Passive income is one of the most highly debated topics in finance. Some people say that it's real, other people say that it's a total myth. But in today's video, I'm going to share with you exactly how I made over $800,000 in passive income last year alone.
In today's video, I'm going to be sharing these seven ways that I've made passive income that actually work. I'll explain them here on camera, but I'll also take it one step further and switch you over to my computer so you can see real examples of all of these. Now, before we get into this video, if you guys know my style, I like to try to pack as much valuable information into these videos as possible.
So for each one of these passive income streams, I'm going to share with you the biggest piece of advice that I can give you that I wish I had when I was starting out with each of these. So guys, without further ado, if you want a real video on how to make passive income, this is going to be the one, and let's get straight into it. Okay, so we've got seven different passive income streams to cover in this video.
For your guys' sake, I'm going to put the easiest ones first. And then as we get throughout this video, we'll get into the medium difficulty and the hardest ones to start. So the absolute easiest way to make passive income is to put some of your money into a high-yield online savings account.
Now, if you're not familiar with what a high-yield online savings account is, essentially all it is, is a bank account, just like your checking or savings account, but the bank is willing to pay you a higher interest rate. Now, I know it sounds like this is something that's too good to be true, but most people just don't know that these accounts exist. So if I switch you over to the computer here, if you just go to Google and type in high yield online savings, you're going to see a bunch of different results.
What I would recommend is just clicking on one of these lists, and it's going to show you a bunch of different banks that offer these types of accounts. Now, the biggest thing you need to know about this one is that you do need to have money to put into these accounts in order to get passive income from them. So I say that this is the absolute easiest one to make passive income.
However, the catch here is that this is once you start to make money, or if you have some money in savings, switch it over to a high-yield online savings account and you were just automatically going to get passive income from that. Now, as I mentioned before, for each of these, I wanna give you the piece of advice that I wish I had when I was just starting out with these, and that would be the best banks that have high-yield online savings that I've found over the years. And starting out, the very first one would be Capital One.
Capital One has a Performance 360 account, that's what this is called, and they offer 3. 8% interest. The reason that I say Capital One is one of the best high-yield online savings is because they are an extremely reputable bank, and a lot of people already bank with Capital One.
So it is extremely easy to open up an additional account within Capital One that is a Performance 360 account and just transfer some money into that in order to get this started. Now, the other two banks that I really like for this, the second one is Ally. They have been around pretty much from the start of high-yield savings accounts.
They're offering 3. 8% as well. And then the last one is Betterment.
Betterment typically tries to keep their interest rate as high as possible, so they are offering a 4% interest rate on whatever amount of money that you put into their savings account. Okay, so with that one outta the way, let's get into the second way to make passive income. This is the first business on this list, and this one is the easiest and the fastest way to make passive income.
So what this one is, is called Amazon KDP. So if I switch you over to the computer here, if you just type in Amazon KDP into Google, the first result here should look just like this. This is Amazon.
If you click on this, it's going to bring you over to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. That's what KDP stands for. And essentially, what this business is, is you can sell books on Amazon, but I'm not talking about either writing books as a full author and selling those, or buying books and reselling those on Amazon.
What I'm talking about is creating books like this. And the way that Amazon KDP works is, all we have to do is upload this cover file, the front and the back, which this one is just blank on the back, and then what's going to go inside the book, which is just lined pages in this instance. And then once we've uploaded those ARC files to Amazon, Amazon creates a virtual listing on their marketplace.
And anytime someone purchases this book on Amazon, Amazon actually prints that in their book printing facility, ships it out to the customer, and handles all of the customer service. This is one of the easiest online businesses that you can start that makes money quickly, and it is strictly passive income. Once you've created those ARC files and uploaded those to Amazon, they stay on Amazon forever.
And then as people make purchases, Amazon does all the printing, shipping, and customer service. That is the definition of passive income. We do the work upfront.
Once we've uploaded it, there's nothing else for us to do, but to receive our split of the profit on every order, ongoing into the future. So guys, this is a business that I started back in 2018 and it has been generating passive income since then. There has been a stretch of over a year that I haven't even opened up this account.
I haven't touched it, I haven't thought about it, haven't even looked at it, and it's been generating income all this time. Now, with that being said, this is absolutely a business that anybody can start. You can do it from anywhere in the world, and you can start totally for free.
And as promised, a really good piece of advice that I wish I knew when I was starting out in this business is that there are a bunch of different categories of books that you can sell on Amazon KDP, and of all of those categories, the absolute best one that sells really well is creating word search books. This is an example of an Amazon KDP word search book. When you open this up, it actually has word search puzzles inside.
And the reason that these books sell so well on Amazon KDP is not many people know how to create the word search puzzles. So if you can learn how to create the word search puzzles and you know how to upload those to Amazon KDP, you are competing with very few other sellers that also know how to do this. Now, for those of you who this is the first time you're seeing one of my videos, I just wanna share with you that if you do check out my YouTube channel, I have full step-by-step tutorials on how to do all of these businesses.
I'm one of the people here on YouTube that shares things very openly. So I'm sharing all of my tips and tricks, the things that I've learned through trial and error, and my exact processes on how I do these businesses. So with that being said, for those of you who are interested in creating word search books for Amazon KDP, I will leave a link in the description below to a full step-by-step Amazon KDP tutorial.
It's 100% free. It's here on YouTube. So if you do wanna watch that video and start an Amazon KDP business for yourself, that link will be waiting for you down in the description.
So guys, as far as starting an online business that generates passive income, Amazon KDP is by far the easiest and fastest way to do that. However, it's not the only easy way to do this. This brings us into the next way to make passive income, and this one is also easy to start.
So as we just discussed, Amazon KDP is for creating and selling books on Amazon, but Amazon has another very similar department called Amazon Merch on Demand, which is for creating and selling t-shirts on Amazon. So if you go over to Google and you type in Amazon merch on demand, this is the page you are looking for specifically. So if you click on that, this is going to bring you to their homepage for Amazon Merch on Demand.
But essentially, this is the exact same thing as KDP, except you're creating designs for t-shirts instead of books. Guys, this is a business model that I started even before Amazon KDP, and it is still generating passive income. Now, to show you a real example of this, let's go over to Amazon.
And if you just look for funny golfing t-shirt, this is just an example. You can have t-shirts on any topic, but this will give you a good idea of how this works. So all of these shirts, they look like they are shirts that are actually printed, held in inventory and shipped out to customers.
But as soon as you see all of these mockups that all look the same, so these are three totally different designs, but the mockup of that t-shirt looks exactly the same for all three of these. And then as you keep scrolling through, you're going to find more of these. That's the same exact mockup.
These are all going to be done with Amazon Merch on demand. So if we click on one of these, the confirmation that this is in fact done with Amazon Merch on demand is the label right here. So essentially, the seller has just created this simple design, uploaded that to Amazon, Amazon creates this virtual listing just like the books for Amazon KDP, and then when someone purchases it, Amazon prints it in their t-shirt printing facility, they ship it out to the customer, and again, they handle all of the customer service.
Now, before I get into the one biggest piece of advice I can give you before starting Amazon Merch on Demand, the big thing that I want to clarify here is that these are being sold for a lot more than what those Amazon KDP books are being sold for. So that means that the profit margin on these is bigger than Amazon KDP. However, the catch to that is that there are more people doing Amazon Merch on Demand than Amazon KDP.
This is where the biggest piece of advice that I can give you comes in. My best piece of advice is to find out what are all of these small niches that other sellers haven't thought of yet, and create your designs in those. Essentially, all the big, popular niches that all the other sellers can easily think of, they are all going to be full, they're all going to be oversaturated.
A ton of people have already created designs in those. However, if you learn how to do niche research, you can find all of these small gaps where people have not discovered yet, then you can create your t-shirt designs in those. Now again, this is another business model that I have created a full extensive step-by-step tutorial on walking you through everything from the idea that you want to start this business, to doing that niche research, creating your designs, and how to upload them to Amazon Merch on Demand.
So guys, for those of you who want to start this business model, again, I'll leave a link down in the description below. So I really hope that you guys take advantage of this one or the Amazon KDP one. Both of them will walk you through everything you need to start those businesses.
All right, guys, so those are the first three ways to make passive income. Those are all of my easy options for you. So no matter which one you are starting, those are going to be the easiest to start.
The next three that I have on this list are going to be the medium category, and then the last one is going to be the hardest. So let's get into the first of the medium difficulty passive income streams to start. Alright, so this next passive income stream has been around forever, and you've probably done this without even realizing that you've done it before.
However, now it is available to do online using the internet, and this is what turns it into passive income. So what this business is called is affiliate marketing. Now, affiliate marketing is what this is technically called, but really what it is, is using company's referral programs.
So in person, if any of your neighbors or any of your friends or family have asked you, "Hey, what was a good one of these? Or "Who was a good person who did this for you? " And you've given them your recommendation or your referral, that is what affiliate marketing is.
However, what a lot of people don't realize is that almost every big company out there has an affiliate program or a referral program where they are willing to pay you a commission for every person that you recommend to them. Now, as far as doing this in person, it's not a very passive income business because you have to be having conversations, you have to be sending links to people. However, if you take this to the online environment, you can turn this into a very good passive income stream.
So there's basically two main ways to do this. The first way would be creating a blog-style website where you are writing information about different products that you recommend. People can then find that on Google, they can read your article and they can click directly on your affiliate or referral link to that product.
It brings them over to the website where they can make that purchase, all of which will give you credit from the company, which they will then pay you a commission automatically. Now, that is kind of the gold standard on how to do affiliate marketing online very passively. However, there is another way to do this that works even better than creating blog-style websites.
And this would also be my biggest piece of advice I could give you that I wish I knew when I was starting out in affiliate marketing. What this is, is instead of creating a website and writing blog articles, create a free YouTube channel and instead of writing blog articles, film those as videos. What I have discovered over years of trial and error with this is that people just want to watch videos nowadays instead of sitting there reading articles, I believe I read something that said that 70% of the internet traffic is watching videos now instead of reading articles.
So if you can get yourself to create videos about products giving your recommendation, I'm putting your referral link to that product in that video, that is going to perform so much better than writing those articles and posting them on your website. Now, I will say once you know how to do this, it does become easier over time, but there is definitely a barrier to entry that keeps most people from starting this business. Now again, if you are interested in learning more about doing affiliate marketing to create passive income, I will put a link to a full affiliate marketing tutorial.
Again, this one is here on YouTube totally for free. That link will be down in the description below. Alright, so with affiliate marketing outta the way, that brings us into the next way to make passive income, and this one again is going to fall into the medium difficulty.
What this one is, is specifically creating a YouTube channel. Now, as we had just talked about, you can do affiliate marketing on a YouTube channel, however, you can also me YouTube AdSense. Now, for those of you who don't know what YouTube AdSense is, it's essentially when those advertisements play before videos, during videos or after videos, the person who created that video and uploaded it to YouTube gets paid for each one of those ads.
Now, I will definitely say that the amount that the video creator gets paid for each one of these ads definitely varies, and that's based on a few different factors. However, there is one specific thing that you can do to make sure that you get paid the most for each one of these ads, and this is also the biggest piece of advice that I can give you if you do want to start a YouTube channel. And what that is, is to understand that you can either create entertainment content on YouTube or educational content on YouTube.
Entertainment content is creating vlog-style videos or things that people are just watching just for fun. However, educational content is where people are coming in, trying to learn something from your video. If you can create a YouTube channel that is focused around educational content, the advertisers on YouTube pay significantly more for those ads.
So each time someone watches an ad, you will make a lot more money compared to the entertainment-style videos. Now with all that being said, once you create a video and you publish it to YouTube, it will continue to get views just totally organically for years to come. And when I say years to come, I'm not talking about one or two years, I'm talking about five, 10, 15 years down the road, the videos are still getting views, which means that you are still getting paid for every time someone watches one of those ads.
Guys, if you are thinking about creating a YouTube channel, it is one of the most proven ways to create passive income. And if you're creating educational-style videos, you can actually be helping your viewers by sharing the things that you've uniquely learned in your life. Alright guys, so I've got two more on this list.
These are both proven ways to make passive income. The first one is creating digital downloads. Now, if you've never heard of a digital download before, essentially, what that is, is you create a file on your computer and then you offer that for sale to other people and they can purchase it online and it instantly sends it to them to download to their own computer.
Now, if you haven't seen anything like this before, let me just show you a good example of this. If you go over to etsy. com, I'm just searching for wedding invitation, but there are a million different examples of digital downloads.
If you scroll through here, you're going to see that some of these are actual printed cards where they will print them and they will ship them to you, but others are just digital downloads. So for this one, for instance, the person who created this listing has just created this layout right here. And then as you scroll through the photos, you can see that the person who purchases it is just able to customize that specific layout and then they can print it themselves.
This is a perfect example of a digital download. Now, as far as the biggest piece of advice I can give you, if you are going to create a digital download, it's to think about what you have learned in your life that you can share with other people that will save them time. So for this wedding invitation example, if you are a graphic designer, you can create these templates or these layouts that other people really like and they don't know how to create.
You are saving them time, you are saving them the trial of error, of trying to create it themselves. Another example in a totally different niche, just to give you some ideas here, is you could create a budgeting finance spreadsheet that has all the calculations built into each column, and you can sell that as a pre-made budgeting tool that people can purchase and it instantly downloads to their own computer. Now, guys, for those of you out there who do have a good idea to create a digital download about, once you do create that, you can list that on a marketplace website like Etsy where there are several other ones out there.
People will organically find it on their own by coming to that website's marketplace. And then every time someone makes a purchase, it'll automatically download to their computer. So just like that, we're onto the last way to make passive income in this video.
This is going to be the hardest one on this list. And what this one is, is creating online courses. Now, for those of you who don't know, you can actually create an online course and sell it on Udemy or you can sell it on Skillshare.
And essentially, these are marketplaces that sell your online course for you. You're even going to see other YouTubers creating online courses just to generate more passive income. But all this is, is creating a very formally laid out step-by-step course teaching a specific topic.
Now, although this generates great passive income, it is definitely in the hardest difficulty to start, and that is because before you can create the course, you need to have all these skills and knowledge in order to teach that topic. So my biggest piece of advice I can give you if you do wanna create and sell an online course to make passive income is to think about two places of information. First would be your career, and second would be your hobbies.
These, in the vast majority of cases are going to be what you know enough information about that you could put together a full course on. So guys, I hope this video has helped you a lot. Don't forget about all of those full free tutorials down in the description.
For any of the businesses that you do want to start, those will walk you through everything step by step. All right, guys, that's it for this video. If you enjoyed it, please give it a thumbs up.
If you have any questions at all, let me know down in the comments. Otherwise, I'll plan to see you guys all in the next video.
