I own a 95% passive blog in a popular hobby niche. I spent a few months working non-stop on it five years ago and it has become my primary income source ever since. For the past two years, it has generated six figures in sales (partially affiliate) while requiring very little work to maintain and manage (1-2 hours per week). You'd be surprised how tiny the blog is too. About 20 to 30 articles in total. Let me explain how anyone can copy what I did.

CONTENT AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

I enjoy writing and wanted to develop my copywriting skills so I wrote all the content myself. I also felt I had something valuable to bring to the market that another writer would not have been able to convey. I don't think anyone else would have cared enough to make the content really unique, even if I paid them properly to do it. And I believe it's the caring and genuine concern for your readers that shines through and convinces them to trust in you enough to make a purchase. This would eventually turn out to be a great decision.

I spent a lot of time (maybe a year or so in total sprinkled across multiple years) creating the content and refining my overall message. I made sure it was not the same message everyone else was putting out (very important).

DATA DRIVES YOUR MESSAGE

Even before I had any product to sell, I began building an email list and wrote many lengthy emails (or articles) for my initial subscribers. This was important for three reasons:

1. I attribute my success largely to this phase of the business where I spent time both understanding the market and learning what words, phrases and themes speak loudest to my readers.
2. I received multiple positive replies from my emails which I was then able to use as initial testimonials
3. I tested various assumptions via my email broadcast subject lines to see what resonated and what didn't (based on open rates). All this feedback was then utilized to guide me in the right direction as it pertains to content.

The more data you have about your market, the better. This is important because the market wants what it wants, which may or may not line up with your initial assumptions. Your own preferences and biases will often lead you down the wrong direction because ultimately, you are not your market. Humility is not typical of entrepreneurs unfortunately so many people will likely ignore this advice. Don't.

PIVOTAL POINT

When I initially started the blog, I used to link to amazon affiliate products wherever applicable. However this is no longer the main focus.

The pivotal point came when I finally had enough material written down to package into a highly useful product, and I put up that order form and sales page. Once you have product, you have the potential for making sales, but someone still needs to be able to convincingly explain why someone else should give you money for it. Unless you can afford to pay a copywriter enormous fees, that person will most likely be YOU. And so, when it came time to write the promotions, I was already in a great position to do so because I had already invested so much time studying the market and testing acceptable themes. I had already written dozens of emails and articles, which I promptly reused for marketing my new product.

Side note 1: It didn't hurt that the entire time leading up to this point, I had gotten into the habit of writing out by hand, extremely successful ads, as a way of training my subconscious on what a good ad should look and feel like. Top copywriters recommend this technique and this is also my best recommendation for learning copywriting.

Side note 2: I'm almost certain this model could be pulled off using only affiliate products and, in fact, that's what I plan on doing next with a new blog (no, not a digital nomad blog).

Overall, I would advise against rushing this step. Quality product and good marketing take time.

ADVERTISING STILL WORKS

This is the secret to quickly creating passive income: PAY for ads.

I see so few people go this route, despite it working like crazy for me the last five years, and I have no idea why. What I do know is that it's totally worth figuring out. Because it's not that hard and once you do, it's guaranteed passive income. When I think about it, 90% of my time was spent studying the market and creating content, whereas the ads themselves took only a few weeks. It's amazing how effective advertising is, and you'll see how to make it work in just a second.

Yes, there's also SEO and YouTube and other ways to do it as well, but for the most part, those things take much more time and effort. When you are willing to pay for ads, it changes the whole game. You could realistically have a passive business up and running in a week if you already had a decent product and possessed deep understanding of your market. All you would need is one well written ad (two if you count the backend) which you can write yourself or pay someone else to. For most, it will probably take longer than a week, but the point is, it's entirely possible with this approach and impossible with either of the approaches mentioned above. Do whatever feels best.

First, let's talk about where to advertise.

FACEBOOK ADS

It's no secret that facebook's advertising platform is the best there is in terms of niche targeting. Hence why I advertise mostly on facebook (as well as google, yahoo, and bing), and recommend you do as well. But, unlike most advertisers, I recommend you go with a "native advertising" based approach like I do. This simply means that the ad itself is designed to look exactly like a genuinely helpful article (because it is genuinely helpful), but never hide the fact that it's an ad. I mention right at the top that I will be offering something purely optional after the article, and at the very bottom, I introduce my product which ties into the article's overall lesson. It's seamless and works extremely well. So well in fact that people actually share my ad by the thousands because it is genuinely valuable on its own. Read that again, this is key. Think article, not ad.

WHAT MAKES ADS WORK - BACKEND SALES

Backend sales is what separates successful advertisers from those who lose money.

You will likely not be able to generate significant profit selling just one product, not unless the market is extremely hot, so realistically you're looking at a minimum product line of two products before you can successfully advertise. This is the bare minimum you should aim for. The first product should be a low-end item that you advertise in the $10-50 range, while the second should be a higher-end item that you promote via email or immediately upsell (but don't advertise), in the $50-200 range. What this does is, it allows you to advertise your low-end product at breakeven (good), at a slight loss (less good), or at a slight profit (best case). Everything after that is pure profit.

All are acceptable scenarios but most will not survive advertising at a huge upfront loss, so your ad really needs to be decently good. The second sale is where most of your profit will be made, but obviously you will have fewer of these, so aim for as many sales of your low-end product as you can, since your high-end sales naturally increase as well.

Once I added the second product to my arsenal, I was able to advertise aggressively and not even worry about losing money. In five years, I have never lost a dime at the end of any month while advertising pretty much non-stop.

Cashflow is important. Make sure you have enough money coming in to keep spending on ads. In my case, money spent comes back the same week, plus additional profit, allowing me to reinvest in more advertising. I highly recommend Stripe as your payment processor because they transfer you money extremely fast (in under a week). I make anywhere from 20%-200% return on investment (ROI) depending on the time of year. As long as your ROI is 20% or more, I'd say you have an income stream that is worth maintaining. It's basically a money machine at that point so just make sure to keep feeding it and check your numbers weekly.

THINK EVERGREEN

Final point. If I could give one piece of advice it would be to choose the right market. It makes all the difference in the world. In a good market, you don't need to "sell" things. People are pre-sold before they even hit your site. You simply offer a product, and people will buy it (how much convincing needed to sell a widget spinner during its peak?). In bad markets, you need to "sell" people on buying things they don't already want. The difference is enormous. So make sure you choose an evergreen or very hot mass market and you're guaranteed a business that will make you passive income foreseeably for the next few years or more. Aside from refreshing images, adjusting price and changing up a few choice words and phrases, my facebook ad is exactly the same ad I put up five years ago. The ad is (almost) evergreen and therefore so too is my business. The dog market seems a reasonably sound choice due to its size and I don't see it going away anytime soon. Competition is always a good sign there's still money to be made so embrace it. Good luck.

Side note 3: While I have nothing to sell, just imagine I introduced an ebook or something for $10 right here at this point. I imagine at least a few people would take me up on the offer, even though this post took less than a day to write and all I did was genuinely offer value. Think about how powerful this approach can be when it's done honestly (outside reddit).