- All right, so today I'm gonna talk about
the buzz word or buzz phrase that is passive income.
Now I've talked about passive income multiple times
on this channel but there is a very famous entrepreneur
that chances are most of you have heard about, Gary V,
who has, well shall we say, strong opinions
on this whole passive income thing.
- [Audience Member] I have a question about passive income
- Okay
- [Audience Member] and I want to know what kind
of trends do you see for a person interesting in that?
I don't wanna be stuck in office 9 to 5.
- When you say passive income,
do you mean some...what do you mean?
- [Audience Member] I mean not having to work all day long.
(laughing)
I wanna be on a beach in Mexico
instead of being on a office in Sweden
in cold November.
- Are you being serious right now?
- [Audience Member] Yes yes I'm serious.
- Okay.
(audience laughs)
- The quickest way to not be on a beach
in Mexico is to think that passive income exists.
- Yeah as someone who has made multiple videos
on building passive income streams,
we clearly don't agree on this.
I've had people ask me what do I think about
Gary's opinions on passive income.
And so that's what this video is.
A response to Gary V.
So look here's the thing.
Obviously, I disagree with him
because I know that passive income exists
and the reason why I know it exists
is because I have created it.
And so in this video I'm going to show you how
I did it and we'll see if by the end
of the video you agree with me
or if you agree with Gary V.
Now I'll admit I've definitely become more careful
about what type of income I now label as passive.
Anything requiring employees or virtual assistants
to run for me I'll either state
that it requires them or I'll call it semi-passive income.
Whether that can be counted as passive
is more debatable.
But this income I earned last month
that you were seeing here this was all automated
no staff required.
To me I would argue that this is not debatable
it is passive.
And all that money was through affiliate marketing income
that I made through this YouTube channel.
And the only big reason that I made this channel
in the first place I wanted to diversify
my income sources and have a source of money
that didn't rely on eCommerce.
I wanted a source of truly passive income.
And you know earlier this year when I had
my emergency appendix surgery in Canada
where my ability to work just plummeted,
I suddenly felt very vindicated and glad
that I made that decision.
So what is affiliate marketing
and what makes it just so passive?
Well to explain that let's take one product
that I promoted last month.
And that product is Placeit.
A site that provides mark up pictures
for print-on-demand products.
In the last thirty days I made over $800
in affiliate commissions with it doing no work.
Placeit is very simple.
What is does is it lets you take
a piece of artwork like this and then
it lets you place it onto a huge range
of different product markups that they have
available on the site.
All you have to do is upload the artwork
to their website and then Placeit
will digitally put it onto their model lifestyle markup.
You can then download this picture
and use it to advertise your print-on-demand T-shirt
that you created and are selling.
On this YouTube channel we usually focus
on eCommerce business models such as print-on-demand
and one of our print-on-demand contributors
is a millionaire Michael Shih.
And as he said in one of our videos
a big reason why he believes
he made over a hundred thousand dollars
selling this print-on-demand T-shirt
was because he had this awesome lifestyle markup picture
for it to use in his Facebook ad campaigns.
And so yes obviously I think Placeit
is a fantastic service.
Because of that,
I signed up to the Placeit affiliate program.
When you create an affiliate account with them,
inside your account dashboard,
you'll be given what's called an affiliate link.
Well then my video a couple months ago,
where I taught how to set up
a print-on-demand business on eBay,
I recommended people use Placeit.
And so what I did, was a placed this affiliate link
in my video description using a redirect
to make it look nicer, of course.
When someone clicks on that link,
they'll get taken to Placeit.
When they do, check out the URL.
It looks pretty funny, doesn't it?
This data added to the URL is a tracking code.
This URL tracks if people click on my link
and then go buy a subscription to it.
And if someone does do that, Placeit will reward me.
And I will get a commission on that sale as a thank you.
And so that's what affiliate marketing is.
It's when you're promoting a product or a service online,
using an affiliate URL that's tracked to you
and you get a commission on that sale
if someone purchases it because of your recommendation.
Now there are two reasons why I think
that this 800 plus dollars I earned
from Placeit counts as passive income.
The first reason is thus the unique thing
to affiliate marketing compared to say
eCommerce business models
is that when someone clicks on my affiliate link,
and purchases a Placeit subscription,
they aren't my customer.
I don't have to send a customer the product.
Placeit does.
I don't have to answer their support emails.
Placeit does.
And that's because they aren't my customer.
They are Placeit's.
Now I will admit, not having the customer be your customer
definitely has some disadvantages in terms
of how much money you can make from them.
On the other hand, unlike what Gary says.
- The quickest way to not be on a beach in Mexico,
is to think that passive income exists.
- I genuinely did earn some of this money
while I was on vacation.
Now, admittedly, it wasn't on a sunny beach in Mexico,
but instead a bunch of it was earned
on a recent vacation to the still warm
and sunny Tokyo in Japan.
The second reason why I consider that money
to be passive is because I created an automated system
to refer potential customers to it.
I have utilized organic YouTube traffic.
You see, here's the thing about this YouTube video
that promotes Placeit.
Now that I've created it and put it up on YouTube.
Well, since YouTube's algorithm likes it
and is sending it traffic,
I literally have to do nothing to it anymore.
Case and point, here is another product
that I have made affiliate commissions
from in the last month.
AliDropShip.
My subscribers here at wholesale team
will likely recognize it.
Basically, it's a premium eCommerce plug-in
to make setting up drop shipping eCommerce stores
with Word Press and WooCommerce fast and easy.
While creating this video,
I sign into my AliDropShip affiliate account
and I counted up the commissions I earned
in the past 30 days,
and what I discovered was that I had made
over $1,500 in commissions.
And so how did I earn those commissions?
Well, surprise, surprise.
It was with YouTube.
AliDropShip is genuinely a great plug-in
and so it's very popular.
Thus, a lot of people want a high quality,
step-by-step video tutorial to follow along with.
And, you know, I've made two.
I've made this new updated one that I released this year.
And this tutorial I created last year.
Let's take a look at how many people are finding it.
If we come, we click on the analytics,
we can go over to my YouTube analytic dashboard.
And if we head on over to the reach section inside of it,
we will see that surprise, surprise,
the biggest way that this video is getting viewers,
is through people using YouTube search bar
to search for keywords related to my video,
such as the phrase AliDropShip or AliDropShip tutorial.
And when they do a search for that,
do any of these videos look familiar to you?
Here's the thing, I made that video and I put it up
and I haven't touched it ever since then.
People have found it, watched it, followed along with it,
and in the process purchased AliDropShip
through my affiliate link,
resulting in passive money and commissions.
And actually those aren't the only commissions
that I make through those videos.
Because to complete the tutorial,
you will need to purchase web hosting,
and in the video I recommend one of my favorite
web hosting platforms for beginners, Site Ground.
In the last month, or again 30 days,
I have made hundreds of dollars with them.
So, really, these two videos bring in
over $2,000 a month in passive income.
And would you believe that that's not the only
video tutorial series that I have on my YouTube channel.
I have another one that teaches people
how to set up an online store
using a completely different platform
that many of my subscribers will recognize, Shopify.
Out of the two, this is unashamedly, my personal favorite.
And check this out, in the last month, or again 30 days,
I have made over $10,000 from Shopify commissions alone.
Yep, just one single product.
My tutorial videos take viewers through step-by-step
how to set up a store using it,
and again if we come and check out the analytics
from my most recent 2019 tutorial,
you'll be able to see that the primary way
that people find this video is again,
through YouTube search.
It's from people coming to the YouTube search bar
and typing in key words related to it, and boom.
Finding my video.
I made that video six months ago.
I put it up on YouTube and I have not touched it since then.
It's just sitting there getting free traffic
and bringing in thousands of dollars each month
completely hands off.
And so let me ask you a question.
When Gary says,
- The quickest way to not be on a beach in Mexico,
is to think that passive income exists.
- Do you agree with him,
or have I convinced you that passive income made
on the internet isn't just some fairy tale.
So while I may have disagreed with Gary
with what he said to that kid in the audience,
there was another video that he released later
that clarified a lot of his views.
And a lot of that I actually agree with.
- Please make sure that your passive income
has practicality to it.
Because of all the people that have tried
to create systems and automate their cash,
there's been a very small percentage of people
that have been able to lay on the beach
while they collect money on the internet.
A lot of that stuff is completely ludicrous.
And I promise you the ones in the 1% of passive income,
spent a boat load of hard work and hard time
to get to that evergreen place up in the sky.
- And, you know, as someone who earns
over $10,000 a month with passive income,
I obviously disagree with this idea
that it's mostly ludicrous.
But, I do agree with Gary that a lot of people
have ludicrous ideas about passive income.
You see, in my video earlier this year
where I called out Gary on his opinions on passive income,
this very astute viewer pointed something out.
Gary doesn't disagree that passive income exists.
No, instead what he finds frustrating,
are people that are looking for
a magical money vending machine.
A system where all they'll have to do is press a few buttons
and boom, they'll have passive money
pouring out of their laptops.
But that's not how passive income works.
- I think that there is an enormous, massive,
misunderstanding that there are almost zero people
that have pulled off substantial success
without putting in real time and effort.
- That 1%, like me, who have achieved it,
we achieved it through a boat load of work.
That video that brings in hundreds of dollars
in commissions from Placeit,
yeah, that required a lot of time to create.
My tutorial videos that bring in over $2,000 a month
from AliDropShip and Site Ground,
yeah, they required even more time.
And guess what, those Shopify tutorial videos
bringing in over $10,000 a month, even more time.
Let alone the time that has gone into
learning those platforms to such an extent
that I'm now able to teach others.
So, remember that.
While the end result we may have created is passive,
the pathway to creating it is not.
And so, perhaps Gary and I.
- Millions of dollars in passive income on the internet
smoking (bleep) weed in Jamaica
while it just keeps coming in,
is just not as real as you think, partner.
- Might agree more than I had initially thought.
Thanks for watching this video.
Now, while I obviously think
that I am probably a much bigger expert
in affiliate marketing than most people,
it isn't my biggest area of expertise,
but I've got some good friends
who have built million dollar businesses
with just affiliate marketing
and they're going to be hosting a webinar
showing us how they do it.
So if you are someone who is willing
to actually put in the work
to create a passive income business,
then you can join us.
And you will find a link to how to register for it
in the video description below.