I literally had no money when I got into the online business world. I thought it would be SO COOL if I could even make $100 per month online to pay for things like:
- Beer
- Beer
- Pizza
- Ramen
- Beer
Haha, you guessed it! I was in college.
But, it wasn’t just making $100 online. I wanted to earn passive income, like I read about in the bestselling book, Rich Dad Poor Dad.
I didn’t want to have to trade my time for money like everyone else I knew. I just wanted money to flow into my bank account with little to no effort.
At first, it seems like a myth, or worse, a scam. But, I’m happy to share with you that it’s actually true. You CAN earn passive income online even when you have no money to start with.
With this article, I’m going to show you HOW. No bullshit. Just straight golden information that you can use to earn passive income.
I’ve used many of these strategies myself to build up a lifestyle where I no longer have to work every day for a paycheck. It took me a few years, but I’m finally there.
The one thing I do need to share with you before we get started is a word of caution. Listen up!
As Tony Robbins says, we tend to follow through with things when we’re in the right emotional state. It’s easy to get all jazzed up about starting an online business on a Friday night, and then take no action for the rest of the weekend.
Laziness is the natural human state. If you actually want to transform your life, break out from the pack, and escape the rat race, you’re going to have to get very serious about learning as much as possible on this topic.
What’s more, you gotta take a ton of action. You gotta try things out. Not everything’s going to work out, but if you keep at it, you’ll get there.
1. Create Assets that Create Income
That’s a bit confusing. What are “assets” and how do they actually produce income?
I’ll give you a few examples of the assets that I’m referring to:
- Blog Articles
- Ebooks
- YouTube Videos
- Online Courses
- Social Media Accounts
- Website themes
- WordPress Plugins
- Software
- Physical products
- And more.
Since you don’t have any money, you’ll be using your time to create assets that create tiny or large streams of income.
To give you an example, in 2016, I self-published my very first book, which is available on Kindle, Paperback (CreateSpace), and Audible.
This book continues to earn me income every single month. I took the time to create it once and it continues to deposit royalties into my bank account!
The book that I wrote in 2016 is earning me passive income. I’m not working to sell individual books to readers. It’s all automated.
As another example, there are blog articles that I’ve written in 2012 that continue to earn me money in the form of advertising and affiliate income.
Every single YouTube video, blog post, and podcast is a mini-product with earning potential.
If you want to begin to earn passive income online, you need to begin investing your time in creating evergreen content that can be monetized and continue to earn you income years later.
2. Start Your Passive Income Home Base
Now that we’ve identified a few of the assets that you can use to earn passive income, I want you to narrow in on a “home base” that will be at the center of all of your activity.
Usually, this is going to be some kind of a website, but it could also be an Instagram account or YouTube channel.
If I were you, I’d start a blog and make this your home base. A blog becomes extremely valuable overtime as you continue to add content to your archives.
There are a few reasons for this.
- You can monetize a blog in multiple ways
- A blog gives you expert level credibility
- You only need $4 per month to run one
- It’s easy to re-purpose content. A few blog posts can turn into a book, a course, or even a talk.
In the next section, I’m going to be talking a little bit about SEO and automating your marketing. Search engines LOVE blogs about particular topics because they’re authoritative sources of content that are updated regularly.
This home base is where you’ll begin to initially earn passive income. As you start earning more and more money, you can branch out into other areas like real estate investing, ecommerce, and the stock market.
I’m going to hook you up with my own hosting company, which is great for hosting a WordPress blog.
You can use this link to check them out.
I’ve been with them since the beginning of my own online journey in 2012. I think you’ll love them!
3. Use automation to eliminate work
The key for earning massive amounts of passive income is to become the king of automation.
Let me explain.
We all put work into accomplishing tasks. Let’s say that you just created a brand new YouTube video. You put work into creating the video, and you’re broadcasting it regularly on social media.
It takes time for you to promote that YouTube video, right?
What if you could get FREE traffic on a continual basis without having to do ANYTHING.
Well friend, that’s exactly why you should learn the ins and outs of SEO. I have videos that I put out on my main channel that continue to earn me advertising income because they’re ranked well in the YouTube search engine.
Google uses algorithms to automatically determine which content they should show their users. You can reverse engineer this algorithm and make it work to your advantage.
This is why a kid who was 21 could grow a blog to over one million hits when he didn’t have any help driving traffic or getting subscribers.
I used the power of automation to drive far more traffic than I could myself to the blog.
3. Re-Invest Your Profits Right Away
It’s really tempting to just pocket any money that you make right away. Don’t do that.
Even if you’re only earning $100 in passive income per month, re-invest that money to create even more passive income. You’ll thank me later.
There are a lot of ways that you can re-invest the money. Here are a few:
- Buy Facebook ads to drive traffic to your product
- Hire a virtual assistant to automate the process even more.
- Purchase software that will increase automation or profits. Example: Leadpages. Buffer. OptinMonster.
There are thousands, if not millions of entrepreneurs who have started out just where you are now. They had no money, or a very tight budget.
The only way that you grow your resources is to continue to re-invest in your business and keep working hard.
Your hard work will go into the creation of more assets that will earn you money. Your profits will be driven back into the business to fuel the development of new products and getting the word out about them.
How cool would it be to be able to spend $5,000 per month on Facebook ads. Think about how much extra revenue that would generate!
It would all be passive too, because you don’t need to be a big advertisement agency to run Facebook ads. It’s all self-serve.
4. Special Strategy: Learn Technical Skills
I probably wouldn’t have included this in my list a few years ago, but now a days there are lots of kids in college who know how to program.
Maybe you’re familiar with Ruby on Rails, PHP, Swift, Objective C, Java, or know how to make apps. This gives you a HUGE leg up on everyone else out there.
You can use these skills to code apps, games, or tools that you can sell in marketplaces like Themeforest. You can also sell them on your own website.
It’s extremely profitable to create a premium WordPress plugin that has rich functionality and does a specific job. The same can be said of apps for other platforms, like Shopify.
Even if you don’t know how to code, you can also earn passive income from other skills, like Photoshop, InDesign, and more. You can create logos, website layouts, and graphics that can be purchased in marketplaces online.
It’s tempting to simply trade your skills for money and work on coding or design projects, but try to create “assets” that can be bought without you being a part of the transaction.
Where to Go From Here?
Do you remember the movie, Batman Begins? I love it! Also, who can forget the Dark Knight?
What I loved about Batman Begins was how Bruce’s mentor trained him in the ways of martial arts and gave him a completely different mindset to fight crime.
At first, Bruce Wayne had lost his way. He was excited and set out on a path to fight crime. But, eventually he lost himself and didn’t feel the same sense of purpose. He was just fighting criminals with no real strategy.
When he finally connected with a mentor, he became Batman. He needed someone who was wiser and more capable to show him the way.
Online business is very similar. You’re going to struggle a lot. You’re probably going to end up buying books or products that are shitty. It’s going to take you a while to figure out how all of this works.
I want to save you from all that headache. I want to lead the way so that you can go out there and achieve your ambitions.
That’s my goal with this blog and all of the content that I put out. If you’d like to join me, you can subscribe to my email newsletter and connect!