One of the dreams of online entrepreneurship / business is to generate a source of passive (ideally recurring) income. What does “Passive Income” mean? For the purpose of this article, I’ll define it as a mechanism by which income is generated with minimal ongoing effort from the business owner. This means where you may have to put in some up front effort but don’t need to put much in to make each additional sale.
I don’t think there is any such thing as totally passive income. When you have customers or users, there is usually some overhead for supporting sales either directly e.g. answering questions that no one else can, or indirectly, in keeping the services you are offering running and maintained, refreshing content and so on.
Not wishing to put too much cold water on the topic, let’s get into what are some of the key means for making passive income if you have a vlog or blog.
- Affiliate Links
- Advertising
- Courses
- eBooks
- Sponsorships
Each of these methods warrants additional posts so I’ll keep the outline brief in this article.
Affiliate Links
Q) What are they?
A) Links to products embedded or promoted in your vlog/blog content that if the viewer clicks through and buys, you can earn some money for the referral. This can range from a few cents on a $5 book through to hundreds of dollars on an expensive purchase e.g. a sign up for an expensive eCommerce service. Amazon have a great affiliate program for pretty much any item you can buy on their site.
Recommended further reading: Affiliate Marketing: The Beginner’s Step by Step Guide To Making Money Online with Affiliate Marketing – a no nonsense short guide by Kevin Ulaner.
Advertising
Q) What is it?
A) Any form of advertisement embedded in your vlog/blog for a good or service. This is different to affiliate links in so far as you are not being paid just if a viewer buys the advertised service but also if they view the ad. The ad revenue per view is generally very small and you will need many hundreds if not thousands of views and clicks of the ads to earn significant money. Generally the ads are served by companies like Google and Microsoft. As your vlog/blog gets more viewers/popular, this form of advertising can get quite lucrative.
Recommended further reading: Google AdSense Secrets 6.0: What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense – by New York Times Best-Selling Author Joel Comm
Courses
Q) What are they?
A) Educational content generated by you the vlogger/blogger that is sold to users for a fee. Some slight twists on this are memberships to private groups – which you might consider a separate mechanism but are often linked to course content. The nice thing about courses are that once you have written them, you can sell them many times. The are fairly passive in terms of touch, especially if you do not need to provide a live element to the course, although course content may need to be refreshed from time to time. Courses can be lucrative, you can basically charge what the customers are willing to pay for them. Discounts can make them seem more attractive as can other techniques like limited time to sign-up/waitlists and lots of other classic sales techniques. A small twist is selling / using your credibility to promote someone else’s course for an affiliate fee
Recommended further reading: 7 steps to Creating, Promoting & Profiting from Online Courses – by David Siteman Garland, creator of The Rise To The Top & Create Awesome Online Courses
eBooks
Q) What are they?
A) Essentially self published books sold for reading on eReaders. You don’t necessarily need to write War and Peace, these books can be short pamphlets or presentation decks. You can use the offer of a free eBook as a hook to get people to sign-up for your mailing list (which you can then market to) or get them to pay for valuable insight and knowledge/expertise that you have. A nice twist is you can, with a bit of planning, take the articles in your blog and use them as a framework for an eBook… similar to syndication of a novel in a newspaper.
Recommended further reading: Kindle Bestseller Publishing: Publish a #1 Bestseller in the next 30 Days! – The Proven 4-Week Formula to go from Zero to Bestseller as a first-time Author! – a best selling guide by Gundi Gabrielle
Sponsorship
Q) What is it?
A) As you get more of an audience or gain more credibility in your particular area of vlogging/blogging, other companies may approach you to ask you to endorse them or their products/services. This can lead to additional income although you are putting your credibility on the line with your audience if you promote a company/product that does not work or does not chime with your audience.
Clearly lots of food for thought and a few more in-depth articles due on the above and other ways to make money from your vlog/blog. Watch this space!
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