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What Is The Best Way To Generate Income In Retirement?
The best way to generate income in retirement is to start a blog, share the knowledge one has gained over the years from work and life experiences or interests, and monetize that blog.
Blogging is the least expensive investment one can make to have the potential to earn a full-time income.
While most financial advisors recommend restructuring investments for higher yields, these strategies assume one has enough retirement savings already.
Most retirees do not have enough money in retirement savings to make a significant difference in monthly income.
Other advisors suggest investing in real estate or some other expensive asset, working longer and delaying taking Social Security, starting driving for Uber part-time, or taking a second hourly job.
Still, other mentors such as Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad) say that Multilevel Marketing is the best business model to follow, but most people fail at being a salesperson, usually after they have invested thousands of dollars in products and fees.
There is an alternative way to earn a great retirement income by simply writing blog posts that answers people’s questions, and Google will provide you with the questions people are asking about your profession, life experiences, or your interests.
The only two pieces of information one needs to achieve this income are:
- What technical knowledge do I need to set up a professional website?
- How can I get Google to rank my articles on the first page?
After 50 years of being a physical therapist, I decided to try blogging as a method of generating extra income for myself.
My Story:
After struggling with these two questions for a couple of years and failing, following the advice of some YouTube gurus, I found a system that actually works.
It is known as Income School and it has provided me with all the information in a step-by-step format to allow me to complete the process, even though I had zero technical skills to set up a website or the knowledge to get Google to rank me on the first page.
Income School’s course is called Project 24 because it gives the steps in a time-sequenced manner that offers an opportunity to earn a full-time income ($4,000 per month) within a 24-month period of time.
It takes time and work to learn these techniques, but the content written according to Income School standards will rank with Google for years, providing income for years.
I am a retired physical therapist. I specialized in orthopedic rehabilitation for 50 years, so there is a lot of information stored in my brain that will be lost at some point in time, so I decided to get as much information out in writing as my legacy to a profession that has been very kind to me financially.
But before I was willing to risk my reputation as a new blogging novice, I decided to start a blog on a subject I knew nothing about to see if this Income School’s technique actually worked, it was my “proof of concept” website model.
In that endeavor, I proved to myself that I could create a website by following the technical step-by-step instructions provided in Income School’s Project 24 course.
All the previous online gurus I had followed online, the technical setup of the website was the most daunting aspect for me, and the least explained by previous gurus.
I began doing the search analysis for topics in my “proof of concept” website using Income School’s protocols, began writing articles in the format taught by Income School, (on a subject I knew nothing about), and began generating traffic to my website that I could monetize as taught to me in the Project 24 lessons.
Once I was sure that I could set up a website, and write articles that would rank with Google, I abandoned the site because I had no interest in the subject matter, it was just a proof of concept exercise, an exercise that Income School does not recommend.
I still get traffic on that website even today.
Unfortunately, just after joining Income School, we lost our home to the Thomas wildfires in California and were forced to temporarily re-locate.
Fortunately, our daughter was generous enough to take us in for a little over three years as our home was being rebuilt.
I lost everything in that fire, including my computers. With that set-back and the heavy demand on my time to take care of the enormous details required after the fire (and I was still working), my progress on developing my “proof of concept” website was way behind schedule, but I continued to work toward launching that website while living at my daughter’s home.
She became very interested in what I was doing with my “proof of concept” site and wanted to start a website of her own based on her passion about a seasonal topic.
She joined Income School’s Project 24’s program and I began helping my daughter build her website before I started in earnest on my own website based on my professional life as a physical therapist, as well as just having lived long enough to have life experiences worth sharing to make aging for others more independent with a better quality of life.
In the next two years, we were able to rank most of our articles on my daughter’s website in the top four positions on the first page of a Google search, and have a few snippets (first spot rankings) as well.
Her website is seasonal. After two years, and only about 60 articles, she was receiving over 54,000 page views a month and earning $1,000 a month just from ads placed on her site by an advertisement broker.
In this third year, she is on track to increase pageviews by 50% and she has added only 20 more articles.
Income School’s Project 24 offers monetization instructions from multiple avenues, such as affiliate income from Amazon and other vendors, and self-written topic ebooks.
Ads revenue is the easiest but probably the least profitable monetization avenue, and we are just now starting to consider monetization with affiliate streams of income.
And now I am building my own professional website around my physical therapy and aging experiences, anticipating earning a full-time income by merely telling people what I know about the questions they ask Google, offering suggestions of products I have used professionally for my patients, and offering instructional videos for sale of orthopedic rehabilitation programs that I have been doing face-to-face with my patients for 50 years now.
I’m expecting to far exceed the $4,000/month benchmark set by Income School and will be eternally grateful to Income School for the income, as well as the opportunity to teach my daughter a skill set she can use to generate income for the rest of her life.
I’m sure the next question one would have is:
What does it cost to start a blog?
Starting a blog for profit costs less than $500, including professional help, and Internal Revenue Service may allow enough tax deductions from a home-based business to more than cover all the costs.
A personal blog, not intended to generate revenue, can cost as little as $36.00 per year.
The above statement is assuming one already has a computer and internet service.
Starting a blog with the intention of generating revenue:
The Internal Revenue Service is very pro-small business and generously offers tax-deductible expenses based on the percentage of space, utilities, property taxes, and other household expenses that are contributing to the cost of operating that home office.
For a much more in-depth understanding of tax deduction regulations, I recommend the textbook Home Business Tax Deductions, Keep What You Earn (Amazon affiliate link)
The tax deductions savings can easily eclipse the expense of starting a blog having the intent to monetize that blog to generate income.
Consult your tax preparer to see how much you personally could save on taxes.
One can create and operate a blog intended to generate revenue for less than $500 using the Income School’s Project 24’s protocols, and that includes the initial annual Income School membership fee, which decreases by about 50% annually upon renewal.
Income School’s membership cost can be tax deductible as well, reducing that membership fee by whatever combined state and federal income tax rate you personally pay.
Other than the initial Income School membership fee, the only other expense would be the domain registry of the website name, hosting of the website on the internet, and a theme for the website.
The domain registry fee is offered by some good hosting companies for free in the first year.
The annual fee for a domain registry is usually about $12.00 annually.
Hosting is required to publish the website on the internet and there are a few good hosting companies that service startup blogs for as little as $3.00 per month; $36.00 annually.
These companies should be more than adequate until one reaches 50K pageviews a month or more. Income School will make current suggestions on which companies they feel are the best at any given point in time.
WordPress, the preferred website-building tool, is usually provided for free by the hosting company.
WordPress is the program that allows one to write articles in plain English, which WordPress converts into computer language.
Following Income School’s protocols makes this task easy and understandable.
Income School’s membership fee includes its own web theme for free, very easy to use, and it is the one that I am currently using to publish this post.
Other premium websites can cost several hundred dollars, which I have used, but I prefer the Acabado theme from Income School.
There are also some good free themes but you usually get what you pay for.
Starting a blog as a hobby without the intention of generating revenue:
Squarespace and Wix are companies that are alternatives to WordPress.
They are more simple to use because they have multiple templates that use a lot of drag-and-drop options, but that comes at a price.
They are like an HMO in healthcare.
There are limited options from which to choose, and they are generally more expensive.
They are good for sharing family photos and such, but almost all businesses on the internet elect to use WordPress. (WordPress.org, not WordPress.com).
Other Income School Benefits:
A great benefit to being a member of Income School’s Project 24 is the active community forum.
It is full of novice to expert members that are there to help you with any question one might have, and I have had many questions. Response from the community is almost immediate.
The owners of Income School are also active in the forum.
I often find answers to questions that I didn’t even know to ask.
One of the most impressive activities of Income School is its ongoing building of startup websites with the intent of keeping current and reporting any new changes they discover.
Even more impressive, unlike all the other internet gurus, they share these new sites’ data, including the URLs of the site, so that one can learn just by watching them build a new site.
Interestingly, when new sites are built, most are sold, with Project 24 members having the first notification of the pending sale.
They do this because they are interested in building new websites to keep current on ongoing changes Google makes to their algorithms and they can’t do that if they are managing a bunch of websites they own.
I have met the owners of Income School personally and I find them to be academically educated, knowledgeable, of very high integrity, morally sound, and genuinely concerned about helping other people become financially independent.
I look forward to seeing you in Income School’s community forum.
Happy Website Building
Other of my blog post that may interest you:
- Lower Your Blood Pressure With A Simple Amino Acid: L-Arginine
- Medicare Maintenance Care: Who Qualifies for What Services?
Age In Place School is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. We also participate in other affiliate programs which compensate us for referring traffic.
