How to Build a Passive Income Empire in 2021
Are you looking for viable methods to supplement your income? Or perhaps you might even want to create something that will eventually earn you enough to liberate you from your 9–5? Regardless of what your goals might be, this guide will hopefully be just the stepping stone you need to get started in a trend that has been quickly gaining popularity, and that is earning passive income online.
First, let’s quickly define “passive income.” It is simply earning income from something you’ve created, well after its creation, without you having to put in much if any, additional effort. Examples of this include song royalties, YouTube ad revenue, and income from continued product sales. The opposite of this would be active income, which is wages, tips, salaries, or commissions received from performing a service.
Earning active income is not necessarily “inferior”, and oftentimes what will earn you the most is doing both, but passive income, because of its nature, will add up as you produce more content, and this is even more so the case if you leverage each piece of content you make to build your customer base and reach. For instance, once a person becomes an established and respected YouTuber, each subsequent video he/she makes will get a lot more views and revenue versus somebody who is just starting out. And the tipping point at which actively creating content for a so-called passive income empire surpasses the active income you earn from working a day job is where a lot of people actually quit their jobs to focus on their own businesses. Not to mention, basing your income on more passive sources can be a way to add a lot of freedom and flexibility to your schedule.
Now, let’s talk about how one can develop passive income streams and even build a business around them. It all starts with passion and expertise. Most interests and skills can be turned into educational and entertaining content for other people, and there are many forms of content that one can produce. But in order for people to want to buy your products, you must first establish yourself as an authority in your niche.
One of the best ways to do this is and begin accruing passive income is to start a specialized YouTube channel. When you first get started, you won’t be getting a lot of views and subscribers, but as long as you keep uploading relevant informative or entertaining content on a consistent basis, your channel will definitely grow. YouTube videos themselves can be monetized via Google Adsense, which pays you per ad watched on your videos. It is certainly possible to earn a respectable income from just these Ads, but it usually takes a fairly large channel of over tens of thousands of subscribers to be able to achieve that. Fortunately, ad revenue will likely start looking like pocket change once you utilize your growing YouTube channel for other passive income streams. With YouTube being the second largest search engine in the world right after Google itself, it is currently one of the best if not the best way to grow a personal brand and a dedicated customer base. Yes, one can grow a following through social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and even blogs, but speaking from both personal and other people’s experience, starting on YouTube usually is by far the most effective way, with the other platforms further allowing one to connect to broader audiences.
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Once you establish respect and interest, your YouTube channel will quickly become a powerful, free advertising tool. One way to monetize that is through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing means promoting other people’s products and earning a commission for each one you sell. It benefits the creators of a product because they are essentially able to advertise for free, while the influencers who market their products take a cut. You’ve surely looked up product reviews YouTube, and maybe you’ve even purchased something as a result of watching one of these videos. Well, many of these reviewers actually earn a commission for each purchase made through their affiliate link. The most popular program for physical products is the Amazon Affiliate program, because of the huge variety of products that one can purchase from Amazon.com. Another very popular website for affiliate offers is clickbank.com, which focuses more on digital products. Even if you don’t do full-fledged product reviews, you can easily do affiliate marketing on YouTube or social media platforms by simply recommending a product that you use such as a webcam, software, or even a book.
Check out my comprehensive, in -depth affiliate marketing tutorials on my YouTube channel:
Affiliate marketing can be a great way to earn passive income, but solely relying on it in the long run, especially if your brand has become reputable enough, can lead to some missed opportunities because you’re only taking a small cut out of these sales. And so another powerful way to make passive income, which only works once you’ve built up trust, respect, and interest from your customer base, is creating your own products. These can be either digital or physical products, but some are definitely easier to create than others.
The first is the online course. You can easily host detailed, step-by-step courses on teachable.com, and alternatives include udemy.com and kajabi.com. Unlike with affiliate marketing, for which you only get a small percentage of the profits, the margin that you get to keep from sales of these is much greater. And this is where a lot of influencers start to see their passive income really start to explode.
Another thing you can do, which is less passive, is to start a membership group that charges a monthly fee. In it, you can offer mentoring and support, oftentimes in addition to an online course. To get a perspective of how significant recurring fees can be, if you can charge 20 dollars a month, you will only need 50 people to join to get 1000 dollars a month, and many influencers can easily charge much more than that. ( with the number of people you’ll be able to reach with YouTube and other methods, this is actually quite feasible.) Websites that you can host a membership group on include kajabi.com, clickfunnels.com, patreon.com, or even a Facebook Group.
The third type of product you can create to make passive income by leveraging your expertise is by writing an ebook. You can easily publish and distribute a digital and even physical copies of a book through Amazon’s Kindle Direct publishing service. If you consider yourself a skilled writer, this can definitely be a good way to earn additional passive income.
Speaking of technical or artistic skills you can leverage, there are a variety of other assets and products that you can create and sell. If you’re a photographer or illustrator, you can sell stock photos, images, and footage on shutterstock.com, blackbox.global, society6.com, and other platforms where your assets will be put on sale and will allow you to receive a commission for each sale. These visual forms of content also work well with Instagram, on which you can grow an audience and customer base.
If you’re a musician, you can upload YouTube videos of your music, in addition to growing a following on other popular platforms such as Soundcloud.com and bandcamp.com. There are even YouTube channels that dedicate themselves to promoting other artists’ music. One way many musicians make passive income is by licensing out their music to other content creators, who pay them a fee for using their music. You can also sell your singles and albums on Bandcamp.
And the list goes on; as long as you have the skills to create in-demand digital content, chances are, you’ll be able to monetize it for passive income.
The final method for making passive income on this list works best if you have already established a memorable brand, and that is selling merchandise. Some of the more popular types of merchandise that people sell are t-shirts, baseball caps, and mugs, which can be customized and sold on websites like Redbubble, Teespring, Nationhats, and Printify (respectively). This can be a great way to not only make some very easy passive income but also promote your brand.
Check out my beginner-friendly print on demand playlist here:
All in all, I strongly believe that developing significant passive income streams is very feasible for anyone who has a computer, internet, and expertise. However, it does require a fair amount of time, diligent effort, and a good strategy. A lot of people become discouraged because their initial results are not as good as they would expect, but if you stick it out, your results will be amazing. As long as you keep creating good content, the opportunities are bound to open up, leading to a snowball effect that could change your life.
Cheers,
Fred
