I’ve been to Spain, Japan, and Mexico. I don’t think we’re going anywhere out the US this year, but I want to start planning for next year! Where have you been that you absolutely loved??

👋 Hi, my name is Woody and I’m here to make money on the internet! (Just not with OnlyFans 😅) Jokes aside, I’d be lying if I said I started on this YouTube path simply for the glory. Sure, I like the attention 😉 but the dream is to build something that helps pay the bills, and maybe one day replaces my 8-5 job. To be completely transparent, I’m still figuring it out myself. I’ve made a couple thousand dollars from YouTube and other internet marketing related activities over the last few years, but I’m a far cry away from quitting my job and moving to an island paradise. There is still work to be done, skills to be learned, offers to be made, and services to be sold. I’d love to know if you’ve already made your first dollar on the internet or not. I’d also like to know if making money online is something you’d like help with. If you care to share, you can vote in the poll and/or comment what you’re thinking on this post. *Here are three of the ways I’ve made money online in recent years:* Affiliate income - I have made a few hundred dollars as an Amazon Associate. This is free for anyone to sign up for (different than Amazon Influencers). You pick an Amazon product, create an affiliate link for it, and put that link somewhere people are likely to click on it. The cool thing here is that you earn a commission on anything they buy within 24 hours of clicking the link, even if they don’t buy the specific thing you made the link for. There are some rules when using affiliate links that I won’t cover here—we can save that for a future conversation. Self-publishing my own book - in 2023, I learned that anyone can write and publish their own book on Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). This is for physical books as well as ebooks. Amazon will literally print them to order - no need to get a book deal and store hundreds of copies in your own inventory. I decided to publish a 2-page ebook just to learn the skill of how to do it. I didn’t think too hard about what the ebook topic would be. I wasn’t already making YouTube videos at the time and had a bunch of potential video topics and outlines scattered throughout my Apple Notes and Google Drive, so I picked one I thought would be easy: “5 Things I Wish I Knew In My 20’s” and I started to write my two pages. I got the 5 bullet points down pretty quickly, but then something in me took over and I started really digging into it. Each of the 5 things became its own chapter with multiple sub-points and anecdotes within it. I was waking up early to write and revise pages before work, and I did this every day for weeks. I decided I wanted it to be a print book as well, so I needed to make a front and back cover, and a table of contents, and introduction and conclusion. I decided I should take the opportunity to also learn a thing or two about email marketing, letting friends and family know about what I was working on, creating a landing page to collect emails so I could let them know when it came out. I put a lead magnet in the book to hopefully build the email list further. I asked my wife to help me edit it. The final version came out to around 50 pages, not a huge book but still 25x more content than what I originally intended. I released it, and I made a couple hundred dollars from it. It’s still on Amazon if you want to check it out. The eBook is free with a Kindle Unlimited free trial, or you can buy the print version for a few bucks (also an affiliate link 😉)

Do you have a YouTube video you posted recently? Want to share it with the NewTubers community? Post the video link here! If you would also like feedback, state that in your comment along with the video link. Feel free to provide feedback to those who have asked for it, and please refrain from giving feedback to anyone who did not invite it! 🙂

Let’s hear it!

I’ll go first. I’m working on a video about how to narrow down your niche to something that you’re good at, that you like, and that people might pay you for! This will be integrated into the Niche Finder course in the classroom as well as available on YouTube. Next in the pipeline, I’m thinking some “AI for YouTube” videos. Thoughts? What video are you working on now? What’s next up after that?