When I started blogging, my hero and inspiration was Pat Flynn. I still love his work, but I don’t follow him as closely these days.
I like him because he was upfront about how hard it is to make a living with websites, digital products, and blogging. He was also very open about how much money he made/makes.
The reason I have a hard time following Pat today is that he now makes over a million dollars a year ($150,000+ for the month March of 2016). He deserves every penny, but it is harder to relate to him at that scale of income.
To help if you are just getting started, here are three types of online income I recommend. Each includes links to people who are doing them well.
Top 3 Types of Online Income:
Affiliates
Affiliates are when you sell other people’s products. It sounds like advertising, but it is more than that. With advertisement, people pay per viewer or as a sponsorship or whatever. With affiliates, it is like working on commission.
For example, if someone buys hosting through my affiliate link (this is an affiliate link), I make $65.
Some people, like Pat Flynn (mentioned above), make the majority of their money off of affiliate sales. They do this through giving away educational posts, videos, and podcasts related to the things that they are affiliates for.
It would be like hanging out with a scientist who teaches you all the cool things you can look at with a microscope. Then when you decide to buy a microscope, the scientist gets paid by the people who sell the microscope, and you now know how to use it. Everyone wins!
Pinchofyum.com is killing it with affiliates. Just check out their February 2016 income report.
YouTube & Ads
Making YouTube videos as a revenue source has been a long time goal of mine. Making money this way is a lot harder than it sounds.
This is why many people on YouTube make their real money from sponsorships (a form of ad), but in this article, I want to focus on income for a beginner. When starting out, your main income source for YouTube will be through the ads that pop-up or are shown before a video.
Those ads on YouTube are all through AdSense.
Google owns AdSense. They provide both the ads you see on YouTube and give you the ability to put ads on a website. The income from the web ads or YouTube ads are usually minuscule.
Over the past few years, I’ve made around $180. It is nice to make some money, but it averages out to be $3 a month.
However, if you make videos or provide content that helps people with something specific, it is possible to make a decent amount of money. My friend, Leslie Samuel, at Become A Blogger, made $12,725.27 in 2013 with biology tutorial videos.
The best thing about it is that he made those videos the year before. He made money the year he made them, they are making money now, and will continue to make money in the future…. AWESOME!
You can see more on his YouTube income and how he makes an extra $4,508.55 (in 2013) selling study guides related to his videos.
http://www.becomeablogger.com/13871/year-in-review-458828-people-117973-40-later-lessons-learned/
Products
Products are amazing! Especially digital products.
Why?
Because having a product gives the creator something to sell directly to their audience.
People who follow a maker usually want to help support their work. Buying affiliates or clicking on ads are great ways for them to do that, but if a creator has a product it feels more personal.
When people buy my Learn to Animate Course, they get to support me directly, learn something, and read (or watch) what I have to say.
Those people who are watching what you are doing, want to learn more and are willing to pay for it. You get money, and they get more of you.
Plus, products can be very profitable.
Just check out Abby and Donnie Lawson’s income from Just a Girl and Her Blog.
You can see their February (2016) income with the link below.
Now What?
It is very simple (yet hard to do).
If you are making stuff and posting it online, especially if you have a blog, you should consider monetizing it to pay for your time or to make back the costs related to your work.
Getting started can be hard.
I recommend picking one of these and implementing it now. Once you choose which way you want to monetize, take a day to learn all you can (limit to a day, so you get started ASAP). Spend half that day researching what people recommend doing. Then spend the second half of the day seeing what people are doing (just explore other people’s websites).
Once you have one income stream up and running, add another revenue source and then another.
Good luck and get back to work.
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