Hi guys, how have you been, hope you all are doing great?
Finally after several requests from some followers, I have made the decision to show just 10 lucky
Nigerian youths how to become financially free through selling on Amazon US and
Canada from Nigeria to make a minimum of $1,000 every month without spending huge
startup capital.
Lagos based Realtor and Entrepreneur, Olanrewaju Salu shares 20 businesses you can do with just 20k in Nigeria.
Lack of money is usually the excuse many people give for not starting a business, but lack of idea is a worse problem you've got to think about.
There are businesses you can start with as little as N20,000, but if you have no idea of what to do with 20k, you'll probably think starting a small scale business is the most difficult thing to do.
You don't have to think this way anymore, Olanrewaju Salu, a Lagos based Realtor and Entrepreneur, recently shared some fantastic business tips on Twitter and many have commended him for sharing such amazing business ideas.
So, if you've always thought of having a small scale business, money and idea shouldn't be your problem again. Just check your bank account, if you find N20k you're not going to use anytime soon, you can start a profitable business that'll give you a genuine financial freedom. Here we go.
1. Bedsheet/Beddings Production
Pay a visit to Lagos Island, or Oshodi where they sell bulk materials, pick good designs and I tell you they guys who will sew it for you are just within the same Market. You can start will less that 100k and diligently grow your money.
2. Shirt Production
A sweet side hustle. There are tailors in Lagos Island or better learn the skill it will save you all the heartbreaks imaginable. Taiwo Street in Lagos Island is where you should be. Materials ranging from 700 - 1k per yard, sew for 1500/2k, Sell for 5-7k.
3. Sales of men's underwear
Schedule a trip to Aba Market, The cost of production of boxers, you can get one for as low as N300, all you need is to package it in 3s, and market these babies properly beg your friend on twitter for RTs, we buy 3s pack boxers for 1500-2500 sell yours for 1200 gradually grow.
4. E-Payments and POS Business
You can a get POS machine from your Bank, and activate online banking: If you live in a place where banks aren't much you can handle e-payments for people and make your small change. I paid someone N200 to withdraw 10k in Ikorodu. ATM queue was crazy.
5. Mobile and electronic Accessories
Mobile and electronic Accessories such Pouches, Chargers, USB cables, HDMI cables, earphones and more, can be sourced on Alibaba, Ali Express, Deal Extreme, etc. The more you buy the lower the price. And they are light so shipping won't be a burden. Sell on here or jumia and co.
6. Popcorn Machine
We all know this guy! We buy everytime. Bags of corn - Mile 12, Branded Nylon, Sugar, Salt & Butter. The beauty of this is when properly made, its aroma will attract it's customers. Manual sealing machine -7/9k. Popcorn Machine is 65k on Jumia. Popcorn can be served anywhere.
7. Sales and Customizing of Football Team
Football team supporters always want to show how much they're rooting for a team. Consult my sister @The_Ronke. She'll show you how well you survived the business. She's cheerful enough to train you too.
8. Snail farming
Snail farming in Nigeria is even more popular, due to its relatively cheap cost of start up and If you market your products well, your business will thrive. This is a business you can start from your backyard. Best in mind, snails take almost a year to mature so Patience is Key!
9. Fairly used goods
Fairly Used Goods such as Jeans, Tops, t-shirts, shoes etc. They could be sourced at Badagry, even Cotonou. 100k can't get you a bale but you can select and mix them. Wash then and pack neatly. Marketing is all it takes, you'll Sell and see your money multiply.
10. Cleaning Services
Some people find it hard to clean their apartments cos they're busy from Monday to Friday and Saturday the have engagement and on Sunday all they wanna do is rest. Your tools won't cost you up to 30k and you can clean 6 apartments a weekend.
11. Home Cooking and Delivery
You can cook a variety of meals well and apply customer service, People will pay good money for your services, You can run this from home @Soup_A_Market and @Marrgarritah are more than capable when to comes to training you on how to start up.
12. Digital Marketing
The success of any business is in its ability to effectively reach its teeming customers and this is achieved by effective marketing: Get a Used Laptop and Smartphone, temporarily your smartphone can double as your hotspot Persistence and Passion is Key.
13. Cakes and Confectionery
This is one business that always comes to play, people celebrate, and bakers are always consulted. Ask my Boss here @mycreamydelight Get the required skill, a decent oven, passion and customer service! You'll grow! They are open to training too.
14. Aso-Oke Beading and Stoning
Aso-Oke Beading and Stoning has become sometimes in vogue now, and this is another sweet business one can start with 100k. You just have to learn how to bead and unlock your creative mind. Ask my padi @wuragold2 The Also Oke Girl. She stated from the confines of her home in IB.
15. Bead Making
I'm not sure there's really much to say here. All you need is training, passion, creativity, unique designs and styles, then adequate marketing. You absolutely don't need 100k to start this.
16. Home Service Barber
This is another profitable small scale business. The beautiful thing about this is you bring your services to your clients for an extra token above regular. The starting capital to get the equipments and I'm sure you know we have rechargeable clippers.
17. Tutorial Classes
No matter your age, this is another well paying job, either as part-time or full-time. Many families are willing to spend what it takes for their children’s success and there's one subject you're well versed at. Just close the gap, meet their need for a fee.
18. Internet Services
Forget the extensive coverage of internet and the fact that people can assess it on their phones, Do you know how much applicants pay just to have Jamb applications filled online? You need a good system, printer & ISP. People pay as much as 1k per application.
19. Production Of Zobo, Smoothies, cocktail, small chops, cupcakes and chinchin!
You'd realise the importance of this combo can't be ruled out. You can render these services with 100k startup capital + proper marketing, branding and packaging. @aisinshugga @DojaCulinary can train you.
20. Production of Hand-Made cards
Do you know people pay good money for these thing made of paper and strawboard. This is one business you can start with less than 100k. My friend @CraftsVillageNG started from his bedroom! And his cards went far.
Yes! There are many easy ways to make money online without sweating or getting frustrated.
How can you earn more money?
You’d think a question this simple would have a simple answer.
Yet experts’ attempts to explain the nuances of earning — whether disguised as personal finance, business management, or the importance of education — could fill a file server.
You could read all the articles, watch all the how-to videos, listen to all the podcasts, and even attend the right business school, but still not know the best ways to make money.
Why is it all so complicated?
I have an idea: It’s because only you are qualified to answer the question of how you can make more money.
Think about it:
Just like our relationships, our time, our food preferences, and even our financial choices are personal.
What works for me may not work for you.
Likewise, I might not survive a day doing something you’d excel at.
And while education, knowledge, and experience matter a lot, they are only the ingredients.
You have to get into the kitchen to cook up your own recipe for financial success and independence:
Are you a people person? Then you should flavor your recipe with face-to-face interactions.
Are you an introvert? Maybe you need a dash of stay-at-home independence.
Are you short on time? Find a recipe with a short prep-time but an abundant yield.
Do you need a flexible schedule? Sprinkle in some freelance work — something like real estate or ad hoc computer programming, for example.
Whatever the case, your recipe must reflect the reality of your personal preferences, your daily challenges, and the way you live.
You can find ideas (and hopefully some valuable advice) in posts like the one you’re reading right now, but you’re the expert on you.
Also, take a look at the end of this article to learn more about our official guide to making money.
With that in mind, let’s get cooking (especially if you can make money doing it!).
Different Paths, But One Common Goal: Earning More Money!
As you know, finding your own path is essential, but let’s also make sure your path leads where we all want to go: a more profitable and financially secure future.
To do that, get to know more about your local economy (or the broader national or international economy) so you’ll know what skills or products are in demand right now and into the future.
In a dynamic economy like ours, any list of ways to earn money comes with an expiration date.
And, I could spend days listing all the possibilities for earning more money and still not include the one thing you’re looking for.
For those of you even vaguely familiar with stock options, you’re probably aware of how you can essentially turn a small sum of money into a sizable payoff if things go the right way for you.
As an example, if you bought out of the money call options on Apple a few years ago, the return would have been over 1000%.
What if you could apply this concept to your career and earning power?
You can!
Still, we need some kind of order for organizing possible paths to earning power.
I like the following three categories:
Entrepreneurship
Education-related
Side hustles
Let’s explore these categories as you determine where to begin or continue your journey toward making more money.
Earning Through Entrepreneurship
To earn your living by owning your own company is part of the American Dream. If watching Shark Tank doesn’t get your creative juices flowing, perhaps consider just re-assessing your skill sets and how you might build a business around it.
And we’ve all heard the legendary success stories about people such as:
Sam Walton, whose family barely survived the Great Depression. He opened his own tiny grocery store after World War II with financial help from his father-in-law. The store, of course, grew into Walmart (along with Sam’s Club and a few other variations).
Oprah Winfrey, who was raised in poverty and became one of the most successful TV stars of all time while also offering reading advice to millions.
Andrew Carnegie, who, as a child, worked as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill (before child labor laws prohibited it). He earned billions in steel and helped transform our economy for the industrial age.
Steve Jobs, a college dropout who likely invented the phone or the computer you’re holding right now.
You may be thinking: But these people are the exceptions.
Nobody ever mentions the thousands of inventors, industrialists, retailers, and entertainers who fell flat on their faces.
You’d be right, of course.
More importantly, though, I also didn’t mention the thousands of people who have enjoyed success on a more moderate scale — all the people who went from living paycheck-to-paycheck at a job they hated to supporting their families by owning a business.
This list is longer than you may think, and it’s full of people like you and me — ordinary people who had a vision for a better future and worked hard to make it happen.
I’ll spare you the motivational speech about how you can’t succeed without the possibility of failure, and about how even today’s billionaires can tell you about their ever-growing lists of failures.
Instead, let’s look at some possible paths to entrepreneurial success, all of which allow you to be your own boss and, in most cases, to make your own rules:
Franchising
Let’s say you love Five Guys Burgers & Fries, an East Coast hamburger place, but the chain doesn’t have a location near you.
As you drive along looking for someplace to eat, you may tell your significant other: “You know, somebody really ought to open a Five Guys on this side of town. They’d make a killing.”
Well, that “somebody” may be you.
You could look into franchising requirements for Five Guys (or whatever your favorite store or restaurant actually is) and open your very own location.
Most stores require some personal investment, and they may have some other requirements, too. You also wouldn’t have total freedom over every decision you make since the corporation you’re partnering with will have its own set of standards.
But, if you have a flair for business management but not necessarily a niche product that’s all your own, this could be your path.
Selling Stuff Online
If you need a lower bar for admission into entrepreneurship than opening a franchise, online sales may be your thing. It’s not all knitted scarves or unneeded football tickets these days.
People shop all the time on Craigslist, eBay, Amazon, and countless other sites for used and new products.
To succeed, you need to be an expert on a product so you can make a profit by connecting others with exactly what they’re looking for.
If you’re an expert on guitars, for example, you could spend your weekends shopping garage sales, estate sales, and auctions. You’d see a lot of junk.
But, since you know your product line, you’d also recognize the vintage Gibson J-200 someone is selling for a song, and you’ll know how easy it will be to find a premium buyer online.
Along with expertise in your product lines, you’ll need great customer service chops and some patience as you get your business rolling.
Selling Your Advice
It’s not all about tangible products.
You can also sell your expertise, whether you are an expert in business, the arts, engineering, industry, retail, etc.
Thanks to Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts and similar services, you can even offer advice online, whether you’re teaching painting lessons or showing someone how to integrate a drone into their wedding videography business.
Just look at YouTube.
Whether you’re fixing a washing machine or changing your spark plugs, chances are you can find a video of someone else doing the same thing.
What do you know an awful lot about?
Whatever it is, someone else may need your advice. Whether you charge for one-on-one sessions or cast a wider net with more general videos, you can turn your smarts into a source of income.
Offering a Service
Do you cut your own grass?
Shop for your own groceries?
Pick up your own dry-cleaning?
More and more people are turning to services to do these sorts of things, which means there may be a growing market in your community for someone to perform these services.
By developing a steady clientele and setting some reasonable limits (no 2 a.m. runs to Taco Bell, perhaps?) you can have your own courier service.
Start by placing an ad in your community’s newspapers or free weeklies, and mix in some patience, some flexibility, and a pricing plan that’s fair to you and your customers.
Other Entrepreneurial Ideas
We’ve hit some high points, but this is by no means an all-inclusive list. If you have a business idea, you’ve already caught the entrepreneurial spirit.
Maybe it’s time to start looking into financing, business partners, or marketing strategies.
If you’re in the type of role at work where you have the ability to affect change or have some latitude in your responsibilities, you could morph an idea or concept into an entirely new business unit.
Sometimes you can parlay being in the right place at the right time into a leadership role of an entire organization or act as an “agent” to fill a need and collect a premium for doing so.
Not everyone is destined for business ownership, though.
Keep reading to learn about other routes to financial success.
Using Education to Unlock Earnings
For several generations it was almost a given: A college degree would open doors for the rest of your career.
Federal labor statistics showed (and still show) higher earning power for people with a four-year degree. So college became a rite of passage across the country.
But what happens if you’re not in a position to pursue higher education?
What if you already have a family and a full-time job?
Or, what if taking a bunch of English and philosophy courses just isn’t your thing?
There’s good news for you, too.
You can still unlock higher earnings through education without going the traditional college route.
Let’s take a look at some traditional and alternative educational paths to show what I mean:
Certificate Programs
College can teach critical thinking skills, helping you succeed in a variety of professions.
However, a four-year degree may not teach specific trade skills.
In many professions, employers value specific, hands-on skills over more general thinking skills.
I think it’s best to have both, but to provide employers with skilled employees, many community and technical colleges offer certificate programs for professions such as:
Welding
Dental assistants
HVAC
Web design
Nursing assistants
Plumbing
Electrical work
Auto technicians
Information technology
Cosmetology
Manufacturing
Certificate programs usually cost a lot less than traditional college courses, and they may require less of your time.
It’s also possible the community college in your area offers night classes and other ways to accommodate classes to your work schedule.
In many professions, getting “certified” unlocks higher wages.
Traditional College Degrees
Of course, skilled trades aren’t for everybody.
Some of us need more time to figure out a suitable profession.
One of the neat things about traditional, four-year college programs is the opportunity to learn a little bit about a lot of things, which means you may come across the right fit when you least expect it.
I remember a friend who started college with no firm plans for the future. She signed up for classes, got her parking pass, and all that.
Then, on the first day of classes, she became enamored with the whole concept of chemistry. She declared chemistry her major, graduated with a degree, and started a successful (and high-paying) career as an industrial chemist.
Most of us will need more than one day of college to find our calling. For some people, it takes two years to decide on a major. Others may go all four years without finding the answer.
For those folks, graduate school for advanced degrees may be on the horizon.
Advanced Degrees
Physicians, high-level business executives, researchers, college professors, and most lawyers have one thing in common, and it’s not necessarily their tax bracket: They hold advanced degrees in their fields of study.
Advanced degrees offer a level of specialization (and earning power) beyond what a four-year diploma or a certificate can give you.
People who research the effects of school nutrition on academic performance or who diagnose medical conditions using a microscope most likely have advanced degrees.
Usually, you need a bachelor’s degree before starting on an advanced degree and expect to spend upwards of $100,000 in tuition for some advanced degrees.
It could all be worth it, financially, when you land your first degree-specific job.
Little or No Post-Secondary Education
What happens if education beyond high school just hasn’t worked out for you?
All is not lost. Recent data shows 72 percent of people with only high school degrees had jobs in 2017.
You could start your own business, as I discussed above, or you could apply for more general labor jobs which don’t necessarily require a certificate or a diploma — jobs in traditionally labor-heavy fields such as:
Restaurant work
Assisting in construction sites
General manufacturing
Custodial work
Retail sales
Expect to start out in the lowest level at a company and with a lower pay rate. With hard work and by becoming a reliable employee, you may be able to start climbing the wage ladder.
But statistics tell a discouraging tale. Recent Pew Research data says people with a college education will earn, on average, $1 million more over the course of their careers than people with only a high school education.
What’s worse is that automation in manufacturing and the transition to online retail has made competition for these kinds of jobs more fierce.
Simply put, the economy is growing less friendly toward workers with little or no training.
Side Hustling Your Way to Greater Success
Let’s say you have a job, or you own your own business, and you’re pretty happy with what you earn.
However, you just can’t seem to stay ahead of the curve financially. In August, when the kids need school supplies, your whole budget gets knocked out of whack.
And at year’s end you have to decide whether to contribute to your IRA or buy your wife a Christmas present.
Maybe it’s time for a side hustle.
One side-hustle that has proven very lucrative for many people is running Facebook Ads for local businesses.
What is a Side Hustle?
When you start marshaling your free time toward making extra money, you’re working your side hustle.
My favorite side hustle ideas make the best use of your existing habits so you don’t have to think about work all the time.
For example, let’s say you work at a bank downtown and you paint houses as a side hustle. City Hall is near your bank branch.
So on your lunch break, you stop by City Hall to see who has taken out building permits for remodeling their homes. Someone who is remodeling, you think, may need to hire a painter.
In other words, you’d be able to generate job leads for your side hustle without going out of your way or making special trips.
That level of scheduling elegance isn’t a necessity, though. It matters more to be good at the services you’re offering, whatever they may be:
Real estate
Multi-level marketing
Contracting
Consulting
Freelance writing or editing
At-home manufacturing
At-home data entry or billing
Interior decorating
Video editing
This list could go on for days, but you get the general idea: Find something you like to do and find a way to fit it into your schedule.
Here are some other tips to remember:
Create business cards, which you can do easily online. You never know when you’ll come across someone who needs (or knows someone who needs) a service you provide.
Set boundaries to preserve your work-life balance. When things get rolling, it can be hard to tell a potential client “no.” But if you say “yes” to everybody, you may find yourself working around the clock.
Be upfront with your steady gig. Make sure your full-time employer or your business partners know about your side hustle to avoid misunderstandings. Avoid treating your co-workers like a built-in customer base, and don’t use your company’s copying machines or other office equipment to support your side hustle unless you’ve made prior arrangements.
Be transparent with your side hustle customers, too. Let them know you have a full-time job and are not necessarily available 24/7.
Keep up with your expenses and your earnings via receipts, invoices, or 1099 forms so you can report your figures properly at tax time. Ask a tax professional for advice before you start spending your earnings.
I also recommend setting some earnings goals.
How much you’d like to earn should influence the kind of job and the ferocity level of your side hustling.
For example…
If You’d Like to Earn an Extra $100 a Week
You could probably earn an extra $100 a week through Multi-Level Marketing (I’m not a huge fan, but hey, maybe it’s your thing) or by selling a line of products to your friends (think candles, beauty products, or environmentally friendly weed spray).
This kind of work takes an outgoing personality. If that’s not you, keep looking.
Some sort of at-home clerical work or light home repair, maybe.
Be careful about up-front costs, though. A lot of these opportunities — especially at-home clerical work or Multi-Level Marketing — require an investment, and if things don’t go well, you won’t recoup those costs.
Before spending any of your own money, make sure you’ve talked to some other people who have given it a try. Online message boards can also give you some insight into the real cost of doing business.
Other ideas for earning about $100 a week:
Become a tutor: So you’re good at math or you’re a history buff? Put those interests to use by helping students in your neighborhood excel. Ask the staff at your local schools, put some cards out at the library, or put an ad on Craigslist or Facebook to get started.
Sell your stuff: Do you have boxes of books or DVDs you don’t really need? Find a used book store and sell your extra stuff. If you run out of stuff, go to some yard sales to get more or offer to help your neighbors go through and sell their extra stuff for a commission. You can also sell clothes, yard equipment, or children’s toys. The list goes on and on.
Clean someone’s house: Cleaning up isn’t much fun, but earning extra money is. If you can get a couple regular customers, you’ll likely earn $100 or so a week. Be sure to factor in the cost of cleaning supplies.
Become a mystery shopper: Do you have a keen sense for detail? Put it to use as a mystery shopper. Essentially, you’re sharing your experiences as a customer with retail store managers.
If You’d Like to Earn $1,000 a Month
We’re getting more into part-time job territory here, but with side-hustling, you’re limited mainly by your time and determination.
You can take the $100-a-week ideas above and do them more aggressively — tutor more children, clean more houses, sell more stuff, etc.
Or, you could…
Start a blog about a topic you enjoy, be it cooking, yard work, interior design, reading, train travel, computer networking, music, appliance repair, electronics reviews, mountain climbing, parkour, gardening, water conservation — you get the idea! Develop an audience and monetize it. See my post about starting a blog here.
Be someone’s virtual assistant. Not all administrative support staff work on-site and take notes in-person at meetings. You can also help an executive from the comfort of your home by scheduling appointments, typing letters, ordering supplies, and preparing presentations. Zirtual may be able to connect you with someone who needs your help, though it may ask for a fee to get you started. You could also send some emails to companies near you offering your services.
Become a substitute teacher. It’s a tough job, but if you like variety in your schedule and work locales, and you enjoy working with children and teens, check with your local school district; most districts have frequent openings. If you can find six or so hours a couple of times a week, it could be worth your time.
If You’d Like to Earn an Extra $10,000 a Month
There comes a point when a side hustle becomes your main hustle. If you’re shooting for $10,000 a month, maybe you’ve reached that point.
If you’re serious about it, though, here’s something to keep in mind: To earn this kind of money on the side, you may need more inspiration than perspiration.
Can you think of a new way to do something which will make an existing process more efficient?
If so, your new knowledge will be worthwhile to others:
Can you develop an app to make car shopping more seamless?
Can you find a chemical process to make composting easier and more efficient?
Can you add a new layer of automation to an existing manufacturing process?
Innovations like these — combined with good business sense and the right kind of marketing — can put you on the map as an earner/entrepreneur.
Sometimes, You Just Need More Money
For most of us, more money equals more freedom.
Some people can cut costs to come up with more flexibility in their monthly budgets. You can do things like:
Getting a basic phone to avoid cellular data charges.
Cutting the cable TV bill and getting a cheaper streaming service.
Putting off that new car to avoid a regular payment and higher auto insurance.
Keeping the AC set to 75 degrees to reduce energy bills.
Sometimes, though, you just need more money, plain and simple.
If your need is immediate, a side hustle may be the way to go.
Who knows? Your side hustle may turn into your full-time business.
If you’re planning the next 10 years and have some career goals, consider mixing in some education. Getting the right certification, diploma, or advanced degree should open some doors.
And, of course, if you’ve caught that entrepreneurial spirit, you may already have the skills you need.
Maybe it’s just a matter of getting the right financing to start your business growing.
Whatever your case, make sure you’re making a plan to meet your specific needs — financially, personally, and professionally.
I’ve heard it said, and I’ve found it to be true: Once you find your true calling, you no longer feel like you’re working.
Instead, you’re just turning what you enjoy doing into a steady flow of earned income.
Treasure hunters would revel at the idea of getting free money. But is it really a thing? I mean, are there seriously companies out there that will just give money away because they are nice? Yes, and no. Companies often pay out sign up bonuses when you use a new service. Some of the best (and easiest) ways to get free money are to switch services that you use every day anyway, such as bank accounts or credit cards.
Other companies will pay smaller bonuses for you to try their app. Take a look at this list of ways to get some free money fast, and choose the best options for you.
Attention student loan holders: Now is a great time to refinance your private student loans to get a better rate and save on your overall monthly payments. Best of all, this is totally free to do! However, if you have federal loans, we recommend you not refinance them at this time as you may lose forbearance and other protections.
We all need our savings accounts to be much larger than they are. But with bills, credit card debt, and our careers, it sometimes feels almost impossible to increase our savings.
If you don’t think it’s possible to boost your savings, then you might be surprised to find out how easy it is to score a few extra bucks each month. And thanks to the internet, all it usually requires is filling out some paid surveys, playing around on the web, or signing up for a few specific offers.
Doing just a few of these things can easily add up to thousands of dollars in cash each year, so what are you waiting for?.
Want some free money of your own? Are you a college student looking for ways to make money while in school?
While you might not get rich quickly with the items on the list, you’ll be getting free money with very little effort.
Check out these 18+ companies that offer free money when you complete simple tasks in your spare time:
1. Refinance Student Loans
Chances are good you have student loans. Have you considered refinancing them?
Refinancing means a lender pays off your existing loans and creates a new, single loan to be paid back at (ideally) a lower interest rate. This is appealing to borrowers because it consolidates monthly loan payments and saves you money!
The *extra* good news is that many refinancing companies will pay you cold, hard cash to refinance with their company.
Check out our review of the best student loan refinance companies
2. Give your opinions for money.
Online survey sites have become a top way for people to cash in doing something pretty mindless in their spare time. While there are a ton out there to choose from, Survey Junkie has one of the longest histories and a consistent record of paying its users.
Just sign up for any one of these free accounts and you’ll be on your way to scoring free money for your musings on everything from new products to advertising campaigns. Some, like Pinecone Research, for example, will even ship you products so you can try answering questions on them.
3. Lower your mortgage payment.
Today’s historically low rates are spurring a refinance boom. By refinancing your mortgage, you not only can lower your interest rate and free up cash flow in your budget, but you can quite possibly take equity out of your home, and put it in the bank.
While not everyone owns their home, refinancing at a lower rate is an easy way to get hundreds of dollars per month free by simply lowering your interest expense.
4. Consolidate your debt to find extra money.
Personal debt such as medical or credit card debt can be consolidated at a lower rate. In a similar way to refinancing a home, if you consolidate your debt, it should be at a lower average rate in order to free up money in your monthly payments. There are two great ways to consolidate your debt:
Personal Debt Consolidation Loan
Online lenders such as Upstart, will work with you on a variety of debts to get them into one low payment, freeing up cash.
Open a 0% Balance Transfer Credit Card
Another great option if you’re only working with credit card debt, is to use a 0% balance transfer card. Many cards have 0% interest options out to 18 months or more. Make sure you have a long-term plan to pay your card off, but this option will net you some short-term reprieve from bills.
5. Get rebates at local retailers.
Ever heard of MyPoints? Simply put, it’s a website that offers points for nearly anything you can do online – from shopping to online surveys.
With MyPoints, the “points” you can redeem are good for cashback and a variety of gift cards to stores like Amazon.com, Best Buy, Nike, and even GameStop.
A gift certificate to Applebee’s, for example, starts at just 790 points. Paypal cash, on the other hand, starts at just 3,970 points.
To get started with MyPoints, all you have to do is sign up for a free account and use the site to shop online, take surveys, watch videos, or participate in fun, daily polls. It’s as simple as that.
You do not have to limit yourself to MyPoints, there are many options available, here are some of our top picks:
IBOTTA
$10 Sign Up Bonus, $20 after redeeming 10 offers
MYPOINTS
Earn a $10 gift card when you spend $20
6. Earn a free $5 with Inbox Dollars.
Inbox Dollars is yet another website intent on paying you for living and breathing. In all seriousness, the tasks Inbox Dollars pays for are crazy-easy. Simply surf the internet, use the website to play games, complete surveys or questionnaires, or print grocery coupons to score free cash!
It’s fairly easy to earn an extra $20 – $30 per month for regular use, plus you can get a free $5 just for signing up.
If you like to get free money, it’s hard to beat this offer. Read more in our Inbox Dollars review.
7. Rack up some Swagbucks.
Swagbucks are ridiculously fun and easy to earn. Believe it or not, this website will pay you free money to shop online, watch videos (or space out and pretend you’re watching) surf the internet, or answer survey questions. Have you ever heard of a part-time job that will pay you just to hang out?
Once you start earning Swagbucks, you’ll learn all the fun ways you can redeem them as well. For example, you can cash in your Swagbucks for a wide range of gift cards. Don’t like that option? Turn in your points for PayPal cash instead.
Signing up is free and you literally have nothing to lose, either. If you’re going to be on the internet, why not get paid? You can learn a little more about Swagbucks in our full Swagbucks review.
8. Score an easy $10 with Rakuten.
Ebates (Rakuten) is a great place to earn money for all sorts of online tasks, but you’ll also get a $10 welcome bonus just for signing up and making a $25 purchase.
Simply open an account, spend $25 at an online store like Walmart.com, Kohls.com, Groupon.com, or Amazon.com, and the $10 bonus is yours for the taking.
And if you use Ebates for the long haul, you’ll earn even more. Just by clicking through the website when you shop online, you can earn up to 40 percent cash back at certain stores. Sounds pretty good, huh?
9. Let Trim save you money automatically.
Trim is an app that tracks your spending and automates the day-to-day process of saving money for you, helping you cut out recurring charges for services you no longer need.
Trim markets itself as an assistant that saves you money, helping you tackle debt and strategically cut down on your spending. The app even checks competitors’ prices on products like your auto insurance to ensure you’re getting the best rates for the services you use.
10. Get refunds with Paribus.
Have you ever bought something only to find out the price dropped a few days later? With Paribus, you can get that money back with zero effort. All you do is shop online as usual and let Paribus monitor your confirmation emails from retailers. Whenever the price drops on what you buy, Paribus helps you get refunded.
You can use Paribus to save with popular retailers, like Target, Amazon, Walmart, Nordstrom, and more. Paribus also applies its services to hotel bookings through Expedia, Priceline, Booking.com, Marriott, and Hilton.
11. Collect Cash from Microinvesting Apps
You might think that the only way to make money by investing is through the…. Investments, right?
Nope! These investing platforms and microinvesting apps will pay you cash just for signing up!
STASH INVEST
$5 Welcome Bonus
ACORNS
$5 Sign-Up Bonus
12. Score a bank bonus.
All kinds of banks offer a bonus if you are willing to put a certain amount of cash on deposit or sign up for a direct deposit. From Chase to Huntington Bank and others, these bonuses can add up to some serious cash if you can meet their requirements!
My post on the best online checking accounts highlights some of the best deals in this space, but you can also check with local banks to see what they offer. Just make sure you read the fine print and watch out for any “gotchas” or requirements you don’t understand.
DISCOVER
$150 for a $15k deposit, $200 for a $20k deposit
CITIBANK
$400 for a $5k deposit
BANK OF AMERICA
$100 if you set up Direct Deposit
CHASE
$100 for all new customers
Another way to score bonuses from the bank is to simply have an interest-earning savings account. So after you get that checking account bonus, find a high yield savings account, too.
13. Invest money with Stockpile.
Stockpile makes investing easy and affordable, offering you thousands of stock and ETF options. You can buy fractional shares of companies like Apple and Netflix. Best of all, you get $5 to invest when you sign up.
If you were thinking of joining an investment app already, you might as well earn $5, right? Join today for a free bonus, $0.99 trading fees, zero management fees, and no account minimums. You’ll be glad you did.
14. Get Paid to Budget
How good are you at managing and saving money? If you’re like most people, the answer is not that great.
But the procrastination to “finally get your financial order in life” is over, my friend! The following companies will actually pay you if you let them help you.
CLEO
$5 Welcome Bonus
DIGIT
$5 Welcome Bonus
15. Get Paid for Selfies
This is a funny one. Basically, a company called Pay Your Selfie will pay you to take pictures of yourself in various locations.
They use the information to help companies do marketing in different parts of the country based off of demographic data (age, gender, race, etc.)
The pictures are all very easy and your first $1 is just for taking a quick pic of yourself. There are always a good number of selfie tasks waiting and people are making a little side money just for taking a few pictures.
16. Sign up for a rewards credit card.
Rewards credit cards offer something for nothing if you are able to meet a small minimum spending requirement. This free cash usually comes in the form of a signup bonus, and can easily be worth hundreds.
Since a lot of rewards credit cards don’t even charge an annual fee, you can get this money for free provided you never pay interest on your purchases. Super cool, huh?
Below are a few cards I recommend from financial institutions I’ve worked with in one capacity or another over the years and trust:
Card Requirements Bonus
Capital One Quicksilver Spend $500 in first 3 mos $150
Wells Fargo Cash Wise Spend $500 in first 3 mos $150
Chase Freedom Spend $500 in first 3 mos $150
Bank of America Cash Rewards Spend $1k in first 3 mos $200
17. Earn a Guaranteed $1,000 with Lyft
I assume you’re familiar with Lyft, the ridesharing competitor to Uber. I actually find Lyft to be cheaper and have better experiences with the drivers.
Speaking of, how would you like to earn a guaranteed $1,000 to become a Lyft driver? Yup! That’s what the company is offering right now.
It’s part of a program called Earnings Guaranteed. According to the Lyft website, the promotion says drivers will earn a guaranteed amount within a certain time frame. If the driver does not make the guaranteed amount within the time frame, Lyft will cover the difference!
And right now the guaranteed amount is $1,000! Easy money.
18. Book reservations with Seated
Seated is an app that can earn you up to 30% back on your meals, and it’s practically effortless. Seated is incredibly easy to use. You just download the app and book your dinner reservations with one of Seated’s partner restaurants.
Each time you book, you’ll get up to 30% back in the form of gift cards for companies like Amazon and Starbucks. The only drawback when it comes to Seated is location. Seated is currently only available in major cities, currently Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, NYC, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.
If you live in one of those cities, you can get free money as fast you can download the app and get to your favorite restaurant.
The Bottom Line
The internet offers a treasure trove of ways to get free money in a pinch. While many of these options won’t make you rich, they will hopefully meet your short-term needs. And most of the time, all you have to do to get started is sign up and complete mindless tasks like watching videos or answering survey questions.
The free money is out there for the taking; it’s up to you to get out there and seize it!
About the Author
Jeff Rose, CFP® is a Certified Financial Planner™, founder of Good Financial Cents, and author of the personal finance book Soldier of Finance. He was a financial planner for 16+ years having founded, Alliance Wealth Management, a SEC Registered Investment Advisory firm, before selling it to focus on his passion - educating the masses on the importance of financial freedom through this blog, his podcast, and YouTube channel.
Jeff holds a Bachelors in Science in Finance and minor in Accounting from Southern Illinois University - Carbondale. In addition to his CFP® designation, he also earned the marks of AAMS® - Accredited Asset Management Specialist - and CRPC® - Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor.
While a practicing financial advisor, Jeff was named to Investopedia's distinguished list of Top 100 advisors (as high as #6) multiple times and CNBC's Digital Advisory Council.
Jeff is an Iraqi combat veteran and served 9 years in the Army National Guard. His work is regularly featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc.com and Entrepreneur.
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Selling ebooks is big business for many people. According to the Association of American Publishers, 2019 saw 335.7 million ebook sales in the United States alone. And according to Amazon, thousands of indie authors made $50,000 or more in 2019 — on Amazon alone. Ebook sales for 2020 have gone through the roof, mainly due to the pandemic.
As you can see, you can make money selling ebooks.
The ebook publishing process has been simplified as much as possible by aggregators and the retail giant Amazon, but it still takes some know-how. Without guidance and resources, you can easily spend hours groping around in the dark trying to write and publish a book people will buy. And, in fact, it’s best to start your research before writing your book.
Luckily, guidance is just what I’m here for. I’ll take you through the whole journey, step by step. And for the purposes of this article, I’ll stick to publishing on Amazon, since it currently holds much of the ebook market. So, read on to find out how to make your first $1,000 selling ebooks.
How to Create Your Ebook
Many people start their ebook selling journey with a story they want to write. They pour hundreds of hours into the book, throw together a cover, write a blurb, and hit publish. Then, they wait for the sales to roll in.
Unfortunately, this rarely works. Mainly because most people write for a nonexistent or oversaturated audience.
Don’t get me wrong, you need to like what you’re writing. But other people need to like it, too. And you need an existing market that’s hungry for books like the one you’re writing.
Whether you’re writing non-fiction or fiction, you need to do a few things before you can start making money selling ebooks.
Research a Bestselling Idea
To make money selling ebooks, you need an ebook to sell. And people must want to buy it. There must be a market for the book, which is why this pre-step is so important. It’ll help you determine whether the idea you have is worthwhile. And if it’s not, you can move on to the next idea. And the great part is, many people come up with great ideas in the research phase.
If you’re absolutely sure your book has a hungry market, you can skip this and move on to step one. But if you’re not sure, answer these questions to validate your book idea:
Is there an existing market for your ebook?
Is the market actually willing to pay for the book, or is it information they can get online for free?
Is the competition so stiff that your book will be lost in the fray?
Not sure how to answer these questions? Here is some software that can help.
Ensure You Create the Different Parts of an Ebook
Even before writing the book, it’s good to know the different parts of a book. You’ll want to have a copyright page, a table of contents, acknowledgments, etc. Some formatting tools set these up for you, but you might need to do this yourself.
The front and back matter of an ebook are excellent places for email opt-ins and a list of any other books you’ve written. But more on those later.
Write and Format the Book
Since this article isn’t a “how-to” on actually writing a book, I’ll keep this section brief. There are plenty of resources for writing your book. Once you’ve written your book, format it so that it looks professional on e-readers, phones, and computers.
Here’s a handy article about book formatting for you that takes you through each step of the process.
Also, you might want to look at getting book formatting software like Atticus. This helps you make both ebooks and books, and ensure they look professional.
Get a Book Cover
You must have a book cover to sell ebooks. And the cover needs to be professionally done. Or, it needs to at least look professional. Luckily, there are plenty of ebook cover creators out there, and many of them won’t break the bank. From Fiverr to EbookLaunch.com, you’ve got plenty of options.
Upload Your Ebook to Amazon
Once you have a written, formatted book and a cover, it’s time to upload them both to Amazon. To do this, you must have a Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) account. If you already have an Amazon account, this will be a breeze. It’s absolutely free and they walk you through the steps.
But, before you hit publish, read the steps below for tried-and-true tips on making your first $1,000 selling ebooks!
Your Guide to Selling Ebooks
Okay, here’s where the fun begins. You have a flawless ebook (or nearly flawless, anyway), a professional book cover, and you know there’s a market. But knowing there’s a market and tapping into it are two different things. That’s what these steps are all about: tapping into your market to make your first $1,000 — and beyond.
The best way to sell ebooks is:
Selecting the right keywords
Selecting best-selling ebook categories
Creating a special launch
Enrolling in KDP Select and KU
Setting up a book promotion push
Contacting book review sites
Setting up Amazon Ads
That’s it. So, with that, let’s begin…
Step 1: Select the Right Keywords
Keywords are key to making money selling ebooks (see what I did there?). They can mean the difference between obscurity and daily sales. The right keywords tell Amazon when to show your book to shoppers. There are three important areas where you’ll use keywords when publishing ebooks on Amazon.
7 Kindle Keywords: Amazon allows you to fill out seven keywords of 50 characters each when publishing your book.
Title and/or Subtitle: Having choice keywords in your book’s title or subtitle can help you gain visibility and sales. Subtitles are more important for non-fiction but can also be helpful for fiction, on occasion.
Book Description: Keywords in the book description can help customers find the book. Better yet, they can help convince customers that your book is the one for them!
So how do you find these keywords?
Easy. Use Publisher Rocket to do quick searches and see which keywords are highly competitive and which ones aren’t.
Here’s an example of Publisher Rocket’s keyword search feature.
This is important for finding a niche audience. Going for competitive keywords means you’ll have to spend more time and effort marketing to get sales. But if you target a less competitive keyword, you can see results faster and with minimal effort.
You can find some of this information manually, but the amount of time it takes far outweighs the one-time price of Publisher Rocket.
Step 2: Select the Right Categories
If you select the right Amazon ebook categories, you will become a bestselling author. That’s amazing because not only will that help you sell more books, it will also allow you to tell your friends, and family that you are a bestselling author. Furthermore, it’s a great credential to put on your resume, blog, about page, inquiry, etc.
How does one become a bestselling author?
Select an ebook category where you can sell more books in a day than the current #1 bestselling book.
Now, that might sound daunting, but it really isn’t. That’s because there are over 14,000+ book and ebook categories to choose from.
The key is finding the right category (you can choose 10 for your book if you follow these steps) that fits your book, and has the highest chance of being a bestseller.
Now there is a manual way of doing this, however, there is no list of the 14,000+ categories and you’ll need to do a tedious amount of research and guessing. You can also use Rocket which has a list of all the ebook and book categories. It will even tell you how many books you’d need to sell that day to become a #1 bestseller.
Basically, Rocket takes the guessing and legwork out of it for you.
And with over 14,000+ ebook and book categories to choose from, there is no way you can’t hit that bestseller status.
Step 3: Create a Special Launch
Launching an ebook well can help you get noticed by Amazon’s algorithm. But it takes some serious plate-spinning to do this well. There are a lot of moving parts and several different philosophies when it comes to a successful launch.
You usually want to give yourself a week or two between uploading your ebook to Amazon and officially launching your ebook. But this doesn’t mean you can’t do a soft launch where you publish your ebook and ask your network for reviews. It just means you’ll need a little time to go through the book and make sure everything looks good and that there are no formatting errors.
Let’s take a look at your different launch options.
Enrolling in KDP Select (Kindle Unlimited) to Help Your Launch
For new authors, enrolling in KDP Select is probably the easiest way to give your ebook a little boost. KDP Select means that you can’t sell your book anywhere else besides Amazon for the enrollment period, which is 90 days. But it comes with some serious perks that can help you launch, successfully.
For example, for every enrollment period, you can do either a free book promotion or a Kindle countdown deal, where your book is sold for a discounted rate for up to five days.
Both options are good for gaining visibility and encouraging people to buy. Of course, a free book promotion won’t gain you any profits, but it can really boost your book’s ranking and can also help you get reviews (if you ask for them).
Non-KDP Select Launches
If you don’t want to limit yourself for a minimum of 90 days with exclusivity to Amazon, you can opt-out of KDP Select. You might want to sell your book to a larger audience by getting it into online outlets like Google Play, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and others.
However, a word of warning: If you’re new to self-publishing, I suggest against focusing on “going wide” as we call it. It can be difficult to keep up with publishing one book on Amazon, let alone on a handful of other platforms. Once you know your way around Amazon, you’ll have the foundation for self-publishing on other platforms, as well.
Some tactics for a successful launch for non-KDP Select ebooks include:
Offering your book to your extended network for $0.99 for the first week or so and asking them for honest reviews. The low price makes for less resistance.
Once you’ve got a few reviews, raise your price ($2.99 or $3.99 is best for most ebooks).
You can also coincide your $0.99 launch price point with a book promotion push, which I’ll cover below.
Amazon generally frowns on reviews from immediate family and close friends, so resist the urge to have them write you a good review — Amazon will probably take it down.
Launching With an Email List
Most new authors don’t have an email list to which they can promote their new ebook. But if you have one, send out a couple of emails in the weeks before launch day, telling your list about the book.
Of course, the book needs to be relevant to the email list. So if you wrote an epic fantasy book and your list comes from your blog about personal finance, you shouldn’t promote your book to that list. It’s a good way to get a bunch of unsubscribes, even if you do get a couple of sales out of it.
Use Social Media
If you don’t have an email list, don’t worry. You can use your social media following to boost your launch. Whether you’re doing a KDP Select promotion or you’re simply dropping your price, you can use free Facebook promotion groups (make sure promotion is expressly allowed), your Twitter following, and even your Instagram or TikTok accounts.
How active you are on those platforms goes a long way to how much success you’ll have. Still, every little bit helps when it comes to launch time.
Step 4: Set Up a Book Promotion Push
Hopefully, you’ve made a bunch of sales during your official launch. It would be nice to simply sit back and watch sales come in ever after. Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually work that way. Remember that there are an estimated 2,000 books published every day! Even big names have to work to keep their sales going strong.
This is where book promotion sites come in handy. Written Word Media, home of FreeBooksy and Bargain Booksy, is a favorite paid promo site. But there are plenty of free book promotion sites out there that can help you sell more books.
All of these sites have slightly different requirements, but you’re sure to find a bunch of them that will be glad to promote your book to their audiences. (I’ve already done a lot of the research for you in that article I linked to above.)
When you decide to do this generally depends on how well your book is doing. You can wait for sales to dip a little bit before putting the word out, or you can do it soon after your launch. Most people wait because they like that little bump in sales it gets them — which can also help Amazon recommend your book to customers — for free!
Typically, you’ll want to contact these sites at least two weeks before starting the promotion. Planning ahead (and being flexible) is a real help here.
Step 5: Contact Book Review Sites
Book review sites can help you get some good publicity around your ebook. Review sites can help you with the social-proof aspect of book marketing. In fact, Amazon has an Editorial Reviews section that every author should take advantage of.
Book review sites provide a service. They have readers who sign up to read books and write reviews about them. Sometimes, these readers are just normal folks who want to read books for free (most sites require that you provide a free ebook copy for the reader). Other times, they are professional or semi-professional reviewers who are paid for their time.
Kirkus Reviews is a well-known review site that charges a pretty penny ($425 last I checked). But if you get a good review from Kirkus, you’ve got bragging rights and are likely to get some solid sales simply because their name carries weight.
But you must realize that a good review is far from guaranteed. And, although most review sites don’t charge near as much as Kirkus, they do usually charge a reading fee of some sort. So if you’ve got some glaring issues with your ebook, you might want to wait until you fix them to contact a review site.
If you’re confident in your ebook, some of these review sites are a good way to get additional reviews on Amazon as well as some great quotes for your Editorial Reviews section. Some sites even include your ebook in their newsletter or on their website, which helps you generate more sales. You could even get on a list of the best books — the key is finding a review site in your genre or subject matter and asking them to review your book. It can do wonders for your conversions.
Pro Tip: Avoid any sites that guarantee a good review. This is against Amazon’s rules about reviews. You can’t demand a good review in exchange for anything, not even for a free copy of your ebook. The reviewer must be free to share their own opinion about the book.
Step 6: Set Up Simple Amazon Ads to Keep Traffic Going
Now that your book is out and you have some reviews coming in, it’s time to start generating traffic through Amazon ads. With these, you can keep selling ebooks, even after you stop doing book promotions and pushing for sales. Amazon helps keep your ebook in front of book shoppers.
You can create Amazon ads that show your ebook in the search results, on another book’s sales page, or on the lockscreen of a Kindle.
Although the learning curve can feel a bit steep, there is a free full video course that authors can tap into that will give them all the necessary information for creating profitable Amazon ads for their ebooks.
Dos and Don’ts of Selling Ebooks
When it comes to making money selling ebooks, there are certain things you should and shouldn’t do. I’ve mentioned some of them briefly in the steps above, but let’s take a look at a few I haven’t covered.
Get Good Reviews
Reviews provide the all-important social-proof aspect that is essential for marketing. The best way to get reviews is to ask for them. You should definitely put an ask at the end of your book. You can even put a link to the review page; many people have no idea where to go to write a review on Amazon, so a link helps.
To get the link, scroll down on your book’s product page and look on the left side. You can snag the link from here:
The link won’t work for you because you can’t review your own ebook. But it will work for others, they simply have to log into their Amazon account, first. Unfortunately, if they don’t have an Amazon account (or haven’t spent $50 through Amazon) you’re out of luck.
It’s also essential to ask your network to review the book. Many authors feel that this is “salesy,” but you’d be surprised at how many people are willing to write a review if you just ask.
Use Amazon Associates to Make a Little Extra Money
It doesn’t take long to sign up for an Amazon Associates account, which is Amazon’s affiliate program. You can then get an affiliate link for your book and post it on your website.
When anyone uses that link to buy your ebook (or anything else within a 24-hour period), you get a small percentage. That means if someone clicks on your affiliate link and then decides to buy a $2,000 pool table from Amazon, you’ll get a percentage! Not bad for just a few minutes of your time.
Allow for Email Opt-In
If you’re serious about selling ebooks and you think you’ll be writing more of them, creating an email list is essential. You can put an email opt-in in the front and back of your book to increase the chances of gaining subscribers.
The standard practice these days is using reader magnets. Reader magnets offer a freebie in exchange for a reader’s email address. This is usually a novella or a short story for fiction, or a spreadsheet or bonus PDF for non-fiction. It just needs to be relevant to the book to work well.
Don’t Skimp on the Book Cover
As I mentioned briefly at the beginning of this guide, a professional book cover is key. Readers can spot a DIY book cover quickly, and most of the time they’re going to skip it for something that looks a little better.
If you have experience with book cover design, by all means, make your own cover. But for most of us, paying a cover designer is one of the best investments we’ll ever make in our book (aside from the hours writing it, of course).
The price range for this is extremely wide. You can even get a premade book cover for under $100 — if you can find one that looks good and works for your book. Otherwise, check with Fiverr, Upwork, Reedsy, Ebook Launch, or simply Google “Ebook cover design.” There are plenty of great options out there.
Don’t (Ever) Pay for Reviews
Paying for reviews can actually get you banned from Amazon. This may seem like splitting hairs, but paying a legitimate book review site is totally fine because you’re not paying for a certain outcome.
But a quick search on Facebook will yield groups where readers gather, promising good reviews in exchange for cash, Amazon gift cards, free books, and all kinds of other things. To stay within Amazon’s guidelines, there can’t even be the suggestion of an “incentivized review.”
In fact, most legitimate review sites don’t allow you to have direct contact with the reviewer. You may not even know who it is until the review is out there in the world.
This is why legitimate review sites are OK but “incentivized reviews” are not. The same goes for review swapping with other authors. Meaning, “I’ll give your book a review if you give mine one.” Amazon considers this an incentivized review. Best to stay away from practices like this.
Other Resources and Tools Needed
Although it’s not imperative that you have any of these tools, they can certainly help you on your book publishing journey. But it’s ultimately up to you if you want to make the investment.
Publisher Rocket
If you’ve read the “Select the right keywords” and “Select the right categories” sections (and I hope you have), you’ve seen a little of what Publisher Rocket can do. It can save you hours and hours of mind-numbing, hair-pulling research. And it can also help you determine how stiff the competition is for a certain genre or subgenre.
If you’re planning on doing Amazon ads for your books, I’d go so far as to say that this is a must-have. Luckily, Publisher Rocket is only one time cost of $97. That gets you all updates and upgrades as well.
Scrivener
Scrivener is a big name in the book-writing world, and is available on Mac or Windows. It has been around for a long while and is a one-stop shop for writing, editing, and formatting. Students, academics, poets, and all kinds of other writers swear by it.
However, it has one major drawback: it’s notoriously difficult to learn. It’s complex because it has so many features. But that complexity is a bit too much for some people. If you’re willing to put in the time to learn how to use Scrivener, it’s a great tool.
Atticus
Atticus is a book writing and book formatting software. It lets you write your books, and then easily format them as an ebook and book. With this software, you can create beautiful book designs and look professional without having to hire a specialist.
It’s simple and elegant and totally awesome. Currently, there’s a waitlist for the tool.
Next Actions to Take
Well, we’re wrapping it up. You’ve read all about how to make your first $1,000 selling ebooks. But you may be wondering what to do next. Your book is up, you’ve followed the steps, your Amazon ads are running. What now? What about the next $1,000?
Well, it’s simple, really: Do it again. Write and publish your next book. But make sure that you have a way to collect reader emails. And point each new book you have to the other ones you’ve written. You can do this in the back matter of your book, and even in the front matter, if you want.
The more books you have, the more money you can make by selling them. When someone finishes one ebook, they may see that you’ve written other ones and purchase them. And with a mailing list, you can gather your fans and contact them directly! How cool is that?
So keep it up. As your catalog grows, so should your income. And that’s a beautiful thing.
Consider Audiobooks
You may also want to consider turning your ebooks into audiobooks. This can create another income stream for you. The audiobook market is growing and it probably won’t stop any time soon. So consider narrating your own book or paying someone else to narrate it for you. This is a logical next step for ebook authors and it’s becoming easier to do.
Summary
Making your first $1,000 selling ebooks may seem like quite the journey. And you’re not wrong. There are quite a few things to do. But, many of the most successful self-published authors publish a few books a year. And they treat it like a business, which is definitely what you should do, too.
As with anything else, the more you do it, the easier it gets.
With the right tools and a drive to succeed, the first $1,000 you make will seem small-time in no time. Then you’ll be looking at your first $10,000 and, eventually, your first $100,000.
So keep writing, keep publishing, and keep learning!
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Elon Musk, a man constantly making waves at the forefront of innovation. Driven by his boundless curiosity, the key trait he utilised to establish industry-leading companies like SpaceX, Tesla, PayPal and many more within a scant few years.
So what is the secret behind Elon’s genius? You may have wondered how this man can seem so smart, well here are 6 steps you can take to follow his way of thought.
1. Open up to new perspectives
Many think that specialising and becoming an expert in a particular field is the way to success and the forefront of development, Elon Musk begs to differ. Rather than becoming an expert in a single field, Elon Musk is an ‘expert generalist’ with deep knowledge in multiple fields of different disciplines.
Here are some of the things you should do to be as knowledgeable as him:
Look for a subject that interests you and don’t be afraid of the difficulty in learning it
Challenge the established status quo. Look for new opportunities rather than ones people are already fighting for.
Elon Musk is living proof that going above and beyond to chase what others consider a pipe dream and succeeding is possible. Becoming the sole pioneer and leading expert in an undiscovered industry is possible if you follow the same principles.
2. Start from the basics
If you want to speak English well, you need to learn the alphabet before you start with sentences. This simple rule applies to everything, building up your basics before doing anything complex prevents you from making dumb and basic mistakes. To innovate, you need to know what isn’t known or what isn’t being used.
Elon Musk once said, “It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, for instance, the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”
In practice, you can apply the ‘semantic tree’ concept in these ways:
Obtaining a complete understanding of the fundamentals before moving onto more advanced topics
Pay attention to the details, even if they seem insignificant to others
Compress and organise all your notes neatly, make them easy to understand for yourself
3. Focus on what you learned and know
It took Elon Musk just 2 years to pick up rocket science and learn enough to launch SpaceX as a leading pioneer in space transportation, the most successful private enterprise for space exploration and transportation ever made.
So how do you follow in Elon’s footsteps? Start by learning from many other people as much as you can, so you can have an idea of what you are getting into before you dive in.
It can be said that knowing how to get reliable and true knowledge is one of the most important steps on this path. Being able to filter out false information is something many people overlook despite their education.
4. Link each field of study together
Once Elon Musk has his basics covered on multiple subjects, he utilises the knowledge of different subjects to support and launch creative ideas. Making use of multiple fields of knowledge to achieve a goal while making it less academic and more realistic.
Here are some of the benefits of doing this:
You will be able to put knowledge to practical use much easier and more frequently
You can come up with new and creative ideas, thinking out of the box will be much easier when you are not limited to a box that is a single field or subject
5. Branch out your knowledge
This man believed that knowing just one thing is not enough. The more we learn, the more we see the world from a broader perspective. By gaining more knowledge in different fields, you can spot more possible connections and interactions that have not been explored or documented in depth before.
6. Putting knowledge to practical use
Action is the key to success. If you don’t come up with a way to take the knowledge you gained and apply it to practical use, then you’ve wasted your time studying. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, failure is the best teacher you will ever have. The lessons you learn from the pain of failing can be used to improve your next attempt, it helps develop your ability better than any other way.
Anyone can be a smart thinker like Elon Musk
If you’ve read up to this point, then you’ll understand why Elon Musk’s way of thinking has allowed him to achieve worldwide success and become a renowned person. We can all apply his philosophy to ourselves and be able to not only improve our creativity but also be unafraid of challenging the established norm.
How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing In 2022: I’ve Been Hitting $150k/Year And Want To Show You How
I never thought this would happen to me.
In 2 years I went from making $20k to $80k, and am now hitting about $150k/yr (see PayPal report). I did this by dropping all my clients and tried making money with affiliate marketing.
So what do I do? My about page has my whole story, but here’s the gist:
I write tutorials on WordPress speed optimization and how core web vitals are a ranking factor in Google. Speeding up your website involves hosting, cache plugins, CDNs, lightweight themes, and other services that happen to offer affiliate programs. I show people how to speed up their website (with very detailed guides), then they buy stuff through my affiliate links. It’s a win-win.
But there’s one big problem. Affiliate marketing has gotten more competitive. And the amount of bloggers/YouTubers creating affiliate content is insane (people have also become skeptical). So how do you stand out? How do you get people to trust you? I’ll explain all of this.
This guide includes a comprehensive list of 50+ affiliate programs.
$150,000/year did not happen overnight. I was broke for a couple years while creating content. But it literally changed my life… I moved out of my parent’s house into a nice apartment in downtown Denver, bought my first car (a Mercedes c300), adopted 2 kitties, and my credit raised 45 points. I also donated $6k to GoFundMe campaigns and 6k to my parents. I’m a humble dude but in affiliate marketing, the numbers do the talking. Now I have 0 clients and 100% freedom. There’s a lot of BS out there on affiliate marketing – which is why I wrote this.
How to make legit money with affiliate marketing
Find your niche
Start a blog or YouTube channel
Sign up for affiliate programs
Be careful with Amazon
Learn how affiliate programs work
Add affiliate links to content
Be a “how to start a blog” YouTuber
Use coupon codes
Get traffic before sales
Master SEO
Create the perfect pitch
Get involved in Facebook Groups
Bookmark affiliate statistics in your browser
Set up email alerts when a sale is made
Build your community
Avoid Google penalties
Monitor conversion rates
Use an affiliate disclaimer
Mistakes I Made
Donate to charity
Share your story
Promote Black Friday deals
2021 PayPal report
About My Blog
I write about website speed (and some SEO/affiliate marketing).
I spend a lot of time in Facebook Groups learning about my industry.
I try to publish original content and not regurgitated crap like a lot of blogs.
I have about 3,000 visitors/day, 90% is from Google (I’ll show you some SEO tips).
It took blogging full-time for several months with minimal income to see results. I’ll bet you 90% of people don’t start because they’re scared their work won’t pay off. Just do it!
Tom with monkey
Affiliate marketing has given me the time/money to travel and be financially comfortable
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
You partner with a company selling products/services you would like to recommend to your audience. If they buy something using your affiliate link, you get a commission from the sale. There are other types of affiliate programs, but this is the most common and is also what I do.
1. Find Your Niche
My career journey went like this: online marketing > web design > WordPress web design > WordPress SEO > WordPress speed optimization. Now I’m focusing on WordPress hosting.
While I was doing WordPress speed optimization I noticed lots of people needed it, but very few people supplied it (there were a lack of services and tutorials when I researched Google). I also knew hosting was the #1 factor of website speed and hosting companies paid up to $200/sale. Hosting is a competitive space but the commissions and lack of supply enticed me.
I expanded my SEO blog and started writing about hosting, cache plugins, and other relevant topics… while recommending Rocket.net in many guides. I added proof like Facebook threads and performance benchmarks. Each tutorial was super detailed (like this one) and tons of people found them helpful – many get 100+ visitors/day since great content = higher rankings.
Once I found my niche (WordPress speed optimization), a solid hosting company with a high commission affiliate program (Rocket.net) and created tutorials around topics people in my niche would find helpful (and might want to change their host), that’s what got me to $150k.
Once you find a niche with high demand, little supply (do your Google research), and a reputable affiliate with high commissions… and you have patience to wait for financial results while creating your assets (I’m talking about content), you should take the leap!
2. Start A Blog Or YouTube Channel
A blog and YouTube channel are completely different, not just because one is writing and one is shooting videos. But each of them are different in terms of SEO, conversions, time, and the cost.
Blogging vs. YouTube Videos
Competition – the SEO competition in YouTube is often less than Google.
Ownership – you own your blog, you don’t own YouTube (or their policies).
SEO Traffic – it takes longer to get SEO traffic to a blog than YouTube.
Cost – YouTube is free, blogs require domain, hosting, development costs, etc.
Content Updates – it’s easier to update a blog post than to remake a video.
Coupon Codes – YouTube is great if your affiliates let you use coupon codes.
Time – it takes longer to set up a blog, but starter templates have made this easier.
Expectations – in your niche, do people prefer watching videos or reading articles?
Start A WordPress Blog
Domain – GoDaddy or Namecheap.
Hosting – Rocket.net, Cloudways, or NameHero for the win.
WordPress – what I recommend building your website/blog on.
Themes – GeneratePress and Blocksy are solid choices. They use the Block Editor (Gutenberg) which is much more lightweight than Elementor, Divi, and other page builders, yet still easy when you use GenerateBlocks. I built my site in the GeneratePress “Search” theme and am very pleased. Kadence theme is good too but also very expensive.
Have A Developer On Hand – I’ve been working with the same overseas freelancer since 2011 who has saved me a lot of time when I can’t do things. Here’s his freelancer profile if you need help setting up your website. His name is Pronaya and he’s from Bangladesh.
Generatepress website library
I use GeneratePress for my WordPress theme
3. Sign Up For Affiliate Programs
Hosting, Amazon, and affiliate programs related to “making websites” are very popular.
Websites – if you’re in the “how to make a website/blog” industry, I’ve accumulated a list of affiliate programs for WordPress, hosting, themes, plugins, SEO, email, CDNs, and services. Remember that to get approved, some companies require you to be somewhat established.
Affiliate Program Category Commission Recurring 2 Tier
A2 Hosting Hosting $55 – $125 x ✓
All In One SEO Pro SEO 20% x x
Astra Themes 30% x x
Asset CleanUp Pro Plugins 20% x x
AWeber Email 30% ✓ x
Beaver Builder Themes 25% ✓ x
Blocksy Themes 30% x x
Bluehost Hosting $65+ x x
BunnyCDN CDN $20 credit x x
Cloudways Hosting $50 – $150+ ✓ ✓
Convert Pro Plugins 50% x x
Constant Contact Email $105 x x
Divi Themes 50% x x
Elementor Themes 50% x x
FlyingPress Cache Plugin 20% ✓ x
GeneratePress Themes 30% x x
GoDaddy Hosting 15% x x
GreenGeeks Hosting $50 – $100+ x x
GridPane Hosting 1 free month x x
Kadence Theme 20% x x
Hello You Designs Themes 20% x x
Hostinger Hosting 60% x x
HostGator Hosting $65 – $125+ x x
JohnnyVPS Hosting 2x monthly price x x
KeyCDN CDN 100% of 1st payment x x
Kinsta Hosting $50 – $500 ✓ x
LearnDash Plugins 35% x x
Long Tail Pro SEO 30% ✓ x
MailChimp Email $30 credit x x
NameCheap Hosting 35% x x
NameHero Hosting $50 – $125+ x x
Ninja Tables Plugins 20% x x
NitroPack Plugins 20% ✓ x
OceanWP Theme 30% x x
OptiMonster Plugins 20% x x
Perfmatters Plugins 20% ✓ x
Pretty Links Affiliate 25% x x
Rank Math SEO 30% x x
Refer WordPress Other 20% x x
Restored 316 Designs Themes 20% x x
Rocket.net Hosting $150 x x
Scala Hosting Hosting $50 – $200 x x
Schema Pro SEO 30% x x
SEMrush Analytics $200 x x
ShortPixel Plugins 30% ✓ x
ServerPilot Control Panel $25 x x
SEOPress SEO 20% x x
SiteGround Hosting $50 – $100+ x x
SpinupWP Control Panel $25 credit x x
StackPath CDN $20+ x x
StudioPress Themes 35% x x
ThemeForest Themes 30% of 1st payment x x
Themeisle Themes 55% x x
Thirsty Affiliates Affiliate 30% x x
TubeBuddy Other 30% – 50% ✓ x
UpCloud Hosting $50 credit x x
Whitespark SEO 20% x x
WP Coupons Affiliate 40% x x
WP Engine Hosting $200 x ✓
WP Johnny Other 25% x x
WPX Hosting $70 – $100+ x x
WP Rocket Plugins 20% x x
Affiliate Marketplaces – these have hundreds of merchants to choose from. It’s nice to login to 1 place and check the performance of multiple affiliates without going to each individual portal on their site. Many programs aren’t part of a marketplace though. I use ShareASale and Impact.
Affiliate Marketplace Number Of Brands Popular Brands
ShareASale 15,200+ Hewlett Packard, Sears, LovePop, Grammarly, Daily Harvest, NameCheap, WP Rocket, WP Engine, Envira Gallery
CJ Affiliate 3,800+ Overstock, GoDaddy, Zappos, Walgreens, TurboTax, QVC, Newegg, Hotels.com, HelloFresh, TeamViewer, Guitar Center
Impact 800+ Airbnb, AppSumo, Constant Contact, Envato Market, HostGator, InMotion, Lending Club, Levi’s, Squarespace
Rakuten Marketing 50,000+ Udemy, Walmart, Macy’s, StubHub, Hulu
Favorite affiliate network
Source: Anil from Bloggers Passion Facebook Group
Other Online Retailers
Ebay – 5 – 7% (roughly) based on categories, only 24 hour cookie tracking.
Etsy – 4 – 8%.
Target – 4% in most categories.
Walmart – 4% in most categories.
Aliexpress – 3% for electronics, 7-9% for everything else.
Newegg – 0.5 – 1%.
Overstock – up to 6%.
Do the math – to make $300 in a day, I would need to refer about 2 people to hosting, 10 people to themes, or 30 people to plugins. Before deciding on a program, ask yourself a few questions. I personally have roughly 3,000 readers/day and make about 2-3 sales per day at $150 per sale.
What commission will you get?
How many sales will you need per day?
How much traffic will you need to get those sales (roughly)?
4. Be Careful With Amazon
Amazon’s commissions are based on categories and you’re only making 0-5% unless you’re referring people to Amazon games, Luxury Beauty, or Amazon Explore. Otherwise you will need a lot of sales to actually make a living and will likely need to refer people to big ticket items (video equipment on YouTube is a big one especially if you’re into cameras, lenses, lights, etc).
Amazon affiliate commission rates
But be careful with Amazon’s affiliate program.
They have a long history of reducing commissions and writing content that competes with affiliates (and most people go directly to Amazon). I don’t recommend being an affiliate for any monopoly. You could very well end up getting trampled on, like most Amazon affiliates have. However, if you get lots of views, many affiliates are making “how to do something” YouTube videos and listing their equipment in the video description. A million views can make it worth it.
Amazon decreases affiliate commission rates
Examples of people making money with Amazon:
How he makes money – at 1m26s he focuses on his video equipment. The video description includes links to geniuslink.com. This is a website that showcases different stores (e.g. Amazon) where people can buy the equipment (using his affiliate links). Genuinely helpful video though.
How she makes money – at 40s you will see the video is sponsored by Skillshare and she also uses an affiliate link in the video description, as well as affiliate links to Amazon for the video equipment she uses. Another person recommending video equipment (that’s a hint for you).
How he makes money – he found a keyword on YouTube “best gadgets on Amazon” which has a lot of searches. People are searching this on YouTube (not Google or Amazon) which means they’re looking for a video review of the best gadgets, otherwise they would have gone directly to Amazon. His Amazon affiliate links to each of the gadgets are found in the video description.
Conclusion: a lot of people are making money by referring people to video equipment they use.
5. Learn How Affiliate Programs Work
One Tier – get a commission when a sale is generated from your affiliate link.
Two Tier – get a commission when you refer other affiliates and they start making sales (think multilevel marketing). An example is WP Engine’s program where I tell my readers about their WordPress hosting, they start making sales, and I earn $50/sale from each sale they generate.
Climbing Tiers – increased commissions as you get more sales.
Siteground affiliate program tiers
Recurring Commissions – usually happens with subscription services… you continuously receive commissions as long as people are signed up. AWeber and SEMrush are examples.
Sitewide Commissions – get a commission no matter what people buy on the affiliate’s website. Amazon’s affiliate program does this.
Pay Per Lead – get a commission based on the number of leads (e.g. contact form fill-outs) you send to a business. Be sure to set up your analytics to track this and have a solid, written agreement with your affiliate. You don’t want to spend tons of time and get burned like I have.
Cookies – amount of time after people click your affiliate link you will receive a commission if a sale is generated. Usually 30-90 days but shouldn’t be a deal breaker when choosing affiliates.
Individual Affiliate Programs – affiliate programs that are located on their website.
Individual affiliate programs
6. Add Affiliate Links To Content
Step 1: Sign up and get approved. You usually need a decent amount of traffic (or a history of sales) before getting approved. If you have a large following somewhere else (i.e. YouTube), you may be able to convince affiliates to approve you. Otherwise, you need to generate traffic first.
Step 2: Get your affiliate links. Login to your affiliate dashboard and grab your affiliate links. With most individual affiliate programs, they assign you an affiliate ID which you can add to any URL on their website to turn it into an affiliate link. In affiliate marketplaces like ShareASale, they preassign affiliate links but also have a custom link generator. Use these to add deep links.
Cloudways affiliate link
Add your affiliate ID (mine is ?id=262128) to any URL on their website to create an affiliate link
Impact affiliate link
Custom link generators are found in some affiliate programs/marketplaces like ShareASale
Step 3: For blogs, install an affiliate link management plugin (I use Thirsty Affiliates) and add your affiliate links here. This lets you organize, track, cloak, nofollow, and add affiliate links.
Affiliate links
Import your affiliate links into the Thirsty Affiliates plugin
Step 4: Configure the Thirsty Affiliate plugin settings.
Choose a link prefix (I use /go/)
Enable statistics in the “Modules” setting
Use nofollow + sponsored (recommended by Google)
Consider Thirsty Affiliates Pro if you want automatic keyword linking
Thirstyaffiliates settings
Configure the Thirsty Affiliate settings
Step 5: Add affiliate links to posts. If you’re using the classic editor like me, use the Thirsty Affiliates button to add affiliate links. When you do it this way, all the attributes you configured in the settings (cloaking, nofollow, sponsored, etc) are automatically added to the affiliate link.
Add affiliate link to content
Use the Thirsty Affiliates button to add affiliate links
Amazon video affiliate links
Or add them to YouTube video descriptions
Step 6: Use your affiliate dashboard to track sales, statistics, and get to know your affiliate dashboard because it can be very helpful (especially when trying to increase conversion rates).
Cloudways affiliate commissions
Take advantage of features/statistics in your affiliate dashboard
Banners – banners don’t work well. They’re easy to throw up, but distracting and probably won’t get great results. If you try them, be sure to show specific sidebar banners based on the type of content people are reading on your blog (for posts that fall under my SEO category I would show a banner related to SEO, and for posts under my website speed category I would show a different banner). You can control sidebar banners using a plugin like Widget Logic.
AdSense – It’s easy to throw up AdSense on your blog, but good luck making decent income. It is NOT personalized whereas affiliate links involve people taking YOUR recommendation on very specific things. AdSense makes your site slower than a turtle. Not good for monetization.
7. Be A “How To Start A Blog” YouTuber
Want to know why this topic is so popular?
Refer people to hosting = $$$
Refer people to WordPress theme = $
Refer people to Elementor products = $
Total income if one person signs up for all three: $200+
The bad news: the industry and keywords are super competitive.
The good news: the amount of people looking to start a blog is enormous. You just need a slice. Many hosting companies pay up to $150/sale once you start generating a good amount of sales.
People are also searching for how to start a food, fashion, travel, and lifestyle blog. You don’t have to limit yourself to 1 single keyword. Learn about hosting, self-hosted WordPress, and Starter Sites. I could literally start a WordPress blog in 10 minutes. Show people how to do that.
Youtube seo keywords
Let’s take a look at some examples:
How he makes money – at 66s, you can see they created their own domain search on their website. When people search, it’s followed by a “get hosting” button which leads to GoDaddy.
How he makes money – he begins his hosting pitch at 4m34s, but at 9m31s he presents his HostGator coupon code which not only saves viewers money, but it credits him for the sale (without people even having to click any affiliate link). That’s why coupon codes are so powerful for YouTubers. Don’t use HostGator though; they’re cheap but a slow/terrible hosting company.
How she makes money – she begins her hosting pitch at 4m48s for Bluehost, but only uses an affiliate link in the video description (no coupon code, no domain search on her website, and no timestamps to help people navigate the video). She could probably increase sales if she did one of these, but Bluehost doesn’t let affiliates create coupon codes so an affiliate link is necessary.
8. Use Coupon Codes
It’s a huge bonus if your affiliate lets you create coupon codes.
Since your coupon code is attached to your affiliate account, you will get credit for the sale if anyone uses it. So in YouTube videos, people don’t even need to click your affiliate link – just give them your coupon code to save them money, and you will get your affiliate commission.
Coupon-code
9. Get Traffic Before Sales
One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make is focusing on money first.
This is bad for a few of reasons:
No traffic = no sales
Most affiliates require you to have some traffic
Your authenticity is ruined if you’re too salesy from the start
But it definitely helps to have money in mind when you start. That way, once you get traffic and are approved by affiliates, you can easily add affiliate links to blog posts where you already mention your affiliate products/services. Don’t focus on money first, but have it in your plan.
Blogging affiliate marketing mistakes
Source: Blogging Newbs Facebook Group
10. Master SEO
Most affiliate marketers get most of their traffic from SEO (or Pinterest which I’ll admit to knowing nothing about). But I do know SEO is a more popular way to get consistent traffic.
The key steps to SEO are:
Researching a keyword, its search volume, and competition.
Creating in-depth content that is better than whoever’s in the top results.
Making content user-friendly (YouTube chapters, table of contents on blog).
Using your keyword in the right places (title, description, content, video file name).
Increasing click-through rates (titles, custom thumbnails, Google’s featured snippets).
Researching A Keyword – find a keyword in YouTube’s autocomplete dropdown (or Google Autocomplete for blog posts). You can use the underline character _ to fill-in-the-blank. Broad keywords have more searches but are more competitive. The best keywords are broad (lots of volume) with weak content in the top results. vidIQ helps you learn a keyword’s competition in YouTube and MozBar helps you learn competition in Google. I find the competition in YouTube is much less than Google, so choose broad keywords for videos and specific keywords for blogs.
Review Keyword Examples
Apple MacBook Pro 16 review
What is the best WordPress hosting
SiteGround WordPress Hosting review
Solution Keyword Examples
How to do yoga at home (recommend a yoga mat)
Why is my website slow (recommended faster hosting)
How to connect laptop to TV (recommend an HDMI cable)
Youtube amazon seo keywords
Creating In-Depth Content Around Your Keyword – 10+ minutes for YouTube videos and 1,500+ words for blog posts depending on how extensive the topic is. Extensive yet concise! If your content is long, make sure to include timestamps in your video descriptions or create an HTML table of contents for blog posts so viewers can jump to specific sections of your content.
Long content word count
Making Content User-Friendly – the two easiest ways are to use timestamps in video descriptions and an HTML table of contents in blog posts (see below). Get a good camera, invest in good hosting to make your site faster (for blogs), and design nice, crisp graphics using Canva.
Use Your Keyword In The Right Places
For YouTube videos, use your keyword in the:
File name (before uploading)
Video title (find a balance between using the keyword and making it catchy)
Video description (about 2-3 times), the description should be decently long
For blog posts, use your keyword in the:
Post title
Permalink
SEO title (in your SEO plugin)
Meta description (in your SEO plugin)
Content body (about 2-3 times, once in the first couple sentences)
Increase Click-Through Rates – for YouTube videos, it’s all about catchy titles and thumbnails. For blog posts, it’s all about a catchy SEO title and meta description (in your SEO plugin), getting in Google’s featured snippets (photo below), and using rich snippets like review stars and FAQs.
Featured snippets can be achieved by answering a question keyword in a very concise way (usually with a paragraph or list from the content). Lists are usually pulled from your table of contents or h3 subheadings. To get a featured snippet for my keyword “how to make money with affiliate marketing” Google will likely use my TOC or maybe (let’s see), this paragraph:
To make money with affiliate marketing, set up a blog or YouTube channel and find relevant products/services to refer your readers to. Sign up for affiliate programs, create affiliate links to products, and add them to your content. Most affiliates rely on SEO or Pinterest to get traffic.
Designing a nice image with your exact keyword helps too!
Featured snippets
List featured snippets
How To Rank YouTube Videos:
YouTube SEO relies heavily on engagement signals.
Find a keyword in YouTube autocomplete with good search volume.
Research the keyword’s competition by looking at videos’ number of views, likes, comments, and other signals top videos have (vidIQ Chrome extension is great for this).
Cover the topic extensively – aim for 10 minutes and be concise (scripts/editing)!
Label the video file (on your computer) as your keyword, and upload it to YouTube.
Craft a nice title that entices people to click your video, with your keyword in front.
Write a long description with timestamps, links, and use keyword in first sentence.
Review the transcript automatically generated by YouTube, then make corrections.
Upload a custom thumbnail (1280px by 720px) that gets people clicking the video.
Always respond to comments, and embed the video on your blog if you have one.
Incorporate your video in your blog, email, social media, other marketing channels.
How To Rank WordPress Blogs:
Use Rank Math Pro and learn how to use it for schema.
Use SSL from the start, most hosts have free Let’s Encrypt SSL.
Choose a fast host + WordPress themes (I like Rocket.net + GeneratePress).
Use post name permalink structure in WordPress under Settings > Permalinks.
Create content around keywords from tools like Google Autocomplete.
Learn about image optimization, internal links, lightweight plugins, OG images.
Add publish dates to blog articles to make content look fresh and increase CTRs.
Use multimedia – whether it be videos, infographics, or audio clips – people love them.
Set up Google Search Console and use it to track rankings, CTR, impressions, etc.
Make your WordPress site load fast (FlyingPress + Perfmatters are both solid plugins).
11. Create The Perfect Pitch
Back in the day, I created a pitch recommending a host, then copy/pasted the same pitch to multiple articles where it made sense to talk about.
This is fine if you don’t want to spend a lot of time on it. However, I’ve recently been trying to make it more personalized (since it’s the most important part of your site for making money). Now I have about 5 different variations of my pitch depending on what the article is about (general speed optimization, reducing CPU usage, WooCommerce, speeding up WP admin, etc).
It looks something like this:
Most hosting recommendations are garbage and I suggest joining the WP Speed Matters Facebook Group to get unbiased feedback on hosting and site speed. SiteGround has a slow TTFB, GoDaddy is a big NO, Bluehost is also very slow, and I would stay away from Hostinger.
Rocket.net – look at their specs and have a conversation with Ben Gabler (that’s all it took for me). They average a <100ms global TTFB which you can measure in KeyCDN. Their free Cloudflare Enterprise is superior than Cloudways/Kinsta with full page caching, smart purging, and built their data centers in the same ones as Cloudflare (Ben was StackPath’s Chief Product Officer so that makes sense). Just to give you an idea, their plans start at $25/mo with 32 CPU cores + 128GB RAM + NVMe SSDs + Redis. No PHP worker limits because only about 10% of traffic actually hits your origin. Everything is free (no paid add-ons) and their powerful stack makes scaling affordable with plenty of resources. I asked Ben to create a coupon OMM1 to make your first month $1. Compared to Kinsta, they use about 16x more RAM, 32x more cores on staging sites, and up to 25x more monthly visits. Top performer on wphostingbenchmarks.com with a 4.9/5 TrustPilot rating too? Take 5 minutes to compare specs and see for yourself or see my Rocket.net review.
Keycdn performance test cloudflare 1
Cloudflare free (no full page caching)
Rocket. Net keycdn performance test 1
Rocket.net Cloudflare Enterprise + full page caching
Rocket. Net top tier wordpress hosting benchmarks
Top performer on wphostingbenchmarks.com by Kevin Ohashi
Rocket. Net ben gabler testimonial
Spend 5 minutes talking with Ben Gabler
…something like that!
12. Get Involved In Facebook Groups
My conversion rate went from 2.5% to 8% just by including Facebook polls where Cloudways was rated #1, along with a few Twitter screenshots of migration results and conversations from Facebook Groups. Whether it’s Amazon reviews or Facebook polls, you NEED to include unbiased reviews. That’s why I don’t like collecting reviews on my website – they look biased.
People want evidence, not opinions.
There’s a Facebook Group for everything. For me, I mainly use the WordPress Hosting, WP Speed Matters, and WP Speed Up Facebook Groups to keep track of the web hosting industry.
Search facebook groups
13. Bookmark Affiliate Statistics In Your Browser
Go to your affiliate dashboard(s) and bookmark the “statistic” page so it saves to your browser. This saves time especially if you’re someone who likes to constantly check sales/performance.
Bookmark affiliate pages
14. Set Up Email Alerts When A Sale Is Made
This only works if the affiliate sends you an email when a sale is generated. Any time I make a hosting sale, I get a custom notification on my phone. It is very ENCOURAGING to get these.
Create custom alerts on your phone for affiliate sales – if you use Gmail, go to your settings and create a filter so all emails with “SiteGround Affiliate Sale Generated” in the subject line go into their own folder (tweak the subject line to match whatever email notification your affiliate sends you). Then set up a custom alert on your phone using the Gmail app so whenever you generate a sale, you get a custom alert (here’s a tutorial for Android and here’s one for Apple). I have different notifications for Rocket.net, Cloudways, others. It makes your day a little better :)
Custom gmail filter
15. Build Your Community
Respond To Comments – some of my articles have 400+ comments. It’s hard to keep up sometimes but this is a key part of building a community and allowing readers to ask you questions and leave their feedback. You should especially respond to YouTube comments because they are a ranking factor and encourage even more people to leave more comments.
Respond to comments
Build That Newsletter – I use Mailchimp and can’t stress how important it is to build your email list from the start (it’s free until you reach 2,000 subscribers). Once you create an account, add an email sidebar on your blog or create a dedicated newsletter page where people can sign up.
Be Open, Not Salesy – I hold back zero information on my blog, don’t recommend anything I don’t truly believe will help my readers, and try my best not to recommend hosting on every single post I write (only where it makes sense). Valuable information first, affiliate sales after.
16. Avoid Google Penalties
Follow Google’s guidelines for affiliate marketing.
Avoid short, thin pages that offer little value to readers.
Don’t always list affiliate products first – Google knows!
Don’t overuse affiliate links in your posts, drop them where it counts.
Avoid too many “list posts” where you just list a bunch of affiliate products.
Write an affiliate disclaimer (you’ll see mine at the very bottom of my blog).
Consider writing a review of your affiliate’s product/service and linking to that post (instead of using an affiliate link) to reduce the amount of affiliate links on your site.
Google affiliate guidelines
17. Monitor Conversion Rates
The way you endorse a product or service and the social proof behind it (Facebook polls or maybe reviews from other customers) are the main reason I was able to go from 2% to 8%+. If you don’t see these in your affiliate dashboard, use Thirsty Affiliate’s pro version to see them.
This is from 2017 when I started hitting it hard. Look at that CR (conversation rate) increase!
Siteground conversion report
19. Mistakes I Made
In my Google Analytics graph you’ll see a sudden drop in traffic followed by a long flatline in 2015/2016. These were pretty tough years for me and I hope I can save you from making a few bad mistakes I made, which resulted in years of financial hardship. Here are a few simple tips.
Don’t hire a sketchy link builder to boost rankings.
Get links from great content or hire someone who knows what they’re doing.
Don’t skimp on a free WordPress theme, cheap hosting, or use bloated plugins.
Don’t set a goal to write 3 blog posts a day… set a goal to write 1 blog post a week and make that post super helpful, long, and filled with information that is so valuable you will say “yeah, people will link to that.” 90% of my traffic/affiliate income comes from just 20 tutorials, many of which are 5 years old, but I constantly update content to make it better.
Do this and you should see consistent “small spikes” in your Google Analytics.
20. Donate To Charity
Once you’re financially stable, I hope you start giving back. It feels good and people like the idea of supporting a good cause (they will be more likely to click your affiliate link). This also means you don’t have to use as many links in your content. In total, I have given $6,000 to GoFundMe campaigns and $6,000 to my parents who let me live in their house while I worked on my blog.
21. Share Your Story
This is now the #1 visited post on my blog! I knew I could outrank all the fakes.
How to make money with affiliate marketing top page
Many companies have Black Friday + Cyber Monday deals (usually for about 2 weeks) and you can easily make 3x your normal sales during this time if you promote it right. I’ve made $2,000 in a single day during Black Friday season. You can make a “Deals” page but what I like to do is use the Better Search Replace plugin to bulk update all pricing screenshots to a screenshot of each company’s new Black Friday prices. Then when Black Friday is done, I just run another search/replace to change the screenshots back. Doesn’t take much time, but it’s very effective.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when you refer people to products or services from a merchant who agrees to give you a commission when a sale is made through your unique affiliate link.
How do I make money with affiliate marketing?
The most common ways are to set up a blog or YouTube channel, grow your audience, then sign up for affiliate programs that make sense to refer your viewers to.
How fast can you make money with affiliate marketing?
It can take anywhere from a couple months to several years to make consistent money with affiliate marketing. It depends on your ability to drive traffic, build trust, and successfully promote your affiliates.
What are the highest paying affiliate programs?
Web hosting programs like Rocket.net, Cloudways, WP Engine, and Bluehost typically pay $150/sale once you start making a lot of sales. That's why the space is so competitive.
Is affiliate marketing passive income?
Affiliate marketing income is not 100% passive income. You still need to create content, keep content current, and adapt to your industry while monitoring sales and conversions.
How much money can you make with affiliate marketing?
Some affiliates make a couple hundred dollars per month while other super affiliates make $10,000+ per month. You will get there quicker if you make it your full-time job and create awesome content on a consistent basis.
How do you get paid in affiliate marketing?
Most affiliates get paid through PayPal or directly to their bank account. Typical affiliate programs make payouts each month or once you reach a specific amount in commissions.
How can beginners make money with affiliate marketing?
If you're a beginner, you can make money with affiliate marketing by setting up a YouTube channel and teaching people how to start a blog while referring your audience to hosting. This is the most popular way beginners start making money.
What are the best affiliate programs to make money?
Amazon and hosting companies are two of the best affiliate programs to make money. Amazon is the most popular online retailer, and hosting affiliate programs offer some of the highest commissions. Bluehost, SiteGround, and HostGator are a few examples.
How do I make money with affiliate marketing without a website?
Setting up a YouTube channel is the easiest way to make money with affiliate marketing without a website. It's free, easy, and you can start creating videos instantly. Once you grow your audience, sign up for affiliate programs and promote products on your channel.
Is affiliate marketing worth it?
Yes, affiliate marketing can be well worth your time. But you need to have a plan on where you will promote products, which companies and products you will promote, and a strategy for getting traffic. Traffic is where most affiliate marketers fail.
How do YouTubers make money with affiliate marketing?
Most YouTubers add affiliate links in the video description or mention promo codes in their video which credit them the sale.
Final thought: It’s A Long-Term Investment
