Last Updated on by Michael Brockbank
Creating passive income streams can help make sure your bills are paid and there is food on the table. This is especially valuable in 2021 when a virus can easily shut down your place of business. However, don’t expect to make tons of money right off the bat.
In many instances, it could take a very long time before you start seeing any real significant amount of money.
While it’s true that some bloggers can easily bring in the dough, keep in mind many of them have been working on it for years. It’s incredibly rare for a blog to come out of the gate as a popular online hub.
How Long Does a Passive Income Stream Take to Make?
What a lot of “experts” fail to tell you about passive income is that it can take an exceptionally long time. It could months, or even years to really start to see an impact on your bank account.
But, that also depends on your goals.
Are you looking to replace a full-time job or just need a few bucks to offset the bills during the week?
But to make anything more than $10 per month, there are a few variables you need to consider.
What Kind of Traffic Do You Generate?
The key to passive income from a blog is visitor traffic. If you only get around 100 visits per day, don’t expect a landslide of income.
It all really boils down to how many people you have reading and interacting with your content. This is true whether you’re strictly blogging or creating YouTube videos to complement what you write.
What Kind of Passive Income Do You Plan to Try?
The different types of methods you want to try will also be a major factor in how much you make. For instance, ad serving networks like Adsense really don’t bring in a lot of money unless you have tens of thousands of visitors every month.
However, something like a prime affiliate product that your audience loves could quickly generate some cash.
How Much Time Can You Invest in Marketing?
The amount of time you invest in marketing your blog directly impacts how many people come visit. This includes everything from researching the best search engine optimization to sharing brilliant content you create on social media.
Like I tell all of my clients and fans, “Effort dictates success.” And you need to put in a lot of effort if you want to see a lot of passive income down the road.
7 Ways to Generate Passive Income from the Blog
So, when I say “passive income,” I mean methods that will require very little work from you to keep them going.
Things like dropshipping or other online retail are not necessarily “passive.” This is because you have to work at it all day long. Well, to keep them successful you do, anyway.
I’m talking about real passive income where you do something once and it generates cash. Editing other people’s photos or marketing yourself as a writer to get clients isn’t passive…because you’re actively working!
Here are a few legitimate passive income ideas that anyone with a blog, or are interested in creating one, can start doing right now.
1. Using Ad-Serve Networks
One of the most suggested passive income opportunities I’ve seen online is that of using ad-serve networks. This is when you add something like Adsense to your website to show ads and banners from other brands.
If someone clicks the ad, you get a bit of money.
However, it takes an incredible amount of traffic for this to really bring in the cash. It also depends on the niche of your site, the topic and where you place those ads.
On the upside, these networks are pretty easy to use and are truly passive when it comes to income. All you do is add the code to your site and forget about it.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Becoming an affiliate is also a popular method for generating income from a blog. This is when you show banners and links to other companies. If someone clicks these “ads” and buys something, you’ll earn a commission.
Overall, these commissions often pay better than if you were to use nothing but ad networks. However, true success with these platforms still requires a lot of web traffic.
You also want to show products and brands that make sense for your users. For example, you wouldn’t want to show a banner for someone to buy a chicken recipe book if you have a vegan blog.
But if you can review a product or service and promote it as an affiliate, your audience may trust your judgment. You could make quite a bit if you find the right affiliate program.
3. Paid Webinars and Live Streams
If you’re an expert in your industry, you could generate quite a bit of interest should you host a webinar or an interactive live stream. And you can easily add a way to make these paid instances if you use WordPress.
Think of it kind of like a concert…only it’s online and for your target audience. People pay for access to you and what you can provide.
In fact, this is something I’ve debated on doing for quite some time. But, I am known for offering information for free, so I don’t know if I’d ever actually charge people for it unless it was something major.
However, I know a lot of awesome experts who use something like paid webinars to generate quite a bit of money.
The way to make passive income from this method is to pre-record the video and then let people pay to watch at their own leisure from your blog. Of course, this is different if you go live. Then it becomes active income.
4. Sell a Digital Product
I know a lot of people who say that eCommerce is great for passive income. But it’s not really passive because you still need to ship products. That is unless you completely automate the process by using dropshippers that pull data from your site.
However, it doesn’t take much effort to sell digital products. Once you create something like an eBook, you can host it on your blog. People then pay and download your book, and you don’t have to worry about shipping anything.
You can boost the potential by hosting your eBook on Amazon and then embedding the link to it on your blog. That way, you can reach two different audiences simultaneously.
People can search for it on Amazon itself or stumble across it on your blog after a Google search.
5. Sell an Online Course
Selling online courses is similar to paid webinars. And they are exceptionally easy to add to something like WordPress. In fact, I can think of several plugins off the top of my head that make it simple.
Essentially, you create a course online to teach someone a skill. Then, people can pay and take the course. You won’t have to do much of anything after the initial setup.
In fact, a lot of people will make a great deal of money by using systems like Udemy. But if you want to cut out the middle man, hosting it on your blog is a much more lucrative way to go.
You just need to make sure your marketing the blog and online course as much as possible. Which kind of takes away from it being “passive income” as you spend time marketing.
6. Promote a Print-on-Demand Store
So, I mentioned eCommerce a moment ago. If you don’t want to use dropshipping or spend time sending goods to customers, you can always promote a print-on-demand service on the blog.
You’ve probably seen some creators use things like Teespring, Printify or Printful. This is when you take an idea and push it onto shirts, coffee mugs, bags and much more.
For example, let’s say that I come up with a funny saying or meme about freelance writers. I can then sell it as a print-on-demand service to sell shirts and mugs with the saying printed.
If you’ve seen any of my Twitch streams, I usually drink coffee from a mug that has my logo printed on the side. This is a form of print-on-demand.
The best part is that it’s incredibly easy to link these services to your blog. The hardest part, like much of this list, is making sure you have a large enough audience who wants to buy those goods.
7. Sell Ad Space On Your Blog
If your blog generates a lot of traffic, you can always sell ad space. This is when you cut out the middle-man of Google and directly sell banners and ads to clients.
Again, using something like WordPress makes this so much easier. For example, I use AdvancedAds on WriterSanctuary. It controls the ads you see on the top of the header of this page.
Once you come up with a reasonable price, businesses will pay to show their banners or links.
Now, the caveat to this is that you need to demonstrate expertise and drive an audience. No one wants to spend money on a blog that doesn’t send them traffic.
Bonus #1 Add Donation, Tip or Support Platforms
Adding donations and tips to your blog is a method that often inspires others to support your body of work. It’s passive income opportunities like this which sometimes work well as long as your audience cares about your content.
For instance, I use Buy Me a Coffee on this blog as well as for my YouTube videos. And even being as small as I am compared to others, I’ve still accumulated a nit of money from the generosity of my audience.
At any rate, something like this is exceptionally easy to implement as it only takes a few minutes to set up.
Bonus #2 Create High-Quality Content!
The way that most passive income succeeds is by creating amazing content people appreciate. It doesn’t matter what kind of income plan you have in place if people don’t want to read your blog posts or watch your videos.
The more engaging you are, and the more information you provide, the greater are your chances of making money.
The best passive income opportunities mean nothing if you don’t give people a reason to visit your website. And that begins with what your blog is about and the type of audience you attract.
Passive Income Is Not Simple to Accumulate
Some experts out there will lead you to believe that you can immediately start making thousands of dollars per month from your blog. But many fail to mention just how much work goes into the process.
Oh sure, they’ll show you how much they made this month. But then neglect to tell you how long it took to get to this point.
Don’t get me wrong, creating a passive income stream is worth setting up, especially in 2021. But realize that you need to establish your blog before you’ll see that income flow.
Think of it as an investment. The more effort you put into your blog today will help you secure a great financial future tomorrow.
In the end, it all boils down to the amount of traffic your site gets and how you monetize.
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