How to Earn Passive Income Online? Step by Step Guide

Passive Income is absolutely possible!  With the right strategy and support you can be earning passive income from your own online business.  We will go through exactly how to earn passive income online in an easy to follow step-by-step guide for anyone wanting to get started.

If you have been looking for a way to earn money online and want to know a little more about what passive income is and how it all works, we have come up with 2 great passive income paths that can mean you can really enjoy the work you need to put in to make this work.

Know this, there is no system out there that will mean you will be instantly earning money on auto-pilot.  But with the right work mindset and some awesome support, you will soon have your own passive income online business.

Let’s get started then…

What is Passive Income?

Passive income is when you do not need to hand-hold the transaction.  If you consider Gem’s wedding stationary business, someone visits our website and places an order for some wedding invitations.

There are then other processes we need to go through like sending and actioning the personalisation of the invitations.

Gem then needs to print them and put them all together and then package and send them. We also need to process the transaction, etc.

Passive Income doesn’t involve any of this, with the 2 great passive income ideas we are going to share with you, you do not need to do anything to do with the transaction or even interact with the customer.  All you need to do is provide help in the form of really useful content.

However, you do need to be mindful when exploring earning passive income.  Whilst you will not be actioning the order, you will still need to work on your business to earn passive income and you also need to watch out for the high number of scams that are out there too.

You also need to know you will need to invest a lot of time into your new online enterprise and I mean a lot of time and effort.

What Passive Income is Not?

Now there is a clear difference between passive income and products claiming everything is done on auto-pilot.  It is sometimes an easy spot too.

If you see any product that claims you only need to work for ten minutes a day or “Switch it on and watch the money come in” or has ridiculous claims of earning thousands on the first day – Yeah, those are the products I am talking about!!

There is no get-rich-quick scheme I have found that is genuinely going to work. They are usually low-quality products that lack any real substance to them and are usually just a funnel into other products that end up costing you a lot of money and with nothing to show for it.

Now, if you find the right sort of passive income it is really appealing because you get to create your own passive income from something that you love. Imagine working on something you already have an interest in or are a subject matter expert in.

Why is Passive Income Appealing?

Creating your own passive income stream can be a lot of fun, it can also allow you to really delve into a subject you already love.

You might decide to focus on a hobby you have.  

You might want to earn passive income whilst travelling (who wouldn’t want to see the world and earn some money too).

There are other factors that make passive income through our preferred method more appealing.  Such as you do not interact with the customers who are buying the products.  Any complaints will go through the merchant, the merchant will handle the sales.

You can just concentrate and creating awesome content that helps people in a niche that you already love.

Let’s get onto our ideas for great passive income for beginners

2 Great Passive Income Ideas for Beginners

There are more than two ideas out there, but as you are just starting out we came up with the two best starting point.  There is a lot to learn, and you do need to put effort into these ideas to see it through to the point where it is making money.

But with our help, and some awesome training we will recommend at the end of the post you will succeed and have your very own passive income stream.

The beauty of these two ideas is they complement each other, and you will be able to explore both as you grow your online business.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is the best passive income stream, as it allows you to fully delve into a subject you love.

You do not need any of your own products or services, you are going to promote other people’s products and services.

As an affiliate, you sign up with an affiliate program.  For our example in the process below, we use Amazon.  It is the world’s largest marketplace and when you become an affiliate of Amazon, you get to promote anything that is available on there.  This is how you can create a business in any subject you want.

How Affiliate Marketing Works?

Affiliate Marketing works by you applying for an affiliate program, and promoting specific products or services related to your niche.  You don’t store the products or have anything to do with the transaction, you just include a special link that tells the merchant (Amazon) that you introduced the buyer.  If they follow your link and buy a product, you get rewarded with a commission.  This is typically a percentage of the sale price.

Endless Possibilities for a Business

There are so many possibilities that are out there and anything you are currently love will be there for you to get started with.

• Love keeping fit and want to help people lose weight, then that can be your focus on your business.  Help people lose weight and include some promotions to specific products that help with this.
• Love Photography and want to share your images with people and help other people who want to learn how to get into photography is also an option.
• Love Arts & Crafts, this is a viable option.

When you become an affiliate, they provide you with tools to allow you to use special links that when someone visits your blog and decides to buy that product, they get taken straight to the page on Amazon for them to complete their purchase.  When they complete the purchase, you get a percentage of the sale.

Let’s put that into context.  You could have one high-quality post on your blog that keeps converting sales for years to come.  There are examples of these throughout the affiliate marketing world.  One blog post could earn you money every month for years to come, and the beauty is you could be having tons of blog posts that are doing the same thing.

Affiliate Marketing is the ultimate passive income stream, because if you do it correctly it can lead to a full-time income and the best thing is you are doing it in a subject you love.

We have used Amazon here as an example but know this; there are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there!

When you start going through how to learn affiliate marketing effectively to put it into practise you will soon find out that you will be able to (pretty much) promote any product or service available online.

Selling Ad Space

This option goes hand in hand with affiliate marketing, but you do need to wait until you have some traffic to explore this option. This option is about utilising the blank spots on your blog for advertising.

One of the easiest options for beginners is Google AdSense and that will be the option we explore in our “getting started” process below.

When you start getting traffic to your blog, you can then start earning money from ads.

You will typically get paid for a couple of things:

• People clicking on the ad
• Number of Impressions (Impressions is when someone has seen the ad, but not interacted with the ad)

Google AdSense doesn’t bring a great return, but we are only just starting out.  Your goal for both affiliate marketing and for ads to succeed is high levels of traffic.  Once you are getting some serious traffic, you will be earning from affiliate marketing and from ads.

Then when you are reaching 25k pageviews, you can start exploring some serious ad partners like MediaVine where you can take a real step up in the money earned from ads compared to Google AdSense.

How to Get Started Earning Passive Income Online

Affiliate Marketing and Ads are great ways of earning passive income and they go hand in hand.  Below you will find the process we followed when we first started out.  We are going to go through this process and then if you think this is the passive income route you want to take; we are going to share with you some awesome training and tools that you can get started with for free!

Pick a Niche – What Subject Are You Going to Choose?

This is the first decision and it is a big one!  It is often one that people get wrong. The reason I say this is, some will try and pick a niche because they think it is profitable. But there are a couple of problems when it comes to a beginner.

• Too Much Competition
• Run Out of Things to Write About

Let’s take the Make Money Online market.  People will often think “that is profitable” and then they start a blog, but they soon realise it is very competitive, and unless you have a clue about how any of the products work you will struggle to write content about it.  i can only write about this stuff now because I know what I am doing, it wasn’t always the case.

Let’s clear this up now, any niche can be profitable!

Whatever you are really interested in is the subject to pick.  Pick a subject that you will not get bored of.

If I chose something like knitting or sewing, I would not be able to put any effort in because it doesn’t interest me.

Now, If I chose something in the motor racing world.  That is something that interests me.  I could talk to someone about Formula 1 for hours, I want to keep up-to-date with it and would happily learn more about it.

You need to do the same process, what really interests you and that you could provide some help and advice in that subject.

You could talk to other people interested in that niche all day and that you also want to learn more about that niche too.

Do not get swayed by someone else who states “this niche is profitable” because they all can be, but you need content.

Can you honest say you could keep writing about a subject you have no interest in at all? Really?

I Keep Going on About a Niche

You might be thinking at this point, why does John keep going on about a niche?  What exactly is a niche?

Well, when we talk about affiliate marketing a niche is a tiny segment of the overall market.  If you target a subject that is too broad, you face a lot more competition and you will find it much harder to break the ice into your market.

Let’s use an example to show how to break a subject you love into a niche to target.

I will go back to the “keep fit” example.  

If we just targeted the keep fit market, we would be up against any and all other blogs in that industry.  That is a huge market and would make it much harder for a beginner to get their claws in and make a mark.

Now, let’s think about some ideas about who we could target within that market:

• Gym Enthusiasts
• Runners/Joggers
• Losing Weight
• Healthy Diets
• Supplements

This is just a few ideas, but again they are still really broad.

Let’s focus on Losing Weight and see if we can narrow down our niche again:

• Losing Weight
• Losing weight after a baby
• Losing weight at the gym
• Losing weight after menopause
• Losing weight by running
• Losing weight benefits
• Losing Belly Fat
• Losing Bingo Wings
• Exercises to aid losing weight
• Supplements to aid losing weight
• fitness programs for losing weight

These are just a few that I could think of to do with losing weight, and by searcing Google

But again, these could be considered a little broad. But again, this is about you sharing your experiences and goals.  You also need to consider your target audience.

You might have been on a journey losing weight after a baby and this could be the niche you choose to help others do the same.

I could choose “how to lose belly fat” as a niche, as I start my own journey to do that and bring others along with me.

Whatever subject you decide, keep narrowing down until you reach a niche market.

Consider these two examples and see which does a better job of helping the target audience and would lead to conversions.

Person Searching Google – Looking to Lose Belly Fat

Blog One – General Lose Weight Site that talks about how to lose weight in general.  Nothing specifically targeting any part of the body or how to lose belly fat.

Blog Two – Specifically about losing belly fat.  Exercises that work, the right diets to support this, supplements that might help. It shares the owners own journey with losing belly fat.  Looks like the website owner is an authority when it comes to losing belly fat.

Which one would they find more beneficial to them?

That is what you need to think about when you are picking your niche.  Start very niche, when you start building out your authority you can start branching out.  But in the early days, keep it tight.

Identify a target audience and make sure you stay very relevant with that audience.

Start a Blog Website for Free

Once you have chosen your niche, it is time to build your own blog website. 

I know you may have found some who say you do not need a website, well I disagree.

The main reason is, you get to explore all channels available to you.  If you only focus on one social media platform and then find out 3 months in, it isn’t really the best audience for your niche then you have to start again.

Whereas if you have a website, you can explore all other social media channels and YouTube, and then if you find one channel is better than the others you can focus on promoting your content there.

You will also find social media channels have a funny relationship with affiliate links, because of poor use from some affiliate marketers.

Promoting a post on social media to bring them to your website with your links in will work out much better for you.

If you wait until the end of the post, I will show you how you can get started with your own free blog website and get some awesome training for affiliate marketing.

Create Awesome Content That Helps & Drive Traffic to Your Website

This is an important step, when you start creating content think quality, not quantity.

If you are like me, you may find it hard to write in-depth at first.  I struggled to write 500 words in a post and now I often tip 4,000 words in a post.

But don’t worry, this will come with time.  But the difference is, you are going to writing about something you love.  If you pick the wrong niche, this step is hard.

If you pick the right niche, you can provide value with whatever you write.

You also need to keep one focus in your posts –

• What question you are trying to answer, make sure you answer it.
• If you are providing a how-to guide, ensure it is clear and concise so that anyone can follow it.
• Remember your Target Audience
• Keep it Conversational

Do not sell, as soon as you start selling to people, they will switch off.  You need to understand where they are in the customer purchase lifecycle.

Not everyone is ready to buy, some people just want help. They might not know what a term is and you are helping them understand it.

If they land on your website and find valuable information, they are likely to bookmark your website and come back later.

That is where they start to trust you.  Trust is the major player in making sales. 

They trust people who help, they do not trust those who constantly sell.

You Need Traffic…

Before we get to applying for affiliate programs, you need to start building up traffic.

Traffic is an important metric, because if you have no traffic, you will not make any sales from either affiliate marketing or your ads.

How do you drive traffic? You create high-quality content that targets specific keywords and then you tell Google about it.

There is a strategy you follow when writing content, it starts with keyword research.  This step allows you find what we like to call low-hanging-fruit keywords.  These are keywords that are getting some traffic and have low competition.

The training we share with you, with help you master keyword research. 

Do your keyword research, target the right keywords with posts that are high-quality and help someone and you are well on your way to getting traffic.

The next step is those affiliate programs.

Apply for an Affiliate Program – Amazon Associates

For beginners, we do suggest you start with Amazon associates.  It is free and easy to join, is nice and simple and gains you access to over 500,000 items to promote.  You are pretty much guaranteed to find something in the niche you chose earlier on.

We recommend you do not sign up with Amazon straightaway because they will expect you to make at least 3 sales in 6 months.  If you haven’t got any traffic, you will find that extremely difficult.

Now, it isn’t a deal breaker if they do reject your application after those 6 months as you can just reapply.  But you are definitely better off waiting until you have some traffic.

The reason Amazon has done this, is because they get a lot of applications and yet most do not continue on with their blogs.  This saves them having a load of inactive accounts.

Follow our strategy and you will not have any of this to worry about.

Get Promoting

Like we said, you need to get some qualifying sales to avoid the bump after 6 months.  Start writing unique product reviews about the products and services you are promoting.

We say unique as Amazon will be reviewing your website.  If they find you are just regurgitating reviews that are already found on Amazon that is not going to look good.

Be opinionated, give the reader your take on the product.  The more honest you are, the more likely you will build up that authority.

Do not just write it, so people buy it.  Seriously, it will not work.

Write in-depth helpful guides on the products, how they work, who do they benefit and what others are saying about the product. Good, Bad or Indifferent.

Do Not Overdo the Affiliate Links

When you are writing your content, Google is looking as to where to rank your content.

If they see every post on your website has affiliate links, and all you have done is place them everywhere; you will find this can actually harm your rankings.

Think about it, when was the last time you scrolled to page two of the search on Google?

You need to be on page one to earn money, be careful where you place your affiliate links.

We suggest you keep your affiliate links to product review pages, and then link to these reviews from other posts.  You will learn all of this with our awesome training platform.

This is like having a central pitch page for an offer, and all the other posts link to them like a spider’s web.

Apply for a Google AdSense Account

Now, this is the point where you are getting traffic to your website.  Hopefully you have got your qualifying sales for Amazon and now it is time to add another money stream to your blog.

Again, for a relatively new blog, we recommend Google AdSense.  We have waited until this point to ensure we have some traffic to show Google.

Without the traffic, you are likely to get rejected.  Often people apply, but if you only have a handful of traffic.

They then wonder why Google has rejected their application, it is nearly always there is not enough content on their website.  If you have only 3 or 4 posts, yeah you are likely to get rejected.

30 to 40 posts, now that is more appealing to Google – it shows you are more serious about your blog.

Be patient, and when you notice your traffic is rising, apply.

Keep Creating Awesome Content That Helps

Now you at the stage where you just need to keep going with creating awesome content that helps.

This may be a passive income stream, but if you stop creating content Google will consider your blog inactive.

You rankings will drop; your traffic levels will drop and guess what you stop earning money.

It is often something people do not want to hear, but there is no system in the world that will allow you to earn money by doing nothing.  You do not need to handle the transactions, but you need to work hard on creating content.

Affiliate Marketing and Ads are passive income streams, but as soon as you take your foot off the gas, you will find that your income will stop.

If you want to be earning passive income, you need to put the effort in to earn it.

Focus on Helping People and you will find success!

This doesn’t have to be difficult; I love doing what I do and writing content that helps people makes me feel quite content.

But it also means these methods are not for everyone.  If you are looking for an easy way to earning passive income, affiliate marketing is not one of them. But it is the only one that will really work, unless you have a big budget for paid ads.

But with the right help and support, it doesn’t feel like hard work. It feels liberating to be able to explore an income where you are helping people and working from home.

Want Help & Support Every Step of the Way…?

I mentioned earlier I would show you a route where you got a free website and training towards getting started. I am going to share that with you, but I will also share with you the help and support you will get.

There are training platforms and then there is Wealthy Affiliate.

With a free Wealthy Affiliate starter membership, you gain access to training, websites and help from experts.

We joined Wealthy Affiliate in 2016 and have not looked back, by the end of the ten lessons included in the free starter membership you will have picked your niche, built your very own website and fully understand how you are going to create content and incorporate affiliate offers including keyword research, applying for affiliate programs, etc.

You will have seen what support you are going to get from us, the owners (Kyle & Carson) and the awesome community you become a member of.

Some are starting out like you; some are industry experts offering their help and advice every step of the way.

If you are ready to put the effort in and work hard, follow the step-by-step process set out by Kyle & Carson you will find that you will have your own passive income stream being built.

If you are still looking for a quicker way, I am sorry you will not find it here and I am yet to find one that works.  But good luck to you!

Wealthy Affiliate is for those that are willing to work hard to earn their own full-time income. They have a proven track record from their training and the tools they provide can and will help you achieve success.

If you feel like you are ready to get expert help and support, you can click the button below for a free (no credit card required) starter membership with Wealthy Affiliate.  Get a feeling for what Wealthy Affiliate has to offer you.

If you would still like a little more information about Wealthy Affiliate, read our thorough Wealthy Affiliate review.

Thanks for taking the time to read our guide and we hope you found it useful, let us know what you thought in the comments below.

If you still have any questions, then please write them in the comments below and we will come back to you as soon as we can.

Either way, Good Luck to You on your journey towards Passive Income.