How Ryan Scribner Makes $40,000/Month in Passive Income

0:00
Hey guys, it’s Sharon from Digital Nomad Quest. I’m excited to speak with Ryan Scribner today, how are you doing?

0:05
doing pretty good. How about yourself?

0:07
I am good. So Ryan is a full time youtuber and blogger who talks about personal finance and investment and different money making ideas. Maybe you can actually tell us about yourself.

0:19
Sure, yeah. So basically, I would say up until last year, I was more or less just defined as a YouTuber. So I’ve been doing YouTube videos since October of 2016. And I mostly talk about investing personal finance and like basic money related skills. Then in 2018, I expanded a little bit with the blog that I operate with a business partner called investing simple that’s investing simple calm, which is cool. We used to be dot blog, but now we got the.com. So pretty official there. But yeah, between those two things between YouTube and blogging, I’ve consistently made, you know, multiple, five figures per month. Most of its still currently coming from YouTube, but the blog is, you know, scaling up as we put more effort into it, but that’s Basically what I cover is those type of topics. And then the primary way that I monetize those platforms on the blogging side, it’s exclusively affiliate marketing. And then on the YouTube side it’s a mix of affiliate marketing as well as you know, running YouTube ads on my videos, but it’s allowed me to make you know, great money doing something I really enjoy. So I’ve had a good, good run with it so far. That’s awesome.

1:22
And yeah, you said you switched it to.com was that like, did you have to buy that from someone?

1:27
Yeah, we did. And it took us like, over six months to like, track this guy down because we we had like multiple we looked up, we looked them up on the who is domain registry, or whatever that is, our web guy helped us out with that. And we had like five different phone numbers. he the guy had like seven different emails. So we just like kept sending like, we didn’t want to bombard this guy, but like, what we would do is like, we would send him an email and then like, wait another week or two and send him a different email to one of his other email addresses. And then it even got to the point where, like, we literally had a listing of like, five properties That his he owned and like I started mailing him letters to those proud. I’m like, we want to buy this from you. And then finally, like there was a bunch of phone numbers listed. And one day I was like, You know what, I’m just going to start calling his numbers. And like a first one I called like the second ring, this guy picked up and I was like, Hey, I’m trying to buy your domain. And he was like, oh, and he was like, he somehow like hadn’t received any of the emails or the letters. So I was like, Man, this guy’s hard to track down. But yeah, that was a pretty big purchase. We ended up paying I think $4,500 for that guy actually made out pretty well, because he bought it 10 years ago for probably 10 bucks the cost to register it for a year, and then sold it for 4500. So but in terms of blogging, having the.com is really important for you know, your domain authority and just being recognized and taken seriously.

2:49
Yeah. Do you feel like you’ve increased in traffic when you did that? Or is it

2:53
actually at first we decreased in traffic, which was really interesting, because I guess Google thinks it’s like suspicious when you change your domain. So like you get a short term penalty and then then it kind of smooths out so I think we’ve pretty much moved out now but it was kind of crazy because after we bought that domain we like saw an almost immediate decrease in our traffic and we were like oh my god what

3:17
if I get in the long run for sure.

3:19
Yeah, it’s definitely a good and then having a domain that’s 10 years old also helps you with your domain authority again, that helps as well

3:26
that David had it for 10 years or whatever.

3:28
Yeah, he bought it I think in somewhere around I guess 2009 2010 he actually bought like a bunch of words followed by simple so he bought like drink simple.com and I think he’s sold just about all of those now and he sold some for like over $10,000 which is crazy wow okay,

3:46
that’s that’s like another business people could like run basically just buying

3:50
domains wanting and sending out domains and waiting, but it’s hard. I don’t know. You’d have to be really creative not to like think of something but yeah, fresh street simple drinks, simple. And he sold pretty much I think most of the good ones that he had

4:04
as smart. I mean, so now you said you make most of your income through YouTube, right? And then

4:10
yeah, right now, it’s still like I would say, probably somewhere around 90% of the income is still coming from YouTube 10% from the blog. But the good thing is blogging is where all the money is. So like long term, like if you talk to me in three or five years, I would guarantee you almost that the blog is going to be a majority of the revenue mix, just because that’s where you have so much more potential to make money, especially with affiliate marketing for the time being, well, that scaling up YouTube is more than majority of the income is but I kind of use the blog as a hedge against something going on. Like if something were to happen with YouTube, where maybe they weren’t promoting my channel anymore or showing my videos, or who knows if YouTube came out with some hard stance against affiliate marketing or something like that. I don’t expect any of those things to happen, but if they did, it’s kind of nice to have that little side thing that’s already built up producing a little bit of income that way if something happened to YouTube I could just go full time into that.

5:08
Yeah, I remember I was at your fin con like seminar right and you said that you were basically possibly going to move off YouTube and just do blog. Is that still happening or

5:18
Yeah, I think I’ll always do something on YouTube as long as there’s somebody watching just because it’s still something I really enjoy. But I mean, I will say like having done YouTube videos now for like three and a half years almost I’m not as excited as I used to be to like jump on camera and I really just enjoy blogging because of how easy it is to just like so for YouTube. You know, you have editing, you have recording equipment, lighting, you have all this other stuff going on. And so like you can’t exactly just like pop open your laptop and crank out a video it’s a little bit more involved. I like that about blogging, where like if I if I want to I can just go to like a Starbucks open up my laptop and just start working and you know, crank out a guest post or write an article for my blog. So I’m, it’s more interesting for me like that side of it in terms of being able to just work and not have all this other equipment and complication involved with it.

6:11
Okay, that makes sense. Do you edit your videos? Or do you hire someone,

6:14
I do edit them, I used to hire that out. But then I found like, the quality wasn’t really as good as I wanted it to be. And then I also now only do one video per week. So it’s really not a huge workload for me at all. But I actually recently did bring somebody on who’s producing some videos for me. So they’re doing like bass is a friend of mine, we went to high school together. He’s doing like full stack for these videos. So he literally comes over, sets up lighting, records them, edits them, and like pretty much does all of that. So what we’re doing is basically, some of the video ideas that I have that I think are going to be more potential for going viral. I’ll have him produce those videos just because they’re going to be better edited and have you know, more going on than just what I can do and they’re higher quality, better lighting and stuff. like that as well,

7:01
where he has like a different camera what it looked kind of weird if some are more like cinematic looking ones more vlog style or

7:08
I don’t really I mean it’s possible but I mean so far I’ve only had one of his videos we’ve only been working together for like a month and a half so we’ve only done and completed one video we have a couple in the works but yeah the one video that I posted I didn’t really get any comments from people about it being like to cinematic That is a question I asked him because I was like I don’t want to go from like, you know, basic level of production to like cinematic Netflix quality and people are going to be like this is just yeah, so I think we’re trying to keep it like we’re it’s still within the boundaries of like what people are used to from my channel.

7:40
Okay, that makes sense. As crazy that you know, you said this person is from your high school wasn’t that the person you’re partnering with on your blog, like

7:48
from your highest guy from my who, who was my business partner with my blog is also somebody who went to high school with the he’s also my tax advisor. So basically, I walked into his office looking for tax prep, help. Back in 2017, and like I’m remember, he had texted me because that was when I first started YouTube. And then I had was talking to somebody there about some of my earnings and how things were going. And then he like, texted me or messaged me. I don’t think he had my number, but he messaged me on Facebook and he was like, What are you doing? Exactly? He’s like, that sounds really cool. So we like met up for coffee. I pitched him this idea said, Hey, if you would ever be interested in doing like an investing blog, because he has a Bachelor’s in finance, and he’s working on getting a CFP. I was like, if you ever want to partner up and do a blog, that’d be really cool. And he said, Yeah, that sounds good. You know, whenever I have the time for it, and then it’s kind of funny how it happened. I ended up like more or less acquiring this blog, like without realizing it. So what happened was there was an Instagram page out there for a while called investing simple and I bought that Instagram page in 2018 because the owner reached out to me and basically said, you know, he didn’t really have a use for it wasn’t able to make money. So I bought the Instagram page. And then like last minute he messaged me Again, it was like, Hey, I also have a blog called investing simple dot blog. It was just a very basic, I mean, the blog itself, we basically wiped it clean and started from scratch just because the articles were like 300 words apiece, and it wasn’t really like doing anything of value, but it just kind of like fell into my lap. And I was like, I think I paid him like an additional $500 for the blog. And they still had like a year of hosting on WordPress or something like that on wordpress.org or no wordpress. com. It was on the.com setup. So I more or less just like, I was like, sure, you know, I’ll throw that in the mix. And then like, I texted him, and I was like, Let’s meet up and I was like, well, we all I got a blog, it fell into my lap. So we took it from there and have grown up quite a bit, which has been cool. Yeah,

9:45
that’s awesome. Let’s back up like so. You know, you make five figures a month, right? From all these different income streams. Maybe you could tell us like what different income streams you have.

9:54
Yeah, definitely. So I mean, I’m pretty transparent about my earnings on my channel. So I’ll also share things here, but I always like to preface that by saying like, I don’t say this in a way where it’s like, oh, look at this Gosha awesome. This is for me. But I know for me when I was like looking at different money making things online, it was always helpful to have like a general idea of what’s possible. So like most months between the blog and the channel, it’s in the range of like, 35,000 to 45,000 per month, which is really awesome. I mean, I never had any clue that you could make this level of income online. But as far as that mix goes, like I said, still about 90% of that is coming from YouTube through ads and affiliate marketing. As far as ads go, that’s usually about 15 to $20,000 have it and then the affiliate stuff really does make up the lion’s share of it of usually, you know, an additional 20 to 30,000 a month from the affiliate stuff. So pretty much that’s it. I mean, I do have courses I’ve sold in the past, I have an affiliate marketing course that’s actually still closed right now. But that’s never been like a major revenue source for me just because I’m not a big fan of the business. model of selling courses just because there’s a lot of people who are doing that that are kind of shady with it. So I kind of did that on the back end. I’ve made some money with it. But like the majority of the money I make is just from practicing affiliate marketing, not like selling people a course on it or anything like that.

11:16
I’m surprised that like the YouTube ads make so much 15 to 20,000

11:20
Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean, like, it’s insane. And it’s because this niche that I mean, this finance space has such a high CPM, you know, advertisers just willing to pay a lot of money to get in front of these videos I never knew and it’s crazy, because like, it’s gotten a lot higher even since I started like 2017. And that is the one number that you’re not allowed to share. I think Google can actually like get in trouble if you share your CPM as a YouTuber, but I will say that it’s like significantly increased as years have gone forward. And it’s I would say honestly, I haven’t talked to people. I don’t know of a different niche on YouTube that pays higher ad rates than this finance space. Oh,

12:00
And then you said how much again for affiliate marketing on YouTube? Are you saying that for like,

12:06
oh, that would be like in total? Yeah. So like if I were to take like a given month, but say it was a month for I made $40,000. About three to 4000 of that would be from the blog strictly from affiliate marketing. And then let’s say 15,000 would be from YouTube, and then the remaining, let’s say 22,000 21,000 would be from the affiliate stuff, primarily, yeah. And then that would be strictly from YouTube. So that’s like me doing reviews of different brokerages, reviews of different investing platforms, that type of content isn’t really what’s getting the most views, but it’s getting the most money in terms of the conversions because something as simple as a review for an investing app, or I do reviews for all kinds of stuff. I did one for audible the other day, I have some content for Airbnb, so I have a ton of different affiliates. And just by reviewing these different platforms and things that are out there, I earn basically money from sending them leads and sending them conversions.

13:03
Okay, you do use different links for both YouTube and blog so you can separate

13:07
Yeah, we have it all separated out with sub IDs and they’re actually under two different LLC. So we’re in the process of creating completely separate accounts just because of the legal side of that the way it’s structured. We want to make sure that like these are totally separate entities in terms of like any kind of liability But yeah, I would definitely recommend that to have somebody like has these different channels like you have a YouTube thing and then you have a blog and then like, if you have this other whatever, you should always have like separate legal structures for each one of those businesses.

13:37
Nice. Okay. Yeah, you are like killing it on affiliate marketing. Do you think you could kind of share some secret tips or whatever for you know, the viewers out there maybe like three of your top tips for people who are trying to do marketing

13:51
for sure. So I mean, I appreciate the kind words for sure, but like I wait for me like I’ve been talking to people that are at such a larger scale than me. I still feel like an ant. But in terms of like, compared to like, what I used to make it my old job, like the earnings are really significant. So I mean, does your audience know a lot about affiliate marketing? Are they kind of like new to this? Like,

14:13
I mean, I feel like I cover you know, all different passive income streams and affiliate marketing was one of them, but I don’t know who knows there’s like a lot of people who are just getting started to that like join my facebook group and like ask me a bunch of questions that might be like from for newbies, you know what I mean? So like, yeah, maybe you could do kind of a widespread like for the beginners out there. Maybe like the ones that are a little more experienced, how can you tweak it to be a little bit better?

14:39
Okay, cool. So I’m going to share a few tips for beginners and then a few tips for people who are more advanced because sometimes those beginner tips are just like so basic. People are like this is not you know, but if you’re a beginner it is helpful to like as a beginner getting into it. Like just start reviewing stuff like literally like it really bothers me sometimes how easy it is to like, start making money. With like the Amazon Associates program, or like affiliate marketing is literally everywhere, like, for example the other day, so I’m an affiliate for Airbnb on the side of the hosting program. So if I get if I refer a new host to Airbnb, I’m able to basically earn a commission in the process. But even going on their Airbnb app The other day I was looking at it, I’m going to open it up on my phone here, just the exact number. I was looking right here under settings and it said, invite friends and get up to $30 off your next trip. So literally, I was reading about this right here. And Airbnb will give you up to 30 bucks every time you refer a new traveler to the program, and you can earn up to $5,000 I’m like, that’s a pretty significant amount of travel credit. So like that’s as simple as affiliate marketing could be is you see something like that. Now that’s technically a referral program and not an affiliate program, but they’re very similar, but you could see something like that, and then say, Okay, well, you know what, I’ve Have a bunch of experience using Airbnb. Maybe you sit down and record a video like hey I’ve done 15 different Airbnb trips is Airbnb safe. Like I was doing some research on it on YouTube. That’s like one of the most popular searches right now on YouTube about Airbnb is simply is Airbnb safe. So you could literally sit down, make a video about Airbnb and Okay, here’s been my experience and these are some tips for being safe and this, that and the other and just include a link to that referral link and just start earning credits. Or it’s as simple as taking products that you have already and doing reviews of them and just linking to the Amazon Associates program which is where you can basically sell just about anything on Amazon and begin making commissions. So that’s pretty much how I started with it. I in my videos would link to different books I was reviewing or reading or link to my different you know, camera equipment or like random stuff that I was using for my videos. But like everybody out there has things that they’ve purchased that They’re pretty knowledgeable of and I know maybe it’s not as you know maybe you’re afraid to get on camera or whatever but it’s like so simple to just sit down make a review of that help people on that customer you know purchasing journey or customer journey whatever you call that and then earn a commission in the process so like I would say honestly just just start like crank out a couple videos do something like this you know like with Airbnb find the referral program like pretty much every app out there a lot of them where you pay for the service like Uber or you know, Airbnb, these different brokerages, Robin Hood, like they all have some kind of referral program. So it’s like just sit down and like review that app and share your feedback about it.

17:42
Yeah, I had a question so you know you said is Airbnb say so you like ask a specific question within you know, the whole Airbnb thing like deed. Do you have multiple videos talking about Airbnb safe? Like how you can make money on air like a ton of different questions you would answer

17:59
that’s actually going to be My advanced for affiliate marketing. And so basically I’ll go into that a little bit now. So when I first started doing the affiliate marketing, I was primarily just going after short tail keywords, which is basically you know, one or two word searches. So for me on YouTube that was like em one finance review, Airbnb review Robinhood review, and that was primarily just it. That’s all the content I made. But that as I was looking to expand this, like, if you look up a review of most of these investing apps, I’m usually like the top spot or in the top three just because of the authority my channel has. So I was sitting there thinking about Okay, how can I get more traffic for these different you know, things I’m affiliated with? How do I get more traffic and what I came up with, not that this is like, earth shattering information, but it’s like going after longtail keywords and making more specific content. Like for example, rather than just doing like Airbnb review. I may also do a video on like how much money you can make as an Airbnb host Is Airbnb safe tips for Airbnb hosts how to become an Airbnb host. So there’s all of these longtail keywords that may not have as much traffic as far as the search volume. But if you do a ton of these videos, it starts to add up. So that’s been one of my strategies in 2000, late 2019 going into 2020 is looking up what are these long tail searches that I can capitalize on for some of my affiliates. And then my other tip there for people who are more advanced is always consider the level of intent behind the traffic that you are sending towards any affiliate. So for example, like and this is also helpful. So I use something called sub ID, which allows me to track all of my different I don’t mean to be all over the place here but some of this stuff, it’s like hard to explain in a simple way. Great. Yeah, but basically like so I have let’s use one of my affiliates, for example at one finance, so I have like 15 different videos that have information about Mr. Finance. So in the past, I used to just put all of those pages or all those videos to the same landing page. And so I had no idea like, okay, let’s say I got 100 conversions did three come from this video did 15 come from this video? So like, I knew that some of these videos were working, some were not. But I had no way of discerning what was really moving the needle and getting those conversions. So that was one of the steps I took late this year, was setting up sub IDs for each of those links. So now, if I do a video called How to open a Roth IRA, I have a specific link there that when people click on it, it’ll cross reference over to impact radius, the affiliate tracking software, and then I can see okay, this video, even though it only has 3000 views, well, this has gotten me 20 conversions for m one finance, for example, having done that, it really has like, opened up my mind to like, Okay, what type of content is really moving the needle? Getting conversions. And what I’m also noticing is if you look at like so for example, with em one finance, they give you a couple of different metrics, they give you clicks on the link, and then they give you conversions. And a conversion is basically simply somebody who has signed up to open up an account. They haven’t funded it yet, but they’ve signed up. So some of these lower intent traffic sources, I will see like 500 clicks, and 25 conversions, which is pretty poor. But on some of these higher intent searches, I’ll see like 25 clicks, 24 conversions not really high, but it’s because the level of intent behind that traffic is much higher. So like somebody who, somebody who finds out about em one finance through a video about passive income ideas, that is low intent traffic, because they don’t know anything about this platform. They’re watching a random video about passive income. They hear about investing in the stock market and they’re like, okay, I’ll you know, check this out, see what it’s about. That’s going to convert all lot lower than a more specific long tail video. So for example, let’s say one of the videos I’d have is like m one, finance, Roth IRA review, that’s very high intent traffic, because that’s somebody who’s already aware of them one finance, they’re doing their research, they’re considering investing in it. And they’re just looking for somebody to kind of give them a basic overview of is this a good Roth IRA. So I may get 1000 clicks from from a passive income video, but I could make more money getting 50 clicks, if it’s higher intent traffic. So that’s been another thing that’s been huge for me, it’s not so much focusing on the clicks I’m getting but the level of intent behind that traffic. And of course, the only way to track that is with you know, more advanced tracking. And that’s just a feature called sub ID impact radius is the platform most people are using for these affiliate programs. And that’s how I do it. It’s just two different sub IDs associated to each one of my videos.

22:56
And so you know, the sub IDs are you making that through impact Gradius Are you just adding new team parameters has our

23:03
Yeah, it’s all right through it’s really pretty easy like so basically you just paste in a landing page, and then you can type in your sub ID. So like one of my sub IDs is Roth IRA they’re basically just descriptors of what the video is about. So like 2018 review 2019 review 2020 review, so I can see like, is my 2018 reviews still making the money you know, it is which is crazy. So it’s it’s really pretty simple and it’s something we’ve been implementing also on the blog. That way we can see okay, what articles are getting us the most conversions is a comparison content is at native reviews, and I find that just helped so much with figuring out what to really spend your time on. Because that was the one of the most frustrating things for me is seeing results but like having no idea where what’s what’s generating these results, whereas where am I getting maybe like for example, I remember one month my conversions like doubled in one month and I remember emailing one of the companies And I was like, do you know why that was? And they were like, no are like search traffic was steady. And I was like, Where did this come from? So that was I was going to like I really need to know more specifically where these conversions are coming from. And now with sub ID you know, maybe I mentioned them in a video and then forgot I even did that video and then that video starts getting a ton of traffic it allows me to like see that and say, Oh, I’m getting a lot of conversions under this sub ID and then cross reference with my spreadsheet and see exactly what video that is.

24:30
Yeah, that’s that’s a really good advice. I think like this year I’m trying to focus on better optimizing this stuff I have maybe with like tracking and stuff like that, how long did it take you to kind of like get from that like, you know, from the beginning to like understanding all these like advanced Philly marketing strategies and just that that process, where are you you’re at that point where you’re like, optimizing your current channels,

24:53
pretty much from so I really got big into the affiliate marketing in June of 2018. That was when I really found Now like So prior to that affiliate marketing, all I was doing was primarily just relying on the Amazon Associates program. So I would review books review, you know, and not so much review, but I would link to, like I said, my microphone and stuff in the description of my videos. And like that would make me like three to 500 bucks a month or something like that. So let me know so pretty good money for like, doing nothing and just linking to stuff from my description. But I didn’t realize there was like a lot more money to be made through affiliate marketing. And then what happened was, I had met up with some people somewhere around that time in that summer, I met up with some people that were doing affiliate marketing on a much larger scale. And that was when I kind of learned the potential of that business model. And then I pretty much just started diving headfirst into it. I you know, reached out to the big brokerage companies asked them if they had affiliate programs, got signed up with them, jumped on calls, you know, did a lot of networking and then just kind of built up from there. And as far as the more advanced strategies, a lot of this is all coming in quarter from 2019 so this is all pretty recent stuff here, where basically I realized I had maximized as far as I could go at my current level, which was just mostly going after the long tail keywords grabbing the easiest traffic out there. But what’s really going to push it to that, you know, larger level in terms of like revenue and conversions is going to be the more advanced stuff like I talked about here, sub ID tracking, longtail keywords and that kind of stuff.

26:26
So you gotta reach out to like the companies, they didn’t have the affiliate programs available online, like you had a column and stuff,

26:32
but it actually depends on the company. So like Weibull for example, they actually like made the program for me, which was really kind of cool, because I reached out to them very early on and their, their brokerage that’s gotten a lot more popular now. And I remember I like messaged them, and I said, Hey, you know, I would love to do a review of this brokerage on my channel. Do you have an affiliate program? And they basically responded, they’re like, No, we don’t, but we will will make you one. And I was like, Cool. All right. And so they were like, give us about A week. And then they sent me back a link and they’re like, okay, use this link in your videos. And then that I was their first affiliate when and now they’re huge like that literally like they’re even like sites like investopedia are affiliated with them now. So like, they’re massive, but then in other cases, you may find companies that they’re in, like impact radius or different affiliate networks. And also, like, even just at fin con, you know, I met a bunch of different companies that I wouldn’t ordinarily hear about grab business cards and you know, make connections that way.

27:28
Okay. And, like, you are already kind of big on YouTube, right? You have 500,000 subscribers or so right now. Like when you reach out to them, they they knew you were like, pretty big in the space, huh?

27:40
Yeah. And that helped a lot because I had that authority where it was like they answered my email, you know, so like, if you don’t have that authority, it might be a little bit more difficult to get somebody and it also helped me a lot too because I was able to get my foot in the door with my YouTube channel, and that allowed me to get my blog in the door as well. Because if I just reached out to them as the blog and said, Hey, I want to, you know, do a review of fundrise on my blog, they probably wouldn’t have been willing to because of how small we were. But because I already have the YouTube audience too. They were like, sure, toss your links on the blog, too. Why not? So having that that did help a lot having the existing audience on YouTube.

28:20
And like, were you already using all of these products or how much of it was stuff that was existing like you were using it before? And like how much of it you had to like learn and like get to that point where you felt comfortable reviewing it?

28:33
As far as the brokerage accounts go, I was pretty comfortable with them because I was studying them on my own anyway, just because people on my channel were always asking me for like, Hey, what’s your What’s your favorite investing app? Or what what apps do you use? So like, I had done a bunch of videos even just about investing apps and brokerages. I just never knew they had affiliate program. So those It was pretty easy because I was familiar with that the crowdfunded real estate platforms that was a bit of a learning curve. And so one of the first things I did was I personally invested in fundrise, which is one of the platforms I’m affiliated with, just because I wanted to see what the whole experience was like, and make sure it was a good platform. And like, I, of course, would never like recommend something I wouldn’t use myself. So like pretty much everything I’m affiliated with. I’ve used it myself. And so like, I would never be like, Oh, go do this thing, if I wouldn’t do it myself. And that’s another thing I’d recommend to for beginners is, you know, don’t recommend anything online that you wouldn’t recommend to your neighbor. You know, a lot of people because the internet is more anonymous, they may be willing to make bad recommendations, because they’ll figure Oh, no one’s ever going to find out but like I, you know, unless you will offer this to your neighbor, who you’re going to see every day when you check your mail. Like you shouldn’t be promoting that online. And like I can comfortably say all of the, you know, different things I’m affiliated with, I would honestly tell my family, my family friends, and I have told them about these things. So ethical affiliate marketing is definitely the way to go about it.

30:03
Yeah, no, I mean that’s definitely good advice. I feel like when you actually recommend it it just comes out like it’s way more authentic and truthful and they would actually convert because they believe in you and their you know your story and like what? Yeah, exactly. I actually

30:18
you can see you using it to is using the product. So

30:21
yeah, when you say all these, you know, you like all these brokerages you mentioned, like, how did you get into finance in the first place? And like, what resources do you recommend and so

30:31
on, more or less, it was just the interest that I had. So I was working at my day job, I was a utility worker, and I was making pretty good money. So I was doing a lot of investing on my own. And I had interest in being a stock trader, which didn’t actually pan out for me just because I wasn’t good at it. But I did a lot of research into investing. And I eventually pivoted away from that short term trading strategy to more long term investing, but basically, it was just a passion of mine. And I also noticed to like been pretty decent with my money. And I guess I know somewhat like I always knew some of the basic do’s and don’ts of money and spending and how to file a tax return How much does a car that kind of stuff, but I noticed a lot of my peers they’d like didn’t know anything about money. And like, they didn’t understand how credit cards work, they didn’t know what a credit score was. So I was like, how do people not know this stuff? I thought all this was common sense. And then coming to this realization that it wasn’t common sense. That was a big motivator for me to start this channel where I was kind of filling that educational gap between what you learn in college and then what you need for the real world, you know, in terms of like, practical finance skills,

31:40
and like, what would you recommend, like what books or like what, you know, sites or whatever, for beginners who might want to get into this personal finance space or like investing space? What do you recommend for them to study?

31:54
Yeah, definitely. So like some pivotal books for me, of course, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki. That was was like the first book, I remember I was at a bit of a slump. And a friend of mine, like, he literally just like, bought that book for me and gave it to me. And he was like, you need to read this book. Like I’m giving you two weeks read this thing. And I was like, so cynical about it. I’m like, What am I going to learn from this stupid book, but like, I read it, and then as soon as I read it, I was like, man, it like opened up my mind entirely to like these new ideas of how to make money. So Rich Dad, Poor Dad, that’s like number one on my list. I think thinking Grow Rich was good, too. That’s more on like mindset. These are the ones that really do make a difference early on. I also liked this book called click millionaires. I don’t remember who the author was. But it’s all these different stories about people who became millionaires on the internet. And I remember reading that book because I was like, seeing example, after example of people who became millionaires on the internet, and it made me realize how possible it was. So it kind of like exposed me to new ideas. So those are three good resources. Then obviously my channel and my blog if you want to learn some finance stuff, but as far as like the affiliate marketing and everything like, honestly, I would just like, do some research on YouTube. Like, I have some videos about Amazon Associates, there’s tons of free resources about it, don’t overthink it, like you don’t have to plan all this stuff. Like you can honestly put together a couple of reviews of products that you’ve already bought sign up for the Amazon Associates program, which is really easy to get into, and just start seeing if you can, you know, get some conversions, but I think a lot of people just overthink it, or they fall into analysis paralysis, and it’s like, literally just like start, you know, see how it goes. Like I know, for example, one of the things that I purchased recently or about a year ago was like a Dyson vacuum cleaner. And like that was a pretty big purchase because those are like two to 300 bucks for the like entry level ones. And I was doing like research on YouTube of these different Dyson vacuum cleaners. And like I couldn’t really find a good video review of it. And I was just like, man, somebody who made this video with Like make a killing because like if I found a really good review, I would like totally use their link and buy it on Amazon. So like there’s things that you’ve purchased where like your advice would be helpful to somebody so it’s like just start sharing that advice and you know maybe start making some passive income in the process.

34:17
I think so rich dad poor dad thinking Grow Rich they’re kind of like mindset maybe like kind of personal finance books What about like investing so if you want to go even granular like more granular and like, how to which brokerages like and what like everything from you know, if you’re just starting out, like, Yeah, what would you recommend for that?

34:37
There’s a couple books I would recommend money master the game by Tony Robbins. That’s a really long book, though, and he made a shorter version of that called unshakeable. I’ve read both you can honestly stick to unshakable that’s, that kind of talks about like the hidden costs of 401k is and mutual funds and kind of what’s going on behind the scenes. Another book I like is it’s just called stock market for Dummies. These, and I think that’s by Paul bludgeoned opik. But that like, I used to be kind of biased towards those for dummies books because I was like, are you know, are these actually good, but that one is actually really good that had a lot of great information. And then the third one, I would say, the Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, I mean, that’s a classic book and it’s pretty link. So,

35:20
okay, huge,

35:22
maybe even reading like the sparknotes of that book for like the footnotes, but the principles he talks about are really good. So I would say those are three good books in terms of like getting into investing.

35:33
Nice. You mentioned, you know, like reviewing a Dyson vacuum, right? So like, wouldn’t when that kind of might maybe turn off like your current followers or whatever, if you’ve reviewed something random, like how do you decide if you know, you might put up a video and keep putting up like a bunch of series of like about Airbnb or something and they’re like, dude, I don’t care. Like how do you balance that kind of thing?

35:57
Yeah, so like, personally, I wouldn’t review a Dyson. Vacuum just because the exact reason you just said we’re like, if I go from reviewing an investing platform to a vacuum cleaner, people are going to be like, I thought you were I thought you were the finance guy. What are you doing? What if like you’re somebody if you’re just some random person, you know, you could review all these random products and you know, supply this these videos to people. My like, yeah, for me, that wouldn’t make sense to do the vacuum cleaner actually do is there’s actually an option on YouTube when you post a video to what not notify your subscribers. So a lot of the affiliate content, that’s especially the long tail stuff, I just will check the box and I will not notify subscribers. That way it doesn’t get pushed out to my feed. It just naturally kind of ranks in YouTube search that way and gets recommended to people based on their interest. And then also in terms of my video content. I just will keep a general idea of like when’s the last time I talked about Airbnb? So I don’t want to burn out my audience by like hitting them with the same thing over and over like Airbnb hosting Airbnb hosting. Oh, Airbnb hosting, they’re going to be like so tired of it, so I’ll make sure it’s never more than like once a month that I’m mentioning like anyone affiliate.

37:07
Oh, interesting. Yeah, cuz I’m, I mean like, I feel like I jumped topics a lot because I’m like all about different passive income streams and a lot of people say you got to do it in a series right so that they’ll keep engaged. But then it sounds like if you talked about Airbnb like way too much they’d be like what? You know, like,

37:26
how do you like every video was Airbnb, they’d be like, Is this an Airbnb channel? People would get tired of it. Yeah,

37:32
so you would just like if it were some newbie YouTuber, right? Like, would you have them not notify their subscribers for like affiliate stuff? Or is that

37:42
it? No, if you’re completely new, just like throw crap at the wall and see what sticks to be honest with you like, Yeah, but like if you have a large audience or whatever you’re not going to want to like, like if just you just want to give people what they’re already used to. So like, if you are somebody who does like a deep dive on one passive income stream like five videos about Airbnb, then maybe you switch to a different topic. If that’s what people are used to, then that could work for you. But if you normally cover like different ideas, and then you just hone in on one topic, you probably will find your audience does get annoyed. But yeah, I mean, you also can try that feature, you know of not notifying your subscribers that has worked well for me. But yeah, so that that works for like larger channels looking to put out content that’s not necessarily specifically related to what they normally talk about, or it’s just so specific, that like, less than 1% of people would be interested in it or something.

38:34
Hmm, that is interesting. So yeah, you find that like, do you have like a certain cadence or something that like a videos or do you just think of it on the spot like, Okay, I’m gonna do this one.

38:45
I usually have like, at least 10 video ideas that are kind of written up in terms of like my content that gets pushed out to my subscribers, but as far as the affiliate content goes, I’ll just do you know, research on what search topics are out there and just make a list of them. just crank out those videos. I have like lists of affiliate content I’m creating lists of video content for my channel and then lists of content I’m collaborating with for my with my guy who’s doing some production for me. And then I also have lists of stuff for the blog. So I basically have like these different categories I’m creating content for and like five or six ideas under each one at a time and I just kind of worked my way through those

39:25
you like cycle between each kind of thing like you never do affiliate you do kind of collab affiliate other video content, like

39:34
yeah, I usually jump around a little bit just because like if I had to sit down for like a week and do nothing but affiliate content, I would be like, so bored of it. Like I’ll record a couple of affiliate videos, and then I may record a couple of videos that I’m gonna push to my subscribers. Like right now on my list, I have some ideas like money lessons in your 20s top five money books, how much to invest based on your age, how to build wealth in your 20s and stock For beginners, so like that’s probably going to be my next five pieces of content for my videos for my channel. And then like, as far as affiliate content goes, I’m going to do more stuff for Airbnb. I’ll probably do a video reviewing Airbnb, like the whole is it safe thing because I think there’s potential there and then like updating reviews for 2020 because it’s a new year so you can do a whole new review and get more traffic that way. So I always have like general ideas based on which vertical I guess, you know, like what content I’m working on.

40:33
So now you’re like killing it. Right? are you how are you like spending your money? Like, are you investing in backing? Are you still trying to grow everything and like make a lot more like what’s your plan right now.

40:45
So I actually spent a lot of money in 2019 but most of it was stuff that was good investments. So I purchased my first real estate property that I live in, which is like a three family which is owner occupied. So I live here, rent out the other two units, and I also expect spending a ton of money this year on a project a renovation project at this property because it actually has a potential for a fourth unit. So it just had to be rehabbed and turned into that so that’s been a huge project as well between the house the down payment on the house and that project that was like somewhere around you know, 60 $70,000 right there and then I also bought my my car that I wanted to buy this year, which is a Nissan GTR so that was kind of my fun purchase I guess. But other than that, you know, I’ve mostly just been investing that money I have a lot of cash right now just because with the market the way that it is I didn’t want to funnel a ton into the market. I am still investing but not like aggressively right now. So I’m a little cash heavy, actually. So I’m probably am going to find some other investments. Maybe I’ll put more into the crowdfunding real estate or something like that. But yeah, I’m not really a huge spender. I like to travel a little bit and so I you know, I don’t really like stuff. So I’m not really out there buying like iPads or like the latest technology or like designer clothes. It’s just not really anything. I’m into but you know, like, I have the car that I like, and a nice, nice property. So that’s the kind of stuff I tend to buy. And going forward, it’ll mostly just be, you know, passive investments, I’ll just continue to invest on my own and have money saved up and you know, have a nice rainy day fund if I ever need it.

42:17
Yeah, I mean, even that property you’re getting that’s, that’s like an investment too, right? Like, are you going to do more real estate investment now or not?

42:24
I, I don’t think so. Because I was going to at first, but I find that it’s not as passive as you think it’s going to be. And like, even just with the property I have, I’ve run into a little bit of headaches with like snow removal, landscaping, getting work done. And so like, I’m sure, I mean, there’s a ton of potential to make money with real estate, but I would rather like invest in passive stuff. And then half my time where I could focus on like, the stuff I’m doing here, like YouTube and blogging, and then taking that money and investing that intellect the stock market or stuff like that, because I just feel like that’s the best use of use of my time, rather than Then, you know, managing real estate properties and that kind of stuff.

43:04
Yeah, you manage it, right? You don’t hire out like a property manager anything?

43:07
No, because I live here. So like, I, you know, I collect rent or whatever. And if I did, if I did buy more properties, I would definitely want to have a property manager, but then you’re managing the manager, you know, like, I find that to be true, like, even with snow removal, you know, it’s like I can, I can basically go do it myself or I hire somebody, but then you’re just managing that person, and paying them and keeping track of expenses and making sure that they’re showing up on time. And then your one tenant is upset because the snow pile is blocking her car. So then you call them back up to dig that out. Like, it’s not as easy as it sounds of just, oh, I’m gonna hire this guy. He’s gonna take care of all of it. You’re still going to be that go between unless you have, you know, a property manager. So, for me, it’s probably not something I’m going to continue doing but that may change.

43:57
Yeah, I guess it depends like where you invest in like You know how how much crime there is all the stuff? Right? I guess you’re you’re in an area with like a bunch of snow, right?

44:07
Yeah, I’m in the I’m in the northeast in New York, so we get snow and so yeah, even the snow removal like we’ve gotten bombarded with snow this year too. So it’s been, I can only imagine like the I’ve had a few headaches with my property here. I’m like, imagine if I had 10 units, I can have 10 times the number of problems I’ve had here because I’ve got all these driveways getting plowed. And then maybe my one tenant is like, oh, why hasn’t my driveway been shoveled? And then you’re calling your snow removal, guys. So I guess it comes down to like what type of work you would like to be doing? And me personally, I would much rather be sitting down working on videos or blog articles, then, you know, making phone calls to people and managing tenants and that kind of stuff. So I mean, maybe down the road, I’ll change my mind about that. But for now, I’m happy with the property I have and don’t really have any plans to buy another one just yet.

44:58
Yeah, I mean, you’ve chosen path like making a ton of money. It’s not like a huge amount of capital you need to even like get started right with those channels, basically nothing. Yeah,

45:07
it’s all my time. So very, very little money involved. And then like, no time involved after you make the content, like it just, it just continues to turn out money. So like real estate does turn out money, but you know, there’s still that time involved where you know, you’re managing people or managing the properties yourself. So for me, the passive stuff is just more appealing.

45:28
Yeah. And it costs a lot more to get into real estate and stuff.

45:32
Yeah, sure. Yeah.

45:33
I do like how it’s like more tangible, though. Like you have something you can show but like, at the same time, online businesses like it’s, it seems easier. It’s like faster to make money. You can make a crapload like, and it’s a lot more passive. It can be cool. So do you have any more like last tips for people who are trying to make passive income? I know we went like all over the place, but yeah, any last words for maybe newbies?

45:57
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. One last tip. I would have is You know, make sure that when you’re made once you decide on whatever your thing is, like whatever you’re going to do, whether it be affiliate marketing or drop shipping, or whatever you decide, like really dedicate a lot of time to that one thing because a lot of people have like shiny object syndrome, where they see like, Oh, this seems like a cool idea then they do it for a couple of weeks and they get tired of it and then they Oh then they try this because like when I first started my channel, I didn’t make any money. And like when I first started the blog to we make like nothing for like almost a year. So like you have to dedicate a lot of time to something before you see the results. So try to avoid that like shiny object syndrome. And when you make a decision that you want to try something like really dedicate yourself to it.

46:43
Yeah, I can totally agree with that. I just thought of a question like are you still doing singing lessons and stuff like that?

46:49
Oh, yeah, it’s funny I actually held off on it just for a little bit just because my I got crazy busy around the holidays, rather still doing it on my own just because I enjoy doing that.

46:57
Yeah, he doing like any other Kind of passions you’re saying like maybe hobbies or whatever.

47:03
I’ve been doing a lot of music just in general like guitar that I don’t do lessons, but I’ve been I kind of like self taught with guitar. So I’ve been doing a lot of that. Other than that no, not really just, you know, guitar music that’s been that’s been really fun for me. And then still I still do a fair amount of travel and stuff. I’ve also been doing more audiobooks just because I found that like, when I go to the gym and stuff, or when I’m driving, I just, it’s more interesting to me to like, be listening to something and learning rather than just like listening to music, but sometimes I also just want to listen to music.

47:32
Yeah, I’m the same way. I mean, that’s awesome. I feel like you know, being able to make all this passive income, you’ve been able to free up a lot of time, unable to, like, you know, travel when you want to play music when you want to whatever. So that’s, that’s awesome. I mean, that’s what I’m trying to do too. So,

47:49
yeah, no, I’ve really enjoyed it so far. And like, I like what I do. So I’m honestly very happy to be continuing to, you know, do what I do each day.

47:58
Cool. Well, thanks for coming on to the show. Where can people find you?

48:02
Okay, yeah. So obviously on YouTube, it’s just Ryan Scribner and then if you want to check out my blog, it’s investing simple, calm.

48:09
Awesome. Cool. Thank you so much for coming on to the show. Like these tips have been super invaluable for me too, you know, and I think the viewers out there and enjoy it a lot. So thanks so much.

48:20
Glad to hear that. Thanks for having me on. Cool

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