Earning passive income online refers to any income you earn without trading time for money or actively trying to earn it.
That might be the earnings from a rental property which you receive on a monthly basis. You’ve made the deal once and can now earn recurring income (which is even sweeter than a one-time payment).
It could be the books you sell on Amazon while you sleep. You can then wake up, check your earnings report, and see you made a few bucks without having to be in front of the computer or do anything else to market the products.
It could be the affiliate earnings from your blog if you’ve written detailed reviews of your favorite products, managed to rank them high on Google, and now earn a commission every time someone makes a purchase through your links.
Making passive income online is one of those things that sound like a dream to newbies in business. But which are the foundation of the career of those entrepreneurs who’ve done a lot of work, in the beginning, to create smart systems, remove themselves from the day to day work process, and continue bringing in money passively.
While I gave real estate as an example and investing is yet another venture that can turn into passive income, I won’t be focusing on these in this guide to earning passive income online.
In fact, I recently created a FREE course covering what passive income is together with how to start earning it online and through your blog.
Enroll in The Passive Income Blog Boss now.
The Passive Income Blog Boss is your guide to earning passive income online and from your blog. That means you’ll learn why blogging is a must and how a powerful platform can turn into the foundation of your online business.
You’ll see how to actually start a blog like that, make it look professional and start building your online brand along with it.
After that, I’ll share with you the 4 main passive income streams you can have from your money-making blog.
Not all might be your thing, but one is enough to allow you to start making money online, turn that into passive income, and feel more financially stable than ever.
For the purpose of this guide on passive income online, though, I’ll stick to the basics. Let’s see what makes passive income so great and how it works exactly. I believe that will motivate you to also take the free course and earn your first dollars online.
Why Making Passive Income Online is Great
Here’s why passive income online is absolutely great and why it’s worth doing the hard work in order to start earning it:
- There are no limits to how much you can earn;
- You can always add another passive income stream;
- You’ll literally make money while you sleep;
- Time is more valuable than money, and passive income allows you to take your time back while earning more;
- Earning from your blog through one of the 4 ways you’ll see in the free course allows you to sleep peacefully at night knowing you’ll get paid;
- You can be anywhere and still receive and spend your blog income;
- While you are the one taking all the responsibility, it also means you don’t have to answer to a boss;
- This gives you the confidence to work on new projects and diversify your income;
- Passive income is the most enjoyable way to retire young.
Sounds amazing, right? That’s exactly what it is.
However, while all that may seem easy, the initial phase isn’t.
To earn passive income online, you do the hard work now and reap the benefits for years to come (or for the rest of your life if you’ve implemented the right systems).
Let’s talk about the basic characteristics of passive income and the not so pretty side of earning it:
The Basics of Passive Income
Passive income online is great for the reasons you just saw.
However, it’s also a challenge. Here’s why:
It doesn’t happen overnight.
There’s no shortcut to happiness in the digital world.
It took me more years than it was necessary to turn Let’s Reach Success into an authoritative site, to double my prices for sponsored posts, and to start making over $4,000/month online.
But your journey doesn’t have to be that long if you’re smart about it.
However, it can’t be too short either.
Here’s the important thing: making mistakes online and not earning a ton of money with your first online business idea (or the first few) is actually a good thing.
It teaches you how the market works, you see what your talents are and learn how to use them.
You understand the principles of blogging and making money online that no one talks about.
You also make connections with other site owners, do your research, and are better prepared for your next idea.
If you’re in a rush to earn passive income online in a few weeks, this guide might not be for you.
While it’s possible by paying for ads in order to bring traffic to your site, and being too salesy with your blog posts, that won’t work for long.
The point of The Passive Income Blog Boss and this guide is to give you monetization strategies that will help you be free from the 9 to 5 and own your time. That requires a system that works for years and is created through hard work.
Anyone can earn passive income.
Here’s the good news.
Whatever your background is, you can make money online without actually being behind the screen.
You don’t need to know the ‘how’ just yet, but you do need to start your own blog in a niche you’re passionate about and see where that takes you.
Check out my free guide How to Start a Profitable Blog
You can start with almost no money.
A few dollars monthly (that you’ll pay to a hosting company of your choice to have your blog up and running) is the first expense for your online business. But it can also be the only one.
Check out my list of business expenses, for instance, to see how much it costs to start a website.
I remember when I first created the self-hosted version of Let’s Reach Success with Bluehost – one of the most popular hosting providers who are also pretty affordable.
There’s nothing else I needed till recently when the site grew and I needed a host that offered optimized hosting for WordPress site, got a premium theme for a more professional design, paid for Teaachable (the platform my free courses are hosted on), and more.
But you don’t need all that.
The point is to choose your topic and monetization method, start a site and begin growing it, publishing content, and connecting with others.
It’s hard to make something 100% passive.
Truth is, you’ll always need to invest a few hours weekly or monthly or have someone do it for you in order to make sure you keep your passive income online stream.
That’s simply managing the system you’ve already created. But it’s a must as you need to ensure everything works, reports are showing steady income, what all your customers are seeing is up to date, etc.
How Passive Income Online Works
There are so many ways to earn passive income online and that’s one of the things I just love about the Internet and the time we live in.
Some people build many smalls sites, each covering one topic, and once they bring traffic to them, they monetize them with ads or add affiliate links.
These are called niche sites and require proper keyword research to make sure the keyword you’re targeting is profitable but there aren’t many competitors, so you can rank high.
Then, Google does its job and if your content is good enough, in a few months it can rank on one of the top positions.
I know people who own hundreds of these and earn a few hundred or thousand bucks from each site on a monthly basis.
It took a ton of time to create each, but now they just need to update them with a few clicks once a month or so.
That’s a pretty decent passive income online right there.
Those who aren’t that strategic but are content creators by heart, like me, prefer to create their own products. Be it an eBook or an online course, sometimes all you need to do is upload the digital product to a platform like Amazon or Teachable and allow readers or students to find you.
Because these platforms are already huge, you have a good chance of being found and making a sale here and there.
Once you get better at promoting your products to the right people, leverage social media and join other platforms too, you can begin making $1,000/month from selling your products.
What better motivation to go ahead and create another thing to sell?!
When talking about making money online passively, remember that:
You need to provide value.
You might offer a product or service, the content on your blog, or else. Whatever that is, it must be useful to the person engaging with it.
Providing value is the core of any online business venture.
You should respect the fact that people are paying you their money and make sure they get the best deal in return.
It takes some hustle.
Some people don’t want this bad enough, so they aren’t ready to hustle.
And by hustle, I mean spending tens of hours in front of your laptop, testing plugins in WordPress, reading tips from successful bloggers in your niche, writing free content, learning how to use tools to automate some processes, dealing with accounting so your income can be legal, and so much more.
Most people are complainers and that’s why they don’t become their own bosses.
They look at the bloggers earning $10K/month online and from home and wonder how it’s done.
Yet, when they are presented with the right steps, they don’t take action upon them.
Instead, they make excuses such as not having the time, experience, skills, or else. So they leave it behind and go back to living a life where passive income online is a distant dream.
The simple answer to anyone’s concerns and insecurities about this is that it takes some hustle and there’s no way around it.
To be honest, that’s the part of it I loved the most. It’s challenging, it helps you build something out of nothing, and it makes everything else that happens from here on worth it.
First Steps to Becoming Your Own Boss
How to Start a Profitable Blog– This step-by-step guide to starting a blog is a must for everyone who wants to start earning online and become self-employed. Having your own blog is the first step to selling products, making money from affiliate marketing, building a name for yourself, getting traffic and monetizing that attention.
Blog to Biz System – This is the proven methodology I teach to go from not knowing anything about blogging or having a hobby blog, to turning this into an epic 5-figure business.
Blogging Resources – To build a powerful site that turns visitors into buyers and monetize it well, you will need the right tools. In my Blogging Resources page, I’ve gathered the best of the best and the exact tools I’ve used to grow Let’s Reach Success and be able to make a full-time living as a location independent freelance writer.
My Monthly Income Reports – If you’re curious how bloggers make a living online, check out my income reports. I publish these monthly and share all the numbers together with the lessons I learned and the new things I’m working on.
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing – If you’re not earning money through affiliate marketing, then you are leaving money on the table. This step-by-step affiliate marketing strategy course shows you how to increase your affiliate income and make more money blogging. It’s by Michelle from Making Sense of Cents who went from $0 in affiliate income to over $50,000 per month (and also the first online course I’ve ever taken).
How to Save $100K by Age 25, Sell Everything, Quit Your Job and Travel The World
How I Became a Location Independent Freelance Writer – In this post, I outline the exact steps from shifting my mindset back when I didn’t believe I could be making any money online to finding my first client, making my first $1,000/month, moving to another country and becoming location independent.
The Blog Sponsorship Boss – your one-stop shop for anything related to making money with sponsored content as a blogger (from making your site irresistible to brands and joining marketplaces that offer sponsored opportunities, to reaching out to brands yourself, negotiating your rates, and turning this into a regular income). This course is a result of years of experience in the sponsored blogging niche and makings tens of thousands of dollars from sponsorships with just 1 blog. If I can do it, you can do it too.
Why Most People Don’t Earn Passive Income Online
Why only a small percent of all those who want to become self-employed, earn passive income online and live the laptop lifestyle succeed?
Because it takes weeks, months or years to see the first money coming it.
Because it takes learning, researching, developing skills, getting feedback, making mistakes and learning from them, losing hope and finding it again, testing many ideas until one works best, dealing with aspects you might not like, and more – all this never ends.
You just learn to love it and get better at seeing what doesn’t work and skipping it, and working smarter rather than harder.
Truth is, most people are lazy.
The idea of writing 100 posts on a certain topic before you see some steady traffic from Google doesn’t appeal to them. But that’s what it takes to create a successful blog, believe it or not.
The idea of starting 5 startups that fail and letting hundreds of hours of hard work go away, before you succeed with the next project you begin working on, isn’t something they’re willing to do.
The idea of cutting their expenses to the bare minimum, quitting their regular job and living in uncertainty for a few months while starting an online business from scratch, isn’t something they’d try.
The thought of waking up early every morning, dedicating every free hour in the evening and their whole weekends for a few months so that they can start doing their work remotely and break free from the system, or just start a business on the side, sounds overwhelming.
These people prefer to keep living their current life because it’s easier. Otherwise, there’s change and risk involved. And that scares them.
These are also the people who read about entrepreneurs, social media influencers, digital nomads and best-selling authors and wonder how they got there.
Because the things I listed above, are exactly what it really takes to start a profitable business, make passive income online and let it change your life and the life of your customers.
So, back to making passive income online through blogging. Now that you know what passive income is and how it works, together with its challenges, let’s move onto the ways to earn it.
Enroll in The Passive Income Blog Boss for free now.
