- Passive income.
You know, everyone wants to make passive income today.
Everyone wants to make money while they sleep.
And I know there's a lot of people out there,
they're talking about this and say,
"Passive income is BS, oh you can't.
"If a man doesn't work, he doesn't need,"
and they're saying all these things,
but here's another way to think
about passive income in 2020.
I think of passive income as automated income.
It's the term that I really wish we replace passive income
'cause I think it's more honest, I think it's more accurate,
never gonna happen, so I'm never gonna title a video that
because I need that sweet, sweet SEO
from the YouTube algorithm.
So let's talk about how you can make passive income in 2020,
the title that the YouTube algorithm prefers,
let's get into that video.
Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake
helping you create something awesome today.
Welcome back to the channel.
For new people here, first of all, welcome.
Hi, my name is Roberto Blake.
I'm a creative entrepreneur, public speaker.
I like to talk about topics like passive income
and how to make money online.
This channel helps people build their brands
and their businesses.
So when I talk about this, I'm talking from experience,
and because I know that there are people
who make absurd claims on the internet,
I'm gonna throw up a couple of screenshots for you.
I've built a six-figure income online
at multiple revenue streams
and passive income is a big part of that.
But the reason that I call passive income
automated income now is because automation
is a huge conversation and we see automation
replacing everyday Americans and workers all over the world,
and so now I think we're ready to realize
that when you talk about work,
we're talking about results, we're talking about an outcome,
and unfortunately, it doesn't always require a human being.
There are systems that can do the work.
Now, this is fortunate for a lot of people and businesses
and small business owners, hopefully like you and me,
to take advantage of this.
And, unfortunately, it's displacing a lot of people
from jobs that have been around for a very long time.
The reason I want you to learn how to make passive income
the way that I did is because it's gonna allow you
to maximize your time and spend it on doing meaningful work,
things that matter to you as a human being.
You'll be able to pursue things that you care about,
and for many of you, that simply means,
you'll be able to spend time with your family
or you might actually be able to start a family.
And we don't agree that maybe doing meaningful things
with your life matters, you're on the wrong video.
So let's talk about the ways people make money.
Conventionally, people trade time for money
because that is just the most accessible thing
and it's the thing that there's the most education around,
I would say, and that's just how our society is.
I fell for that trap too and it meant
that my maximum earning potential
when I first started working as a teenager,
I was making like maybe 6.50 an hour,
and I felt very good about that
because yay, I was part of the workforce,
but it meant that after taxes,
I was making less than $40 a day
on the days that I gave up eight hours of my life
which makes no sense.
Since, that same summer,
I made like $60 mowing a lawn for two hours.
It just makes no sense what I thought about the idea
that I could trade a result and get $60
versus giving up my entire day an agreed upon rate
and make less than that, almost half of that,
why would I do that?
And it took me years and years to have my big revelation,
my come to Jesus moment about the idea of,
I should stop trading time for money.
And I actually made a very important video
that will help you with this concept
if it's something you're struggling with.
I'm gonna link it here.
It's actually one of the more popular videos on this channel
'cause trading time for money is just what we're taught,
it's what we watch our parents do, but if you're like me,
you watched people work all the way up to their 60s
or work to the day they're dying, and like,
they didn't get to live life on their own terms.
So how do we change that?
Well, it's not just about trading results for money
because you still have to give up
a lot of time in doing that
when you're determining your own rates.
That's what I did with freelancing and consulting
and I even do a lot of that in my coaching business,
but when we talk about automating your income
and making truly passive income,
we're talking about creating leverage and results.
I talk about this as building a vending machine
because that's the way that people like Warren Buffett
and people like Tony Robbins explain it.
They say, "Build a vending machine business."
Now, some of you could do this literally,
you could go out and you could build vending machines.
You could go and buy vending machines,
put them on the place, rent the space for that,
and you can make money and all you really have to do
is stock the vending machine and collect your money,
and just make sure that's working,
repair it if it gets broken.
Now, there's still work involved in doing that.
It's not 100% passive, but it is automated.
When we talk about passive or automated income,
all we're talking about is a situation
where you can basically set up a business
where someone can put money in,
extract the value that they want,
and you are removed from
as much of that process as possible.
Automation, essentially, is eliminating human beings
from transactions, the end.
That's it, that's all you have to understand is,
someone put money in and got a result out,
and a human being was involved in that process
as little as possible.
Now, setting up that requires a human being.
That's why people talk about passive income,
not being passive.
Now, there are three main ways
that I make passive income besides investments
because I understand that most people,
they only think of passive income as investments
in their stock portfolio and in real estate.
I have my stock portfolio I have my REITs
which are Real Estate Investment Trust,
so yes, I make money by those means,
but I had the disposable income
to become part of the very few people who benefit from that
because of my other revenue streams
and my other passive income streams.
So I'm gonna tell you the three ways
that I found to make passive income.
I'm gonna make a different video about this
because these basically had almost
no barrier to entry for me.
So I think the obvious one for a lot of you
is gonna be YouTube AdSense
because I have a YouTube channel,
I make money on these videos
and I make money off of the old inventory of my videos.
When I don't upload new content to YouTube,
I still make between $1,700 and $2,200
when I don't upload off of my old videos,
just depending on how they're performing
usually because of search,
so I make money off of YouTube ads.
The other thing is affiliate marketing.
Now, between my blog, my newsletter,
Twitter automations that I set up,
and obviously this YouTube channel,
I have literally probably at this point,
thousands of affiliate links
that exists in the world somewhere that people can click on
for different products and services,
and I make money through affiliate marketing.
Now, a lot of people would say,
"Well, Roberto, what happens
"if you stop making YouTube content?
"What happens if you start putting out those videos?"
Well, before I move on to a third way
that make passive income,
I'll tell you that there are different types
of affiliate marketing, and my favorite
is lifetime commissions in perpetuity
AKA recurring passive income, truly passive income
that happens whether I work or not, in my sleep,
in perpetuity for the lifetime of the account.
And what does that really mean?
Well, I'll give you an example.
Software as a Service, right?
One of my favorite affiliate programs is TubeBuddy.
TubeBuddy is the browser plugin that I use
to optimize my YouTube content.
I use it for keyword research,
I use it for bulk edits to add links to my description,
usually affiliate links, things like that,
or links to my website, and so I use TubeBuddy for that.
In fact, I'm gonna link to it in the description down below.
It's a free plugin that you guys can use.
There's obviously a paid version that you can upgrade to
and if you want the paid version,
you can use discount code, robertosbuddy,
and they'll give you 20% off.
Now what I just did, as an example of why
I've made money with this,
by demonstrating the value on this channel of TubeBuddy
and how I've used it, making tutorial videos,
doing all kinds of stuff, just even mentioning it
in my content has resulted in me getting thousands
of people to sign up to TubeBuddy,
and since it is a monthly recurring software subscription,
I, as a super affiliate, get 50% of the revenue
of the lifetime of those accounts.
As a result, I've made almost $200,000
in the last four years that I've been an affiliate
of TubeBuddy and I average on a bad month,
maybe $5,000 in revenue, based on the subscriptions.
So, you see, I have set up a recurring revenue stream
that I do no additional work for and it still is in place.
Additionally, the videos that I made are evergreen.
Those videos are relevant for a very long time,
maybe not forever but for a couple of years,
so I get passive income from YouTube on the ads,
but also on any of the affiliate programs
that those videos are linked to.
So all of that just stacks and stacks and stacks
and then I take that money and I invest it
in stocks and real estate.
And by the way, the way I set up my bank accounts,
the investing is automated also.
And this is why I call passive income automated income
is I just built systems and machines
using these robots to do work for me to produce value
'cause all we really have to do is produce value.
It's not that you need a job
as much as you need an income source.
In my opinion, multiple income sources.
And when you can do the upfront work
to build an automation for yourself
that's going to deliver value that people want
at a price that they will pay
or help facilitate a transaction for another business
in the case of affiliate marketing,
then you are building truly passive income long-term
off of that upfront work.
Now, here is the third main way that I make passive income
and I have detailed videos on a lot of these things.
If you want a step by step on how I got started
with affiliate marketing,
it's one of my most popular videos on the YouTube channel.
I'm gonna link it here in the info card,
I'm gonna link in the description,
along with some other videos to get you started.
But the third way that I make passive income
is I sell my own products, I sell digital products online,
and basically because I have low cost against that,
I did the work a long time ago,
I keep about 90%, 95% of the revenue
on all of those transactions minus
like some PayPal or Stripe fees,
I keep most of that revenue.
And this one is game changing.
Now, to do some of this, again,
I know a lot of you will have to build up skills
you don't already have.
The good news is this YouTube channel
has helped a lot of people develop those skills
because I have a lot of tutorial and how to content
that will help you make content on YouTube
if you wanna be a content creator and get AdSense.
You can use that content and start affiliate marketing
which I've done tutorials on
to start doing affiliate marketing.
I've even done some things that can help you
to build those digital products
and know what systems and tools you need in place.
I'm gonna link to all of my tools,
all my camera gear,
everything in the description down below.
Yes, those are affiliate links,
I think you're starting to understand the point here.
Now, the cool thing about digital products
is they are scalable.
Digital products are scalable,
and you don't always have to make a course
if you're not into that
or if you don't feel educated enough to make a course.
Now, I have a course that helps
entry-level content creators.
It's called the Formula for Awesome Videos course.
I'm gonna link it in description.
In fact, only on this video,
I'm gonna give a special discount code for a limited time.
So if you're watching this video
and it's probably, let's say, 'til the end of January,
there'll be a discount code that you can use,
so make sure you're checking that out.
Now, it's an example of an entry-level product.
It's about $147 course, and it helps people improve
their content by improving their production skills
with their camera and their performance skills
on front of the camera because a lot of people,
they don't have the confidence, they get nervous,
they also don't know how their gear works,
they don't know how to research,
they don't know anything
that would dramatically improve their quality
of their videos and so I made a course around that.
You don't have to take that approach.
I know a lot of people that build digital products
around their ability to create music,
their ability to create templates,
their abilities and skills that they have
that are creative usually translate very well
to digital products.
Somebody that I love is Matt Sherm from Shermbeats,
he uses a website called BeatStar,
and there are a couple other ones like this,
and as a musician, he makes royalty-free audio
that YouTube content creators and podcasters
and people like that can use without having to worry
about copyright strikes.
You just buy a license to the music in perpetuity
and you buy individual tracks.
My point is, that's an example of somebody
who's not doing digital courses,
and yet has a very powerful passive income product.
That's just an example of somebody
who's really smart about this
because he makes money both ways.
He makes active income whenever somebody hires him
to do unique content for them
and then he makes money licensing his music,
and all that is passive because, again,
I've paid Matt hundreds of dollars and a human being
was never involved in the transaction at any point.
So my final thoughts when it comes
to making passive income in 2020
is eliminate the need in your head
to call it passive income.
Think of it as automated income
and think of how you're going to build an automation
that takes you out of the process of delivering value
to a customer, to a viewer, to a client.
Whatever you can do to remove yourself from that process
makes it more passive over time,
and when you can eliminate yourself entirely
after the upfront work, then you're golden, all right?
So that is how I want you
to start thinking of passive income
and why I think it's gonna be beneficial for you
if you wanna make passive income in 2020 and beyond.
Question of the day.
Does this video, change your pre-assumptions
about passive income?
Have I made you feel more confident
about making passive income in the future?
Let me know in the comments section.
I would love to hear from you.
Like this video if you like it, don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome content on the channel.
As always, you guys, thanks so very much for watching
and don't forget, go out there
and create something awesome today, take care.