These 4 Automations Make Me Money While I Sleep
The Creator’s Blueprint For Turning Content Into Automated Income
Last night while I was sleeping, I sold a $17.99 copy of a digital product I made months ago.
Then, an affiliate network payment hit. Then, a small payment for a sponsored video hit too.
I’ve been mostly MIA the last few weeks hiking around South Africa. But despite being somewhat absent from my one-person business, traffic, conversions, and income kept flowing.
This is the power of building automated systems for your content business.
You can buy your time back, diversify your income, and ultimately gain more freedom to live the kind of life you want to live.
Now, this isn’t the sort of business transformation that happens overnight. But if you’re a fellow creator who’s tired of endlessly trading time for money, this post is for you.
Here are four automations that quietly make me money while I sleep, and how you can begin implementing these systems as well.
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1. Email Newsletter Sequences + Affiliate Automations
Everyone talks about the importance of building an email list that you own to ensure you own your audience.
BUT email lists are also critical to automating your content business.
Email sequences play a massive role here. They’re the automated flow of emails new subscribers receive when they sign up for your list. And they’re one of the best way to segment users based on behavior and to present tailored offers to them at prime moments.
Personally, I run several newsletter lead magnets across my personal finance blogs and YouTube channels. Here’s how the flow works:
A user visits one of my landing pages (mostly from Google organic traffic, social traffic, or YouTube traffic)
A pop-up form fires offering them a free finance guide in exchange for their email
Users opt-in to my newsletter to get the free guide
Users enter an automated email series based on their country, receiving more useful content that also includes affiliate offers or my own digital products
Some of my welcome series sequences are 20+ emails long. This means that a new subscriber can see and potentially convert dozens of times on various offers, provided they don’t churn.
The result: these email sequences help drive thousands of clicks per month to various affiliate offers and digital products.
I use Kit to power all of this. It’s my email marketing tool of choice for affiliate-heavy content businesses. I like how easy it is to build a list with Kit’s pop-up forms and its Creator Network as well.
If you’re only writing on Substack, you need to apply the same concepts.
For one, consider editing your welcome email to promote some of your best offers. You can also use this email to promote yourself on other channels to encourage cross-subscribing.
Now, Substack is testing automated email sequences currently. You can check if you qualify by going to your Dashboard → Settings → Email and looking for Drip Campaigns:
Not everyone qualifies for this yet. But it’s clear sequences are coming to Substack in the future. When they do, take time to build out some basic sequences to engage with your subscribers.
The results from writing a few sequences compounds the more subscribers enter the sequence. And this is why email sequences + affiliate offers are one of my favorite automations for content creators.
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2. Automated YouTube Income
I’m a huge fan of making money on YouTube.
For starters, YouTube offers amazing organic reach. Even new creators get shown in the Discover feed. You can also win search traffic on YouTube and Google’s homepages.
Secondly, YouTube has several amazing monetization opportunities like:
YouTube AdSense income from the Partner Program
Funneling traffic to your affiliate offers / digital products / email list
YouTube Shopping revenue
Landing brand deals and sponsorships
I’ve written about my $250,000+ YouTube framework before. But the idea is fairly straightforward in terms of building semi-passive YouTube channels.
For my channels, I outsource script writing, video editing, and thumbnails. This costs roughly $1,000 per month in freelancer fees and the video editing agency I use.
All I have to do is take an hour every couple of days to sit in front of the camera, record something, and then upload it to Google Drive so the editing team can get to work.
Currently, YouTube is one of the highest-margin activities in my content business. This is why I bought another YouTube channel in December and will probably buy or make more.
If you’re a content creator looking to invest in a new channel / revenue stream, my advice is to try YouTube. The organic reach potential is incredible, and the demand for video is only growing.
Note: I didn’t start out on YouTube by outsourcing everything. I learned how to edit basic videos myself to cut costs. But these days, you can use AI tools like Gling.ai to edit your videos for you. Anyone can start on YouTube, and you don’t need expensive gear or filming experience.
💵 You can get my YouTube Freedom Launchpad for a breakdown of how to build profitable niche channels and diversify your content business. It’s on sale right now, and you also get access to my Skool community where we can chat directly about YouTube strategy.
3. The Content Business Flywheel
This is where things get powerful: when your content talks to each other.
When I was a freelance writer, every piece I wrote for a client paid me once. It was purely trading time for money.
Now, every piece of content I create feeds into the next. Here’s an example of how the content flywheel spins:
New Blog Post → Email Newsletter → New YouTube Video → Relevant Digital Product → Affiliate Offer → Back to Blog
A YouTube video points to my newsletter. My newsletter points to a product. The product mentions my blog. The blog links to affiliate offers. And so on and so on…
I cover this idea in my post on how to build a value engine for your business.
Every channel you build as a content creator fuels your other channels. This is the power of content repurposing and how you can maximize results from a single idea.
This process is also easy to automate between AI agents/tools, freelancers, and email marketing platforms like Kit.
For example, you can use ChatGPT to write pretty decent blog posts these days. You can then use Zapier to turn your blog post into a newsletter. Send that newsletter/blog post off to your YouTube script writer, or throw it into ChatGPT to build a script. You get the idea.
The hardest part of running a content business is coming up with content people actually care about and search for. Once you’ve done that, repurposing is your best friend.
This is how every new piece of content accelerates the whole ecosystem…compounding growth instead of starting from zero each time!
4. Automated Dividend Investing
One habit one-person business owners should develop is taking profits when the sun is shining.
For me, this looks like automatically moving a portion of monthly income into various dividend ETFs, money market funds, and other investments.
This automation is boring, but it works! And it helps establish long-term wealth while reducing risk.
Unfortunately, I know several content creators who double- and triple-downed on building blogging businesses just before ChatGPT rolled out. I’m talking about buying new blogs for 6- and 7-figures and hiring employees. Once Google algorithm changes and AI rocked the industry, they were left holding the bag.
Even a small amount of monthly contributions to your investment makes a difference. That’s the beauty of time and compound interest. All of this can be set up on autopilot as well through your bank or any modern brokerage.
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Traffic Is The Backbone To Automated Income
I’ve been building content sites, newsletters, YouTube channels, and affiliate marketing flows since 2018. If there’s one lesson I’ve learned, it’s that most creators have a traffic problem, not a monetization problem.
I’ve covered effective ways to market your one-person business. Unless you’re a pro at running paid ads profitably, you need to learn how to leverage algorithms and free traffic to your advantage.
Traffic really is the engine that runs these income automations. So if you’re struggling with traffic, my advice is to focus on 1-2 channels at most where you’re seeing the most traction. Then, ask yourself how you can 2X or 3X your marketing output in the next month.
You’d be amazed at how much more volume you’re capable of. Asking this simple question really gets the wheels turning, and you’re forced to work smarter, not just harder.
Consistently, the greatest growth moments for my businesses have simply come from doing more of what’s working. You rarely have to reinvent the wheel. Once you build the framework for automating your content business, it’s time to add fuel (traffic) to the fire.
⭐ Want help in scaling your traffic and content business? Book a paid consultation with me. Let’s go over your current content business, roadblocks, and opportunities to help you scale.
Final Thoughts
Writers and content creators are in a strange spot currently.
On the one hand, the Internet is being overwhelmed with AI slop. Algorithm-based businesses are also more competitive than ever before.
However, AI tools, content repurposing, and automations are extremely powerful. If you’re creating valuable content that stands out amidst the slop, these tactics are how you ultimately compound results from your work.
It might seem intimidating at first. I still remember feeling overwhelmed when getting set up on Kit, or when trying to outsource more YouTube work.
But trust me, most of this stuff is easier than it sounds. It’s really staying consistent and iterating quickly that’s the tricky part. And once you get a successful automation flow working, it opens your mind to what’s possible as a content creator.
Anyways, that’s all from me today.
Thanks for reading!
Tom from WiFi Wealth.
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This is pure gold. I have been learning about creating info products, but haven't figured out how to sell them. Thanks for providing some insight on how to do that!