As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. What does this mean? I recommend products (only ones that I like) and if you purchase a product through that link, I earn some money.

Amazon Affiliate Website: I Have Two More

amazon-associates

Self-Publishing: No More! Recently I’ve started to move away from self-publishing on Amazon. I wrote books exclusively for ESL teachers abroad (see my author page on Amazon), and now that I’m not doing that as a job, it doesn’t hold much interest for me. These days, I’m far more interested in Amazon affiliate websites. Amazon Affiliate Website #1…I Learned a Lot! A year or so ago, I bought a domain and developed my first Amazon…

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Buying a Website: It’s Done!

buying-a-website

Buying a Website: I (Finally) did it! If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you will know this. But for those who haven’t and are just finding their way here now, I’ll give you the brief update. I taught English in South Korean universities for 10 years. A couple of months ago, I returned to Canada. I wavered back and forth about what to do upon my return, but eventually decided to go…

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Why I Love Online Business

online-business

Online Business: I Love It! If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably already open to the idea of starting an online business and perhaps even have a few projects on the go so you don’t need a lot of convincing. However, maybe you’re not that person and are reading Freedom Through Passive Income trying to decide if this online business thing is really worth the time and effort to get into it. I’m not going…

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It’s Crunch Time: No More Day-Job

After an entire year and a half of back and forth and then back again, I finally made a decision about what I’d do when I moved to Canada. Despite being a little bit crazy, perhaps, I decided to go all-in on the digital entrepreneur and make my living off of Amazon Affiliate niche sites and self-publishing books. I got my last paycheque from my university in South Korea about a week ago and now…

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Online Business Goals for 2016

Online Business Goals for 2016

2015: In the Books 2015 is in the books and it’s time to turn my thoughts towards 2016. This will be a particularly interesting year for me because after living in Korea for a decade, I’ll be moving to Canada. The plan is to kick the online business into full-time mode (See: All-In on the Digital Entrepreneur) from what I can currently squeeze in when I’m not busy at my day-job teaching in a university.…

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Teaching Abroad and Going Home: I Got my Money Pool Ready

Teaching abroad-Get a pool of money

It’s Really Time to Go Home I’ve decided to move back home to Canada after teaching abroad for 10 years in South Korea. It’s not without some trepidation, as I do certainly know that things in Canada are ridiculously expensive and that employment is not that easy to come by. However, it really, really is time to go and the thought of signing another 2-year contract at my university was making me feel sick to…

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Bad into Good- A Story from Work

Turning Bad into Good-Work Style What Happened I’ve been working at South Korean universities for the past decade or so and during that time, I’ve always taught extra classes for more money. My contract currently is only for 9 teaching hours/week, so I’ve usually added on another 10-15 to substantially raise my pay. However, this past semester all the extra work seemed to dry up and I was left with almost nothing in terms of…

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Ebook Marketing: Guest Posts on other sites

Ebook

Sales of my new Ebook, How to Get a University Job in South Korea: The English Teaching Job of Your Dreams are maintaining steady at about 1/day since the initial rush in the first couple days, which I’m pretty happy about. My marketing strategy thus far has consisted of the following things: 1. Using my Amazon Associates account to promote the book on my existing blog, My Life! Teaching in a Korean University, both on…

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Passive Income Report October 2014

October 2014 wasn’t a great month for me in terms of passive income with a total of $253.44. Check out my October 2014 passive income report. Iherb and Amazon were pretty disappointing partly due to Iherb not offering any free shipping to South Korea and traditionally dividends are not plentiful in November. Compared to previous Years: 2013: $268 2012: $296 2011: $352 2010: $28 Onwards and upwards! My Ebook should be coming out in the…

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Moving from Squidoo—>Hubpages- Backlinks and Niches

Squidoo shut down their doors a couple of months ago and moved all my content over to Hubpages. After some initial annoyance getting all the details sorted out, it’s actually been pretty painless and it provided me the motivation I needed to get my sites updated because Hubpages seems to have stricter content standards than Squidoo (they’re serious about spammy stuff!). One thing that I didn’t notice until a couple of days ago was the…

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How to Write an Ebook: choosing a topic

This past week, I haven’t had classes at my day-job due to midterm exams, so I’ve been busy working on my first Ebook. I’ve wanted to write one for a while because I think diversity is the key in trying to live off passive income. I really have no idea whether affiliate marketing on Amazon or Iherb will be successful in the future, whether Hubpages will shut down, or whether there will a huge crash…

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Moving from Squidoo to Hubpages

A couple of months ago, I got an email from Squidoo saying that they had merged with Hubpages and that Squidoo would be closing down and all the content would be going over to Hubpages. I was initially quite annoyed, but of course that’s the risk when you use a platform that isn’t your own to build websites. I’ve been so busy at the day-job since that announcement that I didn’t really have much time…

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August 2014 Passive Income Report

August 2014 was a pretty slow month in terms of passive income, totaling $216.46. But, I added up the total, year to date and it’s around $2500. Not bad for the very little amount of time and energy I put into it. You can see my passive income report here. Something I am happy about is Iherb, which I am getting an increasing amount of money from each month. Something that seems to be working…

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July 2014 Passive Income Report

This month wasn’t great in terms of passive income, coming in with a total of $219.09, but I didn’t exactly put a lot of effort into maintaining my current sites or building new ones due to how busy I was at the day job, which is always a frustration. Plus, I was on vacation in Malaysia for a large part of it. Check out the specifics of my July 2014 Passive Income Report here. Comparing…

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June 2014 Passive Income Report

June 2014 was by far my best month since starting this blog in November 2013: $604.57. Check out the report here, but you can see that Squidoo and dividend payments were both really high, and Amazon and Iherb were around average. Dividends fluctuate throughout the year, depending on various factors and it’s really something I have no control over. But, Squidoo did very well for me and the best part about it was that I…

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The Latte Factor

When people talk about frugality, something that gets kicked around quite often is the Latte Factor. That is people who go to Starbucks every morning and drop $5 on a specialty Latte when they could just make a cup of drip coffee at home and save themselves $4.80 each day, which adds up to over $100/month and more than $1000/year. And I get that. Frugality is all about the small choices you make each day…

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Busy at the day job

These days, final exams are looming and I have a lot of grading and other stuff to do at the day job, so I’ve been neglecting my blogs and Squidoo and the social media that is so important to making it online. It’s frustrating. Enough so that I’m seriously considering limiting the amount of overtime that I do each week. My day job consists of 9 teaching hours, which requires an average of around 5-10…

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Friends on a Budget: is it Possible?

Building Passive Income: 2 Main Factors 1. Living frugally so that you have more money to invest in things like dividend paying stocks. 2. Putting the time in to develop the passive income streams through building websites, books, Iherb, Amazon, etc. Going Out in South Korea Usually Involves Drinking Living in South Korea as an expat (I’m originally from Canada), one of the things that frustrates me is that “going out” usually involves hitting up…

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Why I’m using WordPress for this blog (and not Blogger)

wordpress

I’ve been a faithful Blogger user for years and have had this very popular blog on that platform since 2008. My Life: Teaching in a Korean University. So, it goes without saying that I definitely know the ins and outs of blogger and that I generally like it.  It’s extremely easy to add Amazon and other affiliate links (with the widgets: add HTML option), and of course, they support Google Adsense (Blogger is owned by…

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Iherb Affiliate Program

Iherb: A Company That I LOVE I think that affiliate marketing can be a very valuable way to build passive income and it’s an area I’d like to explore more, with more affiliates and more niche websites.  However, I would NEVER recommend something that I don’t personally know and love because it’s just not my style. Iherb is one of those things that I just sort of fell into without even really knowing it had…

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