Have you ever seen one of those cringy ads talking about how you can make money on autopilot? Most of them exaggerate about what is possible when it comes to making money but there’s some truth to it.
Making money on autopilot is a real thing and their thousands of examples of people that have succeeded in doing this but making money on autopilot isn’t exactly what you think it is.
In this post, I’ll share 7 realistic ways that you can make money on autopilot, the truth behind “making money on autopilot”, and include several options to get started immediately after reading this post.
How to define making money on Auto-Pilot
People think of different things when they talk about making money on auto-pilot this is why I want to give you a clear definition of what I consider opportunities that make money on autopilot.
I consider opportunities that make money on autopilot strategies that bring in money without you directly doing something in return for that money.
However, this doesn’t mean that you’ll start to earn money from the get-go. Most of these strategies will require you to do work up-front to create the foundation but once that is finished you’ll have money coming in even if you take days off.
1. Paid Webinars on demand
What are paid webinars on demand:
These are webinars that people can see at any time. Webinars are often used to sell digital products but you can also use them to educate people.
If you’re knowledgeable about a particular subject that people value you can create a webinar on demand and let people pay to see it.
I couldn’t believe the first time I saw someone offering a paid webinar on demand. It was a webinar that lasted 2 hours about how “avoid” rejection in sales.
They already assumed I knew their audience knew the basics of sales and solely focussed on not using particular phrases and tones that’d trigger resistance in your prospects..
They charged $50 per person and the webinar had 30 people in it. They were replaying this webinar 3 times a day.
They didn’t offer a product that took you from step 1 to your goal but focussed on one little but essential thing and they’re earning money with it.
How to start making money from webinars on demand:
First, you pick a topic you have a lot of knowledge about or you can gather a lot of knowledge about.
Research if there is a need for this knowledge. Organize your knowledge and make it as easy to comprehend as possible and create a script.
Acquire webinar and payment software and film the entire webinar. After that, promote it to attract customers and start earning money.
What is the earning potential of paid webinars on demand:
It depends on the need and the quality of the content you’re providing but it’s more than reasonable to assume you could make +$3000 per month.
Minimal starting costs:
At the very least, you’d need webinar software which often is somewhere around $60/month.
2. Selling Habit sheets
What are habit sheets:
Habit sheets are documents that you can use to monitor the progression of acquiring a habit.
In its simplest form, it’s often an excel sheet or a google sheets document containing the habit and a few formulas to calculate the score on a weekly or monthly basis.
There are a lot of apps that have similar functions but excel sheets that you can download still seem to do good numbers despite their simple nature.
A friend of mine showed me his first habit sheet in 2018. I remember him talking about this grand plan that sounded super complex but when he showed me the habit sheet I was pretty disappointed.
I was expecting this high-tech app. Fast forward 3 months later and he had 4 test groups all consisting of 10 people that paid him $30 per month just to use his habit sheet.
How to start making money from habit sheets:
After creating the excel sheet, you can create an online store or website and drive traffic to it.
A great way to improve your sales and differentiate your products from others is to include templates from successful people so they can see exactly what those people did to achieve their goals.
What is the earning potential of habit sheets:
Habit sheets have a high earning potential purely based on their scalability. You create a sheet once and you sell an unlimited number of copies. I have known multiple people that have sold habit sheets in the past and based on their earnings a reasonable estimate would be between $20 and $5000 per month.
Minimal starting costs:
The minimal costs for selling habit sheets would be for the platform you’re planning to use to sell them. A minimum after the free trial would be around $15 per month but you’d have to take into account that you have limited functionality.
3. Affiliate Marketing
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a form of marketing where companies use independent publishers to promote their products in exchange for a commission.
It’s the primary method I use to earn money with my websites. I got introduced to it by the same guy that taught me about habit sheets and I have been grateful ever since.
How do you make money with affiliate marketing:
The steps to start affiliate marketing are simple. You sign up for an affiliate program that has products that you’d be interested in promoting.
After signing up you’ll be provided with unique links that the company owning the affiliate program can use to see if you referred someone to them.
After that, you refer people to the products, and every time someone buys a product on the website based on your recommendation you get a commission.
Earning potential:
Affiliate marketing businesses are often easy to scale because the only thing needed to make more money is to send more people through the link to the company. I’d consider the earning potential to be somewhere between $0 and $10K/month.
How to start:
Start with finding a suitable product and decide how you’d want to market that affiliate product. I'd also recommend doing an affiliate marketing course if you're a complete beginner.
Do You Want To Learn More About Affiliate Marketing?
Here's some recommended content:
Blog Post: Affiliate Marketing Success Stories
Blog Post: Affiliate Marketing Pros and Cons
4. Selling Online Courses
What are online courses:
Online courses in a lot of ways are a lot like paid webinars but there are a few differences. The biggest one would be that an online course is split up into modules while a webinar isn’t.
Online courses often teach a more holistic subject while paid webinars can focus on solving a small problem.
How do start making money with online courses:
Find a problem shared by a subset of the population that you have the means to solve. Gather the knowledge needed and organize it into smaller subjects to make it easier to understand.
Create and film the educational content needed, upload it on an online course platform, or host it on your own website. After doing that start promoting your online course to attract people and charge money for getting access to the course.
What is the earning potential of online courses:
Online courses are even easier to scale than affiliate businesses. I’ve seen people get up to the 7 figures by offering affiliate courses but these are often anomalies. It is safe to assume when done right with proper marketing to earn up to $5000 per month especially if it has evergreen content and you charge a recurring fee.
Minimal starting costs:
It depends on if you want to use a platform or host it yourself. That being said, it’s safe to say you’ll at least be spending $30 a month.
Do You Want To Learn More About Selling Courses?
Here's some recommended content:
Blog Post: How To Sell An Online Course
Blog Post: Teachable Review — Platform for building and hosting online courses
5. Make money by blogging
Blogging is one of the oldest methods used to earn money on the internet. What makes blogging still so valuable after being around for such a long time is the number of ways you can use a blog to earn money on autopilot.
How to start making money with blogging:
Making money with blogging all starts with creating the website after that you can utilize the traffic you’re getting in multiple ways such as inserting affiliate links in your blog content and start earning commissions. You could also put ads in your content and earn money from people clicking on the links.
What is the earning potential of:
Blogging is a great way to earn a full-time income. It requires some work upfront but once you get the ball rolling scaling up and earning a full-time income online is a very simple task. I have seen a lot of people earn up to $15K per month with blogging. On this website, I have an interview with a 6-figure legal blogger.
Minimal starting costs:
The bare minimum to start blogging is somewhere around $20 per month. After that, it depends on how you’re going to promote your content which will determine your costs will be.
If you have patience you could direct organic traffic which comes with low financial risk or you can get people to your right away by investing money in advertising.
Do You Want To Learn More About Blogging?
Here's some recommended content:
Blog Post: How To Earn Money Online By Starting A Blog.
Blog Post: 13 Ways To Attract People To Your Blog.
6. Selling Files Online
Selling files is one of the simplest ways to earn money online. Let me explain why with a story.
I remember watching a video of Steven Bartlett the CEO of Social Chain talking about how much value is needed to make money from something. He said something along the line of this:
“…You don’t need to be an expert. Just helping people get to the next step is information valuable enough to earn money from”.
You can sell PDFs that are 3 pages long and turn that into a full-time income.
How to start making money:
You start by inventorying your knowledge and finding out if there’s a group in need of that knowledge. When you find them you can start creating your pdfs which can be in the form of checklists, workbooks, blueprints, etc.
You pick a place to function as your headquarters on the internet. This can be a website you created yourself or you can use platforms such as Sellfy, Sellwire, Gumroad, or Podia to host your files.
Connect the store with your payment provider and start marketing to the group in need of your knowledge.
Minimal starting costs:
In terms of minimal costs, the products themselves will not take a lot of money to produce if you already have the knowledge. You can use Canva to create and style the pdfs and for the platform, you’d likely pay somewhere around $30 per month.
7. Rent out assets
Renting out assets is a great way to earn money on autopilot.
The first time I got the idea to try this was after reading rich dad, Poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki. He talked about being young and creating a space where people could read old newspapers.
They’d just have to pay money to be allowed in the space for a limited time. After reading this I started renting all the stuff I wasn’t using for a limited time.
You could easily do this as well.
How to start making money:
First, you need to get a clear idea of the things you own that you can rent for money. I started with books but there are so many things you can rent out. You could rent your rooms, cars, bikes, scooters, etc.
What is the earning potential of:
This depends on what you’re putting up for rent. The income you can get from putting a room on Airbnb for example or renting cooking appliances differs.
Minimal starting costs:
You could start this for free.
A Few Last words
Let’s take a quick look at all the methods I have mentioned to make money on autopilot:
- Webinar on demand
- Habit sheets
- Affiliate Marketing
- Online Courses
- Blogging
- Selling Files Online
- Renting out Assets
As you can see, making money on autopilot is possible but you might’ve noticed it isn’t exactly passive income in the way most people envision it.
It often requires you to put up a lot of work upfront which is something a lot of people aren’t willing to do.
The biggest reason people fail is that they come in with the wrong expectations.
I hope these final words give you a realistic view of what is needed so that you’re successful in whatever entrepreneurial endeavor you embark on.
That’s all for today.
See you in my next post!
