How I Make Passive Income Online (& How You Can Too!)
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Does passive income actually exist?
I mean, money made with absolutely no work done?
I don’t think so.
Maybe in very elite families, where the progeny inherit billions of dollars, but even then some work must be done to maintain that family’s wealth, or at least I imagine so.
What do I mean by passive income?
By passive income, I’m referring to money that is made with minimal labor and time.
And I would posit that passive income exists on a spectrum- some passive income might be accomplished with one hour of a person’s time exchanged each week, while other forms of passive income might require 20 hours of time each week (for contribution, maintenance, upkeep, marketing, etc.).
Either way, these are both different from the conventional model of work most people follow, wherein we exchange our time directly for money.
Even if you are self-employed or work online offering a service, you are still in that direct one-to-one time exchange.
I’m not saying that this is bad, not at all. But it is inefficient, and it does suck up the precious hours of your life.
Not all people are interested in this, and that is fine and even necessary. Society needs people to fill ALL of its various positions—from manufacturing, to food, to regular brick and mortar operations. We can’t all offer online services or live off of passive income. Hopefully this is obvious enough without me stressing it even further.
And this works out well, because many folks are very contented going to a job each day until retirement, and directly exchanging their time for money.
This article is aimed at those of us who are more interested in that most scarce of resources— our time.
This article is for those of you who want to start setting the stage today so that you can generate passive income in the years ahead, and win your precious time back.
I’m going to share with you the strategies I currently use to earn passive income, in case of any of them appeal to you!
Disclaimer: this is not financial advice.
How I Make Passive Income Online, From Home
(or Anywhere)
Stock Investing
Yes, you need to have some money to invest upfront.
But, as little as $3,000 can get you started with Vanguard’s S&P 500 index fund, which I think is a great place for beginners to start.
There are other stock broker platforms, too, but I started with Vanguard so that’s who I’m familiar with.
By continuing to add to my investment a little each month, my money grows in value, rather than sitting in a savings account or a home safe continuously losing value (because, fyi, the dollar continues to lose value).
Though my investment does continue to grow each month, I don’t technically count this as monthly passive income. Instead, I treat this as a big savings account for my future. It’s a way for me to amass wealth, not to spend or use now.
So this passive income strategy is long-term for those with a lower time preference.
Bitcoin Investing
Anyone who’s into cryptocurrency will have their opinion on this, and usually a strong one at that.
My opinion is that yes, Bitcoin is still a good investment. 110%.
Because cryptocurrency has introduced such a new paradigm, a lot of people steer clear of it. But, this is a fatal mistake, in my opinion.
I think NOW is the time to buy Bitcoin.
Expert predictions have the price of one Bitcoin soaring over the years ahead to six figures and beyond.
Right now, the cost of one Bitcoin is around $47,000. You do the math.
I started buying Bitcoin relatively late in the game, when they were about $9,000 each. But I have more than doubled my investment, despite, already, within one year.
Is Bitcoin volatile? Yes. So when you invest in it, you don’t want to watch it like a hawk and freak out and sell every time the price falls.
H O L D :) Just hold. This means, don’t act on emotion or whim, instead keep adding any expendable income you have each month to your Bitcoin investment, and think long-term. Don’t sell, only buy, that is my approach any way.
I use Coinbase and it’s intuitive and user-friendly. If you sign up for Coinbase using this link and buy at least $100 worth of Bitcoin, you’ll get an extra $10 worth, completely free, courtesy of using my affiliate link.
Online Courses
One of the top ways I currently earn passive income online is by creating and selling online courses.
I launched my first online course about a year ago, a second one about eight months ago, and they already earn enough each month to cover all of my living expenses!
My plan is to continue creating courses that offer value to my target audience, so that I can keep growing that monthly passive income amount.
Online courses are mutually beneficial in that they not only help you for obvious reasons, but they allow you to reach and help many more people than the standard one-to-one service exchange model allows for.
For example, I could only help 4 or so clients a month with Squarespace SEO services until I launched my Squarespace SEO Expert course, now I can help a limitless amount of people.
I know that creating a course can be very overwhelming and intimidating at first. But it doesn’t have to be.
Did you know that you can create and host courses within your Squarespace website? You can!
I learned how by taking Kerstin Martin’s Squarespace Classroom course, and then customizing and tailoring her process to fit my own needs and preferences.
In my upcoming “How to Monetize Your Squarespace Website” course, I’ll be explaining more about how to operate a course from your Squarespace website! So be sure to subscribe to my newsletter so you know when the course launches.
Affiliate Marketing
A portion of my monthly passive income also comes from various affiliate networks I’m signed up with. Affiliate marketing is great for beginners because it doesn’t require any investment other than your time spent creating quality content.
I’m an affiliate for services and softwares I use, which makes it easy to create compelling content to help promote them.
For example, as a web designer and SEO specialist focusing on the Squarespace platform, I’m an affiliate for Squarespace.
Because website speeds really matters to me, I’m also an affiliate for a couple of domain hosts who boast fast load times.
And because I care about online privacy, I signed up to be an affiliate for my favorite VPNs.
My clients are always wondering how to get good content for their website, so I signed up to work with Fiverr as an affiliate, which I use to point clients in the right direction to get good content created for them.
And yes, I’m an Amazon affiliate, and an affiliate for so many other brands.
For your affiliate marketing to be successful, you need to have a significant amount of traffic to your website. So, if you’re a Squarespace user, I really recommend investing in my Squarespace SEO Expert course so you can learn how to get your Squarespace site ranking on Google Page 1.
Ads
Ads are another easy to way to generate passive income from your website.
You simply sign up for an ad network like Google AdSense (for beginners) and then as your site gets more and more traffic over time, you can start levelling up and joining higher paying ad networks.
Placing ads on your site is very easy, too. In my upcoming course “How to Monetize Your Squarespace Website” I’ll show you exactly how to place ads, as well as strategies behind doing so.
To make at least a 4-figure passive income from ads each month, you’re going to need a high monthly traffic count, so once again- it’s all about blogging for SEO and truly understanding how to do that.
Membership Site
A fun way to generate a passive style of income online is to create a membership website, or a membership area on your current site. I haven’t done this yet, but I’m including it because I plan to in the future.
Membership functionality on your website is basically like having your own Patreon.
You don’t have to have the entire site be only for members, instead you can entice visitors with your public website, and then to “go deeper” or “get more” or “join the community and have access to regular exclusive content” you can offer a member sign-up option for a monthly fee.
Of course, you have to share fresh content for your members regularly enough, but that would be the bulk of the work behind it.
Just imagine if you had a $10 subscription fee, and 200 people signed up. Already you’re generating $2,000 a month without having to do much work.
Here’s an article I wrote about Squarespace’s new Member Areas functionality which could help you achieve this form of passive income!
There are many more ideas for generating passive income online, like dropshipping! I’ll be going over all of the above and many more in my upcoming course, “How to Monetize Your Squarespace Website” so if you’re interested, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter to get notified when that course launches!
Otherwise, the main thing to remember is that no on-site passive income strategy will be successful without substantial monthly traffic.
To get those traffic numbers, you need good search engine rankings.
And to get good search engine rankings, you need to take the time to learn real SEO that works.
So if you’re a Squarespace user reading this who hasn’t taken my SEO course yet, I’d really suggest doing so.
Hopefully this article has been helpful and encouraging. Please let me know if you have any questions or further thoughts in the comments section below!
Thanks so much for stopping by and I’ll talk to you again soon~
x
Tiffany
Welcome!
Hey there! I’m Tiffany ~ a Squarespace Web Designer & SEO Expert. I design beautiful & professional websites that rank well on Google, & I teach courses on becoming a Squarespace SEO Expert and Starting Your Own Squarespace Design Business!
Feel free to contact me at: tiffany@tiffany-davidson.com
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