From the beginning of March all the way until May, I traveled to the cities of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Kuala Lumpur, Lankawi Island, and Penang and lived out of a backpack.
When I am on my travel binge, I only like to focus on my YouTube vlogs and nothing else.
Because of that, I only had around 30 minutes a day to work on my laptop.
Most of that time consisted of me checking Facebook ads stats, talking to my team, and answering some emails.
That entire time, I put little to no work on this blog.
But something crazy happened when I logged into my PayPal to check the income stats from that time period.
Even though I was completely focused on having fun as opposed to working on my business, I was still able to pull in an extra $8580.95 in pure passive income from only just two of the products I recommend on this blog:
I use these products every single day and would naturally recommend them to anyone even if I didn’t get an affiliate commission from them.
The good news is they both do have affiliate programs, so I was a happy camper..
In essence this is how it works with affiliate marketing. If someone just so happened to stumble on my blog and also wanted to use these softwares after reading my in-depth guides on how to make money with them, then I would get a commission at no added cost to the visitor.
I did not have to worry about customer service, returns, or product creation. And yet, I was still able to make some extra money consistently without having to put in any extra work since these blog posts last forever.
That is the true power of affiliate marketing. To blog about it once, and earn income from it for the rest of your life.
Here are some other blogs that do the exact same thing on a bigger scale:
- Michelle Schroeder-Gardner makes $1.1 million per year
- Pat Flynn makes more than $1.8 million per year
- John Lee Dumas makes more than $1.4 million per year
Now don’t let these huge numbers intimidate you, many of these huge bloggers started off in the game with only just a couple of dollars a month in profit.
Many of them took years to actually make a living from just their blogs. But since they remained consistent with providing amazing content focused on helping people, they now earn a huge amount of passive income without much added work.
Here is how you can do the same.
Step 1: Pick a Niche
Let me save you some time and heartache. There are only really 5 niches to get into. The big 4 which are helping people with their health, wealth, love and happiness. And the fifth one which is creating content about an extremely passionate hobby like learning to jump higher (a surprising 7 figure niche) or travel.
What helps is getting more specific with the niche. For example there are a lot of “make money online” blogs out there, so what makes this blog different?
Well other than my sly humor and devilish good looks, I combined the travel niche with the make money online niche which not a lot of people were doing at the time (or well in my case).
Why did I do that?
Because that is what I love talking about.
So regardless what niche you get into, make sure that you are also passionate about it as this will be a business that will last a lifetime. So you might as well enjoy talking about what you love.
The good news with blogging is that you don’t need to be a crazy success story like me to initially make some money. All you need is a story and a journey.
Before these people owned million dollar businesses:
- Michelle Schroeder-Gardner started her blog as a way to share her journey in slowly paying off her student loan debt
- Pat Flynn started his blog as a way to record his journey to learning how to make niche sites
- John Lee Dumas started his blog as a way to find mentors that he can learn from
None of these people had huge results prior to their blogs. But because of their ability to share the key lessons they learned and challenges that they overcame throughout their journey, they were able to attract an audience that related with their story.
You may not know this, but you have a story.
You are reading this because you want something more out of life. Am I wrong?
But even with you reading this and thinking you have nothing to show for yourself yet, you are still far more ahead than someone who didn’t have the courage like you did to take action and actually seek content that can teach you to create freedom for yourself.
Step 2: Get Hosting
Many beginners fail when they first get started because they don’t get hosting right away. Instead they try free options like blogger.com that exist out there.
This is an absolutely horrible idea because if you go this route, you don’t own your content, and google can shut down your website without warning you. Which would suck.
Instead what you want to do is get your website hosted on a server. In plain english, it means that you are renting a piece of the Internet for your blog to call home.
The good news is that it is super cheap as it is only around $3-$5 a month, and is extremely reliable especially if you go with bluehost. (This is what an affiliate link looks like muahaha. Which would give me a small commission that I can use to buy a burrito at no added cost to you.)
Bluehost is what mikevestil.com was born on and it is the hosting service that i tell EVERYONE to use.
The reason why I recommend them is because:
- They give you a FREE domain
- 24 Hour support
- 30 Day refund policy
Many of the multi million dollar blogs also began with bluehost. And if all the cool kids are doing it, then you might as well too.
READ THIS:The complete guide on how to set up your website on bluehost.
Step 3: Record Your Journey
Now even though you may not have results starting off, the one thing you do have is experience with certain products.
As you record your journey talking about your passion, you will start naturally begin to talk about products or services that you enjoy using. When this happens, simply insert your affiliate link.
Where do you get your affiliate link?
Well its easy. Most products that you are already using already have an affiliate program. All you have to do is to go to google and search “(product/service) affiliate program.”
The great news is that affiliate programs are free to join so you can begin to start promoting products and earning commissions right away!
If you need help here are some great places to get started with affiliate programs:
- Clickbank (for digital products)
- Amazon Associates (for physical products)
- Market Health (for health supplements)
All you have to do now is repeat this process for all the other products that you love using and slowly watch the affiliate commissions pour in.
On Taking Action: The Real Way to Passive Income Blogging
This is the exact formula that many bloggers use to make $100 a month all the way to even $100,000 a month. When beginning, it is important to not overcomplicate things. The reason why people fail is because they take in too much information without taking enough action.
Don’t be like those amateur entrepreneurs that spend all their time making excuses instead of taking action. Start your blog today.
Question: What action step could you take TODAY that would enable you to live the life you want 3-5 years down the road? Leave a comment below!
Related Articles:
- My Lifestyle Business: How I Travel the World and Get Paid
- How to Start a Blog and Make Money
- How To Create Passive Income With No Money
And for more tips on how to make money online make sure you do the following:
- Subscribe to My YouTube channel
- Listen To The Podcast
- Download the free case study on how to start a business & create multiple streams of income
NOTE: This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info. This adds no cost to you but it helps me focus on giving as much value as possible in every single post by being compensated for recommending products that I love using.
