How to Make Money Online: 5 Things I Do to Make $50,000+ a Month Online
No Fancy Tricks, Just Hustle and Sweat
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.
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:
If you want to get an idea of some of my sites (besides this one) then here is a list of some of them:
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.
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.
Every penny that I earn starts with my blogs. I’ve put together a
free 12-day blogging bootcamp for you that goes through every step that I
take to build a successful blog.
Enter in our masterclass!
Enter in our masterclass!
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.
