How I Make Money Online - My Top 10 Online Income Streams

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin:    00:00:23    Hi everyone. Kristin from Traveling with Kristin here. And if you want to be able to make money online and work from anywhere in the world, then you need to be able to bank from anywhere. And that's why I've been using a TransferWise borderless account for the past seven years. TransferWise is a free multicurrency account where you can send people money, receive money, and spend money from anywhere in the world. Before TransferWise, banking as a digital nomad or remote worker or expat was a huge headache. I used to open bank accounts in every country I went to. I had bank accounts in Canada, in Poland, in Mexico, in Costa Rica, and it would take hours of time getting together the required documents to open account, going to the bank, waiting in line, signing a bunch of documents just to be able to bank locally and in different currencies when I was passing through that country.  

Kristin:    00:01:28    So imagine having to repeat this process every couple of months, wherever you went in the world. It was such a hassle and so much paperwork. So when TransferWise opened and you could open a free account online from anywhere and hold money in up to 50 different currencies, it was like a miracle. And it completely revolutionized the way that I did business around the world. It saved me so much time and so much money, and I basically never use my Bank of America account anymore because with traditional banks, when you want to send or receive a wire transfer, you're going to pay really high incoming or outgoing transfer fees, like $25 each way, plus super high foreign exchange rates. But with TransferWise, they use the real mid-market exchange rate. So you're paying less money to transfer between different currencies, and you're paying way less money, usually only a couple dollars compared to $50 or more to send money anywhere in the world.  

Kristin:    00:02:36    So this has made it actually really fun and enjoyable for me to be able to pay my freelancers and subcontractors who are in all different countries. I have my book editor in Bulgaria, my video editor in the Philippines, and my virtual assistant out there, and I can just send money to them in a few seconds from my app for just a couple of dollars. So if you haven't opened a TransferWise account yet, I highly recommend it, and you can get your first transfer up to 500 British pounds or your currencies equivalent for free by using the link at TravelingwithKristin.com/TransferWise. That's TravelingwithKristin.com/Transferwise, T-R-A-N-S-F-E-R-W-I-S-E. And I'll also link to that in the show notes. Today's episode is about 10 of my top online income streams. So this is the third episode in a series to help you make money online. The first one was about specifically how to make money online.  

Kristin:    00:03:51    The second one was the six most common ways to make money online as a digital nomad. And then this one is pulling back the curtain a little bit, giving you some insight into how I make money online, because people ask me this all the time on YouTube, on Facebook. So I'm going to give you my top 10 income streams in chronological order to show you how I did it organically, um, logically, even before there were such a thing as digital nomads or before I knew what they were. And to show you how you can make money online doing what comes naturally to you in doing what you have expertise in. And you don't need permission, you don't need a job title, uh, you don't need any experience, uh, you only need to try and establish one online income stream. So you've gotta walk before you run.  

Kristin:    00:04:50    You don't need 10 online income streams, you need just one. And I had just one for years before I had a second one and then a third one. And to be honest, when I was looking up all of my income streams to do this podcast and I also made a video about it, I realized I might have too many because the 80/20 rule definitely applies when it comes to online income. And a hundred percent of nothing is nothing. So if you have a lot of income streams that aren't fully developed because you haven't spent enough time on them, then you're really not giving yourself a chance to make a lot of money online. And it's been really clear to me over the years that the income stream that I've spent the most time and attention on is the one that ends up growing the most.  

Kristin:    00:05:40    You know, where energy flows, attention goes, and all of these sayings like what you put your attention and energy towards, you will see results from. So if you have 10 or 20 online income streams, you only have enough time to really be like monitoring them all so much throughout the month. So you really should start small, start with one, nurture that income stream, grow it before you add another one, and maybe even decide to cap yourself at a, a couple of different income streams because otherwise you could end up with 10, but having 80% of your income come from just two of them. So this is particularly important if you're looking at something like affiliates. Um, I get a lot of companies approaching me to be an affiliate for their brand, and I'm like, well, I'm only gonna promote companies that I use or products and services that I use, first of all, and I'm kind of a minimalist, so I don't use that many.  

Kristin:    00:06:44    But also it would be ridiculous to represent a hundred different companies and <laugh> be an affiliate for them because how could I even talk about that many different things? You know, I'm just gonna pick the best ones that I actually use on a regular basis and that I think that other people should know about. So, you know, you could have, you could be an affiliate for one company and spend all of your time on that company, or you can be an affiliate for a hundred different companies and not even remember that you're an affiliate <laugh> for them. So keep that in mind as you're listening to this podcast and think of which of these income streams appeals to you the most. If if your ears perk up and you're like, oh, I could do that, um, or it could give you an idea of like, ah, I see how she created that out of this skill.  

Kristin:    00:07:36    What if I created this out of that skill and apply it to your own situation? But of course, before we get started, I will read one of the reviews of the podcast, and you can leave a review anywhere you want, and I will read it on the show someday, <laugh> eventually. And you can also leave me a voice message at TravelingwithKristin.com/podcast. Today's review is from Patrizio, and he says, hands down the best podcast for people aspiring to become digital nomads. This is the best podcast if you want to learn how to work online and travel the world. Interesting interviews with people that have quit their nine to fives and have been able to get out of the rat race. Thank you Patrizio for your review, and thanks to everyone listening and everyone out there believing reviews in countries all around the world. I'll just read another short one here from Office Bum who just says, excellent, very insightful and helpful.  

Kristin:    00:08:37    He's from the, he or she is from the us so thanks office bum for that. Shout out short and sweet. So let's get into it. I'm gonna do this in chronological order because these income streams vary month to month. So I was like, oh, I can do, which one's the biggest, which one's the, the smallest, but some months are bigger than others. Like I might make $40,000 off one and then not make anything from it for a year. So you just never know. But the first way that I started making money online was in 2008 when I was a real estate agent in Costa Rica. And I had moved to Nicaragua because I, a few years earlier had invested in a Century 21 franchise. And um, I just wanted to move up there to be closer to the office. And because, you know, it was a big investment and I, we had operating costs and we had three offices in Nicaragua, and so I just wanted to be closer to the operation.  

Kristin:    00:09:43    So I moved up there for the year, and this was, yeah, 2008. So blogging was just starting to become a thing, like online business was already a thing, but we were just getting all of our leads from the internet. And when I terminated that partnership and moved back to Costa Rica, I decided to work for myself because in real estate, it's kind of a weird industry where, uh, the agents are working for the owners, but also the buyers, but they're getting paid from the listings. And what I noticed, so we, we would get all of our leads from the internet, but then I was basically doing all of the work for many years in real estate. Like I didn't get that many leads from my office. I got most of them from referrals and from ads and things that I had online. And so I thought if I worked for myself, I would need to get less clients per month to be able to pay my bills because working for a broker or working in a partnership, I was giving anywhere from half, like half of my income was going to the office.  

Kristin:    00:11:07    So even if I had the client and I found the listing, I would have to pay half of my commission to the office. And that works out okay if you get the majority of your leads from the broker that you're working from their office. But I was an independent contractor, and you guys know I'm a hard worker <laugh>, so I wasn't really just sitting back and waiting for my broker to send me clients. I was like out there making stuff happen. So I was like, I'm working really hard and I'm just giving away half of my income. And then also I owned part of this office, so then I'm like spending thousands of dollars a month on the office, and I was like, things would be a lot easier if I just worked for myself and got out of this ordeal and I would be less stressed out and like things would be more chill.  

Kristin:    00:12:00    So I did that and for the next couple years, I think like two years, two or three years, I just worked for myself out of my house in Costa Rica, um, putting ads on real estate websites like Vivian.com and there's a lot of different ones. I don't know if they're even all still around. So I would find listings promote the properties because the owners didn't know how to use online marketing or these websites or anything. And then I would find buyers and they would either come down to look at the properties or sometimes they would just buy it online. Like I would send photos or videos and you know, the location, the map. We would get lawyers involved for the closing and everything. And sometimes they're just looking for investments. They're like, I don't really need to fly down to see this piece of land <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:12:57    I can see where it is on Google Maps. I, you know, you have the lawyer and all the stuff. They're like, okay, we'll just close, use escrow remotely. And that was that. And um, so that was my first way of making money online. And then I thought, okay, this is going great, but I was living in the Central Valley of San Jose in a suburb called ES Kazoo, and a lot of people were asking me for rentals. So I was doing a lot of rentals in person where I was actually going and showing the houses and doing everything like normally. But then I also thought, what if I applied this online real estate thing to rental properties? And this was before, this was before Airbnb. And uh, so I think I used maybe like TripAdvisor, no, not TripAdvisor, was it FlipKey? I don't even remember.  

Kristin:    00:13:58    It's so long ago, <laugh>. But I would just use all of these different, um, rental sites to show properties in Costa Rica, whether they were in the Central Valley where I was living or at the beaches. And so I was basically doing property management and booking properties remotely and managing them remotely. And then, um, charging a percentage, like 10 or 20% to on each rental. So if I had somebody fly down to Costa Rica and they went, let's say they went to HaCo, for example, I would never meet them, but they would fly in. I would even set up a driver to pick them up from the airport and take them to the rental property. The whole transaction was done online and then I had maids there. So when they left, we would have the maids go in and clean and prepare it for the next person.  

Kristin:    00:14:55    So I only did that in Costa Rica, but really you could do that anywhere in the world. And that's what a lot of people do now with Airbnb arbitrage, is they find properties in different countries and they manage them for the owners or they rent them, uh, with permission and then they sublet them through Airbnb. And now is not a very good example because of the pandemic. So things have changed a bit, but you could either make a percentage on the properties that you rent or you could take on more risk, <laugh>, more risk, more reward, and you could rent like 5, 10, 15, 20 properties around the world on a long-term lease for a thousand dollars a month, let's say. But then maybe the vacation rental rate is equivalent to a thousand dollars per week. So you can make a pretty good profit off of all of those, um, properties that you're managing, and then you could even stay in them.  

Kristin:    00:15:56    And so that's an option as well. So now we're up to about 2011. So between 2008 and 2011, I was doing kind of a hybrid thing between real estate in person in the traditional sense and real estate online. And then the same thing with rentals and property management and vacation rentals. So I would help local Costa Ricans find houses, long-term leases. And then I also was helping tourists find rentals at the beaches and stuff like that. And then I was also doing some other residential and commercial real estate in the Central Valley with another brokerage, but of course supplementing my income with, with other stuff on my own. So that's when I had the idea to, um, create my relocation company in 2011. And again, this was not intentionally a remote company, but it was just, I was living in Costa Rica. Regulations changed around online poker, which made it so that us poker players were not able to access international poker sites anymore.  

Kristin:    00:17:09    And most of those poker sites had offices in Costa Rica. So I was really familiar with that industry. And so I had the idea to help us poker players move to Costa Rica. Um, and then I also did the same thing for Mexico, Panama and Canada, or I think I started with Canada, Panama, Costa Rica, and then added Mexico and then added, now we do like 35 different countries. But, um, so my idea was, okay, help them move to Costa Rica. So get the clients through online sources. I actually started out by private messaging poker players on Facebook and telling them like, Hey, if you wanna play poker, you can come to Costa Rica and I'll help you. And so I did a couple relocations for free and then those guys told their friends and then I had credibility and I partnered with this poker forum and they vouched for me and said like, from then on, I just had clients always, but I would charge a consulting fee, like a relocation fee for that.  

Kristin:    00:18:14    And so even though I was living in Costa Rica, I was getting my clients online, and then I would eventually meet them in person because they would fly down. But then I was also relocating them to Canada and Panama because I had lived in both of those places as well. I knew the ropes, of course, I spoke Spanish so I could work in any of the Latin countries and I could help them find housing, I could help them with banking, I could had ways to source drivers and translators and all of the things that were needed to go into planning an international relocation. And so accidentally I started working remotely that way. So I was working in person in Costa Rica, but then managing everything from my computer and helping people go to other countries where I wasn't and hiring subcontractors and freelancers to, um, meet people on the ground.  

Kristin:    00:19:09    So that was my third, uh, revenue stream and I still make income from that, but it's, it's less now because of the pandemic, so less people can move. But I have added a lot of other different revenue streams that came out of that one, which I'm going to talk about next. So from the relocation company, after about the first year of doing it, like 2011 to 2012, I thought, you know, I've been in Costa Rica for pretty much my whole twenties. Let me go somewhere else because I love traveling and I used to just travel whenever I wanted to because I worked for myself in real estate. So I could like take a few months, go to another country, come back, but I'm like, I just wanna be like traveling full-time. Like I don't need to have this house here, this apartment. And I just kind of felt like I had to make a decision between am I going to buy a house and like live in Costa Rica and make my life here and get residency and like commit or am I done?  

Kristin:    00:20:19    And I decided I'm done <laugh>. So I just wanted to travel and be free. And so, um, I started traveling at the end of 2012, full-time, like sublet my apartment and hit the road and continue to grow my relocation business. And the idea was to go to all of the countries that I wanted to work in so that I could then open bank accounts, find local providers and set up relocation services in those countries. So I went to more cities in Canada, I went to Europe, I went to London, I went to Malta. I would like stay in each place for a couple months and get to know the ropes. I went to ply El Carmen in 2013. I lived there for a few months. I went to Rosarito. I went to all the places that I thought were good places for remote poker players to live, and then I would set things up and um, keep going.  

Kristin:    00:21:17    So it was kind of for fun, but also for business. And so the, the next revenue stream that came out of that relocation company was affiliate marketing. And I didn't know anything about affiliate marketing before, but the affiliate marketing industry and online gaming is massive and it's massive in like every industry, but there's a lot of money to be made in online gambling. So if you've ever seen ads for like gaming websites or casinos, I mean there's a massive infrastructure and industry behind that with content and getting people to click on their banner ads and promotions. So I was signing up poker players and sports bets for gaming sites and I thought, why don't I become an affiliate of these gaming sites? And so I did, and I would make a commission every time the poker player or sports bet would deposit money through an eWallet that I was an affiliate of.  

Kristin:    00:22:22    And I would teach them how to use it because the poker players would save money. They wouldn't have to send money from a pesos bank account in Mexico and small increments to another bank account. And like there's all these transfer fees. So if, if they opened an eWallet, they could upload funds to the poker sites way faster and cheaper and easier than if they did it through a traditional bank. So like I was telling you with TransferWise, that's why I use TransferWise because the alternative to using it is either physically going into a bank and making a transfer or doing it online and spending like 20 or $30 and then paying a markup on the exchange rate and then waiting a long time for that transfer to get there and then having to pay incoming fees on the other side. So over time I started to learn these things and like recommend products, then I'm like, oh, I can also be an affiliate of these products that I'm using and it's a win-win.  

Kristin:    00:23:24    So I started to explore more about the affiliate industry as it related to gaming, going to affiliate conferences in Barcelona. And I don't even remember like all, all around the world. Um, I think it was one in Hong Kong, I don't know. Well, I did go to Hong Kong and Macal 'cause that was a really popular place for, um, poker and sports, uh, sports betting and stuff like that. But this experience, I was able to match my income from the relocation company with affiliate income and I learned all about that industry and now I've applied that to a travel affiliate potential and remote work tools and, and things like that that I'm doing today that I didn't know about before. So if you're interested in affiliate marketing, and maybe we can do another episode about that or maybe a video. So just let me know, um, at Traveling with Kristin, if that's something that you wanna learn more about.  

Kristin:    00:24:32    But I'm just trying to show you how each time I pursued an online income stream, once I had experience and once I learned about that in uh, industry, I discovered more opportunities to add to my online revenue portfolio. So the real theme here in this podcast is to not think of yourself as like a cog in the wheel or what is it, a cog in the system. Um, like a, if you're an employee for a company and you have a job title and you're exchanging, you know, your time for money for that salary and you're doing one thing or you're doing and you have a a big job description. But unless you're getting paid overtime or something, you're just making the same amount of money all year. When you think of yourself as an online business and as a company and as a brand, even if you're a freelancer doing one thing, you can start to have diversified income streams that are bigger than what you started out doing.  

Kristin:    00:25:38    So the next thing that I started doing after affiliate marketing is other types of consulting, because I had been doing relocation for years at this point. And so I started getting inquiries from people asking about other stuff like, Hey, I don't need to relocate, but can you help me open a bank account in Germany? Or can you help me find an accountant in Malta or can you help me find a rental property in Spain? And so I started just charging an hourly rate to help people with their problems. And it sounds simple, but it, it is <laugh> like if you know how to do something and you start doing it and you have a website and then other people start finding you and word spreads over the years that you know how to do this thing, more and more people will start asking you for help with stuff.  

Kristin:    00:26:35    And you can totally speed this process up, which you should listen to the other episode about how to make money online and like how to find clients and customers by communicating what it is that you do. But, um, consulting, like hourly consulting, whether you set your rate at $20 an hour or $50 an hour or $500 an hour, um, depends on the value that you're providing in your experience of course, but, and also the clients, the types of clients that you're, that you're helping. Um, I know a YouTuber who charges like $25 to answer a question and she makes a lot of money doing that. I should probably do that 'cause I just have been doing it for free online. But, um, then there's also, you know, people who only work with big corporations and they're doing brand strategy for a Fortune 500 company. So their hourly rate is gonna be higher, but there's also services where you can sign up as a consultant and put what it is that you do and people who go to those websites can then find you that way.  

Kristin:    00:27:50    Or they can go to like a consultant broker and say, okay, I am, I need relocation help for my company. I need to talk to a relocation consultant. So I've gotten business that way just through LinkedIn by being a relocation consultant and signing up with these sites or having people contact me saying like, we're looking for relocation consultants and can you help our clients? Blah, blah blah. And so these are all organic ways that you can make money online from anywhere. I've never met most of my clients face-to-face. And it doesn't matter <laugh> because we all can work from anywhere with the internet. So consulting is my fifth one. So we have real estate commissions, property management and rentals, relocation, affiliate marketing consulting outside of the relocation company. And um, the next thing I started to do was writing because I love writing and I was already, I was already doing it.  

Kristin:    00:29:02    I had a blog in 2007, 2008, but then I eventually stopped doing it and got busy with with work, but I wanted to get back to it. So I wanted to charge for my writing, but I needed experience and I needed a portfolio. So I started writing on Medium for free in 2016 and then I kind of stopped and then started again in 2018. And I, my idea was just write to get better at writing and just practice and share what I think and share what I know and what I've learned and try to help people with everything from business to mental health and productivity. And I just felt like I had learned so much in my life and from traveling to so many countries that I'm like, it won't help that many people if I'm just consulting one-on-one, I need to publish what I know on the internet so that anyone can find it if they are looking for help with that thing.  

Kristin:    00:30:05    And so this was before the Medium Partner program, but out of that, out of blogging, basically I got more comfortable with my writing skills. I think my writing got better and I was just more confident. So I actually pitched my work to other people and companies and I started getting freelance writing jobs and some of them were really low paying at the beginning, but I didn't care 'cause I just wanted to get the experience and build my portfolio. And now there's the medium partner program. So I write in that and my top article has made more than $6,000 just off one article. And I have multiple other articles that have made like one, two, $3,000 and that turns into passive income because you just write it once and then people can read it a bazillion times in the future. And so you can get paid off one article forever, as long as there's the partner program.  

Kristin:    00:31:07    Um, but some articles don't do well financially. Like I might make a few dollars on them or a hundred dollars or something, but at first, 'cause I don't know, you know, that one article, maybe it makes thousands of dollars, but over the next like five years, who knows? Um, you just have to keep putting stuff out there. But through this writing, I have made money through the partner program, through freelance writing jobs, ghost writing, writing articles for other people's websites, and now writing and doing voiceovers, writing for my YouTube channel, writing for the podcast like writing, writing, writing, <laugh> writing all the time. And so this has become a legitimate income stream for me and leading out of this writing and leading out of the desire to share my knowledge and experiences. And of course like I don't know everything, but I do know a lot and I'm like, none of this is helping anyone if I keep it in my head.  

Kristin:    00:32:17    So I started the podcast, I started my YouTube channel and not thinking that I was going to make a bunch of money with it, but just because I went through this period of about three years when I was doing poker refugees and before I started creating content where I was just consuming tons of books, tons of podcasts, like journaling, trying to figure out what to do with my life and honestly trying to psych myself up for what I already knew I wanted to do, which was create, I wanted to have a travel show, I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't think I was good enough because I wasn't <laugh> because I hadn't started yet. So it really took me three years. It was like 2014, maybe I even started this in 20 13, 20 13 till 2017 probably of just trying to prepare. And then I finally, I guess I started writing in 2016.  

Kristin:    00:33:26    I bought a camera in 2017. I started my YouTube channel in 2018. And like here we are today in 2020. So the rest is kind of history. But my next revenue stream number seven has been client work for video production and audio production. So these are things that I did not plan on doing, but I did it so much for myself that I got better at it and I think pretty good at it. I mean, I'm sure 10 years from now I'll be like, oh my god, I was so awful. You know, like we always look back and we're like, ah, like I look at my videos from a year ago and I'm like, what? No, but you know, you have to start somewhere and you only have to be 1% better than the person you're helping to be able to help them. So when small businesses and other digital nomads and online entrepreneurs and people come to me for help with YouTube, with making videos for social media, with uh, starting a podcast with commercials, where did you get your voiceover or I did the voiceover.  

Kristin:    00:34:36    Okay, can you do one for me? This has become another income stream and it's been a very useful one, especially since I started doing it around the time that the pandemic happened and income from relocation like went away <laugh> overnight, it's coming back now, but um, yeah, so because I had diversified already then this work from videos and writing and other things filled in those gaps. So this is sort of sort of consulting in a way, but it's not hourly consulting, it's project based production. So I am now a video and audio production company. I actually started a second company, well, I don't know how many companies I have now. Uh, no I do, but I started another company called Remote Creative where I am providing these services through that company. So I am helping remote businesses, entrepreneurs, startups with their creative production, not just me, but my team.  

Kristin:    00:35:49    Um, so this is a new income stream and another thing that came out of creating content has been making money from YouTube ads since. So this is my eighth income stream and it's not that big yet, but I think it's finally starting to grow. Like it grew like 50% month over month and then 20%. And that is another big takeaway from this episode is that if you can learn to make $1 online, you can make a thousand dollars online. And if you can make a thousand dollars online with that thing, you can make $10,000 online. And I know people who are making a hundred thousand dollars a month off of, uh, YouTube ads <laugh>, and so, you know, they've been at it for 10, 12 years. But you don't have to put the same amount of effort into something. Once you've built it up that big, it kind of carries itself and you get that momentum.  

Kristin:    00:36:51    So take for example, my subscriber count on YouTube, which isn't really relevant to anything except for maybe brand deals because YouTube doesn't care how many subscribers you have for AdSense. They only care how, how good is that video and do people wanna watch it? So it doesn't matter if you're subscribers are watching it or somebody else is watching it, obviously it's awesome to have thousands of people subscribe to your channel. Like when I think of a room with 16,000 people, like 16,000 human beings clicked on the subscribe button because they watched one of my videos and they liked it and they, or they liked me or they liked what I had to say or they learned something like that is mind boggling to me. And so that's cool. And like a side note, but the fir it took me a year of making videos to reach a thousand subscribers where I could monetize the channel and you needed 4,000 hours of watch time, but I didn't even monetize my channel for like another six months or so.  

Kristin:    00:38:01    'cause I wasn't sure if I even wanted to do YouTube ads, but then I was like, oh, why not? Like everyone else has ads so I might as well do it. Um, but now I could get a thousand subscribers in like a week or so because I have so many videos. And so some of them are gonna be good <laugh> if you make hundreds of videos. Some of them will be good and people will like them. And so more people will watch those and then YouTube will suggest those. And so instead of taking a year to make a thousand or to reach a thousand subscribers, like there's YouTubers that get a thousand subscribers in one day, um, but they're not putting any extra effort more than they did a year ago. You know, they're still trying just as hard, like you have to work just as hard to make your first video as your 100th video and whether one person watches it or a million people watch it, like you still had to spend that time and that energy and that research on that video.  

Kristin:    00:39:09    So it's the same thing with online income and passive income and automated income. You still invest time in writing that article. That article might make $4, it might make a hundred dollars, it might make $10,000, it might make more than that. It's kind of like you put it out there and you don't know what the outcome is gonna be, but sometimes you can just be pleasantly surprised where you're like, I'm gonna make this thing even though the partner program doesn't exist. My channel's not monetized, I'm still gonna make this content 'cause it's gonna help people. And then later you get like a payoff from it. That comes in unexpected ways. So even if you feel like you're struggling, struggling, struggling to build this income stream, like let's say that you wanna do social media marketing for people, it's gonna be a uphill battle to get the word out.  

Kristin:    00:40:09    Hey, I'm doing social media marketing now, and you have to message a bunch of people and like prove yourself and take on jobs for free or for low money to get testimonials and stuff like that. But if you're doing that for five years and you've helped so many people with their social media marketing, they're gonna tell other people. So if they're talking to someone and it comes up like, oh yeah, I gotta like figure out how to do Facebook ads, or I gotta make a video for my, uh, pizza place, and you're, they're like, oh my god, mark does that, or, or Jennifer does that. And then you're gonna start getting more clients without necessarily putting in that extra work cold calling people. So it works in all different ways. It works in freelancing. And then you get recurring clients monthly income from the same people who need help with stuff every month.  

Kristin:    00:41:04    And then you get, um, more people finding out about you word of mouth and it just kind of builds from there. And it's the same way with with writing. And it's the same way with YouTube. You just get these exponential gains the longer that you're doing something. And that's why you should always work through the dip. Unless you're doing something that really, like, you just don't think it's gonna work out and it's time to quit, that's definitely a thing. <laugh>, you shouldn't stick with something that, that you hate doing or that's just not gonna work. But a lot of time you just need a little bit more time until something works on its own. So out of that, we have two more. So from AdSense then I started getting approached by sponsors and influencer marketing companies who wanted to work with me or who, uh, identified me as a good fit for one of their clients.  

Kristin:    00:42:03    So this is actually really funny how this works out because at a video YouTube conference last year, and a guy from an influencer marketing company who I met at a networking event, uh, we were talking and he's like, oh, you would be a really good fit. Like, I didn't know he was with an influencer marketing company. Like we just were having a drink and like small talk and he's like, oh, you have a YouTube channel, like, and it's about travel and blah, blah blah. And like I showed him some stuff and he's like, you'd be a really good fit for one of our new clients who was called away, like away travel away luggage. And I'm like, oh, that's really funny because they already run ads on my channel. Like YouTube was already running away luggage ads on my videos, <laugh>. So they were paying YouTube for marketing that was showing up on my channel, but then there's also the, the possibility that they could pay me directly, um, to make a commercial or something about their luggage.  

Kristin:    00:43:10    And it actually, that one didn't end up working out. And now yeah, that's a whole nother story with that company when with the pandemic, and they had some, there were some very public like, uh, executive issues going on with that at that company, but I still love their luggage. And um, that's the kind of things that can happen when you're, when you're working on something, you can find other revenue streams out of it. So sponsored videos has become a new revenue stream for me as of 2020. Another funny story, I I read like all kinds of stuff about remote work and travel news all the time. And I came across this online bank for freelancers called Oxygen Bank and it was brand new. And I'm like, that is so cool because it's like fee free bank account and you could have a personal account and a business account in the same app and you don't have to pay any monthly fees and you can manage your expenses this way.  

Kristin:    00:44:13    And they had like all these extra features for self-employed independent workers, entrepreneurs and um, small business owners. And so I thought that is really cool. And I did an episode of Digital Nomad News about it and it's actually on the Digital Nomad News podcast, which is discontinued, but it's up there. And I opened an account and I ordered the debit card and I start using it. I'm like, this is cool, I'm gonna like recommend it to people. And then a week or so later, an influencer marketing company contacted me to pitch, um, Oxygen Bank as the sponsor for some of my content. And so I was like, yeah, perfect. I already have been promoting them just because I thought that they had a cool product and so it was a perfect fit. And uh, they sponsored, um, I did a sponsored Instagram post and two videos in including this one about, um, my online income streams.  

Kristin:    00:45:17    And so I got to make a commercial for a product that I use and get paid for it. So it covered the production costs of the video. And then you guys get to learn about a fee free digital online bank for freelancers, which is like a perfect thing that will help you in your online business. And so that's another synergy that, uh, came out of this. And so those are my top nine online income streams right now. And then the 10th one that everybody can do is products and courses. Like before I went, before I say that though, I just wanna say a note on the, uh, influencer stuff and the content with the YouTube ads and the sponsored videos and, and stuff like that. No matter what industry you're in, like you don't have to become a major influencer and obviously I'm a micro influencer, but you don't have to put yourself out there so much to be able to make money from those types of sources.  

Kristin:    00:46:23    You just really have to position yourself, I don't even wanna use the word position yourself. You have to share publicly what you know about your industry or your area of expertise and you will attract peers and companies and brands that want to communicate something to people who are consuming your content. So by you being you creating a personal brand, not even creating it, but by being yourself and the world and talking about what you know how to do, helping people do what you do, solving problems for people that you solve for people in your company or in your circle of friends or your family. Whether it's like how to fix your kitchen sink or how to do this SERP analysis for your website, whatever the skills are that you have when you start hearing it online, that is building a personal brand and it's helping people and it's building credibility and like a lot of other revenue streams can come out of that.  

Kristin:    00:47:35    Um, James Clear the author, he started blogging and he makes most of his money through his email list who are subscribers of his blog. So it's like if you're just you out in the world and you do your thing, then you'll be able to generate income from anywhere doing the things that you do, whether it's attracting writing clients, um, like I did or having proof, like basically having your portfolio public so that you don't even have to approach people, they're just gonna find your work and then contact you about it. Like that's what, that's what you wanna do. So whether you're a wedding planner or a plumber or whatever it is, like you might as well share actually today I was listening to a podcast, it was an old podcast with Matt D’Avella and I don't even know the guest's name. Um, 'cause it just came up on like my auto play as I was making breakfast.  

Kristin:    00:48:39    So I have to look back at that. I'll put it in the show notes. Um, but he was talking about how he, the guest teaches people who didn't go to college practical work skills. And he was saying if he has a student who learns how to use Salesforce, the CRM, um, customer relationship management system, um, I think they do email marketing to maybe. But if he has a student who learns how to use that, he then encourages that student to create a tutorial on how to use it to help other people who want to learn how to use Salesforce. And it's really as simple as that, not like go create a personal brand about being a Salesforce expert. It's like you became adept at using this piece of software. Um, pay it forward, post a video on YouTube about how to use it and help somebody and you know, who knows what happens if you keep doing that over and over again, sharing what you know and and then making it public and making it available for free for everyone.  

Kristin:    00:49:49    Yeah, you can start a business that way. So getting to the last income stream products and courses and eBooks, hopefully <laugh> being that I'm a writer, you would think that I would have my book done by now, but maybe because I'm a writer, that's why it's not done <laugh>. I've been writers procrastinate, everyone procrastinates. Um, but my book is, um, is on its third edit and it's been a year and a half and it's not done yet, but uh, I should have more books out there. And that is a, a revenue stream that I plan to grow in the future as I develop my writing skills and share how to do more things through the written word. Not just through podcasts, not just through video, but um, through that other format. But that's something that everyone can do. You can write an ebook or create a how to guide or a webinar or a workshop or an online course or something about things that you know how to do.  

Kristin:    00:50:51    And I have just started doing this, but I really wish that I started creating these types of things even before I started creating content because creating content is a lot of fun. But also you help people more if you create content about a topic and then you give them a tool to take action, whether it's, uh, doing a checklist or buying a book or taking a course to develop those skills more. And so this has become a revenue stream for me, but hopefully, um, I create more products and more courses so that I can help more people <laugh> in the future and it will grow. But I have just started with that and um, you know, you can have a beginner's mind and I just started creating stuff based on what people asked me for help with. So the first thing I did was make a course about how to become a digital nomad and how to make money online.  

Kristin:    00:51:59    And now I am doing one on how to find remote jobs. So just anything that, that you know how to do that other people want help with. If you create a digital product to help people do that, you can sell it online and then you can make money from anywhere. So the common thread throughout all of these ways that I've been making money online, none of them are, I guess like none of them are the cliche way besides maybe affiliate marketing, but none of them are like programming or dropshipping or any of like the main ways that you might see ads of how to make money online. Although with online courses, I do see a lot of ads on how to do that, but I still think that the fastest way to make an income online is to start helping people do things that you know how to do.  

Kristin:    00:53:06    Help them solve problems. Like you already solve problems for people at your job by fulfilling your job description or whatever it is that you've ever done to make money in the past that was to help someone or something like help a company do something. So if you offer the skills that you have to other people, and again, go back to the other podcast on How to Make Money Online Fast 'cause that will have more steps or sign up for my make money mentorship where I walk you through this over the course of a month and we have phone calls and things and um, q and as and workshops to help you actually implement each step, which you can do at digitalnomadbootcamp.com. Offer the skills that you have to one person and just start there and think about that. I started with what I knew real estate 2008 selling real estate online.  

Kristin:    00:54:12    What do you know how to do that you can sell online or that you can help someone with remotely? There's probably a lot of things and that's again, in that other episode. Um, so yeah, like from 2008 until now, that's a long time. And maybe if I would've just stuck with one stream and I worked in the affiliate gambling industry for the past 10 years, then maybe I would be making a hundred million dollars a year as an affiliate for casino websites. If you focus on one thing for a long time, you can grow it bigger, but that was not my passion, so I did not commit to that. So it is a bit of a fine line, you know, you wanna do something that you like, but you also deserve to make money from what you do because you are providing value in the world.  

Kristin:    00:55:09    And when you provide value and when you help people with with things, then they pay you an exchange for that. That's just how our system works. So, or you can barter with people, which I do that too sometimes. Um, I'll do like swaps with people of, of things that I don't know how to do. Like I'm not good at web web design, things like that. So I really hope that this has been helpful for you guys. But just take one step today towards creating one online revenue stream for yourself. Stick with that for one month or one year and see where you go. And again, you can get, you can get more help from me directly through my course or on my website. You can book a consulting call if you just wanna explore, um, how I can help you with your problems with online business or your brand or your video production or things like that, I'm happy to help.  

Kristin:    00:56:14    You're not alone. Everyone struggles with these things, but remember too that it's not just what you do, but how you can get paid. And so my friend Richie Norton, who has the Richie Norton Show, he always talks about how, uh, entrepreneurs that come to him, they're like, I haven't made money, I haven't made money, my business isn't doing well. And he's like, when is the last time you charged somebody or when's the last time you asked for a credit card? And so you have to have a way to receive payments. And that's in my other podcast as well. There's freelancing recommendations and online bank recommendations. And that's why I use TransferWise. I actually get paid from affiliate companies into my TransferWise account in all different currencies. So some of them are, um, based in other countries. I can get paid into British pounds, into Euro, into any currency, almost any currency, more than 50 currencies.  

Kristin:    00:57:20    And that saves me money too. So if you, let's say that you become an affiliate, but you have an account with a traditional bank and you put in your banking info to get paid out for your monthly affiliate payments, your bank is gonna charge you a foreign exchange fee if that money's coming from a different currency and they're gonna charge you an incoming wire fee if it's coming from another country. But if you are an affiliate for a site that's gonna do your payout in British pounds and they wanna pay you in British pounds, you can just put in your TransferWise info and cut out all of those intermediary fees, high foreign exchange rate fees and um, transfer fees, and you can just receive the money in that currency and then you can spend it on your debit card in US dollars or whatever you wanna do.  

Kristin:    00:58:17    Or you can change, exchange it for a low rate into another currency and you can, you know, pay your virtual assistant in, in this country or pay, uh, your freelancer in South Africa or whatever. And so also when you're looking to make money online, remember you need to have a bank account to receive money from anywhere in the world because if you have that account there, it's like it's good energy to have a, a bucket to collect the money in. So otherwise it's just all in your head, you know, or you could just pay higher fees than needed. I hope that this has been helpful for you guys and we're gonna have lots more actionable how-to tutorial type podcasts coming up, but also some really cool interviews coming up, some which have been scheduled and some which have already been recorded. So stay tuned for that. Make sure to leave a review for Badass Digital Nomads wherever you are listening from. Stay safe, stay badass. See you next week. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, you can support the podcast and look cool while you're doing it by checking out our new merch over on teespring.com/stores/TravelingwithKristin. We have t-shirts, tank tops stickers, coffee mugs, hoodies, cell phone cases, bags and more. Again, that's at teespring.com/stores/TravelingwithKristin.