The moment I found out about entrepreneurship, I became obsessed with learning how to create passive income with no money.
I mean I had no other choice. Growing up, I never had the money to do the things I wanted to do.
Sure I could have just worked a good stable paying job for the next 40 years of my life. But what is the point in making all that money if I never had the time to actually spend it?
I didn’t want to be one of those old, fat 65-year-old dudes driving around in the red BMW deep down pissed off that it took all this time to actually start enjoying my life.
No.
I had to find a way where I can make money while I eat, sleep, and even poop. And I had to find out how to do it ASAP.
(Life in a nutshell)
As Warren Buffet once said, “if you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep you will work until you die.”
In today’s article we are going to go over the ways that I have found to truly make passive income. I’ve tried many different ways that took money invested upfront. But this way is different. And if you truly take this seriously than you too can find out how to create passive income with no money.
There are two types of methods to achieving passive income.
1)An upfront monetary investment
- This was my approach in the beginning. I created a business that went from Zero to $1.5 Million in 12 monthsspending a whole lot of money on advertising to sell physical products online
- Took my profits and hired a team of 8 people to help run it for me
- Put a good amount of it into index funds that can return anywhere from 7-10% a year
- Saved up the rest of the profits for a multifamily home real estate investment in the future
Now this took a lot of time and a good amount of money to get up and running. I wasted a lot of money in the beginning stages testing new products and new markets as well as spending a bunch of money on Facebook Advertising.
The biggest challenge I had was taking the time hiring a good team that I trust with things like my credit card information as well as training each one on how to do the processes that I needed done for the business to grow without me.
The money from that business is somewhat passive as I always have to communicate with my team for any updates and to help fix any issues.
But what I am really excited about is the money I make in my index fund as well as saving up money to buy my first giant piece of real estate which I will record in depth in this blog when the time comes.
The downside is that this did take a decent amount of money to get started but you don’t care about that. You came here to find out how to make passive income with no money so lets get into the meat and potatoes of this blog post shall we.
2) An upfront time investment
- This is what I am focusing on now and why I create value packed blog posts and super sexy, hilariously entertaining, yet super educational YouTube videos
- Takes little to almost no money but it will take way more time
- The benefits of it is that you can build something that lasts forever
- This will be the primary focus of today’s blog
The thing about passive income is that you have to invest something. If you do not have the money to invest then the next best thing is investing your time.
I learned a lot when selling physical products online using Facebook Ads. It was great when getting started especially if you want to make money online quickly.
Not to be that guy and sound like I’m bragging, but yeah, I made my first 6 figures online obnoxiously fast because of paid advertising with Facebook.
Now how Facebook works is you invest money to put your specific product in front of a specific audience and wallah you made a customer. This process takes money but in return you can make money extremely fast.
On the other hand, the moment you stop running advertising, you no longer have a business. Enter the next traffic source you should focus on. Drum roll please……
Free Traffic.
Whoopee. Yay. Free traffic.
Even though free traffic has some disadvantages like not being able to get an immediate result like with paid advertising. Free traffic, when done properly, can give you a steady flow of visitors to your website and your products for the rest of your life.
This is where the bulk of your time investment will be focused on. And if you are truly serious about mastering free traffic, then you will have a stable passive income for the rest of your life.
There are 3 steps to making passive income without any money.
1)You have to learn how to create free traffic
Learning how to create free traffic is the most important pillar in this system. Remember, when you figure out a way to control the eyeballs, and most importantly the attention of your dream buyer, that is how you generate the passive income you need to live the life you want.
What are the 2 traffic sources to generate free traffic?
- YouTube
- Google Search
So why do we focus on these two?
Because that is where the hungriest of customers are. If you think about it, all business is is finding a person with a deep seeded problem or pain point and giving that person the solution that can help fix their problem.
There are literally thousands if not millions of people out there waiting to give you hundreds of their hard earn dollars for you to help them.
Maybe they want to learn how to make more money, maybe they want to look healthier, maybe they want to represent the fact that they love their cat so much that they have this innate urge to buy a t shirt from you and force their feline loving identity upon the innocent people around them (i’ve sold in the cat niche and these people are crazy lol).
The possibilities for what you can passively sell and make money while you sleep are endless.
If you can find out what it is they are searching for you can easily position your brand or your product in front of the exact audience that is looking for it.
This is far more powerful than paid ads in the long run because only your ideal buyer will search the keyword terms on google or YouTube.
A Simple Example
Lets say a cat lover searches the term “Why Is My Cat So Reactive When Something Startles Him?” on google. One of the first things that pops up is this post right here written by iheartcats.com.
Now think about it from their perspective. You have a crazy cat lady (no offense if this is you but for the sake of the example) that is worried about her cat. She types it in and gets her answer from the blog post. Then right after she is done reading it BAM. She finds out that they also sell T Shirts for cat lovers. Yay!
“Shut up and take my money now” is her next thought as she puts her credit card details in and gives iheartcats.com all her money.
Now when many people are depended on only Facebook ads to force their product in front of people that aren’t even in a buying state, Iheartcats.com is putting their products in front of the audience that actually is extremely passionate to the point that they are googling ways to help their cat.
It is this very reason that they have near 1,000,000 visitors a month to their website. They make millions and millions of dollars while other people in the cat niche are still struggling.
Want another example?
This is how I do it with mikevestil.com and the Mike Vestil YouTube channel.
- I find a keyword that people would search for. For example lets take this blog post “How to Create Passive Income with No Money”
- I check the stats on google keyword planner
Oh hot damn. I just found a keyword that is starting to get some serious search volume.
So guess what I do?
I make an extremely value packed blog post and a YouTube video with this title. I then go out of my way to make sure that the information I provide is the best that has ever existed (google likes it when you actually try to help your readers, luckily for you I literally do give as much information as possible)
Then once you land on this blog you subconsciously start thinking, “holy sh*t, this Mike Vestil fellow is as cool as a cucumber, i’m going to buy whatever he has to sell.”
Before you know it, you become like the crazy cat lady that is ready to buy 16 pairs of the same crazy cat lover t shirt but in different colors.
RELATED POST: Find outHow I Made $8,580.95 in Pure Passive Income From Blogging
Whats my end goal with this?
Now my goal with this is to just keep on finding more keywords like this with an audience that has a deep pain point while providing as much value as I can that actually helps them solve their problem and eventually google and YouTube will begin ranking my content on the first of their search results. Which will give me free visitors to my blog for the rest of my life muahahaha.
The hard work is actually finding the motivation to write these super lengthy guides. It doesn’t take me any money to create this blog post.
All it takes is my time.
But once this blog post is done, I can just sit back and relax as the info provided in this can help thousands and hopefully millions with their problems. Google will then reward me with free traffic forever and ever.
Yippee.
The awesome thing is that you can do this with any niche. I have seen this done for blogs that talk about finance, cats, dogs, scrapbooking, knitting, dating, weight loss, learning how to jump, increasing your memory, learning a new langauge.. literally anything.
The possibilities are endless.
If it is a hobby or a passion of somebody or they have a strong desire to learn a new skill, you can create a blog like this and make money from it passively once you have enough high value blog posts ranked. Ultimately having Google sends thousands of free visitors to your blog for you to sell them stuff.
UPDATE:6 Lessons Learned from Building a 6 Figure Side Hustle
What do you need to get started?
The biggest thing you need for the free traffic thing to work is a blog. It is absolutely the bare minimum you need to learn how to make passive income without actively spending more and more money to make money. It can get complicated but no worries I have another obnoxiously in depth guide on how to do it right here.
Now this is why a blog is no joke:
- It lasts forever
- It works for you while you sleep
- It’s cheap to start
It are these exact reasons why I created mikevestil.com, not just to brag about how cool I am (well maybe just a little bit), but to have it working for me while I eat, sleep, and poop. The purpose of a blog is that once you have a bunch of free traffic your way you have to send them to something where you can begin the selling process which we will get to in the next section.
2)Turn your free traffic into leads
So in an ideal world where everyone just gets filthy rich, looks sexy naked, and lives the life that they want, the free traffic we get would automatically turn into sales. But newsflash, we don’t live in this ideal magical world (sadly).
Traffic doesn’t always convert into sales.
So what is the next best thing?
Capturing leads a.k.a. getting your visitors email address.
Now if you look at the iheartcats.com example you will notice on the right hand column a place where you can enter your email address for awesome cat stuff.
This blog gives people some type of value in exchange for their email address. In this case its health and training advice for your cat. And yes something as simple as this works.
Once Iheartcats has the email address, they will send different offers and products directly to their audience.
Think about how powerful that is.
Whenever you want to sell something you just send out a simple email to thousands of your fans.
Now this step is not necessary if you are really trying to spend no money what so ever. You can theoretically just create your blog and go onto the next step and be just fine. HOWEVER, you will be throwing away a lot of free customers in the process.
I personally use clickfunnels to capture emailsand it is the exact same software I used to create projectbestme.com as well as several of my landing pages on this blog.
My auto responder then automatically send out emails on a daily basis which just increases the passiveness of your online business. I created the indoctrination emails once, now every single time someone joins this badass community of freedom fighters they go through an automatic 12 day sequence of emails that I made years ago.
Another reason why you want to create an email list is that it is your direct communication to your audience. You can now send them direct emails about offers that would benefit them. Then you don’t have to write a huge blog post like this one with thousands of words. With email you have direct communication.
3)Turn your free traffic into sales
So for you to start making passive income using this process, you need to find out something you can sell. Duh. This is where the money that you want so bad will come from silly. Now if you are beginning and don’t have your own products like I do, you can use these to get started with affiliate marketing:
Clickbank.com
- Free to create an account
- Focuses on digital products
- Has hundreds of different niches with products that are proven to convert
- When you make a sale you can keep over 50% of the sale without ever having to create a product
Amazon Associates
- Free to create an account
- Focuses on everything that sells on Amazon.com
- You can get up to 10% of the sale when you recommend products
- Blogs likethisiswhyimbroke.com makes well over six figures a year with this method
Markethealth.com
- Free to create an account
- Focuses on health, beauty, and supplements
- Very high commissions
- Perfect for blogs that talk about health and fitness
And don’t forget, these aren’t the only products you can promote. You can also take the time to create your own products similar to how iheartcats.com sells t shirts.
This is how I do it with mikevestil.com:
- My book: The Lazy Man’s Guide to Living The Good Life
- Affiliate commissions: Like Making $100/Day from Shopify Affiliate
- And a bunch of other ways that are included in the resources tab
The biggest lesson to learn here is that for you to make money, you have to sell something. There is no magical elixir that you drink and bam passive income starts flowing out of your laptop. Life doesn’t work that way (I wish it did trust me).
It is going to take some hard work, effort, and a whole lot of time upfront.
But will it be worth it?
Hell yes.
When I first created my book it took forever. But now, whenever someone is curious about my life, they end up buying my book. And without putting any more time and effort, I end up making money.
After you choose a product to sell, focus all your attention on creating free traffic. Its going to be hard work for sure but the amazing thing is that it will exist forever.
It will be like you own a piece of real estate on the internet.
The reason why I am focusing on blogging and creating a YouTube channel for the next couple of years is so that when its time for me to settle down and create a family, I don’t have to worry about constantly hustling as hard as I am right now. And that is because everything will be ranked on Google and YouTube. Forever bringing in steady passive income with no more work whatsoever.
Does that sound awesome or what? I jump out of bed doing cartwheels every single morning because I know exactly what is possible if you just invest a good amount of time into something that can last forever.
Don’t get me wrong, Facebook Advertising is amazing as it makes you a lot of money fast as seen in my Zero to $1.5 Million in 12 Months Post.
But money is no longer my goal. My goal is pure absolute freedom. This blog has definitely helped. So don’t waste another second. Start your blog today and take the first step in learning how to make passive income without any money.
Question: How much passive income would you need to feel secure? Leave a comment below!
NOTE: This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info. This adds no cost to you but it helps me focus on giving as much value as possible in every single post by being compensated for recommending products that I love using.
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