Download Now!
Making the most of your time can be difficult when you’re stuck in a nine-to-five job. In this podcast, Nate Woodbury shares with us how he makes money without investing too much of his precious time and effort. Stay tuned to learn how you can effectively generate passive income yourself!
I have found some very unique ways to make passive income. To make residual income where that income comes in without my time. This really works, and you can do it right now. Let me start out with a story. Okay, this is going back ten years ago. Ten years ago, I worked in sales for an internet marketing company. But I also was an independent contractor. They paid me 10 to 12 dollars per article. And I would write the article, and they’d pay me the money. So they would assign me a topic to say, “Hey, write an article about this.” So, I would write 500-word article, sent it to him. they pay me 12 bucks. They used that article for their internet marketing, right? They would send it out and have that article link back to a website and stuff like that. So, here’s where the story gets interesting. As soon as I got that job, I was learning more and more about hiring people in the Philippines and how easy that is. So, I actually hired a writer. This is the first person I’d ever hired outside of the country. And I hired a writer and sent her some of these topics. Saying, “Hey, will you write these articles?” Now, get this. I was paying her 2 dollars per article, okay? And she was willing to do that. That was a great living for her. But you understand the leverage that gives me. If I pay her $2 for the article, turned it in to the company, and they pay me $10 or $12, that’s a pretty good spread. And so at first, there was a little bit of a learning curve. I’d send her the article. She’d send it back to me. I’d make a couple tweaks for grammar and whatnot and give it back. And I tell her about those tweaks. She sends me another one, make some tweaks, tell her about the tweaks, send it in. Over time, it became – It seemed what I thought was perfect. So, I was not writing any articles anymore, but I was submitting like 4 or 5 articles every single day. Now, this story has kind of a funny ending. Because I got so lazy and just like, “Oh, this is great. I don’t have to do a thing.” I kind of forgot about quality control. And after a couple months of doing this, I thought I’d better check in. So, I grabbed one of the articles that we had recently submitted. And I just did a check on it. I send it through Grammarly to check for plagiarism. And I found out that the assistant that I had hired had started taking shortcuts and just started piecing together things that she had found to speed up her process. She didn’t rewrite it and make it her own wording. It was just plagiarized content. That’s like, “Oh, no.” And I found out the previous 50 articles she had used that approach for. So, I had to go in and tell my boss. Because I didn’t want to get in trouble. I believe in integrity and and creating quality content, and I had been paid on 50 articles that were plagiarized. And so, I went in I told my boss what I’d been doing. My boss actually thought it was funny. He just laughed like, “That’s hilarious.” That that I was hiring somebody else to write the articles for me and making the spread. But he wasn’t the decision-maker. So, he sent me to the supervisor, which was a young kid. Younger than me at the time. And he got mad. He gave me permission to rewrite those articles, so I didn’t have to give that money back. But he didn’t let me have that position anymore because he says, “Well, I can to start somebody in the Philippines.” Maybe they did after that. That would be smart, right? So, I did let that person go. But man, that gave me a taste. That gave me a taste of what it was like to make passive income. So, what did I do next? I started my own web design company, of course. So, while I was still working there, I actually had been learning how to design WordPress and Joomla websites. Just create a custom design from scratch. And I advertised locally on our classifieds, and I found two guinea pig clients. They were willing to pay me $500 to design them a custom website. After I did that and delivered the website to them, they were happy. I decided to quit my job and start designing websites for people full time. But very, very quickly, I hired a team and got up to ten full-time employees within the next few months. I wasn’t designing anymore. I had systematized my process. We actually had four steps. So, first, you’ve got to get input from the client on what looks good to them what type of website are they looking for. Then he created mock-up designs. Okay, so I had four steps. I created this system, and I hired graphic designers in the Philippines to do these designs and then turn that into a WordPress or Joomla website. It was so amazing. All I had to do was market it. All I had to do is find the customers, and I started to automate that as well. I put my sells presentation into a YouTube video. So, when I would call people, I’d say, “Hey, I’ve got a great web design service. Can I send you a video that tells you all about it?” They’d say, “Yes.” So, I’d email them the link to that YouTube video. And I just kept doing that. and then eventually, I found a way using LinkedIn and using Craigslist that I could market to people. But then I hired somebody in the Philippines to start doing that for me. So I was sitting back. All I had to do is wait for the phone to ring because my team was marketing my services on Craigslist and on LinkedIn. And my promo videos were being watched on YouTube. I’d get a phone call. They’d say, “Hey, I watched her video. I learned about your service.” They might have a question. But I didn’t really have to give him a sales presentation because they already got all that through my my system in my videos. So they’d asked me their question, and then they give me their billing information. And I’d send it up, and I’d sign them up. And I would give them to my team. So, I’d get a phone call. They’d want to pay me five hundred bucks for a website. I’d get their credit card information. My team would do the rest. It was so awesome. You know, that is like residual recurring revenue if I’ve ever heard it. So, what am I doing today? Well, I produce YouTube channels. I’m a YouTube producer. My clients fly to Utah, and I go there for the first few hours. But I’ve actually got a filming team that films with them. They filmed 20 episodes at a time. They upload that content to Dropbox. And then my team in the Philippines does the editing does the thumbnail design, does the transcription. Does all the work getting it ready on YouTube and scheduling that launch. And they actually communicate directly with my clients. So, I go out, and I speak, and I make these YouTube videos. And clients come to me and say, “Hey, Nate. I want you to produce my YouTube channel.” So then, you know, I give them some coaching. I help them on strategy. They get into a year program with me and my team. And my team does all the filming. My team does all the editing. They do all the work. Question for you: Can you do something like this? It’s about leveraging your time. You don’t want to trade your time for money. And I still do that occasionally. And it’s crazy to think that I turned down consulting. Because my consulting rate right now is $1,000 per hour. I just did some consulting earlier this week. They hired me for four hours, $1,000 per hour. But it’s not the best use of my time. Isn’t that crazy. It’s still crazy for me to think about that $1,000 per hour. Yet, my leverage time is worth a lot more than that. And it’s not as taxing on my brain. It doesn’t take so much energy out of me. Because I’ve got a lot of energy and I’m putting it into creative things and creating more systems, creating more businesses. When I’m putting that time into consulting, I am leveraging time for money and a higher rate than I have in the past. But it’s not creating more potential for the future. So, I would love to hear your ideas of how you’re going to create passive income. Now, in the comments below, it doesn’t allow links. So, please don’t share links to your company or to an opportunity or things like that. But just tell me about it. I’m very curious of what you’ve found ways that you’re doing. And I am looking for more opportunities that I can be a part of where I can create that same type of leverage.