Passive income is a concept that is highly sought after, but not always understood.
The word “Passive” often suggests it’s a trip down easy street to meet the “Get rich quick” crew.
It isn’t.
Passive Income streams require a great deal of effort, especially in the beginning – you can’t make a good passive income, without a certain level of passion and determination.
My personal definition of passive income is:
Income producing platforms (Website, Facebook Group, YouTube Channel), which consist of digital assets (Blog posts, YouTube videos) that generate traffic, leads, customers 24/7
Make no mistake, creating a passive income from websites does take a lot of effort on your part.
However, the benefits outweigh entirely any negatives. Not only will you earn an additional revenue, but adding passive income streams to your portfolio can help increase other earnings.
If you want to learn how you can start earning a passive income, here are the best ideas.
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Websites that make money through passive income
For this, I will be focusing on four leading websites:
- Best Reviews
- MoneySavingExpert
- Nerd Wallet
- Making sense of cents
All these websites make a great deal of money, easily earning thousands of dollars every single day in passive income.
They all have one thing in common – they all started with an idea, a small idea, but one with potential.
Many of which spent less than $100 to get their website up and running.
So, how exactly did these four websites make their money, and how can we emulate this same idea?
Below, I will show you four monetization strategies – helping you to make money yourself, through websites. Here, you can make money while you sleep.
Nerd Wallet
The first site we’ll look at is Nerd Wallet. This is essentially a financial review site – with a great branding strategy, this site is extremely popular.
Millions of people turn to this site to find the best mortgage, and the perfect credit card, just a couple of examples.
It has been designed to help people with their financial decisions.
So, how do they make money?
It’s through the comparisons that you see on their site. For instance, if you want to find the best savings account – NerdWallet will compare the options.
Every time you click on one, it will take you to that banks website.
Nerd Wallet will have affiliate accounts with these financial institutions. If we click on one of Nerd Wallet’s links and sign up with that bank, they will get some commission.
That is Affiliate Marketing.
Nerd Wallet is actually making over 100 million dollars every year, through affiliate marketing.
Notice as well, Nerd Wallet is creating content based on people’s pain points. They give advice on how to make money, how to pay back University fees, and planning a vacation.
NerdWallets content utilizes social media, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – which brings people in, and ultimately, turns that traffic into leads and customers of their affiliate recommendations.
Best Reviews
Next up: Best Reviews. This site uses the exact same monetisation strategy – Affiliate Marketing. The difference ultimately lies with WHAT they’re comparing.
Best Reviews literally compares everything – from bathrobes, all the way to air purifiers.
Coming from humble beginnings, Best Reviews is now a big site – loved and used by many people. They have built themselves up and now have a lot more authority and credibility.
Importantly, their call to action buttons do not say “buy now,” they simply say “check price.” That’s one of the main factors that people consider, hence why they don’t reveal it.
They generate that referral with curiosity.
When you click “check price,” you are taken to Amazon. From there, anything that the user buys on Amazon will give Best Reviews a commission.
This is how Best Reviews earn their money and why I believe they are a great example of making passive income from websites in 2020.
Amazon hasn’t got the highest commission rates, but with enough traffic from a site, you can make serious money.
Proven by the fact, in 2010, Best Reviews sold for $110 million.
MoneySavingExpert
If you’re from the U.K, the chances that you’ve seen this site are high. It’s a great website that can genuinely help you make the best buying decisions.
This website genuinely does save people money. That’s why it’s loved and used by so many people.
Martin Lewis is the figurehead of MoneySavingExpert. He doesn’t actually own the website anymore, but he set it up for less than $100.
Martin Lewis sold the website for £87 million, after growing and growing the site.
Their mission is incredibly ethical; to help people save money and help them make smart financial decisions. However, they still make money – they are a business, after all.
They make their money from affiliate links, which are scattered around the website. Links that return a commission when someone makes a purchase.
READ MORE: How A British Man Turned $100 into $87 MILLION & Counting
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Making Sense of Cents
This is a little bit different from the others – it’s a personal blog.
An incredibly well built personal blog.
The owner, Michelle Schroeder, is sincere in her writing – revealing that she made over $1.5 million in 2018.
How did she do this?
It’s through a mixture of display advertising, sponsored partnerships, courses, and affiliate marketing.
Again, affiliate marketing made her the most money – producing around 62% of her annual income.
Over $900,000.
Once you begin creating traffic and build up credibility, you can then start to sell courses and partner with others.
Creating a personal brand and being relatable is a great strategy.
People will learn to like, know and trust you.
If you are genuine and create content that helps people then in return you can establish passive income from websites and blogs.
How Can You Build Passive Income Streams Using Websites?
There are a few things that you can learn from these four sites.
Firstly, don’t give up – each one of these sites started from humble beginnings, and required a lot of nurturing and hard work.
At one point they were nothing. They took those brave first steps.
You have to build up your website and allow it to grow. Only when you begin to bring in traffic, can you then start to earn money.
Secondly, affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to earn money – even if the rates are low. If you bring in enough users, you’ll eventually receive a decent amount of money.
However, it isn’t always about huge traffic generation and millions of followers.
By promoting high ticket (large commission) items, we can create profits even with a low number of readers.
Lastly, you should look into other revenue streams.
Don’t stop or slow down.Start selling courses, make money with adverts, and partner with other companies and influencers.
Build up your brand – including your mailing list and social media following. This will help you gain a loyal following.
The possibilities are truly endless.
I hope this inspires you to get started with your own website or blog. These four websites are proof of just how successful affiliate marketing can be for passive income.
They may be extreme examples but there are tonnes of everyday normal people that are successfully making money with affiliate marketing via social media.
If you would like to bypass a lot of the mistakes and self-discovery around building an affiliate business, and learn directly from someone who has been there and go the T-Shirt then register for the free webclass below.
