Passive Income: 3 WAYS I've TRIED (plus a big failure) - Live With Doug From Niche Site Project #Best Education Page #Online Earning

hey what's up its Doug Cummington here

we're going to talk about three passive

income sources that I've experimented

with myself and actually I realized two

of them are failures not just one and

hopefully we have the sound kicking in

in a second everything's gonna be

awesome the wool that remains to be seen

so see we got a couple people in the

house waiting let's see you in a second

all right the sound is working so that's

awesome it's great when the technology

works out I didn't even reboot today

okay cool so we got some got some people

in if it's your first time intending to

let me know in the chat I'm gonna try

and watch the chat pretty closely and

I'm also it's very small again it's a

very small little chat window so I'm

gonna try to figure that out in the

meantime I do want to make a couple

quick announcements so before we get

into it too much and again if you're

just joining let me know in the chat

where you're from if you are attending

for the first time for a live stream let

me know that too

glad to have you okay first tomorrow I'm

gonna do a live stream with my friend

Alex over at WP Eagle okay I said that's

a wordpress channel basically he covers

mostly WordPress stuff but he

interviewed me a couple weeks ago and it

went really well we you know had I guess

a good overlap of audience and we like

each other so we're doing a live stream

tomorrow it's going to be Q&A I think

it's gonna be over at on Alex's channel

though so just be sure you're subscribed

to Alex's Channel I'm sure someone in

the chat can put a link over to Alex's

channel but if you just look up WP eagle

you should be able to find it it's

pretty easy so I'm gonna be over there I

believe that is going to be at one

o'clock tomorrow mountain time but if

you subscribed to his chain

should be able to you know get the

notification and all that stuff number

two is I'm actually doing a webinar

tomorrow at this time it's going to be

on improving Revenue income and

conversions for Amazon affiliate sites

so if you I didn't pull a link but you

should be able to find that pretty

easily if you go over to a niche site

project and I'll pull the link before we

finish the livestream today in third is

I just want to make sure that everyone

is subscribed to the email list I

recognize a lot of names in there with

that Drifter we had JP on Leo's on we

got let's see in director is the first

time first time on oh wow we got a lot

of the check going on here we got Lance

we got a burr Dennis is on what's up

blue blue fuse that's another Doug Jeff

is on awesome yeah Jeff I haven't seen

you in a while

able you should be able to hear a

refresh if you need to and we do have a

good like a candidate contingent today I

know a few of the people adrian on also

and and by the way enable I think the

Sam is working so maybe try and refresh

or just make sure you're not muting the

sound we got Bucharest's Inc another

Canadian this is really cool all right

I'm going through them going through and

Pikachu you you can hear but you can't

see me or sorry this JP okay so everyone

refreshed and I'm just gonna go to the

bottom to make sure everything's good to

go in quick little note Lachey who I

helped out with coaching a few weeks ago

she got her first sale last night so

that's awesome congratulations now just

got to do it again and again and again

okay so we'll get into it this is three

passive income sources that I was not

just you know

read about or you know heard about I've

actually tried these and some work and

some don't so first thing off the bat

excuse me do you have a cold I'm gonna

work through it

so basically I've worked through several

different passive income ideas a lot of

people will just talk about the ideas

and habit right um they can't speak from

firsthand experience and if they are

talking about it sometimes they will

talk about their failures and then tell

you how to do it they haven't like

successfully implemented something it's

not the best advice most of the time so

first off I'll tell you about like the

biggest failure perhaps it's the most

interesting this is a real estate

investment and basically I graduated

from college in 2003 is that right from

2003 I got a job I had lived in a couple

apartments rental stuff I was working at

a management consulting firm travel hot

blah blah blah a lot of my friends were

settling down buying homes at that time

they were getting married and they were

basically settling dead so I was like

hey I should buy a house I you know been

saving up some money I have you know a

good job and it looked stable I should

buy a house so if you I'm sure everyone

remembers in 2005 to 2006 the real

estate market was depending on where you

were located you were you were sort of

still growing the values were quite high

and that is around the time that I

bought my house so I bought my place in

December of 2005 so about a year year

and a half after I got my job which i

think is probably typical for you know

someone in my net position basically I

had a job for a little while I was able

to save some people

going down it's like the normal

narrative to buy a house if you could

afford it at that time in as you

probably know it didn't even matter if

you could afford it or not in fact I

think I got approved for something like

six times my annual income I had some

like rolling credit card debt of maybe

like a couple thousand I would pay it

off and basically my the reason why I

invested in in real estate you'll see

how this sort of it like escalated but

my parents bought their first home when

you know I was like two or something

like that and I was like one or two and

they moved out after five or six years

they turned it into a rental home and it

worked out great for them in fact they

did that like twice and it worked out

great so they had a rental property in

fact my appearance they owned the first

home that they purchased and they still

rent it out of course it was it's a huge

difference it was like 25 years later

and the market was totally different and

basically I bought a place that seemed

fine it was a good location it was sort

of a an area that was turning it and by

the way this was in Atlanta so it was

one of the area's it was it was hit sort

of hard I know different you know

California Florida probably a little bit

worse but Elena it was hit pretty well

in 2008 so anyway I'll fast forward and

say my plan was to buy the house lived

there for a few years fixed it up a bit

move out probably you know get married

and that sort of you know again that

sort of narrative the problem was the

mortgage was too expensive for like the

home and again we all know that the home

prices crashed in about 2008 and I was

upside down on my mortgage by quite a

bit

I'm trying I'm trying to remember so I

bought the place and I can just throw

out real numbers here because it doesn't

really matter the I bought the place for

like 185 and for a year the you know the

value and the appraisal was in the low

200s so like it worked out at first but

by the time I got married and moved out

of there the value of the home was

probably like a hundred and forty or so

and by the time by the time I was ready

to rent it out again it was a rental

property so or I would intended it to be

a rental property so by the time I moved

out I wasn't able to cover the mortgage

of which I had to I financed like 99% of

it or something like that so and okay

and I see a couple people are mentioning

that they can't hear me so if you can't

hear me try and refresh it it does sound

like some people are giving that advice

in the chat so yeah try and refresh and

that should help okay

so basically I wasn't able to cover the

mortgage with the amount that I could

charge for rent even though I kept it

you know occupied the whole time I went

on for like two to three years trying to

make it work and you know this is you

know classic like sunk cost fallacy type

situation and of course with a mortgage

you have to think about the different

options that you may have a whole

different story for some other day which

I can get into more but I could tell you

eventually it didn't work out it was a

failing proposition and I don't have the

home anymore

and yeah it was just a bad deal so I

mean I didn't limp along it could afford

to pay the two to three hundred dollars

per month that I wasn't covering from

the rents so I could cover that and it

was basically like throwing away two to

three hundred dollars a month and by the

way if you get a rental home or any kind

of investment property the

that you people sort of neglect to tell

you is there's gonna be maintenance cost

right it's hard to estimate that but

there's definitely going to be

maintenance cost

I had the AC go out I had like a leaky

roof at some point that I had to you

know take care of and there were a few

other things but again normal

maintenance painting leaky faucet there

are a number of things that come up and

just about everything cost you know a

hundred bucks or more something big like

an AC issue like when the air

conditioner goes out in Atlanta you have

to kind of take care of it and that's

multiple thousands of dollars so that's

the thing that you you know you gotta

consider so the investment property

stuff didn't work out for me a lot of it

was you know inexperienced I was young

and I was you know was buying a house to

live in to turn into a rental property

does don't always match up so obviously

a rental property can be very profitable

can be a great investment you can fix it

up rent it out and then sell it some

years later and you know it just works

out great but you have to have like the

right inputs you have to buy you know

the right property you have to buy the

right stuff for it to work out in the

numbers on the back end have to work out

so for example and I need to move on to

the next topic here in a second but if I

could have put say 40 percent down on

the house and had a much smaller

mortgage well that changes the whole

equation right there I mean that's

completely different than you know any

other scenario because at that point the

payments each month would have been you

know a fraction probably half - you know

75 percent of what I was paying and then

the math kind of worked out and by the

way you probably need to make more each

month than your mortgage like as a

baseline

because of the maintenance cost that

you're gonna have to deal with so just

remember that okay moving on to number

two so my investment property stuff was

a total failure I tried to turn my

primary home into a rental property in

the you know worst time in the last

hundred years to buy a home so that just

didn't work out for me it was a real

bummer okay number two again this is a

failure

this is around digital marketing and

info products affiliate sales and that

sort of thing now it's a specific model

that I'm going to talk about and in fact

I drew a picture that I'm going to show

you in a second so around the time I was

getting started with online marketing

digital marketing in general I came

across digital marketer dot-com

so great group of people very smart they

basically lay out their plans for what

they did in different markets to you

know market in a digital way when you

see the concepts it's pretty

straightforward you know actually I

recommend you check it out it's a great

thing to understand it's all built

through an email marketing and they lay

it out a little more eloquently but this

is the main idea can everyone see this

okay by the way is this showing in a

mirror image or can you see it normally

of Lycia normally so the main idea here

and again this is another failure point

so the main idea with digital marketer

and they're sort of I guess the plan

that they lay out it's not necessarily

like original it's it's been used

multiple times in different industries

so okay cool everyone can see it okay

but essentially you get cold traffic

through ads so you could do you know any

kind of ads it doesn't matter a lot of

times people work with you know Facebook

or Instagram stuff like that and then

you get them on the email list so you

have to use some sort of

a lead magnet or some sort of content

upgrade something free to entice them

digital marketer in fact uses like real

physical products so if you check out

one of their sites called survival lies

they use you know multiple small little

items are from China got one or two just

to see what it was like they're very

cheap they're low quality but they just

have you pay for shipping it cost like

four bucks and you get like a pocket bag

for something so you get on the email

list through these ads so they'll show

you and had you sign up for the email

list you gave something good and then

they have a tripwire the tripwire is a

another like you know it's a low-cost

item under 20 bucks usually and a lot of

times it could be like seven to twenty

dollars so it's in that range a little

bit of investment in the idea is once

you paid money to someone like you're

sort of you're more likely to purchase

from them again

even if it's a very small item so they

called it a tripwire the core offer is

where you have and I'm going along the

blue lines here the core offer is

something more expensive usually it's

between you know forty seven and five

hundred dollars depending on what you're

selling the value of it in the market in

the core offer is where a lot of the

money is made then after the core offer

and these are immediate so you sign up

for the email list and then they're like

hey do you want to you know get this you

know ebook for four dollars you can buy

it here if you go for that they'll say

hey do you want the core offer - that's

a hundred dollars and then after that

they'll try and sell you something else

like some you know maybe a higher-end

option here or something that

complements it so if it's an like if the

core sorry if the tripwire is like an

e-book maybe they try and sell you like

some physical books here the core offer

like a set of I'm gonna make this really

dated like a set of encyclopedias for

example as a bad

sample but we'll just say encyclopedias

and then the upsells maybe they sell you

like video versions of material in the

the encyclopedias so all of a sudden you

have the potential for someone to come

in on an ad sign up for the email list

in a very small percentage will actually

go ahead and buy everything on day one

the hope is that those people that's

very small percentage that purchases

will pay for the ads 100% and then over

time in the email list you'll be able to

build rapport with the other people that

didn't buy on day one and then sell

additional things it's a great model it

obviously works really well the digital

marketer crude they actually used this

model for the digital marketer course of

which I paid you know 40 50 bucks a

month for like 18 months learning the

material so concept is easy right I

think people get it putting it in

practice it's harder right I mean if

it's your first time around like it was

for me there's a lot there's a lot of

issues like most of the time you don't

picture projections so I would put in

some estimates for what I thought could

happen as far as conversions and it

never worked out it was never even close

so I was using sort of like benchmark

estimates and it was way off and the

problem is you have to pay for the ABS

upfront and if you don't have a budget

and you don't have sort of the

experience to understand what it takes

what to tweak it's really difficult to

make it work so it can obviously work

and I'm pretty sure the areas that I was

trying to to use this model they could

have worked really well but it would

take time you know tweaking the ads I'm

not a you know an expert in paid traffic

so it'd take some time to make that work

and then after that you have to develop

the products you have to deal with the

customer service there's a lot of pieces

to the puzzle here that they leave out

which is totally okay I mean to get

someone started you have to

you know give them something

approachable so I actually learned a ton

about you know ads in general and

Facebook that specifically and then

email marketing as well so that model

didn't work for me

exactly but it was a great learning

experience I tried it in two different

areas one in you know a digital

marketing area so if you if you've been

following me for like three or more

years you probably remember I had some

you know products that were under $10 I

had some stuff that was a little more

expensive and then I had like a bigger

video of course all of that was retired

you can't get it anymore it's all

out-of-date but I you I tried that model

and it just didn't work out so yeah it

was it was a big it was a big failure

but from the passive income standpoint

once you hone that damn once you were

fine you're you know your offer the ads

and so on it would just be a matter of

you know finding new audiences to target

and then potentially developing like

multiple core offers and different

upsells and once you have a set of

customers you can sell them you know

different material and if you have loyal

customers they will buy more stuff from

you I know personally I've purchased a

couple big courses actually I bought one

or multiple from digital marketer one

was their ongoing you know digital

marketer lab I was a member there for a

long time and then I purchased what they

called funnel blueprint which was sort

of a you know a playbook for designing a

funnel and just more in-depth material

on the topic that I just showed you here

okay so that's two things and next I'll

tell you about one that worked for me so

this is the third this is as you

probably imagine this is Amazon

affiliate sites and there's a lot of

different sort of niche site models you

could build a site on Adsense you can

sell other affiliate products outside of

Amazon

I did really well on the Amazon platform

I understand the content that needs to

be you know created and I understand how

to get traffic and then how to convert

the traffic over to Amazon this worked

well for me and that's the one where you

know I've stuck with it in the point

that I want to make here I could go in

deeper where they have assigned

affiliate stuff but I think a lot of

people are quite familiar but I could

describe it really quick essentially you

could have a website that or you know

any sort of platform you could have a

website you have an email list you can

have a YouTube channel and get up social

media presence and you can refer people

over to Amazon to specific products or

just a need to Amazon in general if they

make a purchase using your affiliate

link then you get a small Commission

between 1 and 10 percent it sounds like

a small percentage but you probably know

that a lot of people buy stuff like

Amazon like millions and millions of

people buy stuff on Amazon all the time

and I guess my my greatest success is

selling a site for two hundred thirty

five thousand just a couple months ago

and it was just a simple Amazon

affiliate site few hundred pages it was

like two and a half years old when I

sold it and it works out well so I see

one question from Zakaria

oh and that was for for a different

person okay cool so so basically the

Amazon affiliate model works really well

for me and the main point that I want to

make here is there are many ways to you

know create passive income most of the

time you have to have something up front

you either have to put in time or

capital so you have to put in some sort

of high value item up front there's no

way that you can create a passive income

source immediately and start making

money there's just there's no way to do

it

so you

with the real-estate you obviously have

to have like some capital upfront or

obviously I know you can leverage you

know other value and get a mortgage you

can get loans and all that stuff but you

do almost 100% of the time have to have

some kind of collateral for that whether

it's a you know a job so then they know

that you could pay the mortgage back you

have to have some kind of capital

upfront to make the real estate work for

the digital marketer model here or where

you're running ads and selling you know

products whether they're your own or

affiliate products or whatever you have

to have some capital upfront number one

to run the ads and then after that you

you actually need to have experience in

you know running ads optimizing ads

developing products or I guess working

with other affiliates because you don't

actually have to sell in these areas

here you don't actually have to sell

your own products you can sell other

people's products but of course you're

probably not getting paid as much and

once people buy other folks products

they're probably gonna sell them other

stuff so at that point you you don't

necessarily have a strong of a bond with

your email list and for the Amazon

affiliate site I believe that is

probably the one of the lowest cost ways

to get started you probably can get

started for you know under 200 bucks you

have to pay for hosting probably a

premium theme and a couple odd odd odds

and ends like like it keyword research

tool for a couple months but you have to

put time in right so you can get started

cheaply but you have to put time in and

most of the time it's gonna take you

know four to six months to make your

first like to get to your first hundred

dollar a month can people do it in a

shorter timeframe yeah you can do any

shorter timeframe if everything goes

right but if it's your first time around

it could take time and I can tell you

you know some of my peers that are

doing really well they're making tens of

thousands per month they get site

started the same way that we do it takes

them four to six months to make the

first hundred whether they're using

private blog networks and gray hat

techniques or if they're doing white hat

outreach it takes time no matter what

and you know once a science starts

getting traction then it can escalate

really quickly I did have a site last

year is making about a hundred and

twenty sixteen it was making about a

hundred dollars a month in January of

2016 and by December it was make it made

fourteen thousand eight hundred and

nineteen dollars I looked at that stat

recently so I just happen to know that

that's how much it was okay so the point

is it takes time and/or money to set up

a passive income resource then after

that there is maintenance right so for

an Amazon affiliate site the maintenance

could be very minimal the site that I

referenced before this sold for two

hundred thirty five thousand it really

only took like an hour a week or so even

you know people are familiar with the

story even when Rob and I were working

pretty hard on the site to convert it

from grey hat to white hat we actually

were still only putting in like two

three hours a week max I mean it was

quite minimal so okay those are the

three sources and I'm probably going to

do more passive income stuff because

it's a topic I haven't touched on much

it's one level up from you know what I

normally talk about it which is very

tactical Amazon affiliate stuff so I'll

probably do a little bit of content on

this passive income idea and just you

know other related ideas so any

questions on the topic of passive income

or stuff that I reference rental houses

or rental income digital marketing the

tripwire stuff and I see

delica is on two so that's cool and

Kenson also welcome all right any

questions out there while we're just

hanging out and while I'm waiting for

questions I'll just remind everyone the

live stream tomorrow with Alex over at

WP eagle we got a webinar tomorrow

morning on improving conversions and

stuff I'll grab a link in a second if

you're not subscribed to the channel

it'd be surprised if you somehow

stumbled over here but if you're not

subscribed to the channel please

subscribe and if you're not subscribed

to the email list go to ninja site

project comm and you can sign up there

I'll grab a link for WP eagle really

quickly and put the link in there while

I'm waiting for questions if there are

any it looks like my keyboard is dying

here just not cool ok right ok I see

some questions coming in ok JP says what

brainstorming techniques are using how

do I come up with ideas for products to

promote you know I usually just do like

just raw brainstorming and I'll just

write down a bunch of ideas and then

throw out the bad ones so as far as like

products to promote I mean you should

really just go over to Amazon and start

looking at like the high level category

and just you can spend an hour just

clicking around make a list of products

if you you know start on your main

product there's so many recommended

products that are related that you can

you know go from there okay Hadrian says

is you're working so many hours on your

site that you're working on at least

three per day is that normal in the

beginning yeah I think so I think the I

think three hours maybe on the longer

end but it you know depends on what

you're working on and if you know what

you should be working on if you know

what you should be working on then I

think an hour a day should cover it

however will tell you that when I got

started I was like so I had no

background in marketing or like digital

marketing internet anything making money

online so I was so interested in all the

topics that I was like reading a lot of

information I was listening to a lot of

podcast and that was trying to implement

it a lot of it didn't work at all like a

lot of people would work on a case study

publish it as they go and then once

something failed they would say oh that

didn't work in fact that is the opposite

of what to do and here's how I fixed it

which is like just that's to be

responsible right like to publish the

material as like what to do as they're

selling you their tools and products and

then they're like oh I up and

here's how to fix it so that's

unfortunate you'll notice especially

with like project go white hat I we've

basically finished it before I started

publishing information so I could tell

you what to do as you were following

along so that you didn't do bad stuff

right

it's kind of important so anyway I

digress to the adrian and the point is

you're probably doing a lot of stuff

that you're learning but it's not

actually like having the impact that you

wanted to have and the results probably

aren't lining up with the amount of

effort but you

learning so trust me the time that

you're spending on it is okay just you

know there's some waste in there I'm

pretty sure okay

next leo says really thought the

tripwire concept was interesting you

hadn't been heard of it before but it

seems super powerful okay Leo I know

you'll you'll know what I'm talking

about do you remember like BMG like

music and I think there was another like

Columbia you can sign up for to get like

cassettes this is back in the eighties

you can sign up to get like I don't know

like twelve cassettes for like a dollar

you just had to buy like two more at

full price over the next year that's a

trip wire one dollar you get a huge

amount of value and then you're like

well overall it's a good value and they

just had to keep you on and you know how

do you buy a few things so it works out

and I think that there are many examples

like through history so again digital

marketer didn't like make it up but they

they communicated it in this digital

world in a way that I haven't seen

before I'm sure other people teach it

too but yeah they executed super well

John's asks have I considered creating

an Amazon product and sell it no I

haven't

pratik says okay if we can keep the

topics to what I talked about today I'll

answer other ones quickly how to find a

profitable niche today right now a

really good niche okay go to Amazon and

go to the main categories and you'll

probably be able to find a good niche

right away and Prateek go over to your

niche site project.com and you can get

like fifteen thousand keywords if you

sign up for the email list so just go

there they're gonna be some really good

ideas

okay drifter says I heard them for a

guest postal work it should be on a

website that is good interlinking

otherwise it would be a post on an

orphan post and it won't give much

benefit since the juice isn't flowing

blah blah blah okay so drifter where did

you get that information there's some

value to that idea but the fact is like

your post is probably not going to get

interlink to you need to probably do

your own link building to that post so

yeah there's some there is some value to

that thought however I mean what are you

gonna do what else are you gonna do and

then the other thing this could be a

whole topic for another day but if you

are getting like any advice from

Facebook groups you should be really

sure that the people giving me advice

know what they're talking about so

there's a lot of people that read a lot

of information but they don't actually

know how to they haven't done it

themselves but they can regurgitate

information that they've read elsewhere

those people don't know what they're

talking about they're just like telling

you stuff that they've heard somewhere

else they don't actually know what it

takes most of the people in Facebook

groups

giving advice don't know what they're

talking about so if by chance you got

that information from a Facebook group

it's probably wrong again there is some

value in the idea but I mean you're not

gonna get if you publish a brand new

post is not automatically gonna get

interlinks on it just not gonna happen

okay Glenn says what was your profit on

the 200k site that is an interesting

question so the part that I never I

never talk about that but I probably

should I mean the site was making like

10k a month for about a year and

I heard that I was making like 7km

months for the previous year so that's

obviously a lot of money also so the

profit was here oh I'll put it this way

I invested about my partner and I

invested when I started working on it

about $8,000 into it so 200k is like 192

thousand profit okay okay Adrian is

gonna be on tomorrow cool and drifter

says you know you thought it's a must

how can you make sure there should be

interlinking you understand what I mean

cool so JP asks what would what would be

the one piece of advice that I would

give a beginner doing Amazon sites I

would say to find someone that you like

in that has created an amazon affiliate

site before maybe like myself and maybe

not just one site but multiple sites and

they sort of have like an outline for

you to follow follow that outline just

stick with it it doesn't have to be mine

mine is just my particular flavor of

project management on top of internet

marketing finds someone's it doesn't

matter whose it is make sure they know

what they're talking about make sure

they like have the you know stats to

back it up and just follow their plan

right follow their plan and stick with

it until you like run through a cycle

you're gonna have some issues and you're

going to have some areas where like

things were supposed to work and they

just didn't you're gonna have like a

bunch of those if you think you're gonna

have four you're gonna have like

know that there's going to be some some

challenges work through the challenges

and then on the other side you'll be

fine you'll be able to do it again

and none of the individual steps are

that hard it's just like to do the the

right one hundred steps or so in the

right order and then like when you fail

and step 20 like don't give up like

figure out what you did wrong and step

18 fix that part and then keep going so

I guess the main thing this is a general

advice for like entrepreneurship like

you need to find like a model find a

model that works a person that like has

that model laid out for you and then

work with that model don't do like four

different things if you try my work like

the way I do things and then you try and

use like digital marketer and you try

and use Authority hacker and you try and

use like Spencer Hawes over at niche

pursuits if you use all of our methods

it's probably not gonna work out really

well you're gonna be super frustrated so

okay um been asked what's my opinion on

thin content to avoid it at all cost or

having some it's okay you need you

should define thin content for me since

you put it in quotes I'm not sure what

you mean

and I would say

okay come back I'm pretty good with a

mute button from all my days in

corporate world but I missed it that's

I'm sorry about the coffee

so to find some content for me okay

Glenn asks for someone just starting out

with the niche site would it be worth

focusing on one item or a family of

items you should focus on probably a

narrow area that you can rank for that

you know through say the keyword golden

ratio if you don't know what that is

look it up and then you should make your

site's expandable so that you can grow

okay

JP says you'd like my model so you'll

use that I like my model too Thanks it

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