In this article I am going to talk about two main things. Passive Income & SEO, and how these 2 together make it possible to get a paycheck for a long period of time without having to work hard your whole life. It’s not so simple that you can do it after you are done reading this article and it’s not something that is going to happen overnight. What it will do is teach you how to apply skills to help you achieve a goal of passive income in a much smaller amount of time. This could be from several month to a couple years, but I along with others have personally been able to do this in that amount of time. I am going to explain one way to do this, which happens to be the way I did. There are many ways to do this, this is just one of them.
When it comes to business there are many opportunities out there. One of the greatest things about the United States is that there are so many ways to make money. You just have to be creative and look. Just like any business owner out there the hardest part to start a business is capital and money. You have to spend money to make money as they say, but that is not always true. In fact it’s a lie.
One of the greatest ways of thinking when it comes to making money is have a goal of passive income.
Passive income is an income received on a regular basis, with little effort required to maintain it. – Wikipedia
Examples of Passive Income (The Hard Way)
Retirement Checks
We’ll one way to think of passive income is “retirement checks”. Let’s say you get a retirement check every month. You don’t have to do anything but be alive to get that check. Grant of course you had to work 55+ years of your life with blood! sweat and tears but for the most part you can spend the remaining 30+ years on a remote beach drinking your miti with one of those small umbrellas and receive that check.
Social Security Checks
Yes I said it. Even good ol’ SS checks are technically a form of passive income. As long as you paid your dues and hope the money does not run out you will get a check every month as long as you are alive.
Invest In Real Estate
You could buy a house, fix it up and rent it out. Then when you make enough buy another one and rent that one out. In 20 years you might make enough every month to let you stay at home and watch the grass grow.
Lets be honest, they work…you might get arrested for it but hey I said these were examples (The Hard Way) didn’t I?
Serious? Yes but the risk is so high you might as well kiss your investment good buy unless you REALLY know what you are doing
General Investments
There are a million ways to make money with money, I’m actually shocked that I was not able to find a good article to link to on this subject so that might have to be my next article. The problem is that you need to have the money to start with in order to do that, which is totally against what I am saying that you need money for passive income so let’s just pretend I never even said that. That and I’m sure you are reading this because you need to make money in the first place.
Starting A New Business
You could start a new business whether it be a retail store, HVAC Company or even a school …you name it. You can go through the pain staking time to create a business plan, figure out your next 3 to 5 years of financials and compare them to the current industry ratios and then once you have that done you can find an investor, be prepared to not make any money for three years. Stress about overhead costs and try to make sure you are reaching your monthly and quarterly goals so your investors are happy and maybe in 10 years sell the company off assuming of course you made it that far by then AND you are making enough profit that would look enticing for someone else to buy you out for millions of dollars.
One way to make passive income quickly
These are just some simple examples that I could think off the top of my head to make passive income, but they all have one thing in common. They require a lot of work, overhead and years of working at it to finally achieve that constant paycheck and buy the time you get there you would have already lived a generation and watched your kids grow up.
So how in the world do you make money with very little effort and time…really?
One of the ways that I have discovered to make passive income quickly with very little overhead is through a type of online business called SEO. If you are not familiar with SEO then I recommend that you read this awesome article to help you get started. It will give you a nice graphical tutorial to give you a better understanding.
SEO is reffed to as (Search Engine Optimization) . This is the process in which you build websites to try and rank well in Google for particular keywords that people are already searching for. For instance I like to play scrabble, and when I do I have to look up words online for their definition. I will generally go to Google and type “scrabble dictionary” and click on a site and look it up. Well you know how many people type the word “Scrabble Dictionary” in Google everyday? A lot. The whole thing with SEO is building a site so that when someone types a keyword into Google your website is ranked as close to the first page in Google. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s hard and sometimes you might as well give it up for a particular keyword because you will never make it.
Why is it easy and/or hard sometimes?
Everything in this world is a competition. The more competition there is, the harder it is going to win. The less, the easier. You don’t need to be a rocket surgeon to figure that one out.
SEO works in the same way. The more popular a keyword is, the harder it will be to rank with your website. But with diligence and patience the profits can be enormous if you keep at it.
My Real Life Example
I started my SEO business about 2.5 years ago. I started it initially with one website I built as an anagram solver for games like scrabble and words with friends. Initially for about 1.5 years I made no money with it because I did not place any advertising on the website. After that I decided to start placing banner ads from Google Adsense on my website. Google Adsense is Google’s ad placement program which is basically those annoying banner ads you see on peoples websites that you want to block. There are many other programs our there as well from both Yahoo and Bing, Media are just a few other examples. If you are a Google hater you have other options.
When someone clicks on an ad, you get a some money for that click. How much depends on many factors, such as the type of advertising, who is advertising and how much advertisers are paying for each click. Many factors are involved, but you get the basic idea.
Once I started learning SEO and working on my website I slowly, but surely started making some money from this (and by some I mean like a couple cents a day) I realized I have some potential to make money here. How much? is what I didn’t realize until later. I began diving deep into SEO and began really working on my website providing good content and shared it out socially as much as I could.
After about 1 year my monthly check began to grow. I am not going to say how much I make but I make over 20k a month from my SEO/websites and all I do is collect a check every month from Google. How awesome is that? Grant there is “some” work involved of course, but honestly I fart around most of the day watching my favorite shows.
Now I have over 120 websites ranging from blogs, news and tools for all kinds of topics.
Now I am sure you are reading this saying to yourself “That’s awesome dude…but I have no idea how to build a website or even know where to start!”
Don’t worry because I am naming this next section…wait for it!
Make A Website For Dummies
OK this is going to the be the down and dirty explanation. Well not really, but don’t worry I am going to hold your hand through all this.
There are 4 main things you will need and you need to do them in this order.
- Think of a website you want to make
- Get a domain name
- Get a hosting company to host your new website and domain name
- Get a CMS (Content Management System) <- which is basically your website
Once you have those 4 things, you are ready to start building your website. And please do not worry about knowing HTML or coding at all. You don’t have too.
I have noticed over the years that people tend to get confused between the terms “domain name” and “hosting” so let me explain the difference.
- a domain name is the address of the website, you have to have one in order to exist on the internet and you have to buy one (which I will explain later)
- a hosting company is someone who will host your website, much like an apartment where you are renting space from to live. Your domain name is like your real name. So basically JohnSmith.com lives in hosting company’s house and rents that’s space. Both are separate purchases. (don’t worry they are cheap)
Let’s get started shall we…
1. Think of a website you want to make
Most people stress out about this one, but it’s not hard. Just think about the one thing you are passionate about. Here is the beautiful thing about having billions of people on the earth. There are at least a thousand people just like you who like the same thing you do. There is always an audience.
For instance I am a musician, nerd and I play a d20 game every Saturday with my buddies (and NO we do not run around in customs and fight with swords LARP).
I could write about any of those things. So I am going to decide to start a blog…yeah just like this one!
2. Get a domain name and hosting company
So now I decided to make a blog, what domain name should I get. If you do not know what a domain name is, it is the address of your website. I think it’s always important to have fun with your web en devour. So I think I am going to name my blog “I Hate Quick Questions” so I will get ihatequickquestions.com
Back Story
I picked ihatequickquestions.com because I am in the tech world and have been doing this for about 15 years. And whenever someone walks up to me and starts the conversation with “Hey I have a quick question” I know 2 things:
- It is not going to be a quick question
- It is involving something about computers
So I thought the most fitting domain name for me would be ihatequickquestions.com
So how do I get a domain name?
I’m glad you asked
There are many ways to get domain names and many companies to buy them from. I am going to pick a random company to do this from (and mainly because I use them).
1. Go to bluehost.com and get the lowest tier account, that is all you are going to need anyways
2. Under “I Need A Domain Name” type something in there. Be prepared for your domain name not be available so keep trying. They will also give you other suggestions to other domain names that are similar to what you want if what you want is not available.
Here is what happened when I tried to get media.com
General rule is try and get a .com address.
Once you do find a domain name you want and it is available then just go through all the setup process and pick the cheapest account where you can pay monthly. Right now the cheapest is $4.95 a month.
If you do not want to have to do it yourself then you can also call them and have someone set it up for you. You can call Blue Host @ 1 (888) 401-4678
At this point once your hosting company is setup along with your domain name you have already completed steps 1, 2 and 3. Wasn’t that easy?
Get a CMS (Content Management System)
A CMS is basically a website, but its a website that has a nice graphical interface to allow you to manage it and do things like add images, insert posts and text and have cool things like a search field for someone to search your site, add links to a menu and if you are daring you could even add a nice photo gallery if you have a bunch of pictures you want to show off.
You can pretty much do anything you want with a CMS and there are many out there to choose from. You can choose any of these but for the sake of simplicity and popularity I am going to go with the king of king’s when it comes to CMS. Drum roll please…………..WordPress
Installing WordPress
There are 2 ways to do this
- Do it yourself
- Have the web hosting company do it for you
Call them back and ask them this “Can you please show me how to install WordPress on my site?”. They will reply with “Sure, let’s begin”
That is going to be the easiest. If you want to try it yourself then you can follow these instructions right from Blue Hosts website. They have a nice video for that!
Once you have that done you are ready to start creating your website. At this point I could write another 2000000000 word post about all the things you can do in WordPress, but why reinvent the wheel. I am going to list a few videos to help you get started with all the different aspects of your website. Here are some of the main ones you are going to want know.
OK at this point you have a domain name, hosting account, setup WordPress, watched the videos how to setup WordPress, installed some themes, installed plugins and hopefully started writing your first post. If you still are having trouble doing this, you can always leave me a comment below and maybe I or someone else can help you if you are stuck.
So what’s next?
Remember the SEO thing I was talking about? That’s the whole passive income thing that can make you a ton of money.
At this point you are going to have to learn, but like I said before you are going to have to put time into this if you want to make it happen. It’s not the easiest road to take, but with time, patience and diligence you can do it.
Don’t worry I will not leaving you hanging now! Let’s see some of your first steps.
First thing you want to do is learn what SEO is. As I linked earlier in this post please go to MOZ – Learn how to SEO. There are 10 chapters to read through and I suggest your read through them all.
Here are some highlights from each chapter:
- Chapter 1: How Search Engines Operate – This chapter is going to talk about how search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing do what they do best. They look for content on the internet. Based on keywords you type when you are looking for something like “Scrabble Dictionary” will return a result of pages they think are the best results.
- Chapter 2: How People Interact With Search Engines – This chapter talks about how people should build websites for others users on the internet.
- Chapter 3: Why Search Engine Marketing Is Necessary – This chapter explains why it is important that you use SEO when making your websites.
- Chapter 4: The Basics of SEO Friendly Design and Development – This chapter teaches you how to build a website correctly so that search engines can find you, read your pages and make your site easily found by search engines correctly.
- Chapter 5: Keyword Research – One of the most important chapters to read and memorize. Keywords are gold when it comes to SEO. Know everything you can about this chapter.
- Chapter 6: How Usability, Experience and Content Affect Search Engine Rankings – This chapter will talk about how what you build on your site effects how Google will rank you in the results. Your ultimate goal is to be the first link in Google, that will not always happen but the closer the better. This will explain that to you and how your content and structure will help you get there.
- Chapter 7: Growing Popularity & Links – This chapter is going to introduce you to the marketing side of SEO and how you can help your rankings grow. You can do things like this through growing popularity through social means like facebook, twitter and other social media sites and how back links work. I could go into more detail about back links, but they are can be a double edged sword if you do not do it right. So for the sake of not giving you any “bad” ideas so I suggest you just read this chapter. If you still want to know then read this.
- Chapter 8: Search Engine Tools And Services – This chapter can get a little mind numbing, but try and get through it. It’s important.
- Chapter 9: Myths & Misconceptions about SEO and Search Engines – This chapter dives a little more about what I was talking about in the chapter 7 concerning basically the Wrong Way to SEO. This is also VERY IMPORTANT to learn.
- Chapter 10: Measuring & Tracking Success – If you have made it this far and I have not lost you then this is a fun chapter (especially if you are an analytic type person or like numbers).This will help you learn more about your visitors and what they are doing on your site and pages and teach you how to take that data and try and retain and bring new visitors to your site.
Here are some final Tidbits you should know and remember
SEO is about learning how to construct a website so that Google understands what you are trying to say and can read your pages properly to service them to their results. This is important when you are targeting specific keywords since you want your pages to show in those results when users are searching those specific keywords.
SEO is not all about banner ads – Yes this article is about that. I make websites to drive a lot of traffic to them so that people will click on my banner ads. That is how I do it, and that is not the only way to apply SEO. Other ways you can do SEO is…
- Helping a company with their website and helping them rank for keywords and get paid for it <- not passive income
- Create a site and use affiliate links to send your visitors to and hope they buy something. If they do buy something you make money <– yes passive income
- Make a website that gets visitors who are looking to buy something and have them fill out a form or make a phone call that turns into a “Lead”. If that visitors buys, then you make money <– a MASSIVE money maker and yes passive income
- Use SEO to market yourself, if you are a doctor, lawyer, lawn maintenance you could apply these skills to help boost your own company in the search engine results and drive organic traffic to your site. <– yes and no passive income
There are many forms to make money with SEO to achieve passive income, this is a story how I do it. If you have any questions, comments leave me a comment.