How to make money

Yes, you can make money online. That
sounds really dumb to say and I hate
saying it because that phrase alone sounds
scammy as hell.
Anyone can make money online and I’m not
trying to blow smoke up your ass.
There isn’t a crazy system that you need to
learn or mystery that you need to solve.
Go on Pinterest and check out any big
blog. Everything they do to make money is
sitting right there in front of you.
It might seem so obvious to you that you
don’t actually believe it. You might think
that there is a secret that you are missing
but there really isn’t. If you study enough
success stories you can see the methods
that they use.
In this post, I’m going to explain to you the
5 different ways I make money online and
how I was able to achieve each one.
Who the Hell am I?
My name is Paul Scrivens and I run over
twenty (!!!) blogs in different niches.
Before you get the wrong idea, you don’t
need to run this many blogs to make this
kind of money. I just do it because I like to
understand how to be successful in a
number of niches.
Currently, across my sites, I make over 5
figures every single month. It varies from
month to month depending on the niche
and what I’m promoting but every month
I’m guaranteed (okay, nothing in life is
guaranteed but it’s consistent) to make at
least $50,000. Check out this blog income
report that I created to see where the
money comes from.
Here is a screenshot of one of my sites
bringing in money almost daily:
Note: I can’t receive bank deposits over the
weekend so some days in the above image
are skipped.
If you want to get an idea of some of my
sites (besides this one) then here is a list
of some of them:
Obstacle.co
Thrive/Strive
Mama Paisa
Dare to Conquer
The Daily Nutrition
Keto Bootstrap
Miss Fit Living
Bogoten
As you can see, I’m pretty varied in what I
do and it’s important to keep in mind that
all of these sites contribute towards the
money I make each month.
What about the other sites? They are still in
the grow out phase so they won’t be added
to the list until they start bringing in money
as well.
First Things First
Before I dive into the 5 ways I make money
online I want to talk to you about the most
important aspect of making money online
no matter what route you decide to take:
building an audience .
If you can build an audience online then
you have an easy road to making money.
This is a basic concept to understand. If
you have an audience that pays attention to
you, you can make money.
Remember that.
It’s the core concept of any audience
whether it’s online or offline. Without an
audience (clients, customers, members),
you have no business.
The problem is that many people just don’t
know how to build an audience or don’t put
any focus on building an audience. Instead,
they concern themselves with blog themes,
Twitter posts, and other small things that
don’t move the needle.
This is a big reason why the very first
course you encounter in the Billionaire Blog
Club revolves around Pinterest . You need to
learn how to build an audience and that
means getting traffic.
Seriously, if you have a blog and have
decided that you need to start building up
an audience then Pinterest is a great place
to start. I have a Pinterest Course available
to Billionaire Blog Club Members and a
book on how to increase traffic with
Pinterest. That’s how important I think it is.
If you can get traffic to your site then the
whole world begins to open up for you.
It’s great that some bloggers will tell you
that you don’t need much traffic to make
money and they aren’t wrong, but if you can
get a lot of traffic everything becomes
much easier for you.
If I have a blog that is getting 100,000
page views a month that means that I’m
probably getting at least 50,000 people to
the site (most blogs will do between 1.2 to
1.4 pages per session). That means I have
to try and get some small percentage of
those people to buy something from me if I
really want to do well. If I can’t get them to
buy something then (in some cases) I have
ads running on the site that will make me
money anyways.
With a decent ad network, like AdThrive or
Mediavine, 100,000 pageviews should net
you between $800-$2000 a month.
As the number of people visiting my site
increases, the chances of me making more
money increase. That should be easy
enough to understand with one caveat. The
traffic just can’t be random traffic. It has to
be traffic that is interested in what I’m
writing about.
You aren’t going to bring 100 vegans into
your hot dog shop (no you don’t serve tofu
dogs).
It’s a pretty simple formula but for some
reason, many bloggers (and other website
owners) don’t put a lot of time in figuring
out how to get traffic to the sites.
Make It Easy With a Good Niche
Now, let’s address something else which is
going to be bad news for some of you.
If you want to make money online then I’m
not going to tell you to follow your passion.
Instead, I advise you to do stuff that has
been proven to work.
If you like the idea of starting a blog then
know that there are only 7 blog niches that
get good traffic and make good money .
There really is no reason to try a different
niche for your first blog.
I’ve spoken with people that want to start
blogs on the topics they are most
passionate about and they assume that they
will do well simply because they believe
other people love the topics as much as
them.
Wrong.
What people love are things that make their
lives easier and better. Why do you think
how to make money blogs, personal
finance blogs, and health blogs do so well?
Don’t hesitate to start a blog in a big and
popular niche. The audience is already
established in those areas so it’s pretty
silly to avoid them.
With that being said let’s dive into the ways
that I make money online.
The 5 Ways That I Make Money
Online
I’m going to surprise you here and say that
one of the ways isn’t by blogging.
Nobody pays me to blog.
However, the whole reason why I can make
money online is because of blogging so if
you want to make money online I suggest
you get into blogging.
Blogging is your marketing platform. Fancy
marketing people like to call it content
marketing.
Blogging gives you the opportunity to build
an audience which in turn gives you the
chance to open up new revenue streams.
Get this straight, blogging opens the doors
for a ton of opportunities for you. So when
you see other people talk about the virtues
of blogging, they aren’t talking about how
awesome it is to write a piece of content.
In fact, one of the last things I want to do
is sit down at a computer and write.
They are talking about how blogging levels
the playing field for individuals to be able
to reach thousands or millions of people
similar to a bigger company.
My site, Keto Dash, reaches over ONE
MILLION PEOPLE A MONTH . That’s
completely insane to me.
Every single way that I make money online
is directly connected to my blogging but I
don’t want to say I make money by
blogging.
That might be a small technicality but I
wanted to get that out of the way.
1. Ads
This is the second easiest way from a
technical standpoint to make money online
because you don’t have to do much to get
them set up. If you use one of the ad
networks that I mentioned above then they
actually do all of the work for you!
What you do need though is a shit ton of
traffic for this to be effective. By this, I
mean at least 30,000 page views before
you even want to consider putting ads up
on your site.
I don’t use ads on all of my blogs but the
few that I do, I use AdThrive or Mediavine
and both have been wonderful.
Now I know the question you are asking is
how much money do I make for the amount
of traffic that I get. I get paid every time an
ad is shown on my site but you get
fractions of a penny for each view. For this
reason, ad dollars are measured in CPM.
This means that for every 1,000 page views
I make $X amount of money.
So with AdThrive/Mediavine, depending on
the niche and the quality of ads, the CPM
fluctuates between $5 – $30 per 1,000
page views.
If I do 100,000 page views in a month (the
minimum you need to apply to AdThrive)
then I will make anywhere between $500
and $2,000 for that month. Again, it’s
dependent on the topics that you write
about.
Not bad, but not great considering the other
ways that you can make money.
However, ads are the most passive way to
make money online. Your only focus is to
get people to continue to come to your site
which can be challenging in its own right.
As of May 2018 I do about $15,000 a
month in ad revenue.
2. Affiliate Marketing
This is the easiest way to make money
online from a technical standpoint because
you don’t have to do anything but post a
link on your site.
That link points to a manufacturer of some
product that will pay you every time
someone purchases from them.
For example, if I run a car blog and I sign
up for an affiliate program with a car parts
shop, I can link the different car parts that I
like on my blog and when people click on
the link and purchase from the car parts
shop I get a cut.
The commission that you get is totally
dependent on the affiliate program. There is
no status quo. I’ve seen percentages range
from 4% to 90%.
However, making money with affiliate
marketing is a lot harder than people
present it. You might think that all you need
to do is put a link on your site and then
watch the money flow but that isn’t the
case.
You have to do a lot of upfront work to
convince your audience that they want/need
a particular product. If you can’t do that
then your links will just sit there unclicked.
If you want to learn more about making
money with affiliate marketing then check
out this guide to affiliate marketing.
I also have an awesome course dedicated
to affiliate marketing that will show you all
of the steps that I take to make money with
affiliate marketing.
3. eBooks
I love writing eBooks because you can
make them as simple or as complicated as
you want. The easiest way to make an
ebook is to simply write it in some type of
word processing application (Word, Pages,
or Google Docs) and export it as a PDF.
There you go. You now have an eBook that
the world will enjoy.
eBooks are a great starter product for many
bloggers because everyone has the tools to
create them.
Some people believe that your ebook has
to be super long for it to be successful and
I’ve seen 4-page ebooks do well and 200-
page ebooks bomb.
It’s completely dependent on the subject
matter and what problem you are trying to
solve.
If you don’t even want to set up your own
website you can go directly through
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing to reach
millions of people instantly. Of course, you
are dealing with a lot of competition but I
know authors that make over $40,000 a
month with their Kindle books.
I have two ebooks out right now:
The Billionaire Blogging Pinterest
Manual
The 3-Day Weight Loss Manual
Both books were created with Apple Pages
so you don’t need fancy technology to
make these things happen.
What service do I use to sell them?
I use DPD for the Pinterest book and
SendOwl for the weight loss manual only
because I wanted to try out both services
and haven’t found one to be better than the
other.
4. Online Courses
This is one of the most lucrative ways to
make money online when you have an
audience.
To make $1,000 with ads (on a good ad
network) you need to do between 70,000 –
250,000 page views a month (remember it
depends on the niche). That’s a lot of
people!
To make $1,000 with affiliate marketing
you might need to sell a couple dozen/
hundred items.
With online courses, you can make $1,000
by selling just a couple (dependent on
price).
For example, the current price (as of this
writing) for the Billionaire Blog Club is
$400+. To make $1,000 this month from
the site I will need to sell 3 seats.
That doesn’t require me getting 100,000
people to the site. Hopefully, it only
requires less than 100.
Out of these 5 methods, online courses are
both the most technically involved and the
most time-consuming.
I love teaching people but I hate the
process of making courses just because I
like instant results.
With my online courses, I have to come up
with an outline of what the video is going to
be about, plan the shots, hope that I can do
it in one take, edit the video, convert the
video, and then upload the video.
This takes hours and my throat always
hurts when I’m done.
But again, I make most of my money from
online courses so the effort is worth it.
5. Membership Sites
Technically the Billionaire Blog Club is a
membership site that happens to have
courses in it. However, most people think
of membership sites as having recurring
monthly or quarterly fees.
The Billionaire Blog Club is a pay once and
you get a lifetime membership type of deal.
It’s the same thing with my weight loss
membership site, Keto Dash.
Each of these sites brings in over $20,000
a month.
Let me repeat…
EACH of these sites brings in over $20,000
a month.
Membership sites can work a number of
different ways. You can simply offer a
forum. You might offer monthly video
lessons. You can think of a number of
different things but you must make sure
that you are providing continuous value to
your audience.
Membership sites usually work best once
you have an established audience to work
with. Starting them from scratch without an
audience is difficult because people join
membership sites with the intention of
interacting with other like-minded
individuals.
If they are the first one to the dance and
nobody shows up for days or weeks then
they will quickly lose interest.
More Ways to Make Money Online
These aren’t the only ways to make money
online. There are a ton of other options:
Podcasting
Dropshipping
Ecommerce
Offering services
Freelance writing
The list goes on. In fact, I’ve written 15
more ways to make money with your blog
that you should check out.
So where do you go from here? If you’re
interested in getting a blog started I
suggest you begin with my free 12-Day
Blogging Bootcamp to get a feel for
everything I do to grow a successful blog.
Remember, you don’t need to have as many
blogs as I do to make good money. Most
people do it with just one and I could as
well but if I’m going to teach others how to
build successful blogs, then I need to show
I can create successful blogs in other
niches.
Nobody likes the person that fakes the
funk.
You don’t get what you don’t ask for
so I’m asking you to take a second to
share How to Make Money Online: 5
Things I Do to Make $50,000+ a
Month Online with your audience.
They respect great content.