Okay, it all started when my son Wyatt Maktrav received money from his godparents and other family members during his baptism, birthdays and Christmas seasons. It’s not that much but of course, all the money he received is properly accounted and we never get anything from it. I opened a BDO Junior Savers account for him so that his savings can earn interest and won’t be mixed up with other transactions. However, the interest is very small so I thought of a different way to make his money earn more.
Being a web developer, I told myself “why not build a site for him?” I immediately bought a domain and hosting account for my son using his own money. Every business needs investment, right? The domain only costs $10 per year and the hosting is $1 per month. That’s only $22 per year or PhP 1100 (assuming the exchange rate is 1 USD = PhP 50). Not bad. After having the domain and hosting, I created his website and started publishing content.
So, how did he start earning monthly income from his website?
Google Adsense
This is very basic for bloggers. When you sign up for a Google Adsense account, all you have to do is to place ad banners to your site. Google Adsense can be lucrative if your site has hundred thousand to millions of views each month. But in our case, since my son’s website is still new, there’s not much site traffic yet so he’s not earning well on Google Adsense. It took a while before he reached his $100 threshold on Google Adsense and the check delivery took too much time to arrive as well.
Amazon Associates
This one is my favorite. I created a lot of Amazon Affiliate niche sites for my clients and I’m still managing most of them. Given that experience, I decided to sign up Wyatt for his own Amazon affiliate account. We started placing affiliate links on his website and voila! In just a matter of 3 months from the time we signed up, his Amazon affiliate account started making sales, and he started receiving his monthly earnings. My son got his ROI on his first month on Amazon affiliate and he’s earning even more than that monthly. All his earnings from Amazon are sent to my Payoneer account then I transfer it to his savings account.
Selling Pre-loved Items
I created a new website (subdomain) where we uploaded some of our pre-loved items that we no longer use but still in good condition. It’s not wise to keep them, so we decided to just sell and earn from it. Most of the items are hiking apparels. On the second day of his online shop, we already sold a backpack. The following week, we sold a rainjacket. Although we don’t have daily sales, it’s still good to know that we were able to have some small earnings from our pre-loved items.
Other Affiliate Accounts
Aside from Amazon Affiliate that I mentioned earlier, we also signed up on different affiliate programs. Since Wyatt’s website is basically about his adventures and travels, we have the Agoda and Klook Affiliate program. We don’t earn much from this but we just have them on the site, just in case.
There are a lot of affiliate programs out there but as of now, we’re happy with Amazon Affiliate. This is where Wyatt gets his monthly earnings without doing anything. It’s just there and we’re able to convert some of his site visitors to Amazon customers. We’re also in the process of creating his own Youtube Channel and we hope that he’ll be able to earn from there as well soon.