On leap day this year Sam and I got married! (I know, I know… took us long enough.)

We left Florida to go on one of the things that has been on Sam’s bucket list the whole time I’ve known her… a safari! So off to Tanzania we went.

It was such an incredible adventure that took around 29 hours of travel time to get from Sarasota, Florida to Arusha, Tanzania about 30 minutes from the Kilimanjaro Airport.

A few years ago I picked up the habit of doing a daily journal. Every morning at 8:00am I have a little shortcut on my iPad that reminds me to journal. I spend about 5 minutes just spitting out whatever is on my mind at the time. Stuff like what I built, or things that I did the previous day. Just a good reminder and a way for me to reflect back on what happens throughout the years.

On March 13, 2024 my journal started out with…

March 13, 2024 12:04pm
Eastern Serengeti, Tanzania, Africa
Tent 5

“Holy shit. We’re in Tanzania. Yesterday I didn’t have a chance to journal because we were in travel mode for 29 hours”. It was a long trip. When we lived in Bali, it typically took us anywhere from 22-24 hours to get from the states to our villa in Bali, so we were pretty familiar with that kinda travel.

The next segment of the journal talked about the flight and me trying to get an upgrade for free (unsuccessfully for the first flight).

Then…

“Btw as I’m writing this there is a wildebeest walking about a football field in front of me fright now and I see antelope and some giraffes in the distance.”

here is the photo I took with the iPad…

After breakfast and heading out to the airfield at 6:45am we ended up boarding the plane in the picture below.

We ended up flying into ‘the bush’ on a small little plane shown below. It was crazy, we’re just flying along at around 10,500 feet and there’s some mountains that are around the same height… and then we land in a flat field where we then were picked up by our driver.

Sam and I were sitting right behind the pilot because we boarded first. In total there were 8 people on the flight. We flew right into the bush. Then when we landed I asked if I could go out the same door as the pilot, because why not? He told me it was fine. That was a first for me.

It was our honeymoon, so we ended up having our own private driver for the experience. It was awesome.

The drive from the airfield to the first camp was considered the ‘appetizer’ according to our guide/driver. We ended up seeing wildebeest, warthogs, baboon, zebras, giraffes, impalas, eeland, antelope, a ton of birds and some other animals I didn’t write down in the journal that day.

The next day…

March 14, 2024 9:59 am
Eastern Serengeti Nyumba, Tanzania, Africa
Tent 5

After the morning breakfast at camp we ended up doing a walk directly out towards where the animals were roaming. It was pretty exciting initially, but we didn’t get close to anything. When they see humans they kinda just wander away, kinda like normal animals out in the wild.

The guides were super into birds, so we stopped and they named a bunch of different birds. We’re not really bird people, so it was just a “oh cool” kinda moment.

The first night in the tent was a rough sleep. The wind was ripping through and the tent was moving all the time. At one point I pulled out my phone because of how loud it was and recorded, but you can’t really tell on the phone.

The other campers had a similar experience with their tents when we chatted later in the day about it.

We had gone to see a Maasai tribe on the 13th so I wrote briefly about that.

“Yesterday we did a nature hike after visiting a Maasai tribe. They have these little huts that the women build that are made of dung and sticks. The women were outside with the children and we just kinda awkwardly were hanging out there and the kids were all smiling at us. “

“The kids were unbelievably cute though. Sam took some photos of them and showed the kids and then a video of them and showed the kids. They loved it and giggled so much. “

“We went inside their house and it was separated pretty nicely for the size. There were 2 beds that had cow hide as the mattress and there was a little oven made out of rock inside with holes in the side of the wall for ventilation. It’s a very different lifestyle than anything I’ve ever witnessed.”

“They have dogs but not for petting,. The dogs are like the guards of the area and will bark at predators to alert the families that something is messing with their stock. “

A lot of the early day notes were kinda oddly worded and I think it was from sleep deprivation + adrenaline and excitement. Other notes I included here are just direct copy/pastes so you can see like the error with spacing or spelling.

March 15, 2024
Eastern Serengeti in the jeep 
Tanzania, Africa

“Well we’re in the b ack of the car  and it’s hard to write with how bouncy it all is. Who knows how much I can write… might need to write later today. 

It’s 8:32am. I’ll come back to this when the road is easier

Alright well now it’s 4:40pm and the road didn’t get any easier. It was about 8 hours of car time with Harrison the guide/driver. “

That right there explains a LOT of the time in the vehicle. You’re bouncing around pretty much nonstop so writing was pretty hard. I would have journaled earlier in the day that day, but we had breakfast and then had to be out to see things earlier in the day.

On the 14th of March we ended up going out on another nature walk. You’ll see the morning campsite in the photo below:

This was our tent along with front porch that looked out over the vast land. After coffee, we went down for breakfast and then did a walk out into that area directly in front of where our camp was.

We went to a gathering of Maasai women who were making things and selling them to us tourists to help fund their projects and school for their families. You are supposed to haggle and we had a guide, William, who is in the photo with me below who handled the haggling for us. We ended up getting small gifts for a few people. It’s tough to pick up a lot of gifts when you travel light like Sam and I do. (We also went to Paris after Tanzania so didn’t have a ton of space)

It’s honestly impossible for me to put into words what it was like being out on the drive and like “on safari”.

If you’ve ever been to a zoo, you get to see some of the animals we saw. In fact…

I had been to the Kilimanjaro Safaris in Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida… so I had seen a few of the animals in person, but it isn’t even close to the same as seeing them out in the wild. At the Disney one, you see these animals in their little set areas. They’re separated based on what kinda animal they are and they don’t have a lot of space to roam.

and in the wild in Tanzania… well..

I took this photo when we came across ‘The Great Migration’. In the back there you’ll see a vulture flying, zebra, and wildebeest pretty much just right on top of one another. They all travel along in the pack and it’s just incredible to witness.

When we came across it, there were just rows upon rows of these animals and it went on to the left, straight ahead of us and to the right. Behind us it was pretty much nothing until we came across this.

and if you look a little behind and to the right of the watering hole there… there were 2 lions. We were told by our guide that they were on their honeymoon and aren’t really going to be hunting or anything.

At some points during the drive, we were driving for 20-30 minutes and would only see a few antelope or a few birds and the rest was just land. It made me feel very small and insignificant. It was interesting to just look along and not see any other people or animals. Just empty land.

At one point during one of the days we were driving through the Serengeti National Park in northern Tanzania just down one of the roads and walking down the road was a lion. Right outside of our window… just minding it’s business while we pulled up next to it and then drove past it.

Here is a peak into our morning at one of the camps…

Outside the tent was just land full of animals. It was incredible.

The most interesting part was probably at night. It’s just pitch black outside with zero light pollution. The only light is what comes from our tents and the main tent where the employees were and the food was being prepared.

Over night the wind would rip through the hill we were on and the walls and roof of our tent would shake. Then we would hear the sounds. The like growl of the wildebeest and other noises that Sam and I weren’t used to. It was a good thing we were so exhausted by the night that falling asleep was pretty easy.

In the mornings when we woke up, we’d look out and have a coffee or tea and just relax looking out over the beautiful fields. We’d see birds flying, giraffe, wildebeests, antelope, warthogs and various other creatures just living their lives as if we weren’t even there. It was absolutely incredible.

We also did the hot air balloon over the Serengeti and landed in the bush. What a way to see the land. Just fields upon fields.

It was an odd feeling going up in the hot air balloon. You start on your side in the cage and as the hot air fills up the balloon, it lifts the cage up and then all of a sudden you’re floating.

Here are a few more pictures from our great adventure…

Hippos smell bad.

Where do I begin? This year has been incredible. One of the best of my life by far. So many adventures and things to share and I’ve been not documenting on my blog here for whatever reason. I started a daily 8am journal on my iPad that I write for about 5 minutes but that’s more personal stuff and not really things to share.

In February, on leap day, I got married to the love of my life. We have been together for about 10 years and I wish we had just gotten married sooner. After that, we flew from Florida all the way over to Tanzania.

We didn’t have a normal wedding. Want to know the easiest reason why?

“As of 2024, the average cost of a wedding in the United States is approximately $33,000, reflecting a slight increase from $29,000 in 2023. This figure encompasses expenses such as the venue, catering, attire, and entertainment.

However, wedding costs can vary significantly based on location. For instance, in New Jersey, the average wedding expenditure is around $55,000, while in Utah, it’s approximately $17,000.”

that’s a little section from a chatgpt search and explanation. An average cost of $33,000 for a one-day event seems insane to us. It doesn’t even take into account all of the money that friends and family have to spend to travel to a place for a wedding. Flights, hotels, food at the new place, dresses, gifts, etc.

In my opinion it’s gotten a bit crazy with the costs of it all. So, we ended up using what would have been our wedding money and did something we’ve always wanted to do…

An African Safari Honeymoon

We left Florida to go on one of the things that has been on Sam’s bucket list the whole time I’ve known her… a safari! So off to Tanzania we went.

We ended up flying into ‘the bush’ on a small little plane shown below. It was crazy, we’re just flying along and then we land in a flat field where we then were picked up by our driver. It was our honeymoon, so we ended up having our own private driver for the experience. It was awesome.

I wrote more about it here.

I’m Now a Father!

On September 27, 2024 my life got better by a factor of who knows how much. As i’m writing this here in the office of our house, my daughter is asleep in her bassinet next to me. She makes these cute noises when she sleeps (I think all parents get to experience the fun of these) and I end up stopping everything to peak over at her and see that she’s still just sleeping… with an occasional eye open, smile then back to sleep.

The first few weeks have not been easy. Our daughter was born during Hurricane Helene and then a week or two later, Hurricane Milton hit our area. We had evacuated with Sam’s mom and dad (who had been visiting and helping out a ton) to Orlando and came back to a house without power and all the food in the freezer and refrigerator gone bad.

So that means I’ll need to do a bit more research on backup generators and pull the trigger on getting one for the house. I’d rather not have to worry about the loss of power in the future and being based in Florida (where hurricanes hit) we’ll need it no matter where we end up moving.

I have so much more respect for all the parents out there who have gone through this. Huge shoutout to my wife. I have no idea how she’s been doing it. I’ve been able to get sleep, not my normal amount, but way more than she has. She still functions and is doing an incredible job with our baby girl.

I decided it was a good idea to document the month long trip to Aruba. So let’s talk about what we did, where we stayed and what we liked and disliked.

We stayed near Eagle Beach, about a 12-15 minute walk from the beach at an airbnb. In the Bubali area. The location we actually stayed was The Lizard Inn. It’s newly renovated and we enjoyed our time there.

Since we were going to be there for a month, it was way out of budget to stay at a fancy hotel the whole time… don’t worry though, something big happened at the end of our trip that I’ll talk about later.

Also it’s always a good idea to have a few key phrases down in the local language. Dutch and the local language of Papiamento are the official languages of the country, but most Arubans speak 4 languages. Dutch, English, Papiamento and Spanish.

Want to learn a bit of Papiamento? Here are a few phrases to get you started!

Bon bini! = Welcome!
Bon dia. / Bon tardi. / Bon nochi. = Good morning. / Good afternoon. / Good evening.
Con ta bai? = How are you?
Mi ta bon! = I am well!
Danki. = Thank you.
Aruba ta dushi! = Aruba is lovely!

Where Did We Get Groceries?

When you go to a spot for a month, or even over a week, it tends to be way cheaper to cook as many meals at home as you can. So when we travel, that’s what we tend to do.

We ended up shopping at the Super Food Plaza for the majority of our food. We were about a half a mile away from there at the airbnb we were staying at, so it was an easy walk. It also was on the way to the beach and the way back from the beach. That made it super convenient for us.

It has a great selection of food and pretty good pricing compared to eating out. It’s a huge store. It felt like a store that you would go to in the states with how much they had. There’s also a pharmacy inside of it where we got sunscreen. They also sell wine, beer and have a liquor store inside of the store. There is also a nice little restaurant that we ate at a few times, Jack’s Cafe.

If you can buy sunscreen before you come to Aruba, it’ll save you a bunch of money. We struggled a little bit with some of the translations on foods because some of the labels are in Dutch. One tip I always try to do while traveling is download the local language dictionary on google translate. That way you can scan the product and it’ll auto-translate for you. In this case, I had downloaded Dutch,

Although sometimes the translations are just…odd.

What Restaurants Did We Eat At?

Day one when we arrived, we walked down to the beach and had dinner and a beer at Coco Loco Beach Bar. We split a chicken quesadilla which came with fries and each had a Balashi beer for sunset. We had been traveling all day and just needed to get some food in us.

Here’s the sunset the first night.

Splitting the meal was a good idea and it filled us both, for a total of $29. The Balashi’s were $6 a piece for a 8oz beer and the quesadilla was $17. The location is great, right on the beach, and the servers were friendly. But it’s weird paying $6 for a 8oz beer.

Truck di mama: A food truck on the beach in Eagle Beach. I had the grouper and Sam had the special, which happened to be conch. It was $15 for the conch and $17 for the grouper. Both meals came with french fries, rice, a pasta salad and the grouper came with a plantain. Overpriced for these meals and they weren’t that good.

The menu is roughly spray painted on a sort of post outside the food truck. No prices listed anywhere.
If we go back, we’ll share a steak order. That or the shrimp, they both looked good. The serving size could be a split meal between two people.

Here’s the menu for Truck di mama:

Matthew’s beachside restaurant in Manchebo Beach.

Sam saw some videos on either Tiktok or Instagram about Manchebo Beach and eating at Matthew’s, so one day we walked down there to see it for ourselves.

The beach was huge here. It reminded me of Siesta Key Beach in Sarasota, Florida.

At Matthew’s, you are right at the beach just a little bit above sea level so you have a nice breeze and a beautiful view for the meal.

The Islander Bar And Grill: This place has a great upstairs bar/restaurant area. We ended up having a couple of beers and split a pizza. The pizza was decent and the beers were cold, but we went here for the view and it was a great view.

Here’s what we’ve done so far:

We’re beach people so a lot of our time was just spent hanging out at Eagle Beach and reading and swimming. For the most part, the tide wasn’t heavy so people can just hang out in the water and relax. We did a lot of that, with me swimming around and diving to see how deep different spots were.

The water was extremely clear, so I was able to see easily underwater even without goggles. If I were to do this again, I would have bought a pair of small goggles or a decent snorkel mask. We have an awesome snorkel mask that we use in Florida, but it’s too big to travel with when we only travel with backpacks.

I read a lot on my Kindle Paperwhite while we were there. Those things are terrific for reading at the beach. Lightweight, thousands of books and no glare so it’s easy to read.

Fofoti Tree: A cool little tree that is made to withstand storms. It was busy with people taking photos there. Kinda looks like a small banyon tree. You can see it in the photo below on the right side.

Offroad Evolution Aruba Rental & Tours

We did a 2 person UTV and rode around the island and it was a blast. We don’t usually stay at big box hotels when visiting a place for more than a few days or a week, so we stayed at an small airbnb. The team over at Offroad Evolution sent someone over (shoutout Jelle) in the morning to pick us up and we ended up driving to pick up another couple in the morning.

After we got to the location, it was a breeze to rent the UTV. We paid the deposit and were shown the map they recommend of visiting places and we did a walkaround and then were on our way. It was super simple. If you chose to go with them, be sure to bring your ID and a credit card for the deposit.

We then headed west and then north, to the first stop which was the California Lighthouse.

It was pretty breezy up top and got really busy but the view was great.

The stairs were pretty chaotic going up and down with how narrow they were the higher up you got.

The lighthouse was named after the S.S. California which sunk before the construction of the lighthouse in 1910. It’s high up on the elevation and stands out quite a bit compared to the rest of everything being closer to sea level. It’s one of Aruba’s scenic trademarks.

The lighthouse is open everyday 9:00am – 7:00pm and has a $5 admission fee per person.

After the lighthouse we hopped back in the UTV and headed east along the coast of the island. One thing that I never knew about Aruba was that a big part of the island is still uninhabited. A lot of the east side of the island is just… desert. It’s very interesting to see.

Alto Vista Chapel

Our next stop was the Alto Vista Chapel. I didn’t know anything about the chapel except that it was on the map as one of the stops. It was a good little break with some shops and vendors to pick stuff up if you wanted. We didn’t end up getting anything.

Alto Vista Chapel is a small Catholic chapel that stands on the hills above the north shore of the sea and to the northeast of the town of Noord, on the island of Aruba, 27 km north of the coast of Venezuela. 

The church, painted on the outside in stark bright yellow, makes it a conspicuous religious monument for people to visit. The present Chapel of Alto Vista was completed in 1952 and stands in the same location as the original chapel, which was built by Domingo Silvestre, the Venezuelan missionary from Santa Ana de Coro, Venezuela, in 1750.

The Alto Vista Chapel was stated to be the location where conversion of Aruban Indians to Christianity started.

– Wikipedia

We jumped off a little ridge into a natural pool as well. I ended up getting a little cut on my hand and my knee because I climbed over to an area that no one was hanging around in. I was curious to see the spot, so I had to check it out. You always need to remain curious and go explore.

Baby Beach

I’m not sure what the hype is about this place. Yes, it is a beautiful beach… but when you’re in Aruba, almost all of the beaches are beautiful.

It was pretty busy but it wasn’t any nicer than the other beaches we visited. The positive was that it had less waves than other beaches and it was a bit more shallow in spots than other beaches we’ve been to on the island. It was pretty shallow which made it easier for the kids who were there to stand up and enjoy the ocean.

But compared to Eagle Beach, I personally think Eagle Beach was better for adults.

Zeerover’s for lunch

We stopped at Zeerovers on the ride home and the fish of the day were red snapper and mahi mahi. So we got one of each along with 6 shrimp and some Balashi chills and waters. While I had read a few articles about how good Zeerovers was, I was still surprised at it. The price was less than we had spent at other places and it was pretty quick to get the food.

We also lucked out and arrived before 10 other people lined up behind us. Check out the meal below.

After Zeerover’s we ended up taking the UTV back and ended the day.

Flamingo Beach on Renaissance Island

For the last 3 days of the trip, we wanted to make it special. You know, the typical touristy stuff and being real fancy. So, we booked a 2 night stay at the Renaissance Wind Creek Aruba Resort. This is the place you go and stay if you want to go see the flamingos. We wanted to see the flamingos, I mean, who wouldn’t want to see flamingos?

I’m not sure what it is about flamingos that makes them so interesting. Maybe the bright pink colors? Either way, it was a pretty cool experience. While some of the blog posts I read said to make sure you get there early in the day to make sure that you can feed them, I noticed that throughout the day people were feeding them. Maybe early in the day you can get multiple flamingos to come over and eat from you? Later on in the day we had a few different times where 1-2 flamingos came over to eat the feed out of our hands.

If you plan on doing this, make sure you take some quarters to get the feed.

The big moment

On October 24, 2023 I asked my girlfriend to marry me. We were on Flamingo Beach and I was racking my brain to figure out where to actually ask. There aren’t many private areas besides the cabanas, but those aren’t even that private. You’re still pretty close to everyone else.

Lucky for us, I’m a wanderer. I like to just kinda wander around and see stuff. This led us to walking through an area that appeared to have no one there. We ended up walking down a pathway that opened up to an area that looks like it is set up for wedding parties or big events.

The good news is that no one was there, so we had the full area to ourselves. It was off from the main beach and not visible to the majority of the people so it was our moment. I dropped down on my knee and asked Sam to marry me in the sand.

She said yes! So we’ll be getting married sometime in 2024. Then, we’ll be heading off to Africa for a Safari honeymoon.

What exactly is content creation and why is it so awesome?

To me, it’s kinda like planting little seeds all around the world. Except these seeds grow up to be money trees instead of normal plants/bushes.

I create a lot of stuff. Everything from content for social media, blog posts like this one, videos, images to sell to stock photography websites and even books. I am addicted to it.

Here are a few resources for each of those:

• Publishing Books Is Way Easier Now…
• What I’ve Been Working On April 2023 Edition
• How Do YouTubers Make Money? The Ultimate Guide

Once you realize that the stuff that you make can create income for you, it’s hard to stop. A switch kinda flicks on in your mind and you wanna just do more of it.

The way that I look at it, the more of these money seeds that I plant, the more of a chance I have that some of them will turn into money trees.

If you’ve ever planted anything, you know that some of the seeds work and others don’t. Understanding that at the most simple level possible (it grows or it doesn’t) is difficult to accept. We of course want everything to work perfectly 100% of the time… but that’s not what happens.

So we plant more seeds, right?

The same thing happens when you create content online. When you are just getting started, most of the things you create aren’t going to grow into anything. I think of it the same as if you were a beginning gardener. You don’t really know what you don’t know yet.

How much do I water it?
Does it need more or less sun?
Is it too humid? Not humid enough?
Does it even grow in this type of soil?

You kinda test stuff and learn as you go. The same happens with content creation. You’re going to be awkward on camera when you do your first 50 videos for your YouTube channel or TikTok. It’s just how it is. Your first blog posts are going to suck. Your first of everything is going to suck, that’s just how it is.

But when you stick with it, you’ll get a little bit better each time.

The same thing is true with planting these money seeds. It took me about 6 years to ‘figure it out’ to earn an income that sustained my life from the internet. But once it really clicked, I just kept doing what worked… and then I added a little bit of other stuff to see if it would also work.

Most of it doesn’t. But some stuff does… and that keeps me going back to create more.

For example, I know that building an audience online is one of the best ways to create income in my experiences. You can build a community of like-minded people and give them products that help make their lives better.

You can also make YouTube videos and earn income from them. Are you an expert at some specific thing in your job? Turn your knowledge into YouTube videos and teach people exactly what it is you know how to do.

You can get approved to earn money from YouTube once you build up a big enough audience, and in the process of doing that, you can sell affiliate products and receive a commission for sales you generate. I’m currently using Opus Pro to create short form video content from longer videos and it’s working great.

The Long Form Video Content Strategy

Something I figured out a few years ago was that it’s great to create long form video content. With long form video, you can cut out clips for short clips for YouTube shorts, Tik Toks, Instagram posts, etc.

You’ll set up your camera and then talk to the camera and teach as much as you know in that video. You can have somebody hold the camera for you, or you can get a tripod. I use my SwitchPod all the time. It’s a cool little tripod that I just set up and click record and talk.

You can rip out the audio from the long form video and have a podcast. You can transcribe the long form video and turn it into a blog post. It really is one of the best forms of content creation in my opinion.

Start off with an outline of what you want to teach/talk about. Sit down (or stand up) and teach the camera about the subject matter that you are an expert in. Just record the whole thing, hiccups and everything. Just keep talking and teaching for at least 10 minutes. Ideally you’ll get to 15 or 20 minutes.

Once that is done, upload the video to your computer and put it onto YouTube. Then head over to Opus Pro and submit it there. The app will automatically go in and cut up that longer content into shorter form content that you can use. Right off the bat you will probably have 4-5 different clips that are short and catchy to help you with building up an audience from that first video.

That one piece of content basically just multiplied into 3-4 different money seeds. Remember, the more of these you plant, the more likely your videos take off and grow your audience.

It really can be that simple. It’s simple, but not easy. You still do need to put in the work up front.

What’s this mean to me now?

So at this stage in my life, I just want to plant as many of these money seeds as possible.

I’ve been trying to document a little bit more here on the blog. I’m not 100% sure who this is for, but I’m hopeful that in the future it will be great to reflect back on this time.

Last month I self-published 3 new coloring books, along with creating an actual physical copy of one of the books I had written for an audience I built in the survival/prepping niche.

While I have had books published before, via Kindle, this was something I hadn’t done yet because of how insanely difficult it seemed to do. I had kinda looked into it a few different times to get my juggling ebook turned into a physical book, but after watching a couple of YouTube videos it seemed like everyone was jut trying to sell a service where they’d format and publish stuff for you.

Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll figure it out myself.

The good news?

I figured out how to publish them myself.

The bad news?

I can’t believe it took me this long to find out how to do it.

How to Publish a Physical Copy Of Your Book

Before you think it’s going to just be crazy easy to write and publish a book, it’s NOT easy to do all the work involved in writing something. Writing can be crazy tedious and if you’ve ever written any kind of content, you know that it can be scary to hit that ‘publish’ button once you think you’re done.

On my site here, I probably have at least 5 posts I haven’t published yet… I just looked and it’s at 19 unpublished.

So I’m 100% guilty of not publishing things for whatever reason. It’s honestly probably because I can get distracted and then run off on random tangents and build other stuff.

… back on track, Chris.

Okay so let’s say you’ve written some stuff. It could even be a small little guide to something that you’ve taught someone. Now the hard part of publishing, right?

WRONG.

I came across a software, BookBolt , to be exact, that makes this crazy simple. Honestly, like incredibly simple.

So here’s the fun part for me with this. I have written a few books already, that were all published on the Kindle. I had to manually figure out formatting years ago and it was so tedious. Trying to figure out how to put a picture into the book and how to make sure it actually showed up in the right spot… ugh it was terrible.

I remember trying to figure it out and I’d think I had it perfectly… then whenever the kindle preview showed, the whole book was messed up. I still have horrible images in my head from when I first published the books. It really honestly discouraged me from doing it again and again. Which is sad. It’s a great way to share your information and things you learned with other people.

It’s also pretty awesome to say “yep, I’m a published author” or add “author” to your bio.

BookBolt made it super easy. Since using it, I’ve gotten back into the swing of self-publishing stuff and I kinda dig it. Combining this along with leveraging some AI tools, like Jasper and ChatGPT, is a game changer for content creation.

You can go to ChatGPT right now and tell it to act as a best-selling author and to help you write an outline for a book.

I just did that here to show you an example:

Yes, I said ‘act as a copywriter’ instead of best-selling author… you can tell these tools to act as anyone you want to help you with brainstorming. After doing that, I now have an outline with table of contents and a intro to a book that I can use as a starting point if I were to move forward with publishing this particular book.

I’m NOT saying that you should copy the exact stuff that chatGPT gives you. It’s a tool to use to improve or add value to what you’re doing. Take what it provides to you and use it to help you with your outline and help you if you’re stuck at certain points in your writing.

Once you have the outline written and you’ve gone through writing and editing (and re-writing and editing) and are ready to publish, it’s time for BookBolt. Open it up and then on the left sidebar select the drop down and then instead of ‘Research’ click on ‘Create’ and then ‘BookBolt Studio’.

You’ll want to name the file and pick the size of the book you’re going to be publishing. For me, I selected the 6″9″ Book and am going to just go ahead and use that template from ChatGPT to create this simple book.

I’m going to use MidJourney to create a simple book cover image for the background.. and I went on a bit of a tangent creating images. KISS Chris… KISS (Keep It Stupid Simple)… so I’m just picking one to show you.

The book title from the original conversation with chatGPT was this:

Unleash Your Authority: Pen to Power in No Time

so here’s a sample book cover photo…

you’ll notice there’s words in there… we’ll edit those out quick using Canva magic eraser and then add the title in BookBolt.

Bear in mind, this is just a quick look and show of what’s possible. You can see the cover of the image there on the right along with a title (kind of a placeholder for now)until I decide on a better font, etc… just to show you. I also didn’t add any of the info on the back of the book which is the left side of that image.

Ok so the next step is actually importing the information from your new guide/book. Let’s see how difficult that is.

I copied the information from part one and used ‘Pages’ on my MacBook to save the file as a .PDF and then chose to upload the PDF into a new folder within BookBolt (to keep everything nicely organized) and here’s what the first 2 pages look like after imported. I didn’t add the table of contents or any pages before with info about author/book series/etc, just keeping it super simple for this example.

Now what I would do next is to finish up adding all of the information for the book, and adding some images if I chose to. Bookbolt makes that super simple.

After that, it’s as easy as hitting the ‘Download’ button up top and selecting the option for ‘Download Current Project CMYK (Printed Books).

It’ll go through the full process of converting it and optimizing everything automatically and then it’ll allow you to download the full thing. Once it’s fully downloaded, you’ll unzip the download and you’ll have 3 separate pieces of information.

One of them is the cover photo, the other is the interior of the book and the ‘sources’ is something you don’t really need to use in my experiences. There’s probably a use for it somewhere, but I didn’t need it in this process.

Next up is heading over to KDP, https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/bookshelf , and creating an account if you don’t have one, then logging in and selecting the “+ Create” big yellow button.

It’ll ask you what kind of book you want to create. In this case, we’re doing a physical book so you’ll click that one.

Fill in all of the information on this first page, submit that section and then you’ll get to the point where it asks for ‘Paperback Content’. You’ll want to request a free KDP ISBN.

Then, select the ‘black and white interior with white interior’ under print options. Next up select the size of the book. We chose 6 x 9 inch at the start, so we’ll select that. We’ll keep ‘no bleed’ and ‘matte’.

At the Manuscript stage, you’ll upload the version where it says ‘Paperback Interior’ on the file we just downloaded and unzipped.

Then to the cover photo section. Instead of creating one there, we’re going to upload a custom one. One we made inside of BookBolt. So you’ll select ‘ Upload a cover you already have (print-ready PDF only)’. For this, you’ll select the file that starts with ‘Paperback Cover’.

After that it’s time to check the book preview. At this point you might have an error or two with formatting… at least I tend to get at least 1 issue. Don’t worry though, they tell you what it is and you can easily fix it back in BookBolt.

If you had the error, go fix it in book bolt and resubmit a new manuscript and then look at the book preview again.

Once that’s ready, you’re pretty much all set! You’ll save and continue and then select the pricing. After that you can (and I recommend you do this) is to buy a copy for yourself. I did this with the survival ebook to find what mistakes or things I should add. It’s way easier for me personally to visually see something than to see it on a computer.

Once you get the physical copy, you may want to change some of the stuff and you’ll easily be able to do this with the BookBolt software. It makes this whole process to much simpler and i’m glad I now have it.

Click here to use BookBolt today and start making your books the easy way.

I’m sitting at the Tesla service station here in Sarasota, Florida. My tire has a slow leak so I brought it in to have them check it out. It’s going to be around 2-3 hours of wait time and I have my iPad Air, so I figure I would write a bit to pass the time.

I haven’t really been blogging on my personal site in many years. Although I did start a journal habit a few months back, which has been enjoyable. Basically every morning at 8am my iPad has a shortcut that goes off and tells me it’s time to journal. So I open up the “DayOne” app and set a timer for 5 minutes.

It’s a good way to kinda recap what I’ve been doing and keep myself accountable about stuff I’m building. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of Amazon influencer review videos. I make little 1-3 minute videos talking about different products I have or have been using. I then upload them through the app and if people who are on the Amazon product pages watch my video and then buy the product, I get a commission. That’s the super easy version of it, there are some things with compliance and getting accepted into the program and stuff.

I had started that in December of 2022, I think that I first got approved on December 16 when my first three videos went live. Since then it’s grown nicely. I have been taking it more seriously and am reviewing a bunch of stuff. My growth on it has been fun, because I get to talk about different products and what I like/dislike about them. I just quickly opened the app and looked. Last month I earned more than the previous month which is good.

What else is new?

Last year we moved around Florida a lot, so no change there. We lived on the Gulf for a while, between St. Pete and down a bit south of Sarasota and then spent a few months up in St Augustine where I got to surf a ton. It was a lot of fun there, but the water was chilly and it wasn’t super convenient charging the car. We also spent the first 3 months up in Panama City Beach, Florida and one month in Indian Shores, Florida.

We’re really exploring and trying to find the right spot for home base. St Pete Beach is awesome, but it’s tough to find a spot there because of how small and built up it already is.

I started a blog post last month that I never ended up publishing. It had a big update on everything I had been working on.

I am not 100% sure why I never published it, or finished it. That has been common with me in my past, starting a project and struggling to finish it. I’ll get really excited about something but if it doesn’t turn into a profitable thing I end up getting distracted with other projects that have been working or that are on the verge of working.

(it’s now later in the day and I went back and published that blog, you can see it at: What I’ve Been Working On April 2023 Edition” if you’re curious)

That’s how I got into the Amazon review stuff. My YouTube homepage had a good video recommendation from someone I’ve followed for years. I watched his video and immediately took action on it… then I had to wait for approval and it took around 48 days. It was frustrating, but something I knew could work out.

It’s worked out pretty well.

The blog post from before? No idea why I didn’t publish it. I could go re-read it and see, but then I’d be getting distracted from this particular article. Then I’d probably not publish this.

I am probably going to struggle with figuring out how to upload a blog post image for this post as well. We’ll see how that goes when I’m done writing.

Other things I’ve been up to:

I also started creating AI artwork. When I was young I enjoyed drawing stuff. I used to make little baseball cards in art class. I would also draw some stuff randomly but I got away from it because I had no way of monetizing it (in my mind).

But, someone else I follow online showed me how they were using MidJourney to create artwork and selling it on Adobe. I had wanted to play with MidJourney, but it’s $30/month for what I would use… which meant I needed to find a way to have it pay for itself.

So far it has been. Last month I earned around $200 from selling AI art. I’ve been super consistent with creating photos everyday and uploading them. It’s been fun to get a bit creative and leveraging AI tools makes it way easier to actually get the things I want. Is it cheating? I’m not sure.

If I was an artist, using AI could be a cool way to see different versions of potential creations before putting in the time to make them. But on the other hand, part of the joy of creating is just starting and kinda working through all the hiccups. It’s a tough thing for me to truly understand. Although now I can say I’ve sold art, which is fun to me.

It’s kinda like when I first published my kindle book on juggling. I went from normal dude to “author” by simply writing a book. Since then, I’ve written a couple other kindle books. I really used to love writing, back when I started my blog and I was documenting a ton of stuff. I really got out of the habit because of it not being profitable at all for me.

All of my niche stuff worked out way better than my “personal brand” stuff so I put all my attention to that instead. I don’t regret it, since it’s allowed me to live my dream life. But I don’t have all the documenting from a bunch of different things I’ve learned over the years.

I also pretty much stopped doing personal Youtube videos as well. I guess I still don’t have a clear direction for my channel. I ended up building other niche YouTube channels that actually made more money, so I once again moved towards that.

This has been a fun experiment in writing.

There really isn’t a lot of direction with this, it’s kinda just whatever pops into my mind and I just write it. It’s way different than my niche stuff. With that, I know exactly what needs to be written because it tends to be for certain keywords. With my blog here, I’m still not 100% sure on the direction.

I guess it’s all just a big experiment. Maybe someday I’ll have a family of my own and this can be used to see what I was thinking during certain time periods in my life. Maybe not. Who knows for sure.

There was an interview that Tim Ferris’s did with Derek Sivers that I really enjoyed. Derek mentioned how he likes people who just have personal blogs and document stuff and I vibed with that. Honestly that interview is probably why I started writing this article. So, thank you for that Derek. You can see his blog at Sivers.com

Anything else that’s new? I bought a walking pad and have been using it to walk 5 miles a day. Yes, I bought it with the idea that I could review it and get a return on it… and it’s been getting a return, which is awesome. But it also allows Sam and I to get a few extra miles of walking in each day, so it’s a return on overall health as well.

I also started doing 100 pushups everyday as another positive habit. I started that I believe in October of 2022 and have only missed 2 or 3 days. They were either moving days or when I went to the Masters with my dad. Btw, The Masters was incredible. The course is immaculate and watching the players have fun and be incredibly talented was such a memorable experience. I also bought and flipped a bunch of stuff from the tournament, which is always fun. I ended up getting a hat and a few other things for me personally for free from flipping stuff. It’s great.

That seems like it’s a good update overall. I’m still not sure on the direction of the blog here, so I guess that’s it for now.

I’m still at the Tesla service center and I’m trying to get Discord to work so that I can use MidJourney to make an image for the blog post… but it’s not loading. So I’m just going to publish this without a picture for now and will update when it works.

What will be the image? Who knows.

I’m currently sitting at a little desk in the place where we’re currently living for the month. To my left is the gulf of Mexico and I can see the waves rolling in. Sadly, they aren’t big enough to surf and it’s mainly wind swell and pretty small.

I’m honestly considering trying to find a cheap foam surfboard just to head out and try to surf it anyway.

Last week at this time I was up in Augusta, Georgia for the Masters practice round. It was such an incredible experience. Last year we got tickets and drove up and went… but we got rained out. For some reason, they honored our tickets from last year for this year, so we were able to go again.

That course is in such incredible condition. Every blade of grass is perfect. I even took a photo of the pine needles that were in one of the walk-ways because it seemed like it was fake. Everything seemed to have a place and everything was in the right place.

So far this year has been pretty great. I also have been bad at documenting stuff for myself and sharing it with others. I’ve been a bit more active on Twitter and have been picking up a lot of stuff from there. For example, learning to create AI art with MidJourney and then selling it on Adobe.

Thanks to Chase Curtis for introducing me to this. As you can see it’s not a ‘big’ money maker, but it’s fun to create assets like this for me. Every time I create something that earns me income passively, I get excited.

I also wanted to dive in and learn more about AI this year as well, so this was a no-brainer. It allowed me to get a return on what I would be doing anyway. That’s pretty much how I look at everything. Is it something I’m interested in? Yes. Is there a way to earn money with it? Yes. Win-win.

I Created Another Additional Income Stream

Next up is something that I actually started in December of 2022. I came across a video from Spencer Mecham on my Youtube homepage and watched it. The idea immediately made sense to me so I followed my curiosity and learned a bit more. I then dove in a bit more.

It’s been fun to be honest. How does it work? Pretty simply.

Basically Amazon needs honest reviews of the products that they sell, from real people. If you’ve been on the Amazon site lately you’ve probably noticed that along with the photos at the top of the listing they have some videos. They also have video reviews from people who bought the products down towards the bottom of the listing. In its simplest form, if a customer watches your video and then goes on to buy the product you can get a commission for helping them along the buying process.

Here is the video that led me onto this:

So basically you can become an Amazon Influencer and review products. I’ve been an Amazon affiliate for about 10 years or so which made this easy for me to understand. If you’ve never done any type of affiliate marketing, this might be kinda weird or out of the normal for you. Before I learned about affiliate marketing, I had no idea it even existed.

As I mentioned up above, I love creating stuff like this so tend to spend my time doing stuff like this if it has the opportunity for me to work once and be paid over and over again for it.

I started keeping a journal again using the DayOne app on my iPad. At 8am every morning I have a ‘shortcut’ that pops up and reminds me to open up the app and journal for 5 minutes. For the most part I just talk about what I accomplished on the previous day and what my plans are for the day ahead. It’s been a great way to get me writing again and has helped me with identifying some areas I could improve in my life.

Journaling led me to adding a new habit of 100 pushups a day. When I was living over in St Augustine, Florida the last few months of 2022, I was surfing a lot more and when I was journaling I decided that I wanted to improve my paddling ability. One of the easiest things to do that was pushups everyday. So during that day of my journal, I decided ‘I’m going to do 100 pushups everyday’. So i’ve kept that habit up since then. I think the first day I did it was October 30, 2022.

I’ve missed a few days of the full 100 pushups. When that happens I usually put the previous days pushups that I didn’t finish onto the next day. So if I only did 60 pushups one day, I’d do 140 the next day to make up for it.

Journaling also led me to adding a daily Duolingo Spanish lesson to my daily habits. Back in 2012-2014 I had lived in Panama and Costa Rica, so I was able to practice Spanish a bit more which led me to improving. However when I moved over to Asia in 2015-2017 I didn’t speak any Spanish so my understanding of the language got worse. Then when we moved back to the states in 2018, I pretty much stopped with all Spanish. So, I decided to pick it back up. Duolingo has been great and I ended up paying for the full year of it’s premium version so that I’d stick with it. I’m currently on day 49 and am pretty proud of the consistency.

Now that i’m writing this out, I wonder if there’s something I can build around learning Spanish and if Duolingo has an affiliate opportunity that I can recommend in whatever I build around it. That could be a good way to get a positive ROI on the price of the yearly learning.

This feels pretty good to write this stuff out again and share it. I haven’t really done much blogging on my personal site in quite a few years.

What else has been going on?

So my main business stuff is around audience building, niche websites and affiliate marketing. That’s all been pretty consistent lately. Basically I just build social media audiences and use them to send traffic (people) to websites I own or products that I receive a commission for selling. For the most part that’s a lot of my ‘day-to-day’ stuff.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss how AI is changing content creation, and offer some tips on how you can stay ahead of the curve. I’ll also include some resources to help you on your journey.

What is AI and How Is It Changing Content Creation?

AI, or artificial intelligence, is a branch of computer science that deals with creating intelligent machines. AI researchers are working on creating computers that can understand and respond to human language, identify objects, and learn from experience.

In recent years, AI has begun to have a significant impact on content creation. One example of this is the use of natural language processing to generate texts. This technology can automatically generate summaries of articles or videos, making it easier for people to find the information they need. It can also create articles along with you.

Additionally, AI can be used to create more realistic and lifelike images and videos. I don’t know what kind of website or niche you are in. But, let’s say you have a blog that’s got the historical information of famous people throughout history. If you had that kind of website and wanted a unique image of Mark Twain, you could pay to get one… or you could create one with Jasper like I just did here:

You could then plug this into another tool like Canva.com to add some text to the photo with a quote from Mark Twain. That can be used for Facebook posts, Twitter posts, Instagram posts and Pinterest posts that can all drive traffic back to your website.

See how easy that is?

You’re going to learn how you can use this technology to improve your content.

How To Use AI To Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy

It’s no secret that the world of digital marketing is changing rapidly. AI presents a unique opportunity for content marketers to improve their strategies and results. Here are a few ways you can use AI to your advantage:

1. Automated Content Creation:

AI can help you generate ideas for new content, as well as write and edit existing content. This can save you a lot of time and effort, while also ensuring that your content is high-quality and engaging. For example, you can create an entire blog post in about 15 minutes using a tool like Jasper.ai

You can also use AI to come up with content ideas for your blog. Check this out, I typed in “>Write a list of 25 blog post title ideas based on Digital Marketing” and then let Jasper come up with ideas:

2. Improved targetting:

AI can help you gain a deeper understanding of your target audience, their needs and interests, and how they consume content. This allows you to create more targeted and effective content marketing campaigns. If you’ve run any Facebook Ad campaigns you are aware of the different automated tools that are now being offered.

3. Greater insights:

AI provides valuable insights into customer behavior, which can help you optimize your campaigns for better results. Additionally, AI can help you track ROI so that you can see which tactics are working and what needs to be improved.

4. Personalized experiences:

Thanks to AI, you can create highly personalized content experiences for your audience. This can help increase engagement and conversion rates, as well as build brand loyalty.

By harnessing the power of AI, you can take your content marketing strategy to the next level. If you’re not already using AI in your content marketing efforts, now is the time to start.

What Are Some of the Benefits of Using AI for Content Creation?

As businesses increasingly look for ways to improve their content marketing strategy, many are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) for help. While AI has been used for content generation in some form or another for years, recent advancements have made it more reliable and effective than ever before. Here are just a few of the benefits of using AI for content creation.

1. Increased Efficiency:

One of the biggest advantages of using AI for content creation is that it can help you save time. Automating tasks like writing articles and creating artwork for your blog posts and social media posts can be done faster. If you’re a content creator, you know that content is king. The more relevant content you can create to help your audience, the more traffic your website will get.

2. Improved Quality:

In addition to being more efficient, AI-generated content is also generally of higher quality than manually written content. This is because AI algorithms are able to take into account multiple factors, such as the topic, target audience, and desired outcomes when generating content.

No, AI content isn’t just “spun articles” which is what it used to be. I remember years ago I would use certain article spinners for certain niche sites I had just to create filler content. The newer AI tools like Jasper are not spinners, but content creators. You still do need to fact-check certain things and will want to edit the content before publishing.

3. Increased Engagement:

If you’ve been creating content for any length of time, you know how difficult it can sometimes be. Trying to keep the flow of the article to keep the reader engaged isn’t easy. Sometimes you’ll hit a certain spot and just draw a blank. In these cases, you can ask for some help from an AI tool. It’ll help with getting you back in the flow of the article and can help to trigger some new ideas.

When you’re also using AI to create engaging artwork for your content, you’ll have better engagement. We’ve all seen the generic royalty-free photos plastered all over everyone’s blogs. I’ve used royalty-free photos for years on my sites and I wish I would have had the ability to create unique artwork for every post. I’m not in any way an artist, but with AI tools, I can give the tool a prompt and it creates artwork in the style I requested.

For example, I wanted to get a photo for this spot. I typed in the terms ‘a robot sitting at a computer writing an article and got this photo that I can use in this article.

Pretty cool right?

If I were to try to draw something like this or make it in photoshop I would probably end up spending 20 hours and it wouldn’t look good. Or I’d hop on Fiverr.com and pay someone to make a photo for my article and have to go back and forth to get something I liked.

4. Greater Scalability:

One of the biggest challenges facing businesses today is scalability – the ability to meet increasing demands without incurring proportionally increasing costs. Accordingly, many businesses are turning to artificial intelligence as a way to scale their content marketing efforts.

Comparing the Costs

I used to spend around $75 to $100 for a well-written blog post on a few of my niche sites. Now, for $99/mo I can work with Jasper, an AI tool that helps me write 100,000 words a month. Yes, I still will have to do basic editing (or pay someone to edit) the articles.

But if we compare the cost of writing 4 articles a month at $75 a piece, that’s $300 a month. For $99/month, I could get 50 articles that are 2,000 words a piece. Let’s say the normal monthly budget for this site was $300. I could still spend the leftover $200 on an editor and be at the same price point. However, with Jasper, I would also have an extra 46 articles on my website that are bringing in traffic and sales.

Using AI to generate new pieces of content allows businesses to quickly and easily meet the needs of a growing audience without having to hire additional writers or editors. Try out Jasper with this link.

Are There Any Risks Associated With Using AI for Content Creation?

Of course, there are a few potential risks when using AI to create content. The first is that your content may come across as too robotic or stiff. As you learn more about AI, you’ll start to recognize different patterns in different blog posts you read. I’ve started to notice the layouts and structures even on some of the legacy media sites. I honestly wonder if the editors there know that their writers are using AI…

This is why it’s important to have a human editor go over the final product before you hit publish. While Google made a recent announcement about their helpful content update, as long as you are creating helpful content, you should be fine. There was a lot of chatter in a few of the digital marketing communities I’m a part of where people were nervous about the update.

If you’re mass publishing useless articles just to fill up a website, you should be worried. It’s not a good idea to just mass publish stuff that isn’t helpful. This is one of the problems you might face when buying a website without properly researching the site. You could just be buying a website that’s full of spun articles and not unique and helpful content.

As I’ve said in other articles and videos, the goal of each piece of content you create is to help answer a question or solve a problem for the reader. You want the reader to read through your article, get the answer they were looking for, and be genuinely helped by that information. To me, this is a great long-term strategy for every piece of content you create.

It’s why it’s important to create as much evergreen content as you can.

What are some of the best AI-based tools for content creation currently available on the market?

There are a few different AI-based content creation tools available, and the one you choose will likely depend on your needs and budget. Here are three of the most popular AI-based content creation tools:

• Jasper is an AI tool that I personally use and love. It helps users write 20,000 words per month and starts at $29/mo. I personally use the “boss mode” for 100,000 words a month for $99/mo and also just signed up for the Jasper Art that’s $20/month because it saves me money on buying new images for my articles.

• Quill is an AI tool that helps users improve their writing skills. It doesn’t really help you create new content, but it does help you with re-phrasing content. It’s free to start using 125 words. Its premium option is $19.95/mo but with Jasper you get a re-phrasing option as part of the deal. So keep that in mind.

• Hemmingway is an AI tool that helps users edit their writing for clarity and conciseness. It’s pretty convenient to help you identify little errors in your writing, but it’s not perfect. It’s free to use but also offers Hemingway Editor 3 for Mac and PC that’s an independent app (for people like me who get easily distracted). I use the Hemmingway App as well as Jasper.

As you can see, there are a few different AI-based content creation tools available on the market. To keep up with how the world of content creation is evolving, it’s a good idea to at least test out a few for yourself and sees how they work. As times change, it’s a good idea to test out the new technology available to us as it allows us to spend less time sitting on the computer and more time enjoying our lives.

So What is YouTube Actually About?

Before we get into how to make money from YouTube, we’ve gotta know what it is and what it isn’t. YouTube is a video-sharing website where users can upload, share, and view videos. But you know that already.

As a normal user of YouTube, you simply go there and can watch videos about anything you want, right? You might have a question about fixing something at your house and you search on Google for the answer. Up pops a YouTube video that walks you through the step-by-step process. Historically, we would have to read through a manual or booklet to find the answer to many of these questions. Now, with YouTube, you can follow along with someone doing the exact thing you asked a question about.

The way I view YouTube is that it’s a sort of visual search engine. Many of us are visual learners, so YouTube is perfect for this style of teaching. Instead of having to read through paragraphs about how to do something, you can watch a short little video that explains it.

How do YouTubers Make Money From Their Videos?

There are many ways that YouTubers make money. The most common way is through advertising. YouTube sells ad space on its platform to businesses who want to reach YouTube’s huge audience. When a YouTuber makes a video, they can choose to allow YouTube to sell ad space on their video. When someone watches the video and sees the ad, the YouTuber gets paid. The payment isn’t instant though, you’re paid via direct deposit monthly for the previous month’s earnings.

In order to qualify to get paid from YouTube, you’ll need to have at least 1,000 subscribers and have 4,000 hours watched of your videos in the last 12 months. Once you reach this threshold, you can apply to be a YouTube Partner. If approved, you’ll be able to start making money from your videos!

Getting paid from YouTube ads is one of the easiest ways that you can make money from your YouTube Channel. It’s not necessarily the most profitable though. As with most things, you can find other opportunities to be paid more for your videos.

Sponsorships

Another way that YouTubers make money is through sponsorships. A sponsor is a company that pays a YouTuber to promote their product in a video. This could be anything from energy drinks to clothes to gaming consoles. Usually, the YouTuber will mention the product at the beginning of the video and then use it throughout the video. Sometimes, they will even do a whole video dedicated to the product.

Some YouTubers get sent free products along with the ability to become an affiliate for the product that they do a sponsorship video about. You’ll recognize this whenever you watch product review-type videos. The creator might say something like “use my code to order and you’ll get a bonus”. That’s how the sponsor can track the sales from the video.

Endorsing Products

YouTubers can also make money by endorsing products. This is similar to sponsorships, but usually, the YouTuber will only mention the product at the end of the video. They might say something like, “I used this product in today’s video and I loved it! If you want to try it out for yourself, you can use my discount code.”

You don’t need to be sponsored to endorse products. You just need to be an affiliate. For example, I have a YouTube channel that teaches people how to juggle. I have done some videos where I’ll review the products that I have bought and used. I then mention if people want to buy them, they can use the link in the description. The link will lead them over to Amazon where I’ll earn a small commission if the viewer chooses to buy from my link.

You can do product reviews of other things as well. For example, I made a review of one of the services that I’ve used for years, Clickfunnels, and promote the product in the video. If someone uses my affiliate link for that, I’ll get a recurring commission for as long as the person uses the product. If you can create useful guides and helpful tutorials of products that pay recurring commissions it can really add up.

Selling Merch and Digital Products

Other ways that YouTubers make money include selling merchandise and digital products. Many YouTubers have their own lines of merchandise, such as t-shirts, hats, and phone cases. They sell these items on their website or through a third-party website. You can use sites like Gearbubble or TeeSpring to set up a print-on-demand store.

YouTubers also sell digital products, such as e-books and courses. These are usually products that teach their audience how to do something, such as start a YouTube channel or grow a following on social media. There have been many great examples like Lost LeBlanc did with building up his YouTube channel and now teaching people how to Become A World Class Content Creator & Make Money From Anywhere.

Coaching and Consulting

Another way that YouTubers make money is by offering coaching and consulting services. This could be anything from one-on-one coaching to group coaching to teaching courses. These are usually done through Zoom calls or Google Hangouts. Once you build up an audience in your niche, people might want to work with you personally to help solve their problems.

The Types Of YouTube Channels You Can Create

There are a few different types of channels that you can create. The two I’m going to focus on are cash cow channels and tutorial channels. I don’t want to overwhelm you and have you think you need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars like Mr. Beast to create videos. You also don’t need to have a super fancy camera for these channels.

Cash Cow Channels

A few years ago I came across a kid who introduced me to the idea of Cash Cow YouTube channels. Basically, he and his team would create strictly for entertainment videos and channels. The kind of channel where it might be “Top 10 ___________” and just a ton of content that can go viral. I liked that idea and now I have 2 channels that are mini Cash Cow channels that I am actively growing.

To create a Cash Cow channel, you’ll need to pick a niche and then create viral content around it.

You’ll want to publish a lot of content if you choose this route. The kid who I learned this from has a full team now that publishes 1-2 videos a day. Personally, for my mini cash cow channels I’m only able to publish 1-2 a month because I’m very conservative with my investment in these channels. I’m paying someone else to create every single video and it takes me on average 10 months to break even with every video. If I have a video go viral, I’ll purchase another 1-2 videos for that month. However, I’m taking about half of the earnings from these channels to reinvest in dividend-paying stocks.

You can re-purpose other people’s videos if you are adding unique content and/or commentary to the video. You can also do these as faceless channels so you don’t personally need your face to be in the video. You can do simple screen recording stuff and use a microphone.

Tutorial Channels

Another type of channel that you can have is simple tutorials. One great example of this is the channel, Dad, how do I? You can click that link to open up the channel, it’ll open in a new tab. Take a quick glance (don’t watch them yet) at the channel. It’s just a bunch of useful videos. There’s stuff like how to install a kitchen faucet and how to fish.

The Dad, how do I? channel is just helpful stuff that a kid might ask their dad for help with. If you have a certain skill set that others ask you questions about pretty often, you could make a channel about it.

My Juggling Secrets YouTube channel is mainly a tutorial channel with a few product reviews as well. I’m just teaching people how to juggle, something that I’ve done since I was 8 years old. You might have something that you’ve done since you were a kid that you’re really good at. That could be your idea for your channel.

You don’t need to be on the camera for these tutorial channels if you are doing computer or tech tutorials. If you are great with setting up websites, you can record your screen and walk people through the process of building a website. You can do the same by walking someone through writing code or doing something else on the screen.

The Overall Idea/Plan For Building a YouTube Channel

The idea is to build a channel with the intent of making money. You are not going to make any money if you don’t have any viewers.

After you chose a niche to create videos about, it’s time to dive in and start creating. Go out and find other popular channels in your niche and see what they are doing right. Also, take a look at some of their older videos and see how they’ve evolved over time. You might notice that one particular trend in the niche gets way more views than other topics. Take those ideas and put your own unique spin on them.

If you’re doing a channel about something you’re very knowledgeable about, grab a pen and paper and write out every single question that people ask you about the subject. Each of those questions can be turned into a video. If you go into this trying to genuinely help people, you’ll do better over time because people will see you actually care.

For one of my Cash Cow channels, I aim to make $10 a month for every new video that gets uploaded. Yes, that’s not “insane” money, but if I have 100 videos that each earn me $10 a month, that’s an extra $1,000 a month. Many people who are selling internet marketing courses and stuff always talk about “$10,000 months”. If I earn $10 per video, that just means I need to create and upload 1,000 videos right? Once you dial in the numbers in your niche, it can become that simple. It’s simple, but not easy.

I put together a simple course that explains my process here if you want to learn more about what I’m personally doing.

If you are a beginner with dividend stocks, please check out the article I wrote titled: How to Start Investing in Dividend Stocks

The goal of this article is to teach you how to create monthly cash flow from dividend paying stocks. Keep in mind that any time you start investing, you aren’t going to have life-changing income immediately. It is a game of patience, so don’t get down on yourself at the beginning.

I’m a fan of consistently adding to my portfolio over time. One way to think about this kind of investing is adding 10-15% of your income each month to your portfolio instead of waiting to invest until you have a ton of extra income. It doesn’t have to be that number specifically, I’m just using that as an example. You can start with 2-5% of your income.

Don’t Wait To Get Started

If you wait to start investing until you have a ton of extra income, you’re missing out on the compound interest effect. It’s always better to start sooner and that’s because of compound interest.

While it’s not 100% proven that Albert Einstein said this, I like to think he did because he was a smart dude.

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.”

– Albert Einstein (maybe)

Let’s look at an example of why compound interest is so important. Right now I have no idea how old you are, or what your financial situation is, so keep that in mind. You’ll need to change the ages and dates here to make sense for your unique situation.

If you are depositing $10 a month and it is compounding at 5% each year, that means your money will grow to $4,127.46 at the end of 20 years. If you were to just keep this money under your bed or just in a safe, you would have only had $2,400 at the end of the 20 year period.

Which would you rather have? The $4,127.46 or $2,400?

That’s why the idea of compound interest is so important to understand while we’re building up our portfolio’s. The quicker we start compounding, the more it adds up over time.

How Much Money Do I Need To Get Started Investing In Dividend Stocks?

Great question! It’s honestly a lot less than you might think. For example, it’s December 5, 2020 and you can buy a share of the AT&T company ($T) for less than $30. As of me writing this, the price is $29.53 per share and AT&T currently pays a dividend each quarter of $0.52 so that means each year one share of AT&T pays you $2.08 in dividends. That’s a 7% return on your money.

I use $T to describe the stock because it reminds me that it’s for stock ticker T, so when you see me write out a stock symbol I add a $ in front of it so it’s easier for me (hopefully you too) to recognize it’s not an error in the article, but the stock ticker.

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You can see the payout history by clicking here: AT&T Dividend Payout History. It will show you that they pay out in the months of January, March, June, and September.

This means that as long as you own a share of $T stock before the “ex-dividend date” you will be paid out a dividend. You need to own the stock before that date, or you will not be paid out on the “pay date”.

It’s a good idea for you to keep track of the months that each of these dividends pay out so that you can plan for the cashflow. For the most part at this stage in my life (I’m 33 years old), I plan on just reinvesting all of the dividend payouts back into the company that paid me instead of spending that money.

At a later date, I may use the dividends as a source of income that covers living expenses and fun experiences. But at this point in my life, I’m still actively building up assets and will reinvest everything back into the market. The decision really is up to you how you do this.

If you’re below the retirement age I’d recommend just reinvesting everything though, but that’s up to you to decide.

How to Plan Out Your Dividend Calendar

While I am not going to give you every single company that pays out dividends and all of their payout schedules, I will give you a few to get your mind racing and some idea of a consistent schedule.

It’s truly up to you to decide which stocks fit your portfolio and which companies you believe will have a future. There’s too many different possibilities for me to just say “you have to buy X stock and Y stock”.

There is however an incredible resource that you should look into when you are doing your own research. It is known as the Dividend Aristocrats.

Here is Yahoo’s list of 2020’s Dividend Aristocrats List: All 66 Stocks. This will open in a new tab, so it’s fine to click over to it.

What are the Dividend Aristocrats?

The Dividend Aristocrats are companies in the S&P 500 Index that have been increasing dividend payments annually for at least 25 years.

To me, that means that they are pretty secure and trustworthy companies, so they are worth considering as part of your portfolio. Truthfully though, it’s possible that any company could come under bad management and close so everything in life is a little bit of a gamble.

If a company stops paying a dividend, or cuts it significantly it may be disqualified from keeping in your portfolio. It’s up to you to make that decision.

I personally have a few mentors who recommend picking up companies inside the dividend aristocrats list as long as they pay out a 4% dividend. Any time a stock rises above that it is a good buy signal to them (as long as it is a sustainable payout rate).

If a company goes from paying a 3% dividend one month and then all of a sudden they are paying 20%, you can assume that something strange happened and it probably won’t be sustainable.

You do need to do your own due diligence on all these companies to make sure you know why the company is paying out the dividend.

The Four Common Patterns For Paying Out Quarterly Dividends.

Knowing these patterns will make it easier for you to plan out your monthly dividend portfolio.

• January, April, July, October
• February, May, August, November
• March, June, September, December

If you own one stock within each of these patterns, you’ll be paid dividends every month. It really is that straightforward.

Yes, I know it isn’t going to be life-changing income owning just 1 share of these stocks, but when you put it all together you can see the big picture. It always starts with that first dividend-paying stock purchase.

As always, do your own research prior to buying stock in any company. I said up at the beginning of the article I’m just a dude on the internet. I’m not a financial advisor or a professional, so always do your own due diligence.

Here are some stocks that pay out dividends in January, April, July, and October

Automatic Data Processing $ADP pays out a dividend in January. As of today, the price of the stock is $176.88 per share. According to Dividend.com the payout for January 2021 will be $0.93.

If you’ve got a calendar out for tracking this stuff, you can also mark down that $ADP pays out in April, July, and October as well. This will come in handy to schedule out your income.

The next stock that pays out in January that you can add to your portfolio is Franklin Resources stock ticker $BEN. Currently this stock is priced at $25.17 per share and the payout for January is $0.28 per share.

Let’s assume that you bought 1 share of both $ADP and $BEN last year so you qualify for the dividend payment coming up. You would earn $1.21 in dividend income in January. ($0.93 from $ADP + $0.28 from $BEN)

Not life changing, but it’s a start!

Dividend Stocks That Pay Out In February, May, August, and November

Another stock that pays out in February is AT&T stock ticker $T. As of right now, the stock price of AT&T is $29.53 and they’re expected to pay out $0.52 in February.

The next stock you can add to your portfolio for a payment in February is AbbVie Inc. stock ticker $ABBV which is currently priced at $104.35 with an expected dividend payment of $1.30 in February.

If you owned a share of both $T and a share of $ABBV you would get paid $1.82 in February ($0.52 from $T + $1.30 from $ABBV)

Dividend Paying Stocks that Pay Out in March, June, September, and December

We’re all familiar with the AFLAC Inc. duck with stock ticker $AFL. Aflac pays out in March, June, September, and December. Currently 1 share of $AFL is $44.81 with an estimated dividend payout of $0.33 in each of those months.

Another stock that pays you in March is Johnson & Johnson stock ticker $JNJ with the current price of $153.20 per share and it looks like the estimated dividend will be $1.01 per share each payout period.

Owning a share of both $AFL and $JNJ would pay you $1.34 in March, June, September and December.

Putting it all together…

Let’s just assume that you bought 1 share of each of the stocks mentioned above to create some monthly dividend income for you. We’ll look at the payouts put all together.

• January: $1.21
• February: $1.82
• March: $1.34
• April: $1.21
• May: $1.82
• June: $1.34
• July: $1.21
• August: $1.82
• September: $1.34
• October: $1.21
• November: $1.82
• December: $1.34

Of course, if you re-invest all of your dividends each of these numbers will increase a little as you will own more shares of each of the stocks.

In order to have this particular return, with all of the current prices of the stocks (listed above) you’ll have had to invest (one-time) $533.94 in order to receive this monthly dividend income.

Running the numbers (I love to do this) shows that the one-time investment of $533.94 will pay us a yearly income of $17.48. I know that doesn’t look like a lot, and the first year the return on your investment will only be 3.3% ($17.48/$533.94) which gets you 0.03273 and then multiply that by 100 to calculate the ROI. 0.03273 x 100 = 3.3%

If you simply cash out the dividend payments instead of reinvesting, you’ll receive the same 3.3% the next year and the next year as long as everything else stays the same.

However things tend to change, along with the list of dividend aristocrats (historically these companies raise dividends), so these numbers will fluctuate. If you reinvest all of the dividends your ROI just keeps going up.

If you simply cash out all the money for 5 years (5 x $17.48 per year) you’ll have received $87.40 in earnings. If you divide that by your initial investment of $533.94 that comes to an ROI of 16.4% after the 5 year period.

You calculate that by taking that $87.40 and dividing it by $533.94.

How to Make $100 a month from Dividends

Alright now let’s get to that $100 a month from dividends…

What’s cool (at least to me) about buying these dividends is that you don’t need to put down the huge sum all at once. At a certain point, the dividends you earn will end up buying more shares of that stock.

Let’s say that you start off with a $10,000 split between $ADP and $BEN at the beginning of the year. That would mean you bought $5,000 of each stock. This is purely hypothetical.

Reminder: There’s no way I know how much money you have or how much you are actively investing so keep that in mind.

We’ll use the numbers from above to keep things consistent.

If we spend $5,000 to buy $ADP at $176.88 per share that will get us 28.268 shares of $ADP, so the next time the dividend pays out (in April) we will get $0.93 per share we own. Sticking with round numbers that means we’ll have 28 shares x $0.93 per share, so $26.04 in dividend payments from this. We’re going to reinvest this, right?

With that initial $10,000 we also put $5,000 into buying $BEN at $25.17 per share. That buys us 198.649 shares of $BEN. $BEN is going to pay us $0.28 per owned share. We’re rounding here so we’ll say we owe 199 shares x $0.28 per share = $55.44 in dividend payments. We choose to reinvest that and that buys us another 2.2 shares at the $25.17 price point.

So the next dividend period we’ll have 198.649 shares from before + the new 2.2 shares you bought with dividends. That puts us up to 200.849 shares of $BEN. The next dividend payout will increase to $56.28 and we can reinvest that for the next time.

So all in all, the first dividend we receive from that initial $10,000 will pay us $26.04 from $ADP and $55.44 from $BEN. That means in April we’ll have a dividend income of $81.48.

With reinvesting this money, you can see how the compound effect kicks in. This is why it’s so important to start investing at a young age, you have the time for your money to compound.

February, May, August and November earnings…

I’m going to do the next few in a similar manner. That is going to assume you put $10,000 into 2 stocks for this group of dividends. As I said above, I don’t know your finances so I’m doing my best to keep this strictly based on easy numbers for me to calculate with.

In February we invest another $10,000 dollars this time splitting it between $T and $ABBV. $5,000 into $T would get you $5,000 / $29.53 = 169.319 shares of $T. The next time $T pays out $0.52 per share in May will mean you get 169 shares x $0.52 per share = $87.88 in dividend payments. That will buy you another 2.97 shares at the current price.

We’re also assuming no price change at all with these stocks, and prices always fluctuate.

The other stock we’re putting $5,000 into in February will be $ABBV at a cost of $104.35 per share. That gives us 47.816 shares of $ABBV that will pay out $1.30 dividend per share, so $62.40 in dividend payments in May. (Rounding to 48 shares)

that means we won’t be able to buy a full share of $ABBV with these earnings, but we can reinvest it still.

March, June, September and December earnings…

Let’s look at the earnings from March… we’re going to stick with that $10,000 invested between the two stocks from above. $5,000 goes to $AFL at a price of $44.81 per share so we can buy 111.58 shares of $AFL which pays $0.33 dividend in June. That means $AFL will pay us $36.63 (111 shares x $0.33).

The next up we’re going to put another $5,000 towards $JNJ which is priced at $153.20 per share. That means we get 32.637 shares of $JNJ on the initial purchase. That means we’ll get 32 shares x $1.01 in dividend payments = $32.32

That makes our dividend earnings for June (this cycles next payout) will be $68.95.

So it seems like you’re spending a lot of money in order to get a little back, right? In this example, you are investing $30,000 one-time in order to get these first 6 stocks. That only makes you around $75 a month.

I say only because it’s the first initial deposit. The beauty of this is when you reinvest all of these earnings back into the companies that are paying you these dividends.

After a while these numbers really start to compound and every new payment you earn will buy you more shares of that company, thus increasing your income down the road.

While this started out as a way for you to earn $500 a month through dividend payments, my hope is that you are starting to see the potential of growing this to cover other expenses in your life.

Many baby-boomers did this when they were younger and now live strictly off of income that they earn from their investments.

What Other Stocks Pay Monthly Dividends?

If you have heard of REIT’s, you are familiar with the idea of monthly dividends.

What is a REIT? A REIT is a Real Estate Investment Trust and is a company that owns, operates, or finances income-generating real estate. They don’t however offer much when it comes to capital appreciation. Part of their structure requires that they pay out 90% of the income back to investors.

You can learn more about REITS in this article from Investopedia. (Opens in a new tab)

There are more than 225 publicly-traded REITs in the U.S., which means you’ll have some homework to do before you decide which REIT to buy.

The good news is once you find a few and add them to your portfolio, you can start getting monthly dividend payments from these REITs.

A few REITs that I have personally looked into are Realty Income Corporation (stock ticker O) and STAG Industrial, Inc. (stock ticker STAG). I’m not recommending you go out and purchase them either. Do your due diligence and research to find companies that align with your goals.

As of me writing this article, $O trades around $60 a share and $STAG trades around $30 a share. $O pays a monthly dividend of $0.23 per share and $STAG pays a monthly dividend of $0.12.

With the initial $10,000 for the example, you could split that up into buying $5,000 worth of $O and $5,000 worth of $STAG. That would buy you 83.33 shares of $O and 166.66 shares of $STAG.

With those numbers, you would earn a monthly income of $19.17 from $O and $20 from $STAG, for a total monthly income of $39.17.

Now it’s up to you to start building your portfolio so that you can collect income from dividend paying stocks. I wish you the best of luck! If you’re looking to get started, you can use my link below to get a free stock from either Webull or Robinhood.

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