If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you DIE!… kinda harsh words from someone that looks like he could be your grandpa but the Billionaire Oracle of Omaha is not wrong.
Until you stop trading your time for money, you will always be limited by how much you can make. You’ll always be at the mercy of a timeclock and a boss to decide how much money you make.
That’s why I asked you out there in the Bow Tie Nation for your top five passive income ideas. All five of these are income strategies you can start with little or no money and be making $500 a week or more within the first year.
Editor’s Note: This video is the first in a five-part series following two viewers journey to creating wealth. Watch the video and click through to YouTube to see full interview segments.
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In fact, two citizens of the Nation, Bryan and Crystal have done just that, making over $5,000 on Crystal’s Etsy business in less than a year. Throughout the video, I’ll use their story to show you that it can be done, to motivate you and inspire you to get started!
In this complete guide to passive income, I’ll explain passive income and what’s wrong with passive income videos. I’ll then reveal the five passive income ideas, how much you can make in each and five rules you must know to succeed. Stick around and I guarantee there is something here for you that WILL change your life!
Throughout these seven passive income ideas, I want to rank each on how easy it is to get started making money and how passive each can be. To help you pick which is right for you, I’ll be ranking each of these on a scale from one to five and then ranking each idea overall.
Don’t forget to join the community and checkout the playlist in the video description. Besides the passive income ideas, I’ll show you in this video, we’re following Bryan and Crystal’s story in five videos to take you step-by-step into creating wealth from making money to investing and beyond!
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Before we get to those five income ideas, I feel like we need a little tough love. There are a lot of scams out there masquerading as passive income and I blame Dire Straits because the truth is, there’s no such thing as ‘Money for Nothing’ but there is a way to build a business that makes money while you sleep, that will work when you don’t want to.
In our list of five income strategies, I’ll rank each from most to least amount of work. I’ll show you how much time each takes to set up, how much money you can expect to make and how much time you’ll need to keep that cash flowing.
But just understand, as Bryan and Crystal did before starting out, there is always some level of work to get started.
Bryan & Crystal: There is work that you have to put into it. If you want to open a business like that, you’ve got to be willing to put in the effort. It’s not just going to magically appear.
Nation, anyone trying to tell you there’s a way to make money without any effort, without setting it up, they’re either scamming you or just blowing smoke up your ass.
Be ready to put in the time to get one of these residual income ideas started though and I promise you, you will be rewarded with cash flow that will work for you, even when you don’t want to.
Bryan & Crystal: So having passive income is it’s a feeling of free, you’re not out there busting all the hours and on a schedule working 8 to 5. You don’t necessarily have someone telling you when you have to be there, when you can eat, when you can go to lunch. You can kind of do your own thing and make money while doing it… There’s nothing like having your own business.
We’re getting started with my favorite passive income strategy for obvious reasons, creating videos on YouTube.
OK, wait, hold up! Before you click off the video, thinking YouTube is about as far from passive income as you can get…I’m going to show you exactly how easy this can be to make money from my own account. Then I’ll reveal two ways to make it even more passive.
And the best part about YouTube, really any of these ideas we’ll look at is anyone can do them. I hear all the time the excuse of, “I’m not an expert in anything,” or “Why would anyone take advice from me.”
And there’s two answers to this that mean you CAN start your own channel. First is the simple fact that you’re more of an expert than you realize. Whether it’s in your 9-to-5 or an interest you have, anything you spend more than five hours a week doing…you’re going to know a lot more than the average person and that’s going to mean you’ve got knowledge to share.
More important though is that it’s not always about being ‘the expert’. In fact, some of the best blogs and YouTubers I’ve seen have been where the person is starting from scratch in a topic, from a beginner level, and is sharing their personal journey learning about it. People love that, not only being able to share in that journey but being able to relate to someone and learning from the start.
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So do NOT underestimate yourself and your potential because you can make a LOT of money on YouTube. I’ll show you my own YouTube income here and you can see, from that first day of earning a magical $4.07 on June 28th 2018…I’ve made over $380,000 from the channel. Lately, it’s averaged $500 a day for an income of $15,000 a month!
And that’s only from the ads on YouTube itself, not including partnerships, affiliates and other income streams that make another $15,000 a month.
I’ll show you how this can be a legit passive income source next but first I want to share a few ideas to get you started, two tips I wish someone told me when I started.
First is to just get started and I know that doesn’t sound like some miraculous revelation but I see so many people get stuck, get that analysis paralysis and never get started. Nation, fear is going to be an issue getting started on any of these income ideas but more so with YouTube than any other because you’re right there front and center on camera. Everyone wants their first videos to be perfect, they’re scared of looking stupid and they never get to that point.
You want to know the truth. Your first videos aren’t going to be perfect. You are going to look stupid. Just look at my first videos. I’ve kept them up to prove the point that everyone’s first videos are horrible…hell your first 100 videos are going to be horrible.
Do not let that fear keep you from making a LOT of money.
So what I want you to do is plan out five videos on your topic. If you need ideas, you can go to the videos section on channels like yours, sort by most popular and see what gets them the most views. Then just outline your five videos, making notes of what you want to tell people.
Then just get your phone out, don’t worry about a lot of equipment, just tap record and talk through those first five videos. Don’t even worry about editing out the ums or mistakes. Get those first five videos published and commit to doing a new video each week.
That’s going to force you to get started. Spend an hour or two a week learning how to make better videos and a couple of hours creating your next one.
That’s it. That’s the miracle sauce of being successful on YouTube…just to get started!
The other tip I want to share is to think in terms of multiple income streams, making money from as many sources as possible. And this is going to apply to a lot of our passive income ideas but it’s important here for YouTube because it can take a year or more to reach that 1000 subscribers you need to get ‘monetized’, for YouTube to start showing ads on your channel and sharing that income.
Instead, you want to start thinking about affiliates and sponsors from day one. Start thinking about how you can combine some of the other passive income strategies we’ll talk about into your YouTube channel.
But now for the moment of truth, how passive is YouTube…because I see a lot of you out there shaking your head in disbelief.
If you look at just the income I made on YouTube ads in September, just one month, I can go in here, clean this up and highlight the income for each video. Then I’ll sort it by date and delete all the videos that are less than six months old. You see, I’ve got over 400 videos that are more than six months old and still making money.
In fact, I made almost six-thousand dollars that month from videos made as much as three years ago and those videos will continue to make money even if I stop making new ones.
Now I’m not trying to say you’re going to make thousands a month as soon as you get started. You see here in my income tracking, it took me six months to even start making money on YouTube and it only averaged $1,700 a month in that first year but it grows fast and combined with some of the other income strategies I’ll show you, you can realistically be making over $2000 a month within a year.
But we’re talking passive income here so I want to show you how to make this as passive as possible, something it took me more than a year to learn. To make YouTube videos passive income, I want you to think in terms of, what are people searching for in this topic.
People searching on YouTube and the views to my videos is almost a third of my total, more than 250,000 views and almost $5,000 a month. Your passive income is going to depend on your videos showing up in search to answer the questions people are looking for.
So finding and answering those questions as part of your videos is going to be your top priority and you do that with just a simple Google search. For example, I can go in here to Google and type in a broad topic like saving money and the first thing you notice, Google is going to suggest some popular searches which are an absolute gold mine in getting more ideas for videos.
But if I search for that general idea, I can scroll down to this “People also ask” section and here Google is showing me the top questions people ask related to saving money. They’ve got four here but I can click on the down arrow and the list populates with a few more questions on the bottom. Some great video ideas here to answer popular questions like, “Why is saving money so hard?” and “How to save money if I don’t make a lot of money?”
Then, you can also scroll down to the bottom of any Google search and it’s going to show you even more questions and searches people make in that topic, “How to Start Saving?”…”How to save money fast?”
Do this and your videos will rank in not just YouTube search but also on Google. They’ll continue to get views well after you publish and it’s going to turn your channel into a passive income machine!
For YouTube, it’s extremely easy to get started…at this point, nearly everyone has a miniature video studio in their pocket and that’s all it takes to upload a video. And while you’ll have to wait for 1000 subscribers to start making money on ads, you can start making money immediately from other sources like affiliates and livestreams.
So for ease of getting started, I’d give YouTube a four out of five stars.
On the passive idea, YouTube is going to be a further behind some of our other ideas. Yes those older videos continue to make money for me but most fade out pretty quick. I would say 80% of my monthly income from YouTube comes from videos less than three months old so it is something you have to keep growing and I’d give YouTube a two out of five stars on this one.
Overall though, YouTube is something I think everyone should try…not just because it is so easy to get started but because the level of income you can reach is surprisingly high. That ability to reach over $15,000 a month in ad revenue alone, plus other sources you can sell through your videos and this one gets a four out of five stars overall.
Our next passive income idea is straight from Crystal’s success, selling products on Etsy.
I’ll show you how Crystal got started and then suggest a few tweaks to the strategy to make it even more passive. And I was absolutely amazed researching this and hearing from Crystal. Etsy has grown into one of the world’s largest online marketplaces and its uniqueness from Amazon in that personalized, craft space means it gets targeted traffic from people ready to buy.
Bryan & Crystal: I have always wanted a circuit, I mean for years I feel like I’ve talked about this…last Christmas I finally got one and was so excited and upon doing some research on how to use it because I had no idea how to use it. I was looking at YouTube videos and I came across someone, and I literally binge watched all the videos on her channel. She talked about how she created an Etsy business selling vinyl decals…and that is when I told him, maybe we should try this. It’s really nerve racking because you’re afraid you’re going to fail and be an embarrassment but I don’t know, she was really awesome and inspired me to give it a shot.
It’s as simple as that and literally takes less than an hour to set up your Etsy shop. You can sell anything from jewelry to stickers, clothing, organizers, toys and even craft supplies.
Crystal started her shop in February 2021, just nine months ago, and has already made nearly a thousand sales! She says she’s selling between 75 to 100 items a month and at an average of $6 each…how does making an extra $600 a month in your spare time sound?
And that’s on a new shop, building it with limited time. I was blown away researching this but another example here CaitlynMinimalist has more than 1.3 million sales! On an average price of $26 each item, that’s over $34 million!
I want to share some tips to get started here, how passive it can be and how to make it even more passive.
First, for getting started, build your presence on Instagram and Pinterest rather than some of the other social media. These two are more search-focused so your posts will be seen by people searching for topics rather than just your friends and family like on Facebook. Focusing your time sharing images on these two platforms will help you build a customer base faster.
You also want to set up an automated email funnel, something you can do through a provider like ConvertKit. With this, you write up template emails that will go out automatically during different stages of the customer experience. You’ll have one email that goes out when a sale has been made, thanking the customer and answering questions about delivery. You’ll have another email that goes out when the item is shipped, letting the customer know it’s on the way. Another email will go out to make sure they received it and asking if they like it, then a final email that goes out asking for a review.
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This is all to the point of providing great customer service, turning customers into followers and getting good reviews. Crystal can tell you, customer service is KEY on Etsy because your customers are going to be your best resource for repeat sales and referrals to their friends and family. Crystal is a star seller with a five-star rating on Etsy and over 239 reviews…that’s almost one-in-four customers that have left a good review.
Another tip to get started here is just to browse Etsy for ideas on what you can sell. Start with a hobby of yours, something you enjoy doing. This is how Crystal got started. She enjoyed using her Cricut machine and only learned later how she could make money selling the decals.
Turning an Etsy shop into a source of passive income depends on the product you sell but you can automate the process on anything. Selling digital products, so something people can download, will be the ultimate in passive income because Etsy is going to automatically send them the download when they make a purchase.
Even if you’re selling a physical product or a craft though, you can make this more passive and less work with each sale. Here you’ll want to think about every step in the sales process, from marketing on social media to customer emails and product delivery. Then with each step, think of ways to make the process faster or automated.
With your social media marketing, take multiple pictures at a time and pre-schedule your posts. You can create and schedule a month’s worth of posts in just a couple hours to drive a constant flow of traffic to your store.
We’ve already talked about automating that customer outreach with emails. You can automate these so they go out after an amount of time or with the click of a button. For product delivery, try to bulk create your orders, maybe planning one or two days a week to work on crafts. You can also try to standardize your products, making them similar with just a slight difference in each to personalize it.
On our ranking scale, it’s extremely easy to open an Etsy store though it will take more time to create your products and perfect the process so for ease of getting started, I’d give this one three out of five stars…similar to what we saw with YouTube. It’s easy to get started but expect a learning curve in anything.
For level of passive income, it’s a solid four out of five stars for digital products. You’ll still have to show off your products on social media to drive those sales but just about everything else can be automated. For physical products, it’s much less passive but still a great way to make extra money. I’d give physical products on Etsy a two out of five stars and for Etsy as an overall business idea, a three out of five stars on our scale.
We’re getting into the most passive sources here with selling a course on Teachable or Udemy.
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Nation, if you’re looking for passive income, this is it. Courses and self-publishing is easily the most passive strategy in the list with platforms like Amazon or Teachable that will automate nearly the entire process. I make just over a thousand a month on those books, some written more than five years ago, and the courses sell through other sources like YouTube or social media.
And just like with the YouTube idea before, do NOT think you need to be THE expert to do this. Nation, giving someone something of value in a course is just as much about making it personal and motivational as it is sharing that step-by-step. It’s about sharing your personal journey in a topic to make it inspirational enough that people actually complete the course use the information.
In fact, if we pull back the curtain on this five-video series I’m doing right here, you’ll see a perfect example of this. Hell, anyone can make a video on passive income or side hustles or investing and there are millions of videos already on YouTube. I’m highlighting Bryan and Crystal’s story, not because Crystal’s Etsy store has made them rich, not because Bryan used his expertise in investing to find the next 10X meme stock, but to inspire you that you can do it too!
Bryan & Crystal: It does give a sense of relief knowing that you have all this money coming in on top of your full-time jobs. It does give you a sense of pride and you just know that you’re going to be able to pay the bills, have extra money left over to invest, and it’s just a really good feeling. We feel like our hard work is finally paying off. The sense that you’ve done it now, you’ve taken the step, you conquered the fear to start, not to be scared to get out there and try it and now that we have and we’ve seen how well it does work, there’s no going back after that. There’s no back-tracking after that. It’s too much, it’s too empowering.
Bryan and Crystal have worked their butts off and I’m so proud of them but, just like me, they are ordinary, everyday people. They have found a level of success in these ideas; in that passive income strategy, in their side hustle and in investing that maybe only 10% of the people out there find and if they can do it…if I can do it, I know you can do it as well.
I hope that inspires you to use some of what I’m sharing here to make your life better!
Back to our idea of selling a course online and I guarantee you, you’ve got a story in you and a journey that can inspire others and teach them how to do something!
I’ll show you how to get started and how to make this as passive as possible but I want to share my own experience to show you exactly how much you can expect to make from this.
I’ve made just over $60,000 selling three video courses on Teachable in less than three years with the first one here making over $30,000 and even a course launched just four months ago at nearly $6,000 so far.
I’ve averaged $3,400 a month on courses this year and none of that includes the $125,000 from self-published books on Amazon which is the same concept, just written courses instead of videos.
Your first step in getting started here is to figure out what you want to teach. It’s the biggest question I hear from people wanting to start selling courses, that they just have no idea what they could teach.
Now one way to get ideas is just by exploring sites like Udemy or Teachable, see what other people are creating courses on. A more personalized trick though is go to your internet history by clicking on the three dots in the top right of the screen, open your history and it’s going to show you every website you visit…
Maybe do this part when nobody is watching.
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But scrolling through your web history, it gives you a view into what you most enjoy and probably what you have the most experience in.
That or just looking at your hobbies or what you already do for work is going to give you a list of courses you could create.
Then you start backwards on your course, what do you want people to learn or be able to do by the end of the course? Work backwards with each step or information they need to reach that point and everything within each. That way, you know your course is going to satisfy that goal of getting people to that point.
If you’re still worried about having enough experience in the topic, plan this strategy with a YouTube channel or affiliate marketing blog like we’ll talk about next. Spend an hour a day learning about the topic or writing about I and in three months you WILL be the expert!
One tip to make this even more passive though is to automate your marketing through a freebie. With ConvertKit, the same tool we used to automate our Etsy emails, you can offer a free list or some other freebie to get people on an email list. Then use the platform to send out a series of automatic emails that sell your courses. People sign up to get that freebie and you’ve got an automated marketing strategy for passive income.
On our ranking scale for ease of getting started, this is where selling courses is more difficult. That time to plan and create your course is the downside here and I’d give it a one out of five stars.
But the tradeoff to the time it takes to get started is the amount of money you can make and how passive this is once you’ve got that momentum. Once each course is done, you might update it every couple of years but it will sell forever…five out of five stars for passive income and a solid three out of five overall!
Another great passive income idea I’ve used, actually my top income source is affiliate marketing.
Whenever you see a link to a product or a recommendation on a blog or video online, there’s a good chance there’s some type of affiliate marketing going on. When someone clicks on the link and makes a purchase, a commission is sent to the blogger.
Now that doesn’t mean the blogger or YouTuber is biased or just talking about any product. There are so many products and services out there, most with an affiliate program, that you can pick from the very best to recommend. In fact, most of the companies I work with for affiliates start with products I’m already using.
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Even better, a lot of times, you can offer special discounts that people wouldn’t get from just visiting the company’s website. It’s a win-win for your community.
And I was actually surprised looking through my income tracking because I hadn’t realized, this is my top source of income. In the 75 months since I started my blogs, I’ve made over $400,000 on affiliates and have averaged $18,000 a month this year.
Again though, I don’t want you to think you’ll start making that but look at just the first year, I was averaging $909 a month…so this is one where you can quickly get to that thousand dollars a month and build from there.
A few tips to get started on this one, try multiple platforms to see which you really like and works well for reaching as many people as possible. Affiliate marketing is a numbers game so the more people you reach, the better. TikTok is huge right now and YouTube is obviously my favorite but test out a few social media platforms to see which works best for you.
You also want to start early with building an email list. You can get people to sign up with a freebie and then just keep in touch through your list. When you get a new deal on a product or service, that list of subscribers is going to be your best resource for sales.
And this one is similar to YouTube on the level of passive income you can reach. It helps to keep creating new videos or blog posts but you’ll be able to rank those posts on Google and keep getting commissions even when you stop. One of the most popular posts on my investing blog, a post I wrote nearly three years ago, still gets thousands of visitors every month from Google.
To make this as passive as possible, focus on creating content for the platforms you can rank like a blog or YouTube. Like I showed you with the YouTube idea, if you can answer those critical questions for people, you’ll show up in search results and will get views for years after creating a post or video. That means constant monthly income versus a business model focused on other social sites like LinkedIn or Twitter where your traffic dies quickly.
Affiliate marketing is very easy to start and you can start making money immediately. You’ll sign up on what’s called affiliate networks like AWIN or CJ Affiliate here. Here you can browse for products with affiliate programs or search for the ones you already use and you’ll find all kinds of offers and discounts. You then get a link to include in blog posts, videos or right on social media. It really is that easy to get started. It makes this one a five of five stars for ease of getting started.
It might take a few months to start collecting the bigger checks but on that level of passive income, this one also comes out strong with three of five stars because you’ll be able to rank a lot of your content that will keep producing sales.
And now, a lot of the ideas on this list, yes it is going to be three to five hours or more a week, talking about your topic. Whether that’s through videos or blog posts, it can seem like a lot of work but you’re talking about something you enjoy…making it a passion project…so if you love talking about beer then how much work is it really to share that information a few hours a week?
Overall, affiliate marketing is just a great way to earn passive income doing what you enjoy so I’m giving it a four out of five stars!
Being an Amazon Affiliate is almost identical to the last strategy but I wanted to include it because it can be a great alternative.
Here instead of signing up to promote company’s products or services, you can talk about anything on Amazon and get that commission. You sign up for Amazon Associates and can browse special promotions or get links directly from the dashboard. Once you’re signed up, you’ll see this Associates bar at the top of any Amazon page. Just click to get your referral link or images to use in blog posts or videos.
Just like with affiliate marketing, if someone clicks on your link and then buys something, you get a commission on the sale. Besides having the world’s largest ecommerce store to find things to promote, Amazon will place a tracking code on their computer and anything they buy off the site in the next 24 hours…you get a commission off it! Realize how powerful that is, to be getting a commission off anything your network buys on Amazon!
Now I don’t focus on this as part of my business so only average about $50 a month from old blog posts but that doesn’t mean you can’t make a lot of money. One website I know, one set up specifically for affiliate marketing, makes over $20,000 a month by comparing different wellness products available on Amazon.
You can combine those tips for getting started in affiliate marketing here and focus on a heavy use of links. In this business, every blog post you write or every video you create, you want it to be around products or services you can compare. Those comparisons are going to give you the maximum number of products you can link to and the most money you can make.
Even more than the other ideas in our list, you don’t need to be the expert on this one. You’re trying out different products in a category and just sharing your experience.
And the best part about affiliate marketing, if you’re buying the products you review…it now becomes a business expense and you can take the price off your income to lower your taxes!
Being an Amazon Associate is even more passive than the general affiliate marketing idea because it’s so easy to get links for any product on Amazon. You can create a blog entirely around product comparisons, rank that on Google and get those consistent sales each and every month.
Making it even more passive though means focusing in on that comparison shopping idea. Create a simple website with one goal, helping people answer their questions about products in a specific topic. That way, all those visitors coming from Google, you know they’re at that stage of comparing products and they’re ready to buy. It’s just a quick click over to Amazon and you’ll get the commission.
So on our ranking scale, this is the easiest to get started with four out of five stars. All you need is a website and a sign up to Amazon Associates.
And this one comes out strong on that passive ranking as well, with four out of five stars. It’s easier to rank a comparison website on Google because you’re creating very specific blog posts that answer very specific questions of this versus that. Those posts will get traffic for as long as the products are sold and you’ll keep making money…this one gets our highest rating overall with four out of five stars!
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Now if you’ve picked your first passive income idea, congratulations! Let me know in the comments below which one you want to start first. But even if you skipped over the five passive strategies…DO NOT SKIP THESE FIVE RULES!
These five passive income rules will not only help you get started but make sure you make money no matter which strategy you use!
And first here is DO NOT think you need to be an expert to get started.
Nation, I have seen too many get excited about earning passive income, dig into a strategy and then never start. And they never start because they think they need to be THE expert or everything needs to be perfect.
You can only watch so many YouTube videos teaching you how to play golf. And at some point you just have to start playing.
Doing teaches you more than any video ever will. And that’s exactly what Bryan and Crystal have learned.
Bryan & Crystal: So in the etsy business of course it’s very nerve racking. All I could think about is what if I get a bad review…And comparing your prices to others, it’s like I just don’t feel like I can charge that much because maybe I don’t know what I’m doing as well as they do but I just learned that your time and effort and everything you put into it is just as valuable as someone elses. The biggest thing that I’ve learned is you can’t always worry about comparing yourself to everyone else out there doing it. You’ve just got to make up your mind and charge your own thing and do whatever business you’re doing the best that you can possibly do.
Next passive income rule, create multiple streams of income.
Now you probably noticed from a lot of these that they may not pay much to start. Some take longer to build that income momentum and some just pay more than others.
The best part in all of this is you really don’t have to choose just one income source. In fact, many of these work best together. You can pair a YouTube channel with a membership community and courses. You can sell a product on Etsy and teach a course on how to make it.
Bryan & Crystal: Also to the point where I want to find more things we can do here, from home and not have to worry so much about our regular Monday through Friday 9 to 5 jobs. It’s inspiring and I want to find, I would love to find other things we could do.
Not only does this multi-income approach build your cash flow faster but it makes sure you hit that one idea that is going to take you to a six-figure income!
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If you look back on my income tracking, you see I started blogging in 2014 and paired that with self-publishing. I was already writing the content, might as well turn it into a book as well. I added affiliates and sponsorships in those first few years and did really well, making five- to six-thousand a month within three years…but it wasn’t that six-figure dream yet.
It wasn’t until I really embraced that multi-income approach with courses and YouTube that I started making over ten-, twenty and eventually sixty-thousand a month.
Third passive income rule, and this is a great one for getting started, is to get freelancer help.
There’s a myth that in starting a business you have to do everything yourself.
That myth holds a lot of people back from really making the money they could.
Within any of these income ideas, there are going to be other roles outside the main money-making task. Things like graphics, website design and even accounting that trying to learn these and do them yourself is just spending valuable time you could be using to grow the business.
Instead, try to learn just enough of these other roles to know what you need. Understand graphic design well enough to know what image sizes you need for social media and an idea of what you want but then get expert help to finish it up.
So hire expert-quality freelancers as soon as you can. Hiring people on Fiverr or Upwork for $10 to $20 that will save you hours that you can spend on your business…or anything else you want.
This next income rule will go against what you hear on other channels but start monetizing your strategy from the start!
When I started my blogs, the ‘conventional wisdom’ was and still is that you should ‘just focus on building traffic and not worry about making money until later.’
Screw that! I was there to make money and wanted to start doing that as soon as possible.
Did I also try to build the business and grow traffic? Of course. I worked my butt off writing and learning how to grow a blog but you better believe, central to every article I posted was, “How does this fit into how the blog makes money?”
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And it’s why I’m still here when all those others that followed the advice and waited to monetize, when they got frustrated because they weren’t making enough money and gave up. I was able to use that first check for $56.16 from Amazon to motivate me to keep going. That check turned into $142 the next month and $190…and just kept growing from there.
Learn how your business makes money and start doing it on day one!
This next rule is the most important because to have that money rolling in automatically, you have to NOT be doing the work, you have to automate as much of it as possible to make it passive income.
You can automate or get freelancers to help with any part of your business but where most people go wrong is they try to do it all at once. Instead, start small and outsource pieces of the business. Start with the most routine tasks, the things like formatting and uploading a blog post or editing a video. You can find freelancers to take these tasks off your schedule for less than half the cost of your time.
Click through here to search for these tasks and others on Fiverr.
Every six months or a year, review every task and process in the business. List out everything you do and then go through and review how you’ve gotten faster or better at doing each. This way, you’ll be able to see not only those tasks you can outsource to make the business more passive but also which are taking longer than they should and can be improved.