There's No Better Motivation Than Making Money

Money Is The Motivation

In my mind there's almost no better motivation out there than money. I'm not saying money will make you happy or that money is the most important thing in life. Far from it. To be money has nothing to do with watches, or cars, or fancy clothes. To me money means security, and money means freedom in the choices you make and being able to live your life the way you want.

When I say money is the motivation, I'm not even talking about having to make a lot of money. When I first started making money online I was living check to check. I started a blog and ran Adsense on it. I remember when I started making $3 a day I was excited. Sure $3 a day isn't much but $3 a day is $21 a week. That's $84 a month. Sure it's not going to make you rich but that will pay a phone bill, or fill up a gas tank a few times, or will be a fun night on the town.

Once you start making $3 a day it's not a far stretch to say okay if I can make $6 a day, now your making $180 a month. Once you hit that mark, it's not a far stretch to make $12 a day and that winds up being $360 a month. Now this is starting to be "real" money. Some people have to take a part-time job to bring in that extra amount of money each month and now you're able to make that in your free-time doing something you hopefully enjoy doing, writing a blog, vlogging on a Youtube Channel, etc.

I'm a big fan of promoting the idea that it's necessary to have more than one hustle. You need to have multiple ways to make money online. This is for two main reasons.

First, many ways of making money online require a third party be it eBay, Amazon, Paypal, Stripe, Youtube, Adsense, an Affiliate program. When a third party is invovled nothing is secure. A third party could ban you from the site, could change a payout policy, the point is it's not totally in your control. For example if eBay shuts down your account or suspends you, your business is done. If you have other things going on you have other projects to move onto, and you have other revenue streams.

The second reason you want to have more than one hustle is because it gives you more of a chance of success. They say 9 out of 10 businesses fail right. So if you start 10 businesses your bound to succeeed. I say this somewhat in jest. There's another school of thought you should have laser focus and focus on one thing or one project. Though I do agree with this once you start having success with a business, but when your first starting out, you almost need to take the the attitude of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.

About 7 years ago I started with affiliate marketing. After a year or two I kind of thought it was a stupid business model and sort of abandoned it for a few years. Now here we sit today and I've increased my skillsets and learned more about driving traffic and selling and now I love affiliate marketing.

The same thing hapenned to me with Kindle Publishing. I started off a few years back, was really gunngho, and it wasn't bringing me in the type of money I wanted so I kind of left it behind. Now fast forward a few years and I'm loving being a Kindle Publisher and also bringing in some decent money with it.

My point is when your first starting out you don't really know what your skillsets are. You don't really know what you enjoy, and you don't really know what your going to have success with so by trying a number of different ways of making money your more likely to find success and more likely to find what works.

One more thing I'll add. When I say multiple ways of making money it can often mean finding multiple ways to monetize one activity. For example if you start a blog and Youtube channel about a topic, we'll say hoverboards as an example. You can make money off monetizing your Youtube videos and by running advertisements on your blog posts, and you can also run your own affiliate ads on that as well. All in that one activity you've found 4 ways to monetize that activity.

There's no better day than today to get started so get something rolling and experiment with some different things. Freelancing on Fiverr, selling on eBay, selling on Amazon, join a few affiliate programs, start a blog, start a Youtube channel and see what works.

Best of luck!

How I Doubled My Youtube Earnings In Just 30 Days

How I Doubled My Youtube Earnings In Just 30 Days


It's been a few weeks since I logged in and actually checked on my Youtube earnings and was pleasantly surprised to see my earnings had more than doubled.

What did I do to yield these improved results? Many people are probably thinking I optimized all my videos or I had a video go viral. Nope. All I did to more than double my earnings was simply post content and new videos consistantly, that is really all it takes.

I've long been a proponent of just putting in the work and the results will follow. Yes SEO and optimizing titles and descriptions is important both in terms of blogs and Youtube videos, but I feel many people get way too caught up thinking something is going to magically increase views and traffic. The truth of the matter is content is king and if you're putting out quality content on a regular basis the traffic will come and the money will follow the traffic.

I've done similar things on blog posts and Youtube videos in the past, but today I'm going to issue you guys a challenge. I challenge you to consistantly post either blog posts or Youtube videos consistantly for 30 days and come back and report to me how your traffic and earnings have changed either for better or for worse. I would put money on the fact that your traffic and earnings will increase.

So how consistantly should you be posting? Yes there is a point at which you will burn out your audience, however unless your posting 3+ Youtube videos or blog posts a day I highly doubt that will happen. My advice would be at a minimum you should be doing 3 quality blog posts or Youtube videos per week. If you can do one a day even better but post at least 3 times a week, promote those posts on social media and if you have a blog and a Youtube channel cross promote your blog posts on Youtube and vice versa, your Youtube posts on your blog. I can gurantee you will see a pickup in traffic as well as earnings.

I'm going to continue putting out quality content on a regular basis, and though I don't expect as dramatic results, doubling earnings every month if over the course of the next 6 months I can double earnings twice more I'll be at a point where my Youtube earnings are bringing in a fairly respectable income where as in the past it was more just "beer money".

I'll report back on how this little experiment goes.

My Top 3 Earning Affiliate Programs From 2015

My Top 3 Earning Affiliate Programs From 2015

Hey guys, tax season is here and as I'm gathering all my documents together to bring to my accountant I took notice of which of my Affiliate Programs brought me the best earnings last year which was 2015.

I'm always asked what my favorite Affiliate Programs are, and also what my best earning affiliate programs are. The two don't always line up, sometimes one of my preferred programs doesn't happen to be the best earning.

Regardless, below we'll post my top earners in terms of affiliate programs for 2015.

My Top Earning Affiliate Programs 2015

1. Ali Express Affiliate Program

2. Adsense

3. Amazon Associates Program


Now I know most people don't consider Kindle Publishing an Affiliate Program, and in many ways it's more like Amazon is an affiliate for publishers, but I left that out. Had we considered Amazon's KDP markeplace publishing, then publishing eBooks would have come in at number one. Because it's not a true affiliate progrIam we'll leave that one alone.

Without getting into specific numbers in terms of what each brings me in, the above affiliate programs were my top earners for 2015 in the order of earnings. Ali Express is a program I did not even get started with until October and didn't even really get rolling with it until mid to late November but Ali Express was a huge earner for me.

Adsense came in next, if we were just relying on blog earnings those numbers would not be nearly as good but I've really started hitting my stride in terms of getting more viewers to my Youtube channel and getting higher view time, so that really boosted up Adsense earnings.

Lastly was the Amazon Associates program. I both love and hate Amazon. It's a trusted name both for buyers and affiliates which is great. It's a well put together platform and is only improving with the new site stripe, CPM ads, and all the new tools and features Amazon is earning. What I dislike is just the nature of Amazon lends itself to smaller purchases like books, phone cases, phone chargers, etc. Add to that a relatively low commission rate of 6%, topping off at 8% for high volume referrers and the commissions just don't add up as well as a higher paying affiliate program.

My Plans For 2016?

I'm always changing and adapting, however in 2016 I'll probably continue with most of the same affiliate programs. Honestly I'll probably put Ali Express on the back burner a bit just because hoverboard self balancing scooters were my top earner in 2015 and those have kind of died out so my days of getting $20 to $40 commissions per referal are probably over.

In 2016 I plan on continuing to grow my Youtube channel as well as working on and rolling out some new channels trying to grow that. I'll also be putting a heavy focus on Amazon with some review sites and review blogs and will probably be also focusing on Terapeak, Shopify and Volusion which are programs I'm keen to get started promoting but havn't had much time to work with yet.

What are your favorite affiliate programs? Leave a comment below...

Does Passive Income Truly Exist?

Does Passive Income Truly Exist

It seems everyone these days is searching for passive income streams, but does passive income truly exist? The answer to that question is both yes and no.

There are income streams which are completely passive, however that said as you let that stream go passive revenues are going to decline. An example of this is kindle publishing. You can essentially write an eBook, throw it up on Amazon, and forever that book will remain on Amazon. If someone buys the book you do get paid, so it is passive in that sense. That said, as anyone who's ever published on Amazon knows, as soon as you stop promoting a book the sales will slump. The more sales slump the more sales rank you lose and that will hurt sales even more. You may have a few sales comming through a month and without any effort that is passive, but to truly maintain a good revenue stream you do have to continue to promote the book.

That's what I mean by 100% truly passive income streams not existing. The same could be said of a blog, you can write a blog, run banner ads and get paid. Again though, similar to ebooks as soon as you stop promoting the site traffic will slowly die down. Also, as soon as you stop publishing fresh content your Google ranking will suffer. Yes you'll always have some level of traffic but the income and traffic will decline with your effort.

There are income streams which are more passive than others and there's other income streams that require more attention and more work than others but in my experience you won't find a large income stream that's completely passive.

What are your thoughts? Are you seeking that holy grail of passive income or have you given up on that idea and realized that real money requires real work?

Is your Youtube Channel being Penalized for a couple Low Engagement Videos?

Many Youtubers wonder whether they should delete old videos which have performed poorly in terms of both views and viewer engagement.

This video explains the answer to this question. In short each Youtube video is treated individually. One low view or low engagement video will not drag down your other videos or your entire channel. One bad video will not penalize your entire channel in search.

Should you delete poor performing videos? Some may choose to, deleting old videos will delete any views from your channel so if you delete a video with 5,000 views, your channel as a whole will be deducted 5,000 views.

Watch this video to learn more and make a more educated decision on whether you should or should not delete old poor performing videos.