Before I get too deep into this article I want you to know that you will not become rich over night following this framework. What you will do is slowly build a portfolio of web content that will continue to bring in revenue month after month and year after year. If you can stick with it for an extended period of time, you are looking at generating income that can assist you in paying your bills, paying down your debts or paying for that long needed vacation.
If you can stick to the formula until you are making enough money that you can eventually outsource the content creation process, you can at this point begin replicating the business model until you are making substantial sums of money.
My formula consists of spending 15 minutes every day when you get home from work writing one article about a subject with which you are familiar. You will then post this article on either a blog or a revenue share site. I would personally recommend a revenue share site for the sole reason that your articles will get search engine traffic without having to do much marketing. If you open your own blog you can be sure that you will have to spend countless hours promoting your content on top of creating it which does nothing but slow down the rate at which you will begin building a passive income stream.
Writing
Before I get too into how to actually earn money writing, the first tool you are going to need to harness is your ability to write. In order to make money writing you don’t need to have college level writing skills. If you can’t crank out sentences that are easy to understand, you can probably create sentences that can communicate your message and can assist people in accomplishing their goals. When you first get started, write about subjects that you are currently an expert in. Trying to create content with which you are unfamiliar is going to waste time which you should be using to focus on your initial growth. Once you’ve got the hang of writing articles that can help people learn or do something, it is time to find places to put them to start building that passive income stream.
Blogging
Now that you have some content your first option for places to post your content is a blog. There are plenty of free blogging platforms out there such as blogger.com and wordpress that you can use without dropping a penny. You will have to signup for an Adsense account and possibly affiliate accounts with companies related to the topics you are writing about. The biggest downfall to blogs is you generally want to keep all your articles on the same topic which kind of limits your topic freedom.
Revenue Share Web Sites
If you have a number of different subjects to write about I would recommend posting your articles on a revenue share site. A revenue share site is a general site that covers hundreds of topics and provides you a percentage of the revenue generated by the content you provide. Some of the bigger players in this space are Hubpages.com, Infobarrel.com and Xomba.com. These sites are relatively well established with Google which means your articles will naturally receive search engine visitors without having to spend dozens of hours promoting your content. You may have to give up a few percent of your advertising dollars, but you the time you save is well worth the exchange. In order to use these you will need a Google Adsense account. If you don’t want to use Adsense, these sites also offer you to use a Google Adsense alternative to monetize your content such as Chitika or Kontera.
The 95%-5% rule applies here like everything else in life. 5% of the people who enter this industry will make 95% of the money. It isn’t because the got lucky with the articles they chose, but because they persisted when it didn’t seem like they were going to pull through. Most people will write 10-25 articles and expect to be making $100+ a month. While every once in a while a single article will rake in over $100 a month, most will make $1/month or less. I like to use the 50 cents per article per month figure and hope for the best, that way I’m never discouraged. Pick a small bill you want to pay off using this money and set a goal to generate that much money to start. For example, pick your electrical bill. If it is $25 a month, aim for 50 articles before you even think about stopping. Once you reach that goal, pick something bigger and continue to work towards it.
The formula is simple, spend 15 mintues a day writing and in a year, you should be making bare minimum $175/month in passive income.
Good luck!
About the Author
Ryan writes on a number of subjects but specializes in motivating people.