What is passive income? I define it this way – you make money 24-7 no matter what you’re doing with your time. You make money while you sleep, while you’re on vacation, while you’re hanging out with your friends and family – all the time. It’s how I’ve been making a living since 2003, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve been able to retire very early.
While passive income isn’t easy, it is possible.
Especially online.
When Katie & I started our online green-building training company in 2007, she made $350 the first day. All the while she was sitting at her desk doing her internship. When we traveled to Costa Rica for two weeks of vacation after she graduated with her MBA, we made passive income from our online business the entire trip.
While our business made passive income from online products we developed, the easiest way to get started making passive income online is with affiliate programs.
Two pages on my current website that generate passive income are my Business/Leadership books page and the How to Start a Blog page. These pages require very little ongoing maintenance.
We make money from these pages through the affiliate programs for the products we are recommending.
Here’s how an affiliate program works:
- You sign up for a certain product’s affiliate program.
- After getting approved as an affiliate, you will get a unique affiliate link. This link points to the product’s sales page.
- You use this link on your website to recommend the product to your readers.
- If someone clicks on your affiliate link and purchases the product, then you get a percentage of income from the sale.
It’s easy to setup, and becoming an affiliate for products you like and might already use requires no money!
So, how can you create passive income from your blog using an affiliate program? I’d suggest that you start by creating a “resources” page on your blog.
For instance, a food blogger could create a page called Ten Inexpensive Kitchen Tools You Must Have, Three Baking Tools For The Perfect Cake or My Top Five Favorite Dessert Cookbooks.
As a business blogger, I have my all-time favorite business books that I keep going back to again and again, year after year. They are the same ones I keep talking about on my show because they have benefitted me so much.
Amazon Associates Affiliate Program
Amazon is by far the largest affiliate program out there. It’s also one of the easiest and quickest to get started with. Here’s an example of how you could become an Amazon affiliate:
- Sign up for the Amazon Affiliate program – https://affiliate-program.amazon.com
- Create a new page on your blog called Seven Awesome Tools I Can’t Live Without (or something similar).
- Create affiliate links through Amazon for the products you recommend.
- Paste in the affiliate code for the products you are recommending. Include a description of how you use that product and why you love it.
Affiliate programs are a great first step in creating pages on your blog that help to bring in passive income.
How To Get Started Investing
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