WordPress for Passive Income Streams – Start Earning Today!

How to define passive income?

Passive income is the kind of income you receive without spending hours each week working.

Some can do it in combination with other sources of income, such as a side hustle.

There are three categories: active income, passive income, and portfolio income.

An active income is any income you receive from your efforts.

Passive income is income earned from investments or rental properties.

Passive income streams are the new norm.

Let’s not pretend that living in these times is already more complicated than it is. Lifestyle got more expensive, and demand for work has decreased.

No wonder more people want o find new sources of income without compromising the freedom and time they would generally dedicate to their families.

Exploring new opportunities to earn more money might be the world we live in now. Such a possibility, of course, is a good thing. Some people may spend more time with their families, while others may explore new opportunities to generate passive income streams.

Oh god! Why me?? It’s too complicated!

Most will find an excuse not to start because it all seems complicated. With a hundred percent guarantee, this little voice inside your head tries to stop you in your mission by finding all sorts of reasons, such as:

  • You are too old to learn something new.
  • You understand this tech mumble.
  • Your computer skills are just not good enough.

Remember, blogging doesn’t know and care about intellect, race, color, or gender. Determination and dedication are all it knows and expects.

Anyone with a strong desire can learn how to generate passive income streams through online blogging.

It’s imperative to fight this little voice in your head.

Learning how to blog, or any other skills, might not be easy initially. However, websites such as Udemy or Skillshare offer various courses to learn specific skills quickly. Such courses are cheap to enroll in and yours forever to keep. There is also a galore of free video tutorials on YouTube on how to start with WordPress. I suggest starting with the following search on YouTube:

wordpress for passive income streams start earning today wordpress super car

WordPress master – from zero to 100.

YouTube was my first place to visit when I started. I spend endless hours watching tutorials and putting what I learned into practice by running my local web server on my computer. 

I ran and still am running Mamp Pro for Mac OS X for my locale WordPress development. Mamp is also available for Windows 10+. There is also an alternative for Mamp Pro, such as Local, which currently only supports Mac OS X. Local’s strength is that it was developed purely for local WordPress development.

The benefit of such a setup is it allows anyone to try and apply their newly developed skills into practice without the risk of breaking something.

I encountered ongoing failed WordPress installations—endless failed WordPress configurations. I repeatedly started over and over until it clicked and started making sense. 

Eventually, I became brave enough to try it in a professional hosting environment, and without any surprises, it worked.

Building passive income streams did not happen overnight.

It did not occur in one month. 

It did, however, happen over several months. 

Patience and dedication will take you there.

Discover a topic you want to blog about.

Now that we have acquired a needed skill to continue our adventure, we need to think about what our new blog should be about. 

Ask yourself what your passion is and if this is something you know of and would like to share with an audience of like-minded people. Understanding what you want to write about will give you an advantage in creating fresh content.

Let’s say, for example, your passion is freshwater aquariums, which you have been building and maintaining for many years. 

It would be safe to say you could write blog posts sharing your acquired knowledge about freshwater aquariums. 

However, blog websites writing about freshwater aquariums most likely already exist. The solution would be to identify a niche for this particular market. 

Such a niche could be aquarium filters, plants, lightning, or specific fish species. The sky is the limit.

Again, this is just a broad and basic example. It should help understand the steps to take in finding an idea to start a blogging website.

The key to this example is to know that creating content for your blogging website will be easier if you know and understand the market or niche.

Do your research – including keyword research.

Keyword research is essential for SEO regarding visitors finding your blog. You need to understand what your audience is searching for and incorporate such keywords into your posts.

If you have never heard of keyword research or SEO, I recommend looking at some fantastic tutorials on YourTube. Here are a few:

The next step would be researching your competition. Exploring your competitor’s websites provides a better inside into how they structured their blog. Take notes, see how you can improve certain things, and how you could implement this into your blog.

Excuse me, but I never wrote before, so how do I start? 

Learning to write good blog content takes time. Some will learn it faster, and some will take longer. You may have limited keyboard skills, making you a slow typer, or English is your second language, and grammar skills might not be your best.

Once again, enough reason to stop you right on your track. Rest assured, there is a solution to any problem. I talked about personal experience, as English is also my second language. 

Luckily enough, I stumbled across Grammarly. Grammarly’s software helps you to correct grammar errors and enhance your writing skills. I currently use this software to write this blog post.

Still not convinced? Well, how about alternatives? There are loads of services that offer content writing. You supply a topic and word quantity, and someone professional will write content for you. 

Depending on which service you use, the price varies. HireWriters is one of those services.

It will speed up the process of writing content at the start. Many long-time bloggers recommend having at least ten posts ready to be published.

Alright, alright! I have fresh content. Now what?

We need to choose a platform we use for our blogging adventure. The most popular and used one is WordPress. There are, as of today, around 450 million WordPress site installations. WordPress is easy to learn, and over time you can master it.

There is also a massive community of developers writing amazing plugins and themes that extend the functionality of WordPress. This article explains some of them and how they can turn a standard WordPress installation into a powerhouse platform. 

Absolute beginners might want to visit WPBeginner. They provide guides for everything about WordPress.

It’s worth checking them out.

No Brand? No logo? No problem

The next part to consider is establishing a brand with a nice-looking logo. Once again, several online services help you find what you are looking for. BrandCrowd is one of them. Give them a try. 

Alternatively, for a fee, you could hire someone on a platform such as Fiverr or 99Designs. They have many talented designers that are eager to help you. Do you prefer to let your creative juices take over, read this article containing resources on how to get you started?

Logo, checked. Brand, check. WordPress theme, check.

Let’s get serious and get ready for launch. First, you must optimize all your files for upload to your web host. 

Format types, such as JPEGs or PNGs, are widely used and accepted by most web hosting services. If you hire someone to design for you, they will know what to do and prepare these files for you.

If you require other output formats, this article lists resources on how to do it yourself. If you developed a custom theme for WordPress, the designer would most certainly supply you with a ZIP file that you can directly upload through your WordPress admin dashboard. 

Sounds complicated? Fret not. Once again, hundreds of available YouTube video tutorials show you precisely how to do that.

Excuse me, Sir, but where is my new WordPress site?

We must purchase a domain name and web hosting service to host our WordPress site. Your domain name can be anything you feel fits your niche. Importantly, make it memorable.

Online services such as SquadHelp allow you to browse for domain name ideas or launch a domain name contest. I used it to create some creative domain names by swapping words around that SquadHelp recommended. Try it. Some of the results produced are amazing.

It’s vital to avoid numbers, dashes, etc., in your domain name. Years ago, Google favored domain names representing a market or niche, but they have changed this. Fresh content is king; most importantly, your content needs to be original.

For website hosting services, I vouch for DreamHost. As a long-time customer of DreamHost since 2009, I would fail not to mention them in this article. They run an excellent web hosting service with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Your first year of domain name registration is free when buying a hosting package. They feature a one-click WordPress installation, making it easy for non-tech-savvy users to be up and running in no time. 

Also worth mentioning is their support desk. DreamHost’s support desk is fast to reply to any questions or issues you may encounter.

Of course, they aren’t the only ones, but I have never used anyone else because I was always satisfied with their service. You have hosting providers like GoDaddy, BlueHost, HostGator, and many more. Some hosting providers, such as WP Engine, specialize purely in WordPress hosting.

Researching a little about each one is essential, and, more importantly, reading customer reviews is necessary.

Yay, I launched my site. Now what?

Congratulations! You deserve a pat on your back. 

First and foremost, ensuring your WordPress site’s security is essential. Passwords nowadays are easily hacked, and many have fallen victim to their WordPress site being hacked and destroyed.

I highly recommend the use of a plugin name WordFence. I use this plugin on every one of my client’s websites for an extra layer of protection.

This plugin is free but offers a premium version for additional features. I personally only use the free version, as it includes 2FA authorization. 2FA stands for Two-factor Authentication and adds an extra step during the login process into your WordPress dashboard. 

I recommend you watch this video by WordFence to understand what 2FA is and how to set it up. WordFence will also email you whenever someone has a failed login attempt.

They also provide a comprehensive email report detailing failed login attempts from various countries. It’s worth mentioning you must configure WordFence settings for sending emails. This video will demonstrate exactly that.

Developing a plan that includes daily, weekly, or monthly tasks for running your blog is also essential. Daily tasks could include:

  • Checking for spam comments.
  • Answer questions or reply to comments made by your audience.
  • Check for updates on plugins currently installed on your WordPress site.
  • Check and improve the existing content of various posts.
  • Check your SEO performance and make adjustments to keywords where needed.
  • Research new plugins that could extend the functionality of WordPress.

Weekly tasks could include:

  • Write and publish fresh content. Aim for at least 2 or 3 new articles per week. If it’s too time-consuming, consider hiring a freelance writer. You could also invite guest bloggers to post content for you.
  • Add new images to your blog posts to enhance user engagement.

My site is live now, but where is the money?

Now we need to think about monetizing. I recommend joining affiliation networks that host products or services that you could insert in the form of advertising inside your posts. 

For example, Amazon Associates runs an affiliate program that anyone can join, provided they meet specific requirements.

Once you register and get approved, find products on their network that fit your niche and the content of a particular blog post on your site. You can then add products of interest to your blog post. 

Every product will have a URL link that contains your unique affiliation code. This URL link will redirect any visitor clicking to the corresponding Amazon product page. Every purchase made from your link will earn you a commission.

Another option is to apply for Google AdSense. I believe this is harder, especially for someone that has just started. 

AdSense monitors organic website traffic to websites to determine if such sites are eligible to display their ads. 

If you do get excepted, Google will, in simple terms, inject ads on your behalf inside your blog posts. Again, if someone clicks on them and ends up making a purchase, you earn a commission.

Here is a list of other Affiliation Networks that are worthwhile checking out:

For beginners new to affiliate marketing and want to understand it better, I recommend looking at videos on YouTube. I have listed some recent ones below:

It’s important to stress out once again. It won’t happen overnight. Making multiple passive income streams takes time and dedication. If you keep constantly improving, updating, and adding to your blog website, I am confident it will become a business on its own.

Conclusion:

I hope by sharing my own experience, I can explain in simple terms how to take various steps in creating a WordPress site that can function to earn extra money. I hope it will help newcomers to get started without overcomplicating the process.

Please feel free to comment or share opinions.

Happy blogging.

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