My 12 Sources of Income in My 30s

I used to think that the “right” way to make a stable life for myself was to work really hard at my job, climb the corporate ladder, and trade my time for money.

It wasn’t even on my radar to consider building up multiple streams of income that didn’t rely on my direct participation. But looking back now, I see how risky it is to rely on just one stream of active income.

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Active income refers to the system of trading your time for money — how much you make is directly tied to how many hours you work. The second you decide to quit (or you get fired), that income stream stops. 

Passive income, on the other hand, is money that doesn’t take a lot of your time or effort to make. It can run on autopilot, which allows you to turn your focus away and the revenue will come in regardless.

Eventually, I realized I didn’t want all my eggs in one basket with my one law job, plus I didn’t want to spend my life trading my time for money! Which is why I turned my one income stream into many streams.

READ MORE: Understanding Passive Income vs. Earned Income

1. YouTube Ad Revenue

Once I started creating YouTube content and gaining subscribers, I began earning money off the ads that played on my content. 

On YouTube, creators can start earning ad revenue once they reach 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. Advertisers pay YouTube to play their ads, then YouTube pays creators when they show ads on the creator’s profile.

YouTube keeps a cut of the money, but creators still earn 55% of the revenue. 

On a good streak when my videos have a lot of traction, I can make over $1,000 a day from YouTube ads!

Want to get started making you own videos? Download my FREE YouTube Guide and learn how I grew from 0 subscribers to earning $100,000 in less than a year!

READ MORE: How To Make Money on YouTube

2. Affiliate Marketing

If you really like a product or service offered by a certain company, you can make money by becoming an affiliate partner with them. 

An affiliate partner promotes the brand’s products or services to their audience in return for compensation. 

For example, I am an affiliate partner with Webull, an investing app. 

Webull gives me a customized link that I promote through my YouTube, website, and social media. Because the link is uniquely my own, we can track the number of people who signed up for Webull’s services from my marketing efforts. 

When Webull receives a certain number of sign-ups through my affiliate link, I get a free stock!

The key to affiliate marketing is to find products/services you like, then find out if they have an affiliate program. It’s an easy way to make money, especially when you’re promoting brands you really enjoy and care about.

3. Sponsorships

If you’ve watched any of my YouTube videos before, you’ve probably seen me talk about how the video is sponsored by a certain company. These companies pay me to mention them and promote their services to my audience. 

When considering sponsorships, I’m careful who I align myself with because the reputation of that brand will reflect back on me. I get a few offers each week for sponsored videos and I turn down the majority because I only want to work with companies I truly trust and believe in. 

I only have one reputation, which takes years to build up. Just one wrong move can burn it down. I won’t compromise my rep for a quick buck.

READ MORE: How Much Erika Kullberg Makes on Social Media

4. Digital Products

A digital product may take some time to create, but will immediately become passive once it’s published. 

My digital product is a part of my legal tech company, Plug & Law. It contains a set of templates that a small business owner can purchase online and immediately use to complete certain legal documentation for their business. 

It took some time to create and perfect them, but after the templates were completed, the product required very little maintenance, and the revenue became passive. 

I found this niche because, as a lawyer, I know how expensive it is for a small business to hire a legal professional! 

Small businesses with websites need specific legal documentation and privacy policies drawn up and posted on the site, and the free resources available on the internet are pretty sketchy. 

Plus, hiring a lawyer to do it all is insanely expensive. 

Because it’s all digital, I was able to automate every aspect of Plug & Law. Aside from keeping the templates up-to-date and answering the occasional customer service inquiry, my digital product is totally passive. 

I also have a free legal guide that business owners can download so they stay protected. 

5. Productized Services

Service-based jobs like lawn mowing are the easiest to start, but they’re difficult to scale up. 

Productized services meet in the middle — you’re providing a service, but it's packaged as a product to buy since the service is standardized and will be performed repeatedly.

For example, social media management can be a productized service. The product you market might be to run someone’s social media for a month. The service is a package in which you agree to write five posts per week and the customer can renew month-to-month. 

The beauty of this type of work is that once you’ve established yourself, you can build a team to do the work for you. Or, if the service is one you can automate, you can take yourself fully out of the equation! 

My productized service is a “Trademark Bundle” and is part of my legal company, Plug & Law. The customer gives us all their information, and we fill out the paperwork for them so they can register their trademark. 

All we need from the customer is a digital signature. I’ve built a team to operate this service and taken myself out so it's a fully passive form of income for me!

READ MORE: Do I Need an LLC?

6. Online Courses

Are you an expert on something that you feel passionate about sharing with others? Consider making an online course that people can purchase from you! 

Over the years, I’ve created several online courses, including:

• Mastering YouTube: A step-by-step guide to growing a successful YouTube channel, including how to negotiate sponsorship deals and affiliate deals
• Magic Budgeting System: 10 videos plus other resources showing strategies for budgeting, saving, and optimizing your spending
• 3D Money: 94 video lessons to improve your finances, covering budgeting, credit, debt payoff, and investing

Depending on how you structure your course, you could make it totally passive — once you’ve put in the time and energy to create it, you can sell it over and over again! You only have to worry about marketing it to get the word out.

My advice for marketing an online course is to pre-sell it. Before you even go through the work to make the course, make sure it’s something people actually want by polling your audience. 

Once you’re confident you’ll make money off it, get to filming that course!

7. Lawyer

I spent a lot of money to become a lawyer…so I figure I should put that money to good use! 

Practicing law is a form of active income for me, so I have a set hourly rate for those services. 

I only take on legal projects I’m really passionate about, such as representing YouTubers and helping them negotiate sponsorships and deals so they get what they’re really worth.

I also represent start-ups I believe in and work on some trademark projects. 

In general, I turn down most legal projects simply because they’re not scalable or passive, which are the kinds of projects I want to focus on right now!

8. Dividend Income

Dividends are the money a company distributes to its shareholders, based on the revenue the company earns. 

When you invest in dividend-paying companies, you actively purchase shares. But from there, the shares produce a passive income that you can reinvest or use.

If you're interested but don’t want to go through the hassle of searching out the perfect dividend-paying company, look at exchange-traded funds (ETFs). 

An ETF is a bundle of company shares. It minimizes your risk since the assets are distributed across several companies. 

9. White-Labeling

When you see generic branded potato chips at the grocery store, you’re seeing an example of white-labeling. This is when the manufacturer of the product puts the branding of the marketer/seller on the product.

I have a product that customers can buy with their own logo on it, so I make a set amount of money each time I sell this item even though it doesn’t have my logo on it.

10. Rental Income

This form of passive income is fairly straightforward. 

The income I receive in this category is derived from the use of real estate I own. After repairs and maintenance, rental income can be quite passive!

11. Speaking Engagements

As I’ve grown my platform, I’ve had opportunities to speak to companies about finding success in entrepreneurship, YouTube, personal finance, and more. 

I have pretty bad stage fright, so I used to basically blackout while I was talking at a conference. I’d come off stage and have no idea how it went! 

But the more I do it, the easier it gets for me to speak in public. Plus, it helps to have the motivation of a paycheck at the end! 

It also makes me feel like I have a bigger impact when I speak in person about the things I’m most passionate about. 

12. Angel Investing

My final stream of income is somewhat riskier than the others I’ve described. 

“Angel investing” is when an investor provides a start-up with funds in exchange for part ownership or equity in the company. The hope is that the company will grow and the investor will get their money back, plus more. 

Angel investing is risky since the odds of a start-up becoming the next Uber or Airbnb are pretty low. However, I’m very strategic with the companies I put money into: I invest in the ones I really believe in.

TL;DR: Why You Need Multiple Sources of Income 

Building your streams of income takes time. You’re planting seeds for the future and the payout won’t be immediate. 

But keep in mind that in a traditional, 9-to-5 job, there will be a clearly defined cap on how much money you can make. With numerous revenue streams, there is no cap! It’s yours for the taking, so get creative and get to it!

For more tips on how you can earn more income, check out these episodes of the Erika Taught Me podcast:

• Building Actual Passive Income
• Secret For Building an Audience That Buys
• How To Sell Without Selling

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