How To Make Money In Your Sleep: A Comprehensive Guide To Passive Income
Steps to starting your own blog
There are lots of great ways to make money online, but few are as passive as some would have you believe. For true passive income, you must be able to set it and forget it and then wait patiently while the money comes in overtime.
This comprehensive article will help you understand what passive income really means, and how to make it happen with your existing skillset and interests.
What is passive income?
There are many ways to generate passive income, but some methods may be more reliable than others. No matter what you choose to pursue, it’s important to make sure you do it with an eye toward its sustainability and financial viability.
For example, while blogging is passive income (you can set up a blog in 15 minutes or less), publishing a textbook is not. For some, passive income might mean trying something entirely new like training for a marathon.
If you’re wondering how to make money passively, here are some ideas that could work for you.
The first step to making money in your sleep
Identify your competitive advantage. What unique skill set do you have that can be monetized? Or what specific product or service can you offer to consumers in a way that they aren’t already being offered by someone else?
If it’s not readily apparent, brainstorm some ideas. You may want to try asking yourself some key questions, like What value am I offering my customers that nobody else is offering them at a similar price point?
The answer to that question will help guide you toward a sustainable passive income model and also give you an idea of what industries might be best for your business.
Setting up your blog
One common misconception about starting a blog is that you must be a great writer in order to be successful. That could not be further from the truth. People read blogs to gain a personal perspective on issues, so most bloggers write in a very casual and conversational style.
Because of the format, many successful bloggers will cover a wide range of topics on the same blog.
Furthermore, in order to have a successful blog, you do not need to be an expert on any of the topics you write about. Visitors to a cooking blog, for example, do not want to read a textbook from a food scientist; rather, they want to hear about the experiences of someone who has actually cooked some real meals, mistakes and all.
Pick a blog name
A good blog name should be descriptive enough that potential visitors can tell what your blog is about just by looking at the name.
If you are blogging about a specific topic, you should definitely include it in some way when choosing a domain name. But try not to get too focused on a single word. A cooking blog, for example, does not have to include the word “cooking.” The words “food,” “recipes,” and “meals” will also alert readers to the fact that your blog is about cooking.
Get your blog online
You’ll need two things to get your blog up and running: blog hosting (also known as web hosting) and blogging software. The good news is that these are usually sold together.
A blog host is a company that stores all of your blog’s files and delivers them to users when they type in your blog’s name. To have a blog, you must have a blog host. Try BlueHost, HostGator and others.
Step 2 — Choosing your niche
When it comes to passive income, choosing a niche is one of the most important steps. You need to choose something that you are passionate about and will love spending your time doing. The more passionate you are about it, the more likely you’ll be successful at it.
The more time you spend on building your site or business and less time worrying about how to make money from home, sooner or later you’ll start making money from home. If you can understand what your passion is and turn that into an online business, then passivity is all yours.
When choosing a niche make sure it fits your personality. For example, if you’re sarcastic make sure that doesn’t clash with an overly serious niche such as health care for seniors. Some of the popular blog niches in 2022 are:
- Digital marketing
- Making Money Online
- Health and Fitness
- Personal Finance and Investing
- Recipes and Food
Step 3 — Creating an engaging blog
Now that you’ve thought about your target market, chosen a topic, and written an engaging and professional intro paragraph, it’s time to make your content even more effective by writing about it with a certain goal in mind.
Every writer has his or her own approach to taking what is an academic subject (e.g., writing about finance) and creating something that engages readers. There is no one size fits all formula for achieving engagement. It all depends on who you are writing for and why they should care (or should want to learn).
Step 4 — Writing posts (tips)
If you’re blogging on a topic that is highly trafficked or evergreen, then it’s best to create different posts. It can be daunting to create multiple posts around one topic.
Often it takes hours of research and writing to craft a good post. You’ll have to learn how Google Adsense works too if you want those little ads around your site.
If you add 10 good posts though, that can build traffic and from there it is easy to monetize your traffic using affiliate marketing, CPA offers, and many other methods. Don’t forget all those free courses always have something they want to sell at the end.
Step 5 — Guest blogging opportunities
You’ve finished your first four steps and are ready to start making money, right? Hold on a minute! There’s one more strategy you can use to boost your income potential.
You can become a guest blogger. The easiest way to do that is by writing articles for other blogs, in exchange for linking back to yours and possibly sharing their ad revenue with you. Or if you’re feeling ambitious, think about starting your own blog and becoming an affiliate blogger who writes about products specific to your niche. Any extra income source will help boost your overall earnings.
Step 6 — Getting traffic to your site
Getting traffic to your site isn’t too difficult, you just need to know where to start. The first thing you can do is create a bunch of social media accounts. This doesn’t have to be a lot either. Two or three active accounts is all it takes to get started in my opinion.
From there, start posting regularly and drive traffic back to your website by tagging your photos and posts with relevant hashtags for whatever niche you are targeting. You can also look into Google ads, PPC campaigns, and similar methods for driving traffic as well.
However, I will warn you, making money from one of these methods alone will take time before seeing any sort of success for yourself so be patient. But even then; use them all.
Step 7 — Monetizing your website
Once you have created your website and started putting out quality content, start focusing on how to make money with your website. For example, you could sell advertising space directly on your site or use affiliate marketing to drive sales to other products.
Either way, it’s important to implement a monetization strategy as quickly as possible to keep your site profitable. When it comes time to monetize your site, there are two main strategies you can choose from depending on what type of business model you want to follow — Adsense or Affiliate Marketing.
Step 8 — Taking it to the next level
After you have developed your basic skill set, practice and get feedback from others on your writing. You will begin to feel more confident in your abilities as a writer.
After you have learned enough, consider what kind of information you are interested in sharing with others. Consider topics or hobbies that you’re passionate about and create content that is interesting to both yourself and others.
There are many different ways of making money online; each way depends on how much time, dedication, and effort is put into it. If you love what you do then building an audience will be fun because if they enjoy reading your work then they will want to share it with others.
Final Thoughts
There are many, many ways to make money on your schedule. Some will be easier than others, but it doesn’t matter which one(s) you decide to take up, the most important thing is that you start doing something today.
I have shown my favorite here, but if you have a plan for passive income that isn’t listed above and would like to share it with our readers, I would love to hear about it in a comment.
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