It Starts with Passion

I got started first with YouTube. I was really into Apple’s iPod Touch and all it could do, and I had a cheap video camera (plus spare time). Naturally, I began making YouTube videos to teach people how to better use their current technology. I wasn’t being paid. Finding your passion isn’t that hard. What do you do when you have a day off? Besides sleep, of course. And if the answer is “I watch TV”, then what shows do you watch? Everyone has interests, and some of your interests may just be passions.

If love doing something so much that you’d do it for free, you’ve found your passion.

If I was making YouTube videos simply to make money, I would have quit long ago. It took me a while to get to the point of making money, and even longer for my income to even be decent. Plus, had I not been passionate about my videos, they would’ve been even worse than they were.

Passion to a Business Model

You can’t just have a passion to make money. I really like eating pizza, but it’s going to be difficult to get paid to eat it. Unless I was a pretty girl. I am neither. Fortunately for me, YouTube was easy to start making money off of. YouTube’s partner program was something I had been aiming for because I knew it would allow me to monetize my videos (kids these days don’t even have to be partners to monetize).

Have you ever started to talk to one of your friends about something you both love to do, and everyone else gave you funny looks because they had no clue what you were talking about? If so, you are an expert.

It happens to me all the time, and it’s actually pretty funny. You are an expert. Odds are, if you’re passionate about something, you know a whole lot about it, even if you don’t consider yourself an expert. As an expert, you have so many opportunities open to you to start making money.

Information Products

PDFs, videos, screencasts, webinars, you name it and you can sell it. People want to be taught, and as an expert, you can teach. Imagine how much information you can share after all the years you’ve spent learning about your passion. You can go with the YouTube method like I did and make free videos that earn money from ads, or you can offer paid products.

Physical Products

If you’ve been a high school football coach for 10 years, you may have noticed a flaw in a specific piece of equipment that you could make better. Something that the average spectator wouldn’t notice. Use your years of experience to make a product that is perfect, or very close to it. You of all people should know the problems that consumers in your industry face, so why not use that knowledge and make an amazing product?

Subscription Services

While it isn’t easy, getting monthly payments from customers is one of the best ways to make a killing online. If you get just 1,000 users paying $10/month, you’ve got yourself a really nice income. The key here is to provide an excellent value to your customers. Give them exactly what they want, and then give them even more.

Software and Apps

Everyone has an amazing $1 million app idea. But with your expertise, you can make software that can that can solve the problems of people in your industry. The best place to start is with yourself. Would you pay for your software? Make something of value to you and odds are someone else will find it valuable, too.

Something Else

I’m using my expertise in audio and consumer technology to make a new product called Audio Press. I won’t go into that much detail, but it is actually a mix of an info product, subscription service, and software. Making your own product can be exciting, especially when not many people have tried it yet. It can be a little risky, but who doesn’t like a little risk?

You Have to Start Now

I’ve found that many people really want to begin making their own products and selling online, but they’re waiting for something. The perfect idea, a good opportunity, more free time, etc. The only problem is that you’ll probably keep waiting forever.

It’s easy to keep coming up with excuses when you’re afraid of failure.

The truth is, there’s nothing wrong with failure. You’ll find that nobody noticed that you failed, because that’s the nature of failed projects: nobody knows about them. While you should try to avoid failure, just use it as a way to learn. As long as you try again and try something different, you’re more likely to succeed. As Thomas Edison would put it, you found 1 way how not to run a business.

Patience

You probably hear about overnight successes all the time. I’m going to tell you right now, that will probably never happen to you. In fact, the “overnight successes” you do see aren’t really as great as they seem. In order to get that kind of recognition, you’ll have to be producing something amazing, and that often takes much more than just one night.

When I started making YouTube videos, it took me a long time to start getting comments on my videos. It took even longer to start getting videos that would gain more than 500 views, it was tough to get popular. If you keep at it and stick to your work, you’ll get there eventually.