This article is a sort of biography/case study type article that I hope will help people who are in a tough spot and don’t know what to do, OR people who just want to get started with content marketing but don’t think they can do it.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links that provide me a commission when you use them. This is how blogs make money and it doesn’t cost you anything. Thank you!
Well, from what I can tell it can. I’m certainly not rich yet, but I woke up to another ~$120 USD after sleeping for 7 hours, just from referrals from one app that I promote.
Edit: I was pulling in about $400 per day from that app (Zynn app), but they have since discontinued their referral program… Either way, I ended up making about $4,500 from one blog post promoting Zynn.

At the time of this screenshot, I had only been doing this for 4 months, so I’d consider that pretty decent, considering I had no experience with any of this before that.
HOWEVER, saying that it’s “passive income” isn’t entirely accurate.
You DO get passive income from blogging, especially once you know what you’re doing, but I think a better way to view it is “delayed income”.
You have to do quite a bit of work up-front, and then the income starts coming in later.
The good news is – the income can scale very well because digital content just sits there and gets views, as long as you’re making the right kind of content.
My Story: How It All Started
About 7 months ago I was in a pretty rough situation.
I was unemployed, had no money, had some health issues that made full-time work near impossible, was severely depressed, and had no motivation to try at all.
I got kicked out of my parents house and into a shed that me and my dad built. Pretty sure it isn’t even legal, but hey… it beats sleeping in a tent. My step-mom isn’t very pleasant and wanted me out… it is what it is.
I had an old laptop from when I was working, and that was about to break. I had an old cell phone so I could call people and access the internet, but I really didn’t have much going on.
I somehow managed to have a girlfriend, who is amazing for putting up with me, but we never got to see each other, but she means the world to me, so I figured I’d try to figure something out so we could see each other.
I was looking online for work, but couldn’t find much that I felt qualified to do. I tried to get a job at the local grocery store where my girlfriend works, but they wouldn’t hire me because it was a “conflict of interest”.
As I mentioned before, my health was pretty bad (it still is) so I pretty much gave up looking for an actual job.
I kept seeing Youtube videos, and reading blogs about how you can start making passive income from content marketing, and it seemed interesting.
I figured “hey I don’t have much to lose, so I may as well try it!”.
Good thing I did.
Starting Out As A Blogger
Raising money for a laptop
Getting a nice phone for internet service

How I paid for a domain and web hosting

How I paid for web hosting
I did some research about how to build a website and what web hosting I should use. It turns out that a LOT people recommended using Siteground hosting and WordPress.org to make the site itself (the .org version of WordPress, not the .com version).
So I used the $200 gift card to pay the $71.40 for the first year of my Siteground hosting.

The Hard Part: Content Creation


The new blog is going to take more time to start getting ridiculous traffic because it’s much harder to beat the competition in search engine optimization, but it should make a LOT more money in the long run. That’s kind of why the competition is so stiff.
I also haven’t even begun to really get the hang of keyword research yet.
I really enjoy the SEO tool named SEMRush, but I don’t feel like I’m ready to pay for the premium features yet, so I just use the free version for now.
When you’re first starting out you don’t really need to get too crazy with the paid tools.
Most of the good tools allow you to use them a few times per day for free.
Potential Issues With Income
There are a few concerns I have about the recently gained income and some ideas I have to help mitigate some of them.
First of all, Google is notorious for releasing updates that makes people start losing traffic. Being at the mercy of Google can be problematic.
To counteract that I’m making sure to get indexed on other search engines, and trying not to do anything that will piss Google off.
I’m also trying to work on other sources of traffic, like Youtube videos, and trying to work on my long-term strategy, which is to make a business incubator.
Another potential issue is the source of my income itself. Unfortunately, my income sources aren’t diversified very well, so I’m trying to put more money into the stock market and trying to find other ways to offset that reliance on a small amount of products.
I’m also concerned about getting stuck doing things a certain way because they work at the time.
It’s really easy to say “but this is working, so I’ll just keep doing it.” But I want to already know what the next thing I need to do is, just in case what’s working right now stops working.
Edit: about a month after this post, the product I was promoting completely cancelled their affiliate rewards program, so I’m glad I was thinking ahead!
Other than that, I’m just going to keep churning out content and try to be better every day. So far it seems to be working.
Thank you for reading, have a great day!