Summary
- Consider personal branding when starting an online business, as it allows for adaptability and builds leverage. Your identity, experience, and starting line are key factors in personal branding.
- Pursue low-cost online money-making options initially to minimize risk and maximize profit potential.
- Choose online revenue strategies that align with your personality, such as blogging or e-commerce, based on your preference for writing or selling.
- Balance short-term and long-term goals by creating content for immediate engagement but also thinking about sustainable income strategies like course creation.
- Focus on audience growth through organic means, ensuring your content isn't just dependent on ads, as they are unstable and costly.
- Explore AI tools and prompts to help streamline content creation and idea generation, capitalizing on technology to increase efficiency.
- Blogging and YouTube are strong platforms for building a sustainable online business through content creation and affiliate marketing.
- Identify the right niche that interests you and complements your strengths, ensuring long-term motivation and adaptability as interests evolve.
- Build leverage by outsourcing time-consuming tasks like content writing or video editing, allowing you to focus on strategic business growth.
- Stick to a consistent content schedule to build an audience and ensure repeated exposure, even if progress feels slow.
- Understand platform-specific approaches, such as focusing on long-form content for YouTube and maintaining topical authority for blogs to rank well in search engines.
- Use various monetization strategies, including ads, affiliate marketing, course sales, and sponsorships, to create multiple revenue streams that don't conflict.
- Consider lifestyle and mindset adjustments necessary to achieve your goals, acknowledging potential sacrifices and personal growth along the way.
- Emphasize the importance of an audience for monetization; explore platforms where your niche's audience is most active, like YouTube for video games or blogs for detailed guides.
- Be aware of your motivation – whether to build financial independence or personal fulfillment – and maintain gratitude for your current life while seeking growth.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest starting by building your personal brand. It's important to think about who you are, your experiences, and the environment you're in. These elements define your brand and can help make it flexible and adaptable over time.
A good way to begin is by exploring low-cost online ventures. You can try blogging or e-commerce based on what you enjoy. For example, if you're an introvert and prefer writing, maybe blogging is better than video.
Balancing short-term and long-term goals is key. You might create engaging content now but also think about sustainable income in the future, like online courses.
Growing your audience organically is super important. You shouldn't rely solely on ads because they can be unpredictable and expensive. Instead, consider creating valuable content that people can find and like.
Exploring AI tools can make content creation easier and faster. They can help generate ideas and streamline your work.
Platforms like YouTube and blogging are solid choices for growing an online presence. They allow for affiliate marketing and creating content that can keep earning you money over time.
Finding a niche that is aligned with your interests and strengths ensures long-term motivation.
Outsourcing tasks, like editing or writing, helps you focus on important business growth strategies.
Stick to a consistent schedule, even if it seems like you're not making progress.
Understanding how each platform works can improve your content’s reach and help you earn more from ads, affiliates, courses, or sponsorships.
Finally, consider any lifestyle changes you might need to successfully pursue your goals. Be mindful of what motivates you, and remember to appreciate where you are as you work towards where you want to be.
Quotes by Author
"You are a special little snowflake no one is like you you are only you you have a message to share with a world of some kind you want to be known for one thing"
"Personal branding is like your identity changes niches or niches change over time so you just have to kind of change with it"
"Most people take the path of least resistance so people try faceless videos they try Tik Tok they try Instagram they try things that they're very familiar with that everyone has access to"
"Virality is not a consistent business strategy I have never once gone viral I have two multi-million dollar businesses"
"If you believe in yourself and you stay consistent over the course of time time it actually can and it's kind of cool"
Full Transcript
I have found the blueprint to make money on the internet and it is that's actually the Millennium Falcon okay wait this is actually the blueprint to make money online I found it big mistake big mistake I'm going to walk you through it step by step in a real way cuz it can get confusing there's tons of ways to actually make money online I mean there's YouTube blogging podcasting e-commerce only fans selling feet piics you know what's a girl to do these days there's so many different options out there how do I actually make money well jokes deide I'm going to break through the noise and give you specific options just for you and we're going to use a little bit of AI to figure it out too now there's a lot of factors here there's who you are there's your starting line where you are in life your experience there's extracting value from the market by leveraging your skills to serve an audience and there's all these different platforms so there's three main levels to this blueprint and it starts with the foundations of making money on the internet let's get into it so first we have to think about what do we actually look for if we want to make money online well there's a number of different things first it should be low cost to start we don't want to spend a bunch of money here and go in the negative before we make our first dollar that's obvious and we want the potential to make a lot of money so we're not going to be talking about low value tactics like fiver or gigs are things that anyone can do we also want to potentially be able to use AI to speed things up so in this video I'm going to show you some AI prompts and Frameworks some custom ones I made that can help you with this process if you're interested in click the link in the description below in the top comment I'll send you that plus my AI master class all the resources so you can get started another one is we want organic audience growth so we're not just relying on ads because ads can fluctuate you need to keep pumping ads out and spending money to make money we want to grow an organic audience over time you need to get attention in this attention economy every business needs it and it needs to be monetized based on things created in the past so we want to build some type of money online where we're not constantly having to be on this content hamster where we create more and more and more content we want the backlog of things that we created 6 months a year ago to also be making us money and the business model needs to blend well with your personality so for example if you're an intr and you hate the idea of being on YouTube then don't do YouTube or if you don't want to write content you're a horrible writer and it just you cringe at the thought of having to get up and right then don't create a blog so we're going to cover exactly what's right for you but first we have to talk about you because you are the foundation you are at the center of this this all revolves around you when you think about personal branding I started my website as a personal brand it kind of happened by accident but I realize it's the best possible path that turned into multiple seven figure businesses because I based it on my name and I recommend you do the same thing when you're making money online there's a million different benefits of personal branding and why it's easier than creating a tiny Niche thing but the biggest one is it's infinitely pivotable and adaptable until you find success your content strategy the ways that you're monetizing things can infinitely change if it's just based on you you never have to quit everything builds leverage it builds it in your career it builds it and makes money and it really just increases the leverage that you have in the marketplace so there's tons of benefits to personal branding but first we have to cover who are you and that's really three different things there's your identity your experience and what I'm calling your starting line or your environment so first is your identity and you are a special little snowflake no one is like you you are only you you have a message to share with a world of some kind you want to be known for one thing you might think how am I going to make money how am I going to do this well actually you are Central to this you have values you have priorities and you have goals now your identity is actually a fluid changing thing now I'm not talking about your gender identity I'm not going to come on here in the next video with beautiful wig on although it could be pretty funny and cool if identified as a woman starting tomorrow and then maybe changed it but your identity is it evolves it changes your interests change your hobbies Chang who you are changes you learn things and hopefully you change that's actually a good thing changing your beliefs changing things over time a little bit right and also your your interest will change so let's say you want to start a business about something you love like running well often times if you love running you like the act of running you might not like creating a business and making money around running writing content around running talking about it on a video ultimately anything that you do hobby based passion wise or otherwise it becomes a business so anything that you build and your interest will change so maybe you do that running thing and then 10 years later you're like I don't even care about that anymore am I going to still do it so the great thing about personal branding is like your identity changes niches or niches change over time so you just have to kind of change with it now second is your experience or your knowledge is there a topic you know a little bit about even you don't have to be an expert on anything if if you want to make money online you want to help and teach people and create content around it in some way to monetize different things on the internet now you don't have to be an expert you can be a beginner and you can be teaching people the process as you learn now we're going to be talking about higher value tactics there's lower value tactics create a Fiverr gig on removing black magic curses in bad energy now I don't know what that entails but you can send an email to somebody and claim that you you know unhex them and they'll send you money for it it's a weird world that we live in but we're going to be talking about more like high value stuff now you have to build skills if you want to make money online the higher your skills that you build the higher your Revenue ceiling becomes for example if you wanted to start an e-commerce business you kind of need to know a lot of stuff you need to know all the sudden marketing like email marketing if you're going to do promotions potentially paid advertising inventory shipping most people take the path of least resistance so people try faceless videos they try Tik Tok they try Instagram they try things that they're very familiar with that everyone has access to the problem is you're then competing with millions and millions ions and millions of other people so we need to try a little bit harder to find things that can make us a lot of money that aren't saturated with everybody so we can all agree that your identity is important your experience is important and also there's your starting line so we all have different starting lines you know if you're a VP of sales for a company you're going to have a higher starting line and the potential to probably make more money based on your experience than somebody who's just getting out of college or working at a pizza place for example I've said it before and I'll say it again I went to Michigan State for college I failed out I finally got back in I graduated after 6 years and I worked at a pizza place for 3 years until I was 26 years old you know at that stage of my life I was drinking too much I was partying I was lost I didn't know what I wanted to do I was not in an environment to even think about making money online or starting an actual some type of business for myself my environment didn't lend itself to that there's both your physical environment and your mental environment so a physical environment is like when I was at College living with three roommates and there was dishes piled up in the sink and it was disgusting right that's not a good physical environment to be successful there's also your mental environment so when I got home I moved back home with my parents now my mental environment wasn't very healthy because I was drinking too much I was depressed I was working at a pizza place waking up at 11: to 12:00 every single morning or afternoon right it wasn't the the mental environment didn't lend itself well to making money so what you need is a good mindset but you also need a place a location where you can make the most progress in the least amount of time you can do the most work and get the most done for example I'm sitting in a YouTube studio right now I have a green screen behind me I have lights on me and I have a camera all that I have to do to start shooting this video is look at some of my notes here but all I have to do is turn the camera on turn the lights on turn the screen recorder on and then just start talking that's really it all I have to do is sit down and start talking if I had a YouTube channel where I was going all over in different environments and I had to shoot outside inside it's just a little bit more complicated a lot of people do that I'm not saying it's wrong but we have to create a consistent schedule ual whether it's content articles videos podcasts we have to create something consistently over a long period of time to make money because we need consistent growth we don't want to just make money one month and then it all goes away so to do that you just need an environment that makes it as easy as possible so we said there's your identity your experience your starting line another like Factor here is sacrifices so you are going to have to make some sacrifices if you want to build something big any type of business you're going to have to make some sacrifices now you're not going to have to like spend less time with your family necessarily I don't recommend that but you will have to remove some things that you're doing now maybe that's passively scrolling on your phone maybe it's Netflix maybe it's just things what is wasting the most of your time when I started my blog I did I started it back in 2019 and in 21 22 and 23 it's made me a million dollars every year so when I first started it though I had a 40 hour 50 hour a week job and I basically didn't have a life for 7 months so I sacrificed like time with friends Hobbies a lot of stuff to do that cuz I was working so much on it but you almost need like a chip on your shoulder you almost need a little bit of abnormal or craziness in order to really build something big if you're kind of content with your job and you like your job then you probably shouldn't build a business for yourself or try to make money online or build passive income because it's a time commitment I'm not a get-rich quick scheme I'm not a guru person that's going to say you're going to make a million dollars and ultimately maybe that million dollars doesn't make you any happier than you are now just working at the job you are so it's not for everybody right I don't want to rob you of that thinking that you'll only be happy if you make that million dollars by building something for yourself online for me I needed to because I always had a chip on my shoulder probably comes from like failing out of college and getting good grades in high school having a really high expectations of my of of myself and not meeting them for so long where I like I had to make this work so sometimes some of that craziness actually can make you more successful in the long run but ultimately there are some sacrifices as well all right that's enough about you let's actually get into the main ways to make money online so again we're not going to be talking about the cheap stuff doing online surveys Fiverr gigs we're not talking about that if anyone can do it you should not be doing it it doesn't make sense there's really only three ways to make money online you either sell your own product you sell someone else's product affiliate marketing or you sell your time services so first you can sell your own products there's e-commerce there's dropshipping now there's some problems with this form because I tried it back in 2015 I didn't do that good at it it costs money to start you have inventory you have to still Market the entire business right you're not like it's not a personal brand it's not YouTube you actually have products and you have to do advertising you have to get people to them then you have to sell them you have to do it over and over and over again another thing you can sell is courses so you can sell courses it's a really good thing to do problem is you need to build an audience first it's not going to happen overnight now you can sell someone else's products that's number two which is typically affiliate marketing so the problem with that though is you need to build up lots of clicks over time and build trust we're based on conversion right here if you send somebody to a product they typically have to buy it so they click a link to buy the product what percentage of people buy typically 2% so you need hundreds if not thousands of clicks on your affiliate links consistently every month to make money that way you need to build trust with your audience there can also if you're selling other people's products that's also ads like banner ads on a website the YouTube Partner program you're technically helping other brands that way so there's ads now you need a lot of attention for those you need a lot of views you need a lot of traffic if you have a Blog you can also sell your time so this is Services starting an agency freelancing you're doing something that takes you time and you're spending people are uh paying you for it now this is a little bit like having a job so it's not complete time Freedom or passive income or anything like that but it's a good entry point now the main thing I want to cover those those are the main three ways but the four main ways to make money online as a single person as an individual business the best ones are ads affiliate marketing selling your own product and having sponsors those are the four that you can have the great part about them is they don't interfere with each other so for example on my YouTube channel there's ad Revenue there's affiliate Revenue sometimes with products uh with links in the description there's course Revenue through lead magnets and things like that and then there's sponsors in some videos too so there's four ways that an individual person makes money online now you need to do all of them eventually but you just kind of start with the right ones in the right order now to me courses and communities is the future and it's the best long-term path you look at big companies too they're all creating streaming platforms courses communities monthly memberships things like that so that's the best long-term path creating your own product online that you're teaching selling things but ultimately you need to realize that no matter what way that you're trying to make money online no matter what way you need an audience every brand needs a consistent audience even like Nike with Super Bowl ads or brands on Tik Tok or YouTube If brand recognition goes away they don't really have sales so to make money on the internet you need ongoing and consistent eyeballs and attention on the content that you're creating and then it is monetized in the correct ways whether it's Super Bowl ads a Blog getting traffic a YouTuber getting views even The Wolf of Wall Street had to call somebody on the phone to get an audience of one we all need somebody to buy something to make money online a purchase typically has to be made unless it's ad Revenue now for our purposes if we're going to build an audience to make money what are we going to do well there's different options there's YouTube there's a website or a Blog that's getting traffic mainly through Google or Pinterest or other things like that there's social media Tik Tok Instagram Facebook and there's podcasting so those are like the main ones right so let's talk about each one which is good which is bad starting with the bad so Instagram and Tik Tok to me are not the best ways to make money online first you don't get paid very much for getting views and attention on Tik Tok you might make two cents for a th000 views think about that two cents you get th000 views you might make two cents from Tik Tok now here's an interesting exercise 123. 7 million people watched the Super Bowl last year if you got 123. 7 million views on Tik Tok you would have made $2400 that is it to get the attention of the Super Bowl you make 2400 bucks from Tik Tok that's insane you'd have to have sponsors and do all kinds of crazy stuff to do that and you'd have to go viral virality is not a consistent business strategy I have never once gone viral I have two multi-million dollar businesses it's about consistency teaching helping and doing the right revenue streams with a small audience now Tik tok's horrible $2,400 for Super Bowl attention that's nuts now if you did that same thing on YouTube If you were on YouTube and you got $13.7 million views you'd conservatively make between $600,000 to $1.2 million that's with an RPM of like five or 10 bucks some people can get up to 15 or 20 so that's a conservative estimate $2,400 on Tik Tok 600k to 1.2 million on YouTube so you think about short form video like shorts and stuff I can say that it's people want to make money on Tik Tok however the the value of a 10 to 15c view is about a 100 times less than what it could be on YouTube for a longer form View and it just makes sense if they're watching you for 10 seconds versus 10 minutes it's a lot less time it's a lot less valuable there's also the idea on social media of passive scrolling versus active interest so if somebody's on YouTube or Google they're going to be searching for you actively typing things in actively seeing a thumbnail and clicking on a video they're actually interested based on their interest in what you're talking about potentially what you're selling uh on Instagram though most people are just passively scrolling through stuff now there's also a lot more friction on Instagram and Tik Tok to actually make money so for example if someone's scrolling on Instagram and you're trying to make affiliate Revenue they'd have to see your post you can't link to an affiliate Link in the caption so they'd have to you'd have to say Link in bio so then they click your bio they click your link tree bio link they click the link on that link they get to a product page they then F have to buy that there's like six clicks involved in that process versus if you're on YouTube and you do affiliate marketing you say click the link below boom they click the link they're already on the page one click versus six so there's a lot more friction on there and also it's just a different business model if you're selling stuff on Instagram and you're trying to make money on Instagram you need DM sales so that's actually how it's done course sales for example on YouTube it's done click the link in the description get this lead magnet really simple one click they go to a landing page they opt in Instagram it's pretty much done through DM stuff so you have to say DM the word Instagram to get my free resources and then it's autod DM and then DM sales people go in and message that's how products are sold on Instagram it requires a human person to actually sell stuff which makes it more complicated so those to me they can work but they're not the best second is a podcast so it's just a podcast I like but it can take a really long time like years it can take like 1 to 5 years of consistently doing a podcast not as easy to monetize like it's harder to get people to click on links unless you're doing it also on YouTube so a good thing you could do it on you know stream it with a podcast hosting tool push it out to different platforms and then also post it on YouTube so that's a good way to do it could be a good angle but you're just kind of limiting a little bit it's more you need more Mass Appeal it's typically you know monetized through sponsors and you want to create like entertaining podcast content it's not as much like direct teaching so it's a little bit better we're getting there then there's blogging so blogging is a little bit better you can rank on Google and make money consistently for years if you're sitting there ranking however a lot of the times Google changes things a lot Google controls everything they can decide your site shouldn't rank anymore and they say here's a manual penalty goodbye or you know they just change the algorithm and Forbes and Reddit and all these big media sites are on top I I do think it's becoming a little bit harder to like say put all your eggs in Google basket I think that you can have a Blog and you should have a website a website is something that you own it's not a secondary platform like YouTube or Tik Tok or something that you don't own you own the website you own the hosting but Google controls pretty much everything so you need secondary traffic sources to your website a website is kind of like the sun in a solar system whereas the planets are things like YouTube and Pinterest and Google and all these traffic sources cuz no matter what you're doing to make money online you need to send people to a website to either click on affiliate links or buy products opt into an email list all of those things the benefits though of of blogging are you own the website it's AI heavy so it can be outsourced to a human writer help you know you can use AI in some ways to speed up your process it's not like YouTube or a podcast where you have to constantly be on the content hamster wheel and creating more videos or more podcasts you can just Outsource it to another person that writes it it's not like your face is on there right so you can Outsource it but SEO can be difficult it takes long it takes three to six months to potentially rank content Google is constantly changing its algorithm so I don't like having this as the only audience building method I know firsthand from firsthand experience traffic goes up traffic goes down you're following their advice and then things can go crazy so what I like even better in the long run is YouTube so YouTube long-term audience building in a real authentic way it's really that simple you want to build an audience and make money online you do it on YouTube that's where everyone is doing it if you look around it's like people telling you how to make money make make money with this way make money with this way they have YouTube channels teaching you how to do that so it's much more personalized like I can teach a lot better through a video talking to you than I could on an article right it's just a lot of a better format you create a simple and I'm not talking about creating a YouTube channel of entertainment videos or prank videos or comedy videos or going out in public and doing stuff that can be hard to monetize because that's only reliant on like millions of views and getting a sponsor and making some ad Revenue if you're teaching when you teach on YouTube you can create simple talking head Style videos where you hit the button you turn it on you create simple things or even screen shares or even faceless videos where you're just not even on the screen and you're just showing stuff maybe you're showing graphic design or photoshop or using an AI tool or something like that and you can monetize it in the four ways ads affiliate Revenue courses and sponsors every business needs to understand the algorithm because we acquire attention from the third party platforms YouTube Google all of that and then we monetize that attention so we go from attention from algorithm to ownership because we don't own Google we don't own YouTube but we go and we collect email addresses we build assets we make money and we go from algorithm to ownership by doing those things so to recap so far you have your identity your experience your starting line we all know that you need to teach something in a niche to be open up to four revenue streams YouTube and blogging are the best options based on per people's purchase Behavior online it's what they click on it's what they buy things through affiliate links they buy courses they don't actively do that as much on Instagram or Tik Tok that works better for e-commerce Brands and remarketing and stuff like that so with all that said it's a lot of information it's time we actually have to choose a niche because you have to be known for something you want to be known for one thing you don't want to be so Broad and create content around everything right that's not the best way to make money online so we have to choose your Niche however with niches niches however you want to say it there is one more nuanced fact and I'm covering all of these things because this is the foundation if you can't sit through the foundations then you're probably going to be stuck on Fiverr or freelancing or something because we have to figure this out this is the most important thing when you're just starting out is choosing the right Niche but we have to realize that we're serving an audience it's not just about you and what you want to talk about it's serving a specific audience that is going to be interested in every piece of content that you create now what's interesting is some niches though are more easily monetized on certain platforms than others so you could pick the right Niche but the wrong platform for example if you're in Fitness yes you can go after affiliate Revenue through products you can review them but the main income stream longterm the best possible income stream is your own program selling a course which is actually probably much better through YouTube if you're in food you can go after you know those really long recipes that people write that give their entire life story because they're making ad revenue and maybe selling your own cookbook or doing a little bit of affiliate marketing or something you can even sell a cookbook on Instagram or put your recipes on there or if you're in video video games right you're talking about video games you're not going to go on Instagram right you'd go on YouTube or twitch or things like that where you're actually your audience actually is or if you're in finance for example let's say you want to talk about Finance credit cards Building Wealth all of those things it could be super competitive on Google starting a blog in finance is not a good idea right now like it would be much easier if you aim for affiliate revenue on YouTube instead of instead of writing an article about the five best credit cards that'll never rank on Google you shoot a video on the five best credit cards and it has much better chance of getting served up on YouTube it's actively looking for new videos to constantly promote that are new so if you chose finance and you choose blogging then you've made a mistake and you wouldn't even know that if you didn't really think about it or know this so it's almost like a chicken in the egg scenario what came first the content or making money or understanding the monetization streams first before you even start the content in the first first place can get a little bit disheartening in a lot of ways but I don't want to over complicate things for you so what do you actually do we have to figure out we're going to make money online we know we need to create content to build an audience and build attention we need like some categories of content that we're going to create so for example I have a Channel right now it talks about blogging affiliate marketing YouTube content creation there's like four or five things I'm not just talking about like one aspect of SEO or something like that this is true in every Niche so if you're creating content around camping you would have things about the best gear tents backpacks things like that but also maybe the best trails to hike on maybe some things about the best campsites maybe other things about equipment and checklists and things that you need and how to prepare so we have to really realize that either whether a YouTube channel or a blog or anything that we're creating content on we need the right categories because if you look at the YouTube channel as a whole it shouldn't just talk about one aspect of the niche it should talk about all of them the blog should have multiple aspects too if you have a Blog and it's only talking about the camping GE gear but it has nothing about where to actually camp or checklist or guides like that well then Google doesn't think it's very helpful so we're creating helpful content we need categories of content and I'm going to show you an AI tool to help you do that so I created an AI prompt uh an AI system prompt that can really hone in on what your Niche is so you're going to copy this I'm going to get a Google doc um if you again click the link in the description below you can get this Google doc plus nine others that'll help you figure all this stuff out what we'll do is we're going to copy and paste this into either chat GPT or Claude and it'll give us the categories of content in our first idea so let's get into it all right so this is the AI YouTube idea engine this will help you come up with ideas we see other people are in here cuz they're accessing it I'm going copy and paste this in and what it does is it runs through this system prompt for you so it's going to say all right so it ask you a question so it says Tell me the main Niche you're interested in exploring in YouTube Once you share I'll give you five relevant sub niches so the five areas of content you can create and then five topic ideas for those so I'm going to say crypto trading people do it a lot they have their own Discord communities or different types of communities and they have their own products that they sell and different tools that people can use and they talk about crypto different coins all kinds of different videos but this will help you come up with like what are the categories of content I'm I'm going to create to make money so for example technical analysis and charting so people need to read the charts the candlesticks all of the stuff they need to kind of understand some of that technical analysis that can always be good people like that risk management so interesting ideas here how I lost $1,000 in crypto what I learned perfect position sizing managing emotion so more the emotion mindset risk management type stuff also market analysis so looking at individual coins Bitcoin Litecoin if people actually still look at Litecoin Solana all the different coins right you can make videos on each individual one and what it's doing and then trading strategy so your full trading strategy dollar cost averaging five trading strategy swing trading versus day trading all kinds of different ideas and a good crypto channel would have all of these and now it's going to tell you what sub Niche are you interested in most I'll generate 20 video ideas for a specific keyword so I'm just going to say technical analysis and charting so it comes up with tons of ideas plus the target keyword the only three Candlestick patterns you need RSI for 30 using RSI the truth about moving averages I tested time frames five chart patterns 90% of Traders really good video ideas that you can create now again we're creating these videos to build an audience to monetize in multiple ways eventually through ads and then also through potentially sponsors in the future but right now we can talk about affiliate marketing adding affiliate links to maybe this is crypto platforms like binance or whatever the other ones are that you can actually make affiliate revenue on and then also potentially selling your own course your own community so you'd say hey in this video on the truth about moving averages you know if you're interested in my crypto Community if you want to get my charts my daily tools that I use every day make sure to click the link in the description get access to that now you're collecting the email address to turn this into sales now email marketing is still the number one way to sell your own products online so this is a really good starting point and a strategy to create that content that actually makes money now with this we create a Content plan now what you have to do is you stick to a consistent schedule with no exceptions ever since I started my YouTube channel about three years ago I've had at least one video a week for the last three years oftentimes two videos a week plus shorts and stuff like that now even if it isn't working even if you don't see any progress even if no one is watching you stick to a consistent schedule it's just like pretend you're a TV show and you have to put out that episode at every week it can be disheartening it can be tough you might feel like you're terrible at it but I promise you you look back at any old YouTube channel you at the oldest videos they're way way way worse I mean look at Mr BEAST's first video he's just sitting and talking to the camera versus now he's got thousands of people on screen doing crazy stuff so especially if you feel terrible at it again we can do text Spas stuff we're going to cover in a second YouTube podcasting all of that but to make money with content you need to understand how the algorithms work so for YouTube this is Click through rate r ition basically people clicking on your thumbnails and watching the videos till the end keeping people on YouTube is YouTube's goal because they make money through advertising so Brands adverti and videos they just want people watching more videos clicking other videos when they're watching your video right clicking that thing at the end of the video or when I'm if you mention another video while your video is going they just want to keep people on YouTube the thumbnail is basically just as important as the video itself because half the battle is click-through rate so the title and thumbnail so so for example if you're doing that crypto YouTube channel maybe you have a enticing title 7 years of crypto knowledge in 25 minutes it's a common formula that everyone's doing I haven't done it but everyone's doing it and the thumbnail should follow certain formats so this is an example here a 7even years of crypto trading knowledge in 50 minutes year one year seven everything I learned so it's always good to have like you can have before after you can have all kinds of different YouTube thumbnail ideas what you have to do is you start the video based on what the thumbnail promised so you say in this video I'm covering all the the crypto knowledge that I've gained over the last 7 years in just 25 minutes let's get into it people have short attention spans so you're really creating content I was talking to my wife about this like you're not just if you want to make money online you're not just doing it for fun unfortunately that's the reality of the situation you're not just walking around with your phone shooting lifestyle content and hoping that people are going to watch it you are specifically doing it for the algorithm that you're doing it on so for YouTube unfortunately you have to frame a video in a certain way you can't just blindly go into it and make stuff up sometimes that can work especially once you've already built an audience but when you're just starting out it's really important to hit the right notes throughout the video so you want to make the claim you know the beginning of the thumbnail actually you know entice people to keep watching that's all you want to do tease what's coming get into the presentation this is the format of all talking head videos you do a a scripted intro of some kind or some type of interesting intro and then you get into the bulk of the content now I can shoot this entire video with just some notes that's pretty much it I'm just looking down looking at some notes and that's really it it's not scripted I'm just going with it so really what you can do is have a scripted intro notes for the teaching components and a few calls to action so again the monetization zone of YouTube is going to be the YouTube description that is where you can put all your links to get people to take actions so they can click affiliate links they can click your own course links all that stuff but if you don't mention them in the video they're not going to click it so somewhere in the first 2 minutes you want to say now if you're interested in joining me whatever it is click the link in the description want to do that somewhere in the first few minutes because as we know on YouTube most people will drop off over time based on retention so you don't want to say a minute 7 join this link like a lot more people will see it if you do it at minute one or minute two now when you're doing this it's interesting it's not like you're like to to me I don't consider myself like a YouTuber in a lot of ways I am but I'm not like I'm I'm here to make money believe it or not right if if if I didn't make money on YouTube I probably wouldn't do it I'd be making videos about mindset stuff or random things and I just be doing is a hobby but I'm here to teach and I'm here to make money so to do that am I sacrificing you know you think am I sacrificing retention and Views by telling people to click stuff maybe maybe instead of telling people to click a link in that 7 to 10 second span you could be doing some crazy editing and more people would watch it however what's the point of getting more views if you're not monetizing it so you have to monetize your YouTube videos you have to get people to click links in them or you're just only going to have ad revenue and as we know that can be something thing but ad revenue is only 3% of my YouTube Channel's Revenue the other 97% is affiliate marketing sponsors and courses so to build a real business on YouTube you treat it like a YouTube channel but you also treat it like a sales engine you treat it like a real business you have to find the formula that works for you when it comes to making money online with YouTube the thing that takes the longest to prep is the notes so I have like five pages of notes for this video just to kind of jog my memory and stuff now shooting is easier it takes however long the video is I can start I can stop I just keep the camera rolling the whole full time we can edit it later minimal editing if you're just starting people don't really care especially if you're teaching you don't need crazy editing that's the benefit of teaching people just want the good information they're not just only there to be entertained all right so that's YouTube you can make a lot of money doing that your Revenue ceiling is really high if you build a big audience sell your own products and the other revenue streams now let's get into blogging so creating a website now with the website we again we have to choose your Niche now over time you can do a YouTube channel and a Blog that's what I have at this current moment but it's hard to do both at this same time you want to focus on one or the other and it's based on your personality what you actually would get more enjoyment out of and you see yourself doing so with the same thing we're going to use what I call the AI Niche Hunter Niche Hunter it's a another prompt you can get if you click the link in the description and it will tell you in a blogging form we can see a lot of people are using this there's like at least six or seven people using this right now I'm going to paste it into Claud again now this will just be a little more specific instead of YouTube it's coming up with blog content ideas so it's going to identify five niches and and uh topics so for example I'm going to provide a niche it's getting a little cold so I'm going to put in snowmobiling pretty a seasonal Niche probably we're just going to see it for example so the is snowmobiling so subn one beginner snowmobiling so guides to doing it this is articles we're talking about making money with articles now maintenance and repair tips travel and trail riding performance and racing and then family snowmobiling so again I like this but it's not perfect I'd probably ask actually add like the gear itself like the best snowmobiles the best helmets the best things like that but it's a pretty good starting point so I'm going to say what subjects would I like to explore further I'm going to say beginner snowmobiling now this will give me 20 article ideas that I could create now there's going to be two pillar posts like really important posts you need to write mostly informational content which is going to be the most helpful to readers and Google likes and then some affiliate articles about five that you can make money with with affiliate marketing so what this is it's got 15 informational articles like what to wear snowmobile snowmobile hand signals how much do it cost to get into snowmobiling Trail signs snowmobile controls firsttime tips all of that stuff and then we also have transactional the best snowmobile helmets the best boots the best GPS systems the best gloves the best gear packages so it also gives you some more tips you know include plenty of images create detailed step-by-step guides link to related articles to build topical Authority all of those things any clarification so what we have to realize though is we are creating content for humans we're writing content to make money we need to get people to read the content we can make ad Revenue if they just read it and look at it and the ads are shown and we want to make affiliate Revenue by getting them to click on links and things or exit intent pop up to a course so through a website the best way to get people into your email list is through an exit intent popup so their mouse goes to the top of the screen boom an exit intent popup appears but now when we're creating the content you know we have these pieces of content this is where it gets a little more technical than YouTube YouTube you just start making videos about different things Google it's like you need topical Authority which means you need a bunch of articles about a given topic to rank topical authorities the more articles you have the more Google thinks that you're an expert in that Niche now to do that we write content both for human beings and for the Google algorithm so the Google algorithm has changed a lot but we want it to be as helpful as possible to the human reader so things like you know personal experience-based stuff images things that people like and want to see we match the search intent of what the thing is also though we have to optimize it for SEO for Google so that's things like every article needs a Target keyword the target keyword should be in the URL it should be in the title it should be in the H2 heading it should be in the intro somewhere there's certain SEO things we have to do now we don't have to master SEO like we used to maybe 5 years ago where you just perfectly optimize the article it's more about the human elements is it helpful and is it good to the reader now we can use AI to speed this up if you click the link below you get all those prompts there's also ones that like write an entire article for you they take the keyword that you got you put in the keyword and then it'll automatically give you the full article outl lined and then you can do a paragraph generator to write all the paragraphs now I don't recommend you could have a fully finished article but I don't really recommend you just publish AI content because no one reads that stuff it's not helpful it's not going to rank it might rank for a little bit but it's just not that helpful now you can use AI to speed up the process where it's kind of giving you the ideas for the outline and then you're filling it in with human-based experience one thing you need is images in your articles so also like if you're in a hobby new like snowmobiling you should just go out take a bunch of pictures of yourself on a snowmobile different angles different types going to the store doing all these things that are like that if you're in a software age talking about AI or software most of your images are just going to be screenshots of things so you take screenshots you put them in so for example though we really need to understand like the power of Google and YouTube so I've had articles individual articles on Google ranking that have made me over $10,000 $220,000 a month from one single article ranking because it's making money with recurring affiliate programs someone signs up for software I make 30 or 40% recurring every single month that they remain a customer so if my blog blew up tomorrow you're still making money that's the main the best path to make money blogging is affiliate marketing it's the best one however it's getting more difficult people are kind of pivoting now you can see other videos on my channel on like the strategy for 2025 people are pivoting more to like easy informational content so tons of uh niches have this so for example if you're talking about tattoos your nich's tattoos think of how many articles you could have on angel tattoos viking tattoos arm leg bicep back there's like 5,000 plus articles you could write to get traffic to and make ad Revenue now I consider ad revenue is kind of like the last resort of monetization that's why recipe blogs have them if you search for a chicken soup recipe you're not going to go to that website and buy a can of Campbell Soup doesn't make sense the search intent is not to buy something you might really love the recipe and eventually join an email list or something but the vast majority of people like 98% of people are just going to leave and never interact with that website again to monetize that you have ads now again courses is another thing that you can sell through a Blog you have an exit intent popup here's my lead magnet the five best blogging tips for beginners get it here however YouTube is 100 times better to sell courses on than a Blog I've seen just from my own experience I do get people in the email list from my blog but it's probably 90 5% YouTube because it's much easier to join on YouTube it's much more personal on YouTube Someone lands on my blog they're reading my content they don't know who I am they might see my face in the corner but do they really trust me I don't know right so there's a lot of nuance to this stuff I'm kind of rambling in this video because it's just really important to understand all of this and just I hope you're enjoying this it's kind of like a podcast Style video in some ways where I'm just kind of going through these Point by point now again doing both at the same time is hard there's a reason I did my blog first I got it passive with a few hires I hired a writer at month 3 to six I hired one assistant and I scaled that to $80,000 a month back in 2020 then I started the YouTube channel once I had my time back so the thing is as you keep learning and creating content to make money you need to build leverage so this is the next really important part so what is leverage well Leverage is the exertion of force on a lever technically speaking but what does that mean well it means that the more leverage that you have the easier things are to do like I'm in a leverage position now where I have 10 employees and I can create a YouTube video without having to edit it I can tell a Blog writer to write 30 articles for the month and not actually write them I couldn't do that when I just started so Leverage is like okay if this is lever or something let see if I can balance this if I push right here it's going to be a lot harder I'm be like this is really really scientific really good stuff this is like Vsauce level of science now if I push here Leverage right you get the idea Leverage is what you build to make more and more money online somebody that has a bigger audience has some employees eventually can make more money doing it now what we have to realize is BAS it's really simple though it's just like to make money online you just want to remove the most timec consuming work so with blogging that is writing the actual content do every blog does every blogger write their own stuff no most don't actually believe it or not for YouTube That's the video editing if I can just prep and shoot a video I don't have to edit it or upload it perfect right so that makes it a lot easier so you remove the time consuming stuff then you can focus on building the business the back end that's the strategy the execution the affiliate programs the relationships the Partnerships the sponsors that's what you want to focus your time on so with one person though I did this you can scale up your leverage create more content with Le less effort because we just want to create more content so I'm not in the position to have as much content as somebody like the daily wire or some okay I'll use a conservative example I don't know a liberal example some some other pod save America podcast or something like that like they if you look at some of these bigger channels they're publishing videos like every day like Dave Ramsey for example maybe they have a video going every day and it's distributed across podcasting multiple platforms like I'm not to that level yet but I am in a position where I can do one to two videos a week pretty easily right so it's a little bit different but you can start snowballing it when I first started it wasn't this way I was writing every single article myself I eventually hired a writer and then when we started YouTube we went through multiple video editors and different tests and things so that's kind of the hard part is when you're first starting out this video though is if I wanted to make money online in 2025 what would I do not 2019 not 2020 not you know the 2019 when I started you would do it a little bit differently if you're just starting out then what exactly what I'm doing right now because now what I would do is I would start okay I automated the blog got it to a million dollars a year brought the built the YouTube channel got that to 2 to $3 million a year automate that if I could automate YouTube a little bit more then I would go let's do a podcast let's scale this out where there's three videos a week things like that so what I would do right now is different technically in the title than what I would tell the beginner to do and that's just the reality of the situation so here's what I would do I would based on your personality whether if you're introverted or extroverted if you'd rather do YouTube or you'd rather do a website I would pick one and stick with it for me I'd create a YouTube channel on a topic I know about want to learn about and I can talk about for the next 5 years think about longterm like for example I have a student that they like tennis then they like finance and I said think about this in 5 years from now would you still want to be talking about tennis I know you've played it for a long time I know you've played it since you were a kid but do you want to be known as the tennis guy is that what you want to be if you see your face on a website is it tennis or do you want to teach Finance do you want to teach active trading and the answer was really obvious to him it was he wanted to teach Finance so even though the niche seems a little bit harder it actually served his long-term personal brand better because he would stick with it for five or 10 or more years to build your personal brand around that use the I prompts try to brainstorm pick a niche that you'd be interested in learning and teaching so again you don't have to be an expert you could do beekeeping and I've seen students that they just started learning about it and they're teaching as they go because a lot of times it's more interesting to learn somebody who's like one step ahead of you than it is a thousand because it seems intimidating if I wanted to learn golf would I want to learn it from Tiger Woods or would I want to learn it from the average golfer who's getting better for me I'd want to learn it from the average guy who makes mistakes and is vulnerable and shares where they are on their journey to actually do it because tiger was a so far ahead it would almost like not even make sense to me so that's what I would do first so think about that nich then I would set up a studio in your house we have it in some of our courses like the minimum viable Studio the easiest possible path where you'd set it up um come up with your first 10 video ideas prep those videos in a style that you can actually do so maybe it's fully scripted maybe you just don't want to you know you want to write the whole thing out because you're kind of intimidated by talking or making things up this is a skill that you'll build over time if you look back at my first Channel videos on my channel I was slow I was talking weird it's it wasn't bad but it wasn't good I'm not saying I'm not great at it now but again you improve over time so you just focus on building your audience you start looking for affiliate programs because when you're teaching anything it could be how to build a shed well to build a shed you need different tools maybe it's a framing nailer expensive tools or all kinds of different things so there's two types of videos one is how to do things how to build a shed or the five best framing nailers right both of those a transactional video the five best framing nailers you could have affiliate links to the top five how to build a shed You' probably have affiliate links to all potential products cuz you don't know what the person wants at that point you see a lot of hobby niches have videos like how to plant strawberries how to plant potatoes how to build a shed you just give them everything like all the affiliate links they put in because I don't know if they even have a measuring tape I don't know what they have they might not have one out of the five tools so you add a bunch of affiliate links in and then you're basically just waiting whether you're blogging or YouTube you're just waiting on the sponsor an ad Revenue there's no action to take those are just a byproduct of getting views over time so there's nothing to worry about there the main thing you have to focus on is if I'm going to teach in a niche what are some affiliate programs I can start generating Revenue through and then second what is my course going to be what am I going to teach because you have to transform the student so if you're teaching like how to play the guitar you have different guitar videos and things that you're teaching what is the course well you get people in with a lead magnet so it could be like the top five guitar tips something simple that kind of teases that they get into the email list and then over the course of 3 4 5 6 7even days they get a series of automated emails getting into the full course now the full course is a a toz transformation of the student they go from beginner to expert or intermediate they change their life in some way if it's a hobby they change their life by becoming good at that hobby if it's Fitness they change their life by becoming in better shape if it's business they learn something about business maybe make some money so you're transforming through a course so you have to think about that that with your Niche so to pick the right Niche you have to have affiliate marketing programs because to do things if you want to golf you need golf clubs if you want to build the shed you need tools if you want to play the guitar you need a guitar if you want to start a blog you need web hosting that's where affiliate marketing comes in because you're teaching something but people typically need products to do stuff unless they're just D like dancing maybe you probably need dance programs to learn so there's always products and services related to things and sometimes people pick niches that are just way out there like I want to teach writing uh journaling to 60-year-olds we had a students say that and I was like that's just too specific that's too like who's you can't really dictate when you're making money online like who your audience is going to be it's not going to be just 60y olds you don't want to dictate the the the age or the demographics or anything like that so a lot of the times you're picking think of if it's think it's either going to be a hobby or business pretty much that you're going to talk about if it's a hobby think of physical locations in the home the patio maybe you want to talk about barbecuing patio stuff outdoor backyard games and things like that maybe you want to talk about living room furniture how to decorate a living room interior design your Niche needs a product category it needs a actual category of products that you can write about that you can create videos on so again you're basically waiting on sponsors and AD Revenue you're focused more on affiliate Revenue in the short term course sales in the long term building your personal brand just helping people getting and building a bigger audience over time so so I plan on by month 6 creating the short course on what you're teaching could be a 10-hour course people are going for courses they're going for communities not dead courses there's a reason that we update our communities all the time with new content because people want actual you know little Mastermind communities with people that they can interact with more so than just 10 hours of video content then that's it so it's more about communities building real communities for people that's what people want now especially in this online world where we're all working remote like college can teach people some stuff but there's a big gap in education that's being filled with individual people teaching stuff on things like Hobbies business finance Fitness all kinds of different areas so again this is the most lucrative way you see most people teaching things like dropshipping or agencies where are they teaching it they're teaching it on YouTube and they're doing the things that I'm telling you to do right now comedians make money they go on tour but they also have a podcast and where do people watch that mostly mostly on YouTube so it's Central to build building something for yourself so basically what I'm saying is that in this day and age where inflation is high and it's kind of harder to get ahead and tech companies are laying people off and you don't know necessarily what's going to happen you want to take back some control I always wanted to take back control have a little bit more Financial Freedom a little bit more time freedom to do what I want so right now I publish blog articles or I don't really have to do much I make helpful YouTube videos and that's it I don't have to drive to work work I can spend time with my wife and my baby and it's a different lifestyle that I built for myself but I had to really what I realized is like I went to college nothing changed I got a job nothing changed once I fully took personal responsibility for my life and I realized that there are no limits on what you can do I had so many self-limiting beliefs holding me back I said I'll never amount to this I first learned about passive income in 2008 I didn't actually get any until 2019 2020 so it took 11 years of trying and failing and trying and failing to kind of teach some of these lessons that I'm teaching you now cuz you're going to have blind spots you're going to have areas where like I'm going to try to learn this thing about YouTube or about creating content or blogging or making money or e-commerce or anything and you're going to hit blind spots and just things that you didn't think you know you'd run into so it's kind of like crossing a bridge there's a plank missing in the bridge are you going to jump over it are you going to find the plank or you just going to let let it sit there and turn around and walk back and I always recommend to challenge yourself I think life is about challenging yourself it's about growth it's about growing into something new while also having gratitude for what you currently have so that's another thing I always want to talk about is that making money online will not make you any happier potentially than you are now it might lift some financial burden which in turn can make you happier like I'm happier that I don't have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck like I once did but I'm not inherently happy every day just because that happened so I want you to know that you have everything you need right now you don't need necessarily a million dollars to be happy but it would be nice to build something for yourself so at least you have a backup plan in this crazy economy with AI inflation all kinds of stuff going on in the world right now so with that if you want to learn more if you want the AI prompts all 10 of them to choose your Niche do keyword research write the content come up with the monetization strategy there's all kinds of different ones in there click the link in the description below sign up for that I'll send you my free AI master class as well it's exactly how to do this stuff with AI in the 2020s how to build a real business for yourself once and for all so with that you know it's a conceptual learning style you know I'm not going to I have so many videos on my Channel about like the exact specifics of over theh shoulder writing the content over theh shoulder creating YouTube videos but really if I wanted to make money online in 2025 I would look for something that doesn't cost me money to start that I know a little bit about that I could build my personal brand around because a personal brand you don't have to quit you can use it as a Resume Builder you can always use it in the future in any number of ways and you just keep going create consistent content and figure out who you are what you want to be known for does should everyone in the world be a content creator not necessarily right there's most people are content consumers so if you're a consumer you're scrolling through social media you're watching YouTube videos and you're never taking action then just know your life's not going to change but if you believe in yourself and you stay consistent over the course of time time it actually can and it's kind of cool so I hope you enjoyed the video check out other videos on my channel and I will see you in the next one and make sure to subscribe if you haven't yet usually like 70% of people watching my videos are people that are not subscribed so check out the channel and I hope it was useful let me know if you have any comments on anything specific in this video making money online in 2025 and I will see you in the next video