UPDATE October 2023: This WORKS. I’ve updated this guide to be slightly more relevant for 2023 and 2024 but it’s all up to date accurate and ready for you to follow and take ACTION on!
Also if you’re looking for a more concise course on making money doing your passion, check out the Digital Nomad Bootcamp course.
Money makes the world go round.
Money allows you to enjoy your life that ‘bit’ more.
That being said, there are lots of people who have a very happy life with no money, no possessions and no home.
Before we go much further, we need to explain what this page is for, and why it’s on this blog.
This is a page to show you how to make money doing what you love, if you’re interested.
If you’re not interested, and you don’t want to make more money, that’s absolutely fine, just go back to the main blog and read the articles there.
FOR SKIM READERS: The best long term method for making money doing what you love is to create a website (don’t wait, just take action.
Get web hosting here, you’ll have a WordPress site up in less than an hour), and write articles about what you love.
Then, add links to affiliate products to make money, or put adverts on the site.
There are LOTS of ways of making money but it starts with making your first website.
Before we begin, it’s important to realize the way which money helps you regarding personal development.
Money helps you because although it’s not needed to enjoy a happy life, it can make a happy life happier.
What I mean by this, is that if you’re already working on improving yourself, and becoming the best version of yourself you can be, then money will only add fuel to that fire, and motivate you further.
Imagine these two scenarios:
Scenario 1 – A man trying to improve his life. He’s had some results, but he can’t spend much time on self help because he needs to work at a job he hates to pay the bills.
Compared to..
Scenario 2 – A man is working on improving himself, and can spend all day on it, because he works from home (or wherever he wants) doing the things he loves.
His passion is his work, and he doesn’t have to worry about money.
I think I know which one I’d prefer.
The problem is that many people simply don’t know how to start earning money doing something they find fun.
They assume that they have to get a job just to pay the bills, even if they don’t enjoy it. While it may be necessary to get a job you don’t like to start off with, it should never be the end result.
You should always try to work on what you love doing because in the end you’ll be able to spend more of your time doing the things you love.
Although you can be happy and work on yourself without thinking about money, generally speaking having more money means more time and resources to spend on improving yourself, and doing the things you love doing.
Makes sense, right? Well, that’s what this page is for.
To help you learn how to make money doing the things you love, and therefore you won’t need to waste time on a job you don’t enjoy.
That’s not helping anyone, because if you’re not enjoying your work, you’re not going to do a very good job. No – one wins.
You CAN earn an income from your passion
This page is here to show you how to do things you love/enjoy and make a living from it.
It will help you through the stages of learning how to make money online and the things you’ll need to do in order to earn a living.
This is a big resource, and there’s lots of information here, so feel free to bookmark it if you need to, in order to refer to it later as you need. It all comes down to this at the end of the day..
If you can find something you’re passionate about, and you can share that passion and knowledge with people, you can make money.
Read that twice please. Knowing this, you should be starting to think – ‘I might just be able to create a business or online success out of the things I love to do’, and you’re right. Of course you can! Why not?
There are lots of people who have done the same thing! Lots of people. Let’s look at some of the ways you can create money by doing the things you love online.
You can sell things.
This means either online or offline, but it’s easier to do it online. You can sell either your own products or affiliate products.
Affiliate products are other people’s products that you earn money from by referring people to them with a special link.
You’re probably thinking that this isn’t for you, or that you can’t do this.
Don’t worry. That’s normal, it’s overwhelming at first, but I assure you whatever your passion is, you can make it work.
You can either create a product that people will want to buy from you, or you can find a product someone’s already created and make money by selling that.
If you want to learn more about this special type of marketing, there are a number of training courses and resources available.
For now, on with the post about your own business and the basics.
Setting your business up online
Don’t panic. A lot of people will run a mile when they hear those words, but if you’re still here, good on you.
Stick around and you’ll learn that it’s really not that hard, in fact it’s actually fun to have an online business, and it’s MANY TIMES less risky than a physical business like a shop.
In fact, there’s almost no risk.
I’m telling you up front right now, that to have an online business, you might have to spend at most £3-5 a month. Per MONTH! That’s it. Not a huge investment, is it?
Considering lots of businesses cost the owner thousands if not hundreds of thousands of pounds to set up, and could take years before they see any profits, online business is the way to go.
You don’t need to know ANYTHING about technical computer stuff at this stage.
I’m just inviting you to consider sharing what you love, your passion, with lots of people.
It’s the easiest, fastest, and most effective way to make money from doing what you love. Here’s how you do it.
Create a website or blog > Share what you love on it >Help other people > Receive money.
Creating a website about your passions
Now, it’s obviously going to take some work, but that doesn’t matter, because you’re doing something you’re passionate about and you’re helping others at the same time.
To get paid for all of that is a bonus, and an awesome bonus at that. So, let’s get started.
Creating a website is a perfect way to make money, as it’s a fast and effective way to share your message (what you love) with lots of people.
In order to make a living doing what you love, you must be able to ‘reach’ lots of people with your message and therefore by sharing what you love with them. To do this, you’ll need a website on the internet.
So once you’ve thought about the thing you love doing, (for me it’s personal development, can’t get enough of it) think up a ‘domain name’ for your site.
This is just the address that your site will be found at, make it something related to your area of interest, for example a person interested in martial arts could call their site ‘Martial-arts-lessons.com’ or something similar.
How to start a website (fast)
Now to actually get a domain name and website, you’ll need to purchase what’s called web hosting for it, which is a company that hosts your websites files online so people can access your website.
The company I use is called Bluehost, and they’ve been excellent for the years I’ve been with them.
They always have promotional offers on, so go check them out to see what deals you can get.
Hostgator are a good host as well, but Bluehost tend to be a bit cheaper. See what’s best for you.
Both companies should give you a free domain name when you sign up though.
As I say, purchase a domain name with something related to your interests, and get hosting for that domain as well.
It’s something like £2-3 or $5-6 a month, hardly anything. The online support and phone support are always there if you have any questions at all, so don’t be scared.
Make your first website in 5 minutes
If you’ve chosen to go with the hosting I suggested, you’ll have an account set up with them and when logged in you’ll see a screen showing you various options.
This is your ‘cPanel’ and what you’re looking for here is a button or icon that says ‘WordPress’. Click that, and follow the on screen instructions.
WordPress is the platform this site runs on, and the platform almost every site out there these days runs on. It’s just a free online program/platform for creating a site and blogging.
Don’t worry too much about this right now, it’s just a blogging platform.
By the way, if you don’t know how to find the WordPress button, (It’s SUPER easy) then just call their support line which can be found under their ‘contact’ tab and give them a call.
They’ll walk you through it, or even do it for you. After about 3-5 minutes, you’ll have a WordPress ‘login I.D and password’.
This is just the way you’ll access your new site. That’s it! You’ve just taken the first step to making money online doing what you love. Now, onto the actual content..
So to recap, get web hosting here, choose a domain name, in your dashboard click ‘Install WordPress with one click’ and follow the instructions, then once your site is live we’re moving on to..
Sharing what you love on your site
This is where it all starts to click and make sense for a lot of people!
Now that you’ve got your domain name and website, you’re thinking – ‘How can I make money from this site?’ OR ‘What do I do now?
What sort of content should I put on the site?’. Well, this is where you can get creative.
At this point, you have a place that people can find your information, and any products you may have.
We’ll get to products a bit later on, or maybe in another post but for now, you’ll need to focus on sharing your message on your site.
By sharing your knowledge, you’re allowing people to find you through search engines like Google, or through social media.
You’re opening the door to people who are interested in what you’re interested in. They’re going to find you!
Hopefully you’re understanding this, basically at this point you just need to ‘share’ your passion.
If you’re a guitarist, make videos or blog posts explaining how to play certain songs.
If you’re a rock climber, maybe take pictures of various handholds and film yourself doing some rock climbing techniques.
Be creative. Create any of the following for your site –
- Articles. Posts about various things you love.
- Videos. If you’re comfortable in front of the camera, create some videos about what you love, and post them on your site or blog. Watch some of mine for inspiration and ideas.
- Podcasts. If you know how to do this, go ahead, I don’t however, so I can’t give advice on this subject.
- Or any other method. Any other way you can think of for sharing your message on your site or blog.
- (Or you could open a store on Shopify if you wanted to sell physical items but this guide is focused on creating an information website)
Share new, useful content every day
Now before we talk about the ways you’re going to make money from this, let’s explain about how often you should share content on your site. As often as you possibly can.
It should be easy for you to share your ideas and thoughts. Whatever experience you have, just share it with people.
Share what you already know about the subject, or maybe even share your opinions and thoughts about the things you don’t know.
It doesn’t matter, what you’re doing at this stage is getting your content and personality out there, and hopefully building a following.
I’ll probably do a post soon about how to share the content more effectively, but that’s not really what this blog or site is about.
We’re all about being a better version of ourselves here, so I won’t focus too much on the technicalities of blogging, that’s for you to discover.
This is just a starting point, a way for you to learn how to share what you love doing with lots of people, and make money by doing so.
The neat thing about this is that you can share things as you’re learning them yourself.
You can share things you’re doing in your life and what you’re learning from them, and it will either interest, inspire or help someone out there!
Now, let’s talk about how to actually make money from all this, the main event!
3 ways to make MONEY doing the things you love
You have your website set up on Bluehost You understand that you need to share your love and knowledge for this thing that you love so much. What now?
Now you’re looking at ways you can make money from it, and we’ll start with a few basic ways to make money from your site.
This is how you can make money from your site and your message that you’re sharing with people.
I’ll break it down into sections depending on the way in which you are sharing your message.
1: With YouTube Videos
With YouTube videos, it’s pretty simple. All you need to do is ‘enable videos ads’ and Google will display a few advertisements before each of your videos.
This setting is already built into YouTube you just need to enable it. The more views and more videos you have, the more you get paid.
You get paid based on the number of people that SEE your video and the advert, and also based on the number of CLICKS on the advert. Simple as.
If this is the approach you’ll be taking, just keep posting your videos, and sign up to Google Adsense.
2: On a Blog or website
With a blog, you can actually use the same thing, Google Adsense. The adverts are displayed in the form of little boxes or text links and when people click on them you get a small amount of money.
The way this works is that on your blog you’ll have content. That content has certain keywords in it, and Google display an advert hopefully relevant to that content.
This means when people go on your website, they’ll see for example, a website about rock climbing and an advert for a rock climbing gym.
They’ll click on the ad because they’re interested in it, and it’s HELPFUL to them, and the website owner (you) will get a few pennies for that click.
The more traffic, the more clicks you get and therefore the more you make.
A great course on this is The Business Of Travel Blogging by Nomadic Matt, really great stuff there and it’s super effective!
Through the use of your blog or website, when you share content, you’ll have an opportunity to either sell a product you’ve made, or recommenced someone Else’s.
This is the main way for you to make money, let’s dive in..
3: Selling a product (yours or someone elses)
You KNOW what you love. You know hopefully a lot about that thing. So create a product. Make an eBook.
If you don’t know how to do this, there are lots of guides on how to create an eBook.
For now, you can still make a lot of money just by having a website with adverts on it. So go do that first, then when you have lots of content on your site, come back.
Okay, so assuming you have a website, and have built a little following, you can start thinking about making a product.
This is going to make you more money than the adverts on your site have done, and it should be fun to do as well.
Think about what you love doing, let’s take an example of rock climbing.
So a few example products you could create are as follows.
- A video series on how to do various rock climbing techniques
- An eBook about rock climbing hand positions
- A series of reviews of certain products
- An eBook showing the best climbing locations in the world
- 10 tips for a beginner climber
Do you see? Just package some information you have that others might find useful into either a video series or an eBook. There are lots of places to get help with this.
This site lets you find people who are good at things like designing and you can hire their services for a small fee. As long as you’re fairly good at writing you can create this book!
Tell them the basic information you want in it and you’re good to go. You should be able to do the typing yourself though, it’s not hard and you can put more of a personal touch on it that way.
Whatever product you decide to create, put it up for sale on your site.
Again, you can easily search Google for how to do this, I’m sure you’ll find answers. A good example of this for my site would be my Resources page.
Final words
- Love something enough to be passionate and interested in absorbing loads of information
- Find a way to share that love with others online or offline
- Set up systems that allow you to receive love and money in return
And the way this would work in terms of practical steps is like this:
- Set up a website on Bluehost or Hostgator and get your free domain name
- Do some keyword research using Longtailpro (Looking for what keywords people search for, so you can create content around those keywords)
- Track your rankings on Ranktrackr (So you can see how well your business is growing)
- Constantly share new content with your audience
- Receive the love (and money) in return for helping lots of people
- Read our list of the best passive income sources and start building a portfolio of little things that bring you an income so that you can always do what you’re passionate about!