to research? Because you need web traffic to get visits and you need visits to make sales.
The bad news is that you wont make many sales if you do not rank in the search engines. Good news is there are tools that help you pick subjects and keywords to discuss that fits your site.
The technical term for this phase is search engine optimization or SEO. This is just one part of SEO but it is very important, there is a saying in SEO circles… Content is King. You picking the right topics and choosing the right keywords to focus on is going to determine how well and how quickly your site gets visits.
Semrush
My favorite tool to use for this step is SEMRUSH. SemRush allows me the ability to see what people are searching for in Google which then gives me content ideas. Furthermore, I can track my search engine results by using Semrush. They offer a 7 Day FREE Trial Here, give it a try. Plug a keyword or website in their search bar and you will see the monthly traffic estimates as well as many related keyword phrases that people are using to search online.
When you begin to rank in Google your customers will find YOU instead of you going out to find THEM!
I offer a much more thorough explanation HERE in video format, with examples. I HIGHLY recommend you look it over.
Make sure your content includes topics that people use in search engines. Otherwise, you might not generate traffic from Google, Yahoo or Bing. Semrush makes this critical step very simple.
How to Make Passive Income- Step Four
You will begin choosing your affiliate programs at this step.
So far you have picked a topic you love, created a website and discovered some keywords to target. This how to make passive income guide would not be complete without offering you some suggestions. I will also tell you who I personally use later on in this article.
When it comes to flexibility, you cannot beat AMAZON. Amazon has an affiliate program and they have a huge selection of products that can fill nearly every niche. Getting started is easy, you apply for an Amazon Associates Account and you are off the races. You must have a website to get approved.
CJ.com
Another great program is CJ.com. This program used to be called commission junction. They can fill the gaps that Amazon cannot fill.
For example, if you are talking travel CJ.com has travel related affiliate programs such as cruises, hotels and more. You should definitely consider them if you are doing something that Amazon cannot offer.
Ideally, you can use them both. Again, using travel as an example, you can offer the actual vacation using CJ.com but perhaps have an article about a suitcase and use your Amazon link to generate revenue.
Another option, which I like, is going to smaller companies that offer affiliate programs in your selected niche.
There is no way for me to list them all but a good way to find them is to simply go to Google and type in your niche followed by “affiliate program”. So if you are in the bodybuilding niche, you might search for “Protein Powder affiliate program” or “Bodybuilding affiliate program”.
You typically would have to apply to these sites individually but more often than not, they have higher payouts.
Find an affiliate program that suits your subject matter. Amazon and CJ.com are both programs that offer a wide variety of goods and services.
How to make Passive Income-Step Five
Take action! Realistically speaking it can take three or four months to start getting traction in the search engines. You should not despair.
The fact of the matter is you should be taking this time to write killer content anyway. I have found that you can expect to start seeing traffic after you have written between 50 and 100 articles. Obviously this is a guideline, but it appears to be pretty consistent.
One thing that will not help you is doing nothing.
You should not be discouraged though, not one of us is perfect. If you have not had time to write for several days, then write a bit extra the following week. Remember, at this stage you are just laying the foundation for your long term passive income goals.
You will find that the more focused content you produce, the better your rankings will be. As your rankings climb, so will traffic. When traffic climbs, sales will come in. If you rinse and repeat this step, you will certainly earn your first of many dollars online.
Rome was not built in a day. Keep putting out focused content (based on the previous steps I have shown you) and the rankings will come. When the rankings come, so will sales. When sales come, put out even MORE content so you can grow your passive income stream.
How to Make Passive Income- What I do
I told you earlier I would show you what I do. It is all explained already but I am going to be more specific now.
As I said, this site was created as a test. However, I found that it was starting to rank due to the content that was being created.
I would estimate that around May or June I started applying for affiliate programs.
I have already mentioned two of them that I use, but here are the others:
Advertising Boost– The advertising boost program is simply amazing. First, you get to give customers and clients complimentary resort stays both in the USA and abroad, but just today (9/21/2018) they added the ability to give out restaurant vouchers to your clients and yes, to yourself also! You can give yourself a complimentary resort stay too, just to test the product. The monthly fee is $49 but there is a 7 day free trial.
They pay 40% commission on anyone that buys Advertising Boost through your affiliate link. The program is well worth it BUT there is no purchase necessary if you simply want to sell Ad Boost.
BookVIP– BookVip.com is a low cost travel site. They have millions of positive reviews online and you can save 50%-70% on resort travel all over the world.
They pay 30% commission on anyone who buys a vacation through your affiliate link.
Riverfront MD– Riverfront MD sells medical weight loss products as well as genial wellness products. They offer HCG Shots, Lipotropic Injections, Vitamin B12 shots and more…
Riverfront MD pays 10% commission but their ticket average is $200-$300 per sale! They also will work with you on special discounts just for your visitors if they see that you are sending them traffic!
You can click on any of the BLUE text above to be taken directly to the affiliate sign up page.
How to make passive income? I just told you. This is what a do and who I do it with.
How to Make Passive Income-ROI
I get really excited when I talk about this part of it.
The reason is that not only do you not have to deal with customers day in and day out.
You don’t have to show up to an office everyday.
Money is being made while you sleep.
But also, the ROI is as high or HIGHER than any other investment you can make. And with most of those, you still have work and to deal with customers!
For Example:
Lets assume you spend $150 per month on various internet marketing tools and in year one you manage to get the site to generate an average of $600 a month starting on month four. At the end of the year you will have spent $1800 and made $4800. $3000 in profit for a ROI of 166%! With 0 risk!!
Now imagine you go out and buy a rental property. Your mortgage is $1000 per month but you rent it for $1300 per month. That’s an ROI of 30% with a TON of risk involved. You can have deadbeat renters, they might damage the home, property value might plummet and meanwhile you are holding the bag on a mortgage you cannot get rid of.
Yes, the property value might increase, but so will the value of your website if you keep at it. And you do not have to chase a renter down for payment, you don’t have to address a leaky roof or any of that nonsense.
Passive Income Bottom Line
The bottom line is Affiliate marketing is about as passive as you can get when trying to figure out how to make passive income! The only other way I am familiar with is to have a bug chunk of money and then invest it in the markets to draw dividend income. But even then, one major downturn as we had not too long ago and it might take you years to recover what you invested.
Now you have to decide, do you want to invest in yourself? If you do, I am sure you will not be disappointed. If I can do it, anyone can!
Take Action!
