- Hey everyone, so today, I thought I would share with you the story about how I built five
streams of income in my 20s, that makes me over $1,000 a day. And actually, do you know what's better than earning $1,000 a day? It's getting my eternal gratitude
for your very kind support by hitting that like button on this video. But no seriously, while my eternal
gratitude is nice and all, what's actually better
than earning $1,000 a day is earning $1,000 a day
passively while you sleep. Yep, while I know that everybody
has their own definitions of what constitutes as
passive or not passive income, and if you disagree with my
definition of it in this video, feel free to let me know in
the comment section below. I personally believe that
these five income sources are extremely passive. So, not only am I gonna show you what these income sources are, and how I built them, but I'm also gonna give
you actionable tips on how you can start
building them today yourself. And I'll be honest, if you've
been subscribed for a while, you're probably gonna recognize at least some of these income sources. But I highly recommend that
you keep watching anyway, because in this video,
I'm gonna be revealing some more websites, methods, and tips, that I have not discussed before. So, let's do this. Passive income stream one, my online merch business. So let's start with the story about how I built my five
income sources in my 20s, from the very beginning. And the very first income
source I ever built was my e-commerce business. Today, I primarily sell clothing
like t-shirts and hoodies, and in this video, I'll actually show you a new way that you can do this for free. But while I sell clothing now, I didn't used to. Nope, I actually started
my e-commerce business when I was a teenager. And back then, I sold video games. When I was 15, I was
obsessed with video games. I desperately wanted to buy
the latest Nintendo games. But there was just one problem. I was a broke teenager. And I had no money. So I got a job at my local supermarket, getting groceries every
Sunday afternoon and evening. And here in New Zealand, we call that being a checkout chick. And I absolutely 100% hated
being a checkout chick. It was monotonous and incredibly boring. And I started to notice something. In the past on Fridays when
school ended at 3:00 p.m., I'd be super excited. Whoo hoo, no more school
for two whole days! This is awesome! But now, as the clock
ticked closer to 3:00 p.m., instead of being excited, I was filled with a sense of dread. Because all I could think about was how I was gonna be spending
my previously fun Sundays doing something I hated. And it was funny because
everyone else at the supermarket hated their jobs too. I remember thinking to myself as a kid, looking at the adults, is this what adult life is like? Going to a job that you
don't wanna be at every day? They'd all walk into their
shifts with dead empty eyes. Well, each shift, would get
a tiny 15-minute tea break, and I remember having a conversation with one of the other
teams in the staff room, who was a grocery stacker. "So, do you like your job?" And he was like, "Uh
obviously I hate it here." "Yeah, I hate it too. Have you ever thought of leaving?" "I wish, but no one will hire us. Like, who wants to hire someone who's 15?" You see, here's the thing. While I'm definitely not stupid, I was also definitely not the smartest kid in my high school class. And yet, despite the fact
that I wasn't the smartest kid in my high school class, I'm fairly certain, that
I'm now the richest kid from my high school class. Why, well it's because intelligence
does not make you rich. The ability to push through roadblocks is what actually makes you rich. And that's exactly what
happened to my workmate here. He had a roadblock. No one would hire him. So, he resigned himself to
his grocery-stocking fate. Whereas for me, at that moment, I decided if no one's gonna hire me, then I'm just gonna hire myself. So I decided to research
and look for side gigs, so that I could create
my own source of income. And through a series of
fun and hilarious events which I discuss in this video here, I ended up figuring something out. Because New Zealand is an isolated island with just five million
people living in it, floating by itself in
the middle of the ocean, video game companies like Nintendo knew that if they charged us higher prices, there was nothing that
we could do about it. So they've taken a
Nintendo DS game like this, and charge Americans $30 for it, but then charge us in New
Zealand, $80 for the same game. And so I opened an online store. I would have bought
second-hand USA video games from mum and pop video game shops and resell them in New
Zealand for double the price. And I started having big sales days. $100, $200, sometimes over $300 a day! But while the money was awesome, what wasn't as awesome was that, every time a sale came into my store, I would then have to take the video game, package it up, go to the post office, and send it out to the customer, and then come home and email the customer their tracking code. The opposite of passive income, right? I mean it was better
than scanning groceries, don't get me wrong. But I'll be completely honest. I hated having to ship
items to customers manually. And so I've always been looking for ways to run my e-commerce business
as passively as possible. And it was that journey that led me to do what I now do today. And that is print-on-demand. While I also still do
something called drop shipping, where I store items in
a fulfillment warehouse and shipped them out as
customers ordered them, my main product sourcing method these days is print-on-demand. And as a result, I've
made it way more passive. Let me show you how it works. So to protect my intellectual property, I choose not to reveal the
actual products I sell, but I have set up an example store, to show you how my
e-commerce business runs. So you see all these merch
that I've listed here, in my example store? Well I don't actually manufacture or create any of that myself. Instead, I've come to this print-on-demand app here, Printify. Now using this app, you can go
through the catalog of items and then choose a blank product that you would like to sell
your own custom version of. And as you can see, they've
got all sorts of things, including t-shirts, backpacks,
mugs, hoodies, you name it. So once you've found an
item that you want to sell, you then just upload
either a trendy slogan, or a piece of artwork onto it, and pick what color
t-shirts you want to sell. So for me here, I've uploaded
a piece of artwork onto it, and you can move it around
and place it where you want. And Printify will then
store a digital copy of this t-shirt in their computers. And then, you can list that
item for sale in your store. And when a customer
comes and buys the item, Printify's app will automatically see and process the sale for you. Your t-shirt factory will then print the design onto the t-shirt, package the t-shirt up, and then they'll ship out to the customer, and notify them that the
package is on its way, and give them a tracking link, automatically, without
you having to do anything. So you can see why this service
is called print-on-demand. Because it's literally what it is. As you can see, Printify
charged me about $12 to do this, but because I usually sell
my unisex tees for $29.95, I really don't mind paying that cost. So yes, as you can see, by
switching my e-commerce business to now be a print-on-demand business, it is way more passive than
my old video game store. I even get free passive
traffic from Google. So, if you wanna learn more about how my store runs passively, you can look at this video here. But I can imagine that
some of you are like, ah Sarah, setting up a store like that sounds like a lot of work. And it's okay, I get it. So if you're watching and you want a more beginner-friendly way to set
up a print-on-demand store, it doesn't actually have any of that whole setting up your own store stuff, then check this out. Here's a beginner-friendly
print-on-demand website that I don't think I've
discussed before on this channel, Spreadshirt. It's absolutely free
for anyone to register and start making money selling merch that you create on here. And they charge you no fees. So as you can see, Spreadshirt is both a huge
print-on-demand factory, and a big digital marketplace that lets you create and sell merch, that their factor will create
and sell for you on demand. Like t-shirts, hoodies,
mugs, and even face masks. And by the way, face masks are making a lot of money right now. So if you can think of
a good face mask design, I strongly recommend
uploading it and selling it, because right now, there is a huge demand for fun face masks. But, yes, what you do is
you come to Spreadshirt, and you upload a trendy or a funny slogan, or a cool picture to the website, and you pick which of their product you want to place it onto, and pick which product color
you want to be the primary one, and Spreadshirt will review the design and create a digital copy of the product, and store it in their computers. And then, once they've reviewed it, they'll create a product listing so customers can find and
buy your product for sale. And, I can imagine that some
of you are probably wondering, why I had uploaded that
slogan that I did earlier. And the reason is because, as you can see, someone else already did that here. And even though this is
a super simple design, this actually became one
of the top selling designs on Spreadshirt. Why, because people find it funny. And so it shows you that you
don't need to be an artist or a graphic designer, to make passive income on here, because simple text-based
designs that are clever, can sell great! And every time someone
comes and buys a shirt that this user has uploaded, Spreadshirt's factories print
the design onto the t-shirt, and they package it up and they
ship it out to the customer. And unlike Printify that charge
me $12 to do this service, Spreadshirt actually charge you nothing. Instead, they collect the
money the customer paid and removed their shipping
and production fees from it, and then they pay you the
difference as a commission. So it's free to sell and
there are no start-up costs. And also, before I get
bombarded with questions of, "Does this work?" Yes, yes, this absolutely
works. (chuckling) If it didn't, how could Spreadshirt have made over $130 million last year? The only way that Spreadshirt makes money, is if people actually come and buy the print-on-demand shirts. So yes, people do buy these t-shirts, and people do make money
on Spreadshirt passively, each and every month. And by the way, if
you'd like to learn more about this income stream, then you can download my free e-book, "The 6 Steps that 6 Figure
Online Stores Follow to Make Over $10,000 a month." And you'll find the link
to download that e-book in the video description below. But anyway, back to the video, and it was actually because
of this income stream that I was able to build my next one. Passive income stream number two, free cash rewards from credit cards. Yep, it turns out, that
by just buying things that you were already
buying, such as groceries, that you can earn free passive money in stuff like flights and gift cards, how? Well that is through the
incredible power of credit cards. So here is the deal. Remember my e-commerce business? Well, it has some expenses, doesn't it? For example, Printify make me pay $12 to make the t-shirts that customers buy. Unfortunately, due to
general bank logistics, it takes two days for
my payments to clear. So, if a customer orders a
t-shirt from me on Monday, I'm not gonna get that
money until Wednesday. And yet, Printify charge me the cost of that t-shirt right now. So to most people, this would
be considered a downside. But for me, I actually
consider it an upside. And it's because of this, my business credit cards. Here is my favorite credit card that is available worldwide,
not just in New Zealand, the Amex Platinum. Each time I spend money
with my Amex Platinum, I get two Amex reward points. And sometimes, Amex runs
awesome deals like this, that rewards you with
additional bonus points, which is super neat! So, what I usually do, is I split my automatic
expenses on multiple cards, which end up giving me different rewards. So for some expenses,
I use my Amex Platinum, and since my other cards
are New Zealand exclusive, we'll just focus on
this one for the video. So in the past five days, I've earned over 47,000 points from automatic business expenses, that I've paid with it. So, how can we use all these points? Well, we could choose to
exchange them for gift cards. 8,000 points for a $50 gift card. So with 47,000 points earned
in the past five days, we could get $250 of iTune gift cards. Or we could exchange
them for travel rewards. So for example, if we were
to transfer them to Emirates, we'd get 23,500 miles, which we could turn into
heavily discounted flights. Which, when the world isn't
in a the middle of a pandemic, is my favorite way to use them. I use this credit card points
to fly heavily discounted Business Class flights,
and First Class flights, that would usually cost
thousands of dollars, sometimes over $10,000 dollars, including First Class
flights on the Emirates A380, a huge plane that actually
has a shower for First Class. Yep, a shower! So, this is my favorite way
to spend my points when, you know, there isn't a global pandemic. But unfortunately, since
there is a global pandemic, another way that you could choose to use your points right now, is for straight cash,
i.e. credit on your card. Each month, you can come here and be like, yep, why not, I'm just gonna
take another $1,000 please. Of course, for some of you watching, you might be like, but Sarah,
I don't have a business! I guess I can't do this then? Well, actually no, you can. For example, here is just
one credit card in the USA that gives you free cash back, just for buying groceries. And it has no yearly fee. It's absolutely free to get and use. Literally, everyone has to buy groceries. So if you have the discipline to use your credit card wisely, why not make some cash back
while you're doing something that you already have to do? Different countries have
their own reward credit cards, such as these no-card-fees
I found for Canada, the UK and Australia. But do a Google search and
see which ones are available for where you live. And by the way, if you watch this video, and you've got any questions, I'll be hosting a live Q&A Hangout session on my Instagram page at 8:00
p.m. Eastern USA time tonight, as in the day that this video goes live. I regularly host Q&A Hangout
sessions on my Instagram page, so if you haven't yet already, go ahead and follow me. But anyway, back to the video. Passive income stream number three, Shopify affiliate commissions. So, let me ask you a question. Do you think that Elon Musk became rich by creating one business
and just sticking with it? Nope, he used his first business to launch and grow new ones. I always find it so
strange when people say, "If you have a successful business, why would you start a new one?" Well, if you want to know why, just ask Elon Musk. And so that's what I decided to do. I'm definitely no Elon Musk, but I do use my first business to launch and grow a new one. This channel. See, while now YouTube is saturated with videos about e-commerce, five years ago, practically
no video existed. I remember coming to YouTube looking for videos on e-commerce, to help me grow my
store, and I found none. So I decided, hey, if I want this, others probably want it too. So I decided to share what I knew, and see if it helped others. And, well, 500,000 subscribers later, my experiment was a success! And financially, it was a success too. I decided that I'd make
money with my channel, by creating tutorial videos
like this one here for Shopify. And in the video description, I placed what is called an affiliate link. And when you click on this, you get redirected to a URL, which contains a little tracking code. Well each time someone visits this URL, and then decides to buy
a Shopify subscription, I get a commission. And so, my last pay check from Shopify was over $3,000 for a 15-day period. So that is on average,
200 US dollars a day, that I earn passively from
my Shopify tutorial videos. I put my last Shopify tutorial
video up over a year ago, and still to this day, YouTube's algorithm
passively sends it traffic, earning me commissions. Now here is the thing. Anytime I say the money I
earn from YouTube is passive, people get mad. "Hey, it's not passive, because you have to keep
uploading videos, don't you?" Well actually, no. I don't think that that's true. Nope, because you see, here's the thing. If you want to earn passive
income on YouTube, you can. The key is that you need
to upload the right videos. This is one of the most popular Shopify tutorials on YouTube. And yep, the description
contains an affiliate link. Well, the YouTuber who
made this video, Tobia, has only made two videos. And he uploaded them over two years ago. Yeah check this out, as we
can see on Social Blade, even though it's been over two years since he uploaded a video, he still gets 10s of 1,000s,
to over 100,000 views a month. And sure, some months
are better than others, but that's normal for a YouTube channel. In fact, he had his best
month in the past two years, last month, despite not
uploading any new videos. Why, well it's because this
video is going to be relevant for a very long time. People are always gonna be
setting up online Shopify stores, and they are always going
to be wanting tutorials. So this video is going to remain popular. And think about it, my most popular Shopify tutorial, which I uploaded over a year ago, got 17,000 views in the past 28 days. Well, Tobia's tutorial
got over 170,000 views. And so, if I am making
$200 a day passively, just imagine how much
money Tobia is making. I am sure he is clearing well
over $10,000 a month easily. And if you'd like to try this yourself, I personally use Camtasia to
film my onscreen tutorials. But you don't need to
spend money on Camtasia, if you don't want to. You can just use free
screen recording software like OBS Studio, and you can use free
video editing software like DaVinci Resolve to edit the videos. And of course, you can use
your cellphone microphone to record a voiceover, explaining
each step that you take. Now of course, you can
choose to be like Tobia. Nobody knows where Tobia has mysteriously disappeared off to. I like to imagine him
relaxing on a beach somewhere, enjoying the passive fruits
of his previous labor. But, yes, you could choose to do that. Or you could choose to
do what I chose to do, which was to scale this further. Which leads me to my next
passive source of income. Passive income stream number four, Placeit affiliate commissions. So yes, while Tobia had
decided to disappear mysteriously off somewhere, and live off of his Shopify
affiliate commissions, I did not. I decided to scale and grow my income. So I thought, you know, I'll
use other apps on my store that also have affiliate programs. Why just stop at Shopify? Nope, I should create tutorials for the other ones I use as well. So I went ahead and added
a tutorial into a video for another app that I use
in my e-commerce business, Placeit. Placeit is a giant database
of blank product photos that you can use so you don't
have to pay for a photo shoot. So for example, they have thousands of blank t-shirt pictures, where you come and you choose
one of the blank photos, and then upload your t-shirt design that you're selling onto it. Placeit then creates a mock-up photo, that you can place onto your store, to help you sell your t-shirts. And, well, I included my affiliate link in the video description, and see if people wanna thank
me for the free tutorial, that they use my link to buy Placeit. And people do. And in the past 30 days, I made over 5,900 New Zealand dollars. Which when you turn into US dollars, is over $3,800. Passive income stream number five, YouTube Adsense. And of course, my fifth source of income, is that ad that you probably skipped over at the start of this video. Yep, in the past 28 days, I made over 17,000 US dollars. Now, I know that some of
this advertising money is because I released some new videos, and my subscribers have
watched my new videos. But because I focus on making videos about topics that will
always be helpful to people, most of that money
actually came from people watching my old videos. So take this video that I
released here seven months ago, it teaches 10 important things that new t-shirt store owners should do, before they launched their stores. And, well, because
every year this industry is only getting bigger and bigger, people will continue to
watch this video every year. That means then, that
even if I, like Tobia, decide to mysteriously disappear one day, to enjoy the passive
fruits of my past labor, I'll continue to earn passive
income from this channel. And so, remember, if you want
your business or income stream to make you money into the future, choose to build, create,
or invest into something that is evergreen. (lively music)
