How to Pass the Time Productively

The year 2020 has brought a lot of unique challenges. One of the main challenges is being forced to stay at home for long periods of time to avoid exposure to COVID-19. If you’re normally the type of person to go out and do stuff, then it can quickly become boring and monotonous to sit at home.

There are plenty of ways to pass the time in the connected age we live in, but there seems to come a point where you’ve spent all the time you really want to spend on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, watching Netflix, watching TV, etc. Eventually you begin to wonder about how to pass the time productively instead of letting it slowly waste away.  Sure you may find something of use on social media or TV shows, but is it really useful spending hours of time to only come across one somewhat helpful or enlightening post or idea?

Don’t Do This Without Discretionary Income

I’m going to give you a warning. What I am going to talk to you about is only good if you have some disposable/discretionary income to work with. The last thing I want you to do is put yourself in a financial bind by doing this.  It involves signing up for a site that gives specific training on how to build websites and monetize them online.  The membership fee includes hosting for your website.

I say don’t do this without discretionary income because it’s not something that you’re going to make money quickly with.  It’s not even guaranteed to make you any money. However,  if you follow the training and take action with what you learn, then it does give you a solid chance at making money.  If you need an assured way to make money, then your best bet is to work towards finding a job.  With that being said let’s get started.

In 2020 Building a Website Is Easy

Whether you’re retired, a pensioner, under a lock down order, or under quarantine you have the same problem of having endless time on your hands and no way to go out and do the things you would normally do outside of the house. One thing you can do from the comfort of your own house is to start working on your own income producing website. Now I can hear your doubts already:

• I’m not technically inclined.
• I’m too old.
• That tech stuff doesn’t interest me.

Now all of those things may seem true, but I’ve seen plenty of people that are not technically inclined and people are 80+ years old working on building websites in areas that interest them.  If the tech doesn’t interest you, what about the possibility of making money that would allow you to do more of the things that do interest you?  What about building a website about one of your hobbies or passions to share with the words?  Does that interest you?

In the year 2020, I would dare say that making a website is the easiest it’s ever been. I would actually compare making a new website to learning how to navigate a new social media website. If you can sign up for an account on a social media website and learn how to make posts there, then you’re not far off from being able to make your own website.  No one is born knowing how to do anything.  We’ve learned everything that we know how to do in our lives and this is no different.  You just have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable until you know what you’re doing and you’re comfortable again.

I’ve been a member of Wealthy Affiliate for over 11 years. Over the years they have made creating a website incredibly simple. They’ve distilled it down to clicking a few buttons and boom you have your very own website that you can start creating and writing content on. They aren’t focused on helping people create websites just for the sake of creating websites. No, they’re much more interested in teaching people how to leverage websites to make money. They only developed their website hosting to remove the technical barriers of managing websites to allow members to focus on creating content that will make them money.

The Process in a Nutshell

The process at its very core involves these components:

• Create content on your website(s) in the form of articles, blog posts, reviews, etc.
• Link content to relevant website(s) that will pay you a percentage of each sale that you refer to them.

Now there is a lot that can go into those two things, but Wealthy Affiliate does a much better job detailing all of these things in their Online Entrepreneur Certification course, than I could ever hope to cover in a short blog post.  They even give you free access to the first level of the course consisting of ten lessons that teach you how to:

• Make Money Online
• Choose a Niche
• Build Your Own Niche Website
• Setup Your Website
• Get Your Site Ready For Search Engines
• Create Your Initial Website Content
• Create Custom Menus on Your Website
• Understand Keywords

By the time you make it through the first level of training you’ll have a very clear understanding of how to create an income producing website.

A More Concrete Example

I realize this all pretty vague, so I would like to provide some examples by asking you a few questions.

• Have you ever bought a product off an Amazon and left a review?
• Have you ever left a review on Yelp or Google for a service?

If you’ve done these types of things, then you’ve already performed online marketing for those businesses and didn’t realize it. You were helping people make decisions on whether to buy a product or service based on your experience of the product or service.

The only difference between what I’m suggesting and what you’ve already have done is that what I’m suggesting is not to give those reviews away for free. I’m suggesting to put those reviews on your own website and find websites that are willing to give you a cut of the sale for driving traffic to their website from your reviews.

If you’ve never left a review online, then:

• Have you ever searched for reviews for a product you wanted to buy online?
• Did those reviews help you make an informed decision on if you wanted to buy that particular product or service?
• Did you then go on to click on a link and buy a product?

If so, then you were already part of this process from the customer side and didn’t realize it. The website you read the review on probably made money from the other website if you made a purchase.  In fact, they probably had some type of disclosure on their website on their page disclosing that they may make money if you click on links and subsequently make a pruchase.

Not a Quick Process and It Requires Effort

Now there is work involved and you’re not going to see immediate results.  Heck, you’re not guaranteed to have any results.  However, the type of work that is involved is the type of things you have been doing for free without ever having even the chance of being compensated and letting other companies reap the benefits:

• Have you ever made a post on Facebook?

You wrote content on Facebook which created interactions that Facebook could in effect monetize with their advertisements.

• Have you ever posted photos on Instagram or videos on Tiktok?

Those sites are either directly or indirectly monetizing the content you created. It’s time to start seeing the fruit of your labor.

I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. You are NOT expected to start blasting your friends and families with advertisements on social media websites. No, that is far from what you’ll be doing.

You’ll be creating your own website, writing content on that website, and then letting the search engines find your content and send people searching for information to your website. In turn, people that find your site using search engines and visit it, will read your content, potentially click through to the websites you link to, and make purchases which you will get a commission for.

There is no need to share stuff on social media if you don’t want to.  You don’t have to blast your friends trying to get them to buy products.  You don’t have to organize parties.  You’re simply building a website with information that other people are searching for.

Final Thoughts

Building you own website, which is really a business, is a great way to make productive use of your time that otherwise would be spent unproductively. Even if you don’t make any money on your websites, then at the very least you learned a new skill set that can potentially help you land new jobs in the future or pass time in a more fulfilling way by being the producer of content rather than the consumer of content.  You really owe it to yourself to

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