I was able to make some additional passive income outside of what I talk about on my blog & YouTube channel.
I briefly mention some of them, like my Google Ads revenue on my monthly income reports.
In this article I want to hopefully teach you some additional ways of making passive money, as I'm a firm believer in diversifying your income streams.
By diversifying, you're giving yourself the best shot of finding what works best.
From there, you can double & even triple down on whatever is making you the most money... and make, well, make even more money!
Lets dive into the numbers.
Monetization: Google Ads
If your website traffic is picking up, it can be monetized by running display ads.
Now just to be up front: I am not running any ads on my personal blog at the moment.
I do run other (entertainment) websites, one in particular does really well, my 2019 stats are below:
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My website isn't exactly optimized for ad revenue, but I still make a decent amount of money each month:
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If you're lucky enough to see your audience balloon like mine did on this website, running ads can make a lot of sense... here's what you need to know:
Google Ads: Introduction
Google Ads is the #1 platform for monetizing web content. Joining is free, and if your website is approved, you can begin serving ads today.
They keep 33% of revenue & we get the remaining 67%.
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Google Ads: 2019 Profit
Here's a break down of my 2019 AdSense earnings:
- Best Month: December
- Best Month Earnings: $560.39
- Earning on the Year: $3,151.67
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There's a strong correlation between website traffic & money from ads.
My website hits peak traffic on weekends, and especially around big holidays (such as Christmas & New Years), so it's no surprise that December was so successful.
Monetization: YouTube Ads
Similar to Google Ads, Google also own YouTube, meanining YouTube ads actually runs through Google AdSense.
I uploaded the first YouTube video to my Ryan Hogue Passive Income YouTube channel on January 24, 2019.
Unlike many other people with similar ambitions who started their YouTube channel around the same time... I never gave up!
As a result, I grew my channel to the required 1,000 subscribers & 4,000 hours of watch time so that I could Earn money on YouTube.
On the year, I earned $2.044.36 on YouTube.
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I was actually immediately eligible for monetization... but in March there was a policy update requiring the subscriber count & watch time, which can be seen in the chart.
Looking ahead to 2020 & beyond, I'm excited to continue growing my YouTube channel & to start at least 1 new channel that I can publish content to outside of the "passive income" niche.
Digital Courses
I use a platform called Teachable to host my Digital Courses where I teach students my exact methods to make 6-figure annual passive income.
The chart below shows my 2019 profit from course enrollments.
Total Earnings: $15,422
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(Teachable's reporting is not very good, I wanted to screenshot more of the statistics... but they wouldn't dynamically update when I changed the filters...)
I look forward to growing my Ryan's Method: Passive Income School in the coming years!
Being An Affiliate
This is the definition of affiliate marketing from Google:
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.
I didn't set out to make money as an affiliate for products... I simple recommend the products & services that I myself use while running my online businesses.
If the company I recommend has an affiliate program, I register myself as an affiliate & use special trackable links when I recommend their products.
Affiliate programs are a win/win & a no-brainer: both sides win!
I don't have a reporting mechanism prepared that tracks all of my affiliate income, but by my estimates it's around $2,500 on the year for 2019.
No single program makes me a ton of money, but all together it does start to add up.
Here's the 2019 chart for my Amazon Associates account (which is what they call their affiliate program):
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Total earnings: $239.45
It's not much, but I'll take it!
Additional Income Streams
Here are some other ways I made some additional income online in 2019, along with the estimated earnings:
- 1 On 1 Coaching Calls: $500
- Freelance Web Design & Hosting: $2,000
- Selling Website Ads & Backlinks: $1,300
- Investing: Undisclosed (learn more about how I invest)
That's all that comes to mind for now... I may come back and update the article in the future if I forgot anything.
Thanks for checking it out! If you have any questions, drop me a comment below - Thanks!
