Passive Income Is Easy
Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash
Hi there, dear reader! One of the best ways to make money is through passive income. Imagine, you can make money while you sleep, eat, or enjoy family time. That would be the best, right? In this post I will share some ideas of how to set up your passive income sources which will definitely help you on your path to financial freedom.
The common ideas that come to mind are to rent a property or sell stuff online but let’s focus on something else as not everyone owns a property they can rent out and selling stuff online is a pretty complex topic that we might explore some other day. Today I want to focus on some practical ways to make passive income and hopefully you can pick something you like and will start doing it today!
YouTube
Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash
The first option is YouTube. The good part about YouTube is that you can start without any investments, you can literally create an account in less than 5 minutes, and believe me the hardest part of creating a passive income through YouTube is just getting started, creating the channel and committing yourself to actually doing it. After that, you can monetize almost anything with YouTube, there are some requirements though. Your channel needs to have at least 1,000 subscribers and at least 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months. If your content is created with quality and passion then it won’t be a problem to hit those numbers. Maybe you know how to cook, maybe you are good at teaching people stuff like mathematics, programming, or doing dance moves. You can start making videos about it and when someone types in “How to start in programming” and your video gets watched you get paid through ads that can be set up to be shown before or during the video. Once you make the video and rank it properly, it can stay there for years while earning you money even when you sleep. There are plenty of channels that can teach you how to set up a channel, or properly rank a video, and even how to create a quality thumbnail. The best part is it costs you nothing. As it was said before the hardest part is actually committing yourself and starting out.
Online Store
Photo by Mike Petrucci on Unsplash
The second option on the list is to open a dropship store. The idea is simple: you set up an online store, find products from Aliexpress or Amazon, list them on your site, and whenever someone buys the product from your store, you go to the seller's website and buy the item with the money the customer paid you. Then simply use the name, number and address to order the item to their home. To make it easier to start, search for tutorials on shopify and dropshipping on YouTube. As far as basics go, they are as follows: you set up an online store with Shopify, Wordpress with WooCommerce, or SquareSpace. Use professionally looking templates that come with each of the listed platforms. Pick a niche product that is not too broad, i.e. snowboarding and skiing accessories, and find the product on sites like Aliexpress or Amazon. Check how much it costs and set the price on your site high enough, so you get a profit from each sold product. After that, you need to market your site. You can set up Facebook or Google Ads campaigns to target people who love winter activities, or you can message some Instagram influencers that have a following around winter sports and even send them one of your products for free, so they can take a photo with it and either pay them to promote your store or maybe offer them to split the sales in the next month or so.
Online Publication
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
Moving on to the next option which is creating and selling audio books, e-books or online courses. If you are an expert in something: cooking, gardening, skiing or just telling jokes you can probably write an e-book or an online course about it. You would be surprised how many online courses or online books there are. Once again, just pick a topic you are an expert in and you will definitely see success. I’ve recently bought an online book on how to manage my time during the day. I bought it so I can learn it and make a better result of my schedule. When I purchased the book, the author got paid a few dollars and probably a hundred more people bought the book the same day. The author could have been eating, sleeping or maybe on a vacation but they still got paid for something they created only once. You can do the same. After you write a book do not forget to create an eye-catching cover and you are ready to upload it on several different sites including Amazon Kindle. The next step is to market the book because people won't be able to find it as there are hundreds of new books getting uploaded every single day. If you do not want to market it you can contact some affiliate marketers and offer them to market your book for a percentage of each book they sell. You can also find a book reviewing YouTube channel and give them a book for free and if they like it they can review it with their audience.
Affiliate Marketing
Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash
The last option for this post will be affiliate marketing. It is the practice of partnering with a company, essentially becoming their affiliate, to receive a commission on a product. If you have a site, a blog, a YouTube channel, a Facebook page or an Instagram account then you can use it to become an affiliate marketer. In this kind of passive income, you do not have to create any book, product or course, you simply have to connect the creator of the product with the right audience. In short you market products for other companies. Remember an e-book advertising strategy when you give it for free to a book reviewing YouTube channel and they advertise it in return? So it is the same thing but in this case you are advertising someone else’s products. The typical commission rate is anywhere from about 5-25% depending on the niche and competition of the product. I would highly recommend looking at this last passive income option as a supplemental strategy to your YouTube channel or blog.
That is it for this time. Those are just some of the ways you can create passive income for yourself. They of course require hard work and patience that will include a significant learning curve. So do not expect to jump in and start earning money from day one, put in some hard work and it will make money in 6-12 months. Passive income needs some time before it kicks into gear, so do not lose hope and it is totally normal if you do not see any results, keep going and keep trying.
