Making a Blog a Passive Income Investment
This is a basic introduction to making money blogging and create a passive income investment by doing so. There are many other ways to generate income but these are the most popular. Please like and share.
The other day I was quite surprised to see a “financial advisor” give some of the worse advice ON TV that I have ever seen. She was telling people to get extra jobs to create a “Passive income investment” to generate wealth. I could not believe she was serious and people were actually following her advice and getting extra jobs to pay off bills and to earn extra money to make ends meet. I am not in any way a financial advisor but I DO understand how to make your money work for you.
First and foremost we have all heard “It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep” but there needs to be an addition to that statement. “It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep AND WHAT YOU INVEST.”
The first thing I can tell you is that “passive income” is NOT going out and working yourself to death to make extra money. That’s simply EXTRA income and I can guarantee you that if you think that’s the way to gain wealth you absolutely can, but it will take a lifetime and you better be willing to surrender all of your relationships, your health, and your most valuable assets: your time and your energy.
I believe one of our responsibilities when we have been blessed, is to share our knowledge with others. I strongly believe in paying it forward. Allow me to share a bit of information with you to gain wealth that is ACTUALLY “passive income.” For this case, I’ll use the benefits of a blog or website.
I know several people who have excellent content and they use Facebook to garner audience and response and while they do a GREAT job of doing that, they are leaving a LOT of money on the table. First and foremost because they are giving it away to Facebook and they are not getting an ROI (Return on their investment) of TIME and ENERGY. Here is a better way to do it if you have a large following on Facebook. Click NEXT below to see the next segment
Create a Blog or Vlog Instead …
Giving your best compelling long-form posts away on social media certainly has a return on the investment. Your fans may like it, share it or comment on it. But you are missing two amazing assets. You don’t have their email address and you are not gaining any income from it. Posting on Facebook actually has a limited return. Your posts are NOT getting to your entire friend’s list because Facebook wants you to pay to reach your entire list with Facebook ads.
Even when people share your posts, all of THEIR friends are not seeing your posts either but what’s worse is Facebook has no way for you to monetize your content because they want YOU to pay THEM. By having your own site or blog, you can earn a great deal of money from Google Adsense which is known as “affiliate income.”
Let me be honest, it’s going to take about a year of posting to see good returns on a blog. It’s not a get-rich-quick venture but if done right it can last many years and give you residual earnings. You may make $100 after about a year of posting, maybe more. I have a good average for Radio Facts but the more visitors you get the more you make. Blogging is all about PPC (Pay Per Click) when it comes to Google Adsense but you also make money per 1000 visitors even if they don’t click. When I started off, I was making about $30 a month with Radio Facts. Since that time, my earnings have escalated tremendously.
My most earnings came when I earned $1200 IN ONE DAY when I had a really hot post on the site about racism. There are journalists, bloggers and sites out there earning as much as $8000 and MORE A DAY with AdSense and other affiliate marketing programs but AdSense is by far the most popular and the most used. Know that if you are posting compelling content on Facebook that’s getting a lot of responses you are leaving money on the table.
BTW, a “Vlog” is the same as a blog but a video version. Vlogs are actually more profitable. I will go into detail about Vlogging in the follow-up article. Click NEXT below to see the next segment
Write eBooks as a Passive Income Investment
I’ve written several eBooks over the years and it’s really not that hard. You can literally take some of your content from your blog that has consistency (related to one subject) and create an ebook with plugins like Anthologize. You can formulate the eBook, get a proofreader/editor off of FIVERR and have them formulate the ebook. Hire a graphic designer off of FIVERR for a reasonable price and create an eBook from compelling content you have already written over a one or two year period. It would be very difficult to do that with Facebook. Click NEXT below to see the next segment
Sell Posts
Radio Facts is considered a “Micro-Influencer” site because we are niche and very engaging for readers. Micro-influencers are HUGE right now because major influencer site audiences are not as engaged and advertisers have realized they have wasted a lot of money on those sites. If you are posting reviews for restaurants on social media, for example, that same content can go on a website or blog and advertisers will approach YOU about running banners or posts, depending on the quality of your site. Sure advertisers approach people about mentioning a product on social media if they have a great following, but you still don’t have the ability to earn extra income with banners.
I was having a conversation with a girl at a bar the other day who knows all the hot spots in the San Fernando Valley, from restaurants to bars to music spots. I told her she should think about doing a blog because advertisers would be thrilled to get her to review their products and she could easily relegate herself as an expert. In addition, because she has a niche “Hot spots in the San Fernando Valley” instead of something much more competitive and WAY too broad like “Hot Spots in LA” she could grow her site quickly and be a “Micro influencer” Click NEXT below to see the next segment
Use Adsense as a Passive Income Investment
“Passive income” is not about working yourself to death, it’s about waking up in the morning and seeing a text on your phone that says “A direct deposit has been made to your account” and you didn’t expect it. Not only is that the BEST feeling in the world and a GREAT way to start your day, but it’s also making money while you sleep. Having a website or a blog for your compelling content will open the door for you to run AdSense ads. As stated at the start of this article, it will take a minute to get your money rolling in but it will happen sooner if you are running a lot of great content that is garnering a lot of visits or goes viral. Blogging is not a game, it’s a job. So make sure you chose to have a blog about something that you are REALLY interested in. If you are interested in it, there’s a good chance others are too. Click NEXT below to see the next segment
Get Email Addresses
Social media nets have shut down your ability to get email addresses from your friends. This is intentional. This is so that the ONLY way that you can reach them is to use the middleman (social media) but when you also think about the fact that your posts are only reaching a small segment of the people on your friends list AND you can only reach more people by spending a LOT of time AND money on social media, you have to ask yourself if it’s worth it ESPECIALLY when you could develop a mailing list with those email addresses and have that same compelling content you are posting on a social media platform go to your ENTIRE list for a small monthly fee. In addition, you have the added benefit of your site being indexed by Google. Click NEXT below to see the next segment
Relegate Yourself as an Expert
I’ve been asked to speak at major events, to make TV appearances and to give my opinion on major sites. This is a great passive income investment because it elevates your brand. Who would go on TV and promote their Facebook page? A LOT of people do and that’s a not giving them the true benefit of brand building because they don’t have their email addresses. It’s better to promote your site and to make sure you have a popup to gather email addresses. In the process of making appearances, your earnings will start to go up because once people see you as an expert and they will request you. Keep in mind, Email addresses are MORE valuable than social media friends. If you have to, find a way to promote both. Click NEXT below to see the next segment
Make Appearances
When you are invited to cover events or make appearances GO FOR IT but posting the reviews on social media is OK but again, you are leaving money on the table. If you ever read sites or blogs and you see references to articles, it is RARE that the link is to a FaceBook page or article. It’s usually to a site. Your site is your brand NOT your social media page. Those links back to your site help to build your audience and can create links to your AdSense ads and gather more email addresses. Click NEXT below to see the next segment
Guest Post
A lot of major blogs like Huffington Post and others LOVE guests posts. This can work wonders for your brand to link BACK to your site. I know people who guest post on these sites and they don’t have their own sites to link back to. I look at this as a TOTAL waste of time, energy and money. The purpose of guest posting is for brand building. Have you ever noticed celebrities do the rounds in media when they are promoting a book, album or a new movie? You are always selling your brand and product and if you are just GIVING your skills away then you are merely building someone ELSE’s brand. Click NEXT below to see the next segment
YouTube Channel as a Passive Income Investment
If you like doing vides post on YouTube and monetize again with AdSense. I’ve seen people go viral on Facebook with videos that get MILLIONS of views that are simply shared over and over. There is a benefit to that but it’s rare that it’s monetized like when posting the video on YouTube FIRST, which means every time someone clicks on that video you get a credit on Youtube and you can earn money.
Also once you post it on YouTube you can make the video exclusive to you. People can share it all day but they can’t monetize it because they don’t own it. The more they share your video the more clicks YOU get. If they steal your video and monetize it as their own, they will get a penalty from YouTube but if you post it on FaceBook you can’t monetize it. Click NEXT below to see the next segment
Podcasting as a Passive Income Investment
Podcasting is HUGE. I saw this trend coming several years ago and didn’t stick with it. At the time, there was no way to monetize it because it was too new but I had 1.3 million downloads. You have to be dedicated to consistency with Podcasts otherwise, you will not be successful.
They do take time but they can be profitable because advertisers are everywhere now and they see the value. If you have something compelling to say, podcasting can be profitable for you. Click NEXT below to see the next segment
Review Product
If you are currently reviewing music or movies on Facebook the most that you will get is an invite to review more things. There are MANY people who have a LOT more friends on their list than you do who the advertisers will approach about saying something about their products on their socials. But if you have a site or a blog you can sell banner ads or the advertisers will come to you to run banners.
Depending on the size of your site you can charge anywhere from $500 to $10,000 or MORE an ad. Steer clear of middlemen like agencies who come at you to offering pennies on the dollar to run banners on ads. I get bombarded with them. They are making a bulk of the money and that does you no good. Ask them who the ad is for when they approach you if they tell you, and they usually won’t, you can multiply what they are willing to pay you by multiples. They are hired to get as many sites as possible to run the ad. I don’t work with any agencies. Click NEXT below to see the next segment
Barter
Barters can come in very handy when it comes to saving money. For example, if you are doing a niche blog about restaurants in your area and one of them is your favorite you can offer to run an ad for free or discounted food for your meetings etc. The bigger your site is the greater your opportunity. Click NEXT below to see the next segment
USE IMAGE SERVICE
You can earn affiliate income from promoting image sites but the more IMPORTANT point here is that Attorneys and agencies are currently TROLLING all the blogs and sites and suing if you are using images that you don’t have permission to use.
If you review movies, for example, the studios don’t usually have a problem with you reviewing their product and using THEIR images from the movie for free and whatever is emailed to you in the form of a promotion from a major company gives you wiggle room to use the images but if you are posting random pictures of celebrities from Google images, you will most likely get sued or at least a nasty and looming threat where they STILL want thousands as they threaten to take you to court.
12 REASONS YOU SHOULD NEVER HIRE FRIENDS
I have had it happen to me and know a lot of other sites who have had to pay penalties as much as $10,000 for using a crappy image for a story. It’s better to just pay for images to avoid this. I may cost you 3k a year but that’s a LOT better than paying $10k 20 times for using someone else’s images. I recommend sites like Shutterstock
How I will make passive income with this post:
- Create an ebook with an extended version
- Adsense ads
- Affiliate links
- Shares and Likes (generate more traffic)
- Viewers who look at the links to other posts (increasing chance to earn income) and visits to the site.
- … and more