In 2022, I was a freelance web developer specializing in Shopify theme customization.
My income was very unstable. Freelancers only get paid for completing work, which sucks when something bad happens - there is no sick leave and no paid leave in case of emergencies.
It was a stressful lifestyle, and I was always on the verge of being broke.
But in 2025, I now have a content business making around $5k a month in passive income.
Now I have much more financial stability, I'm free to work on what I want, when I want, and it's no big deal if I skip a day (or a week) of work. This is what allows me to live as a digital nomad.
My income comes from:
- Digital Product sales
- Affiliate links
- Youtube Adsense
Here's how I got here.
It all started with blogging
I've always kind of wanted to be a YouTuber - it lets you monetize what you know or love.
Even the most niche hobbies can make money if you can create educational or entertaining content about them.
But I'm an introvert - I'm not talkative, so I didn't think it was possible.
Instead, I started by writing tutorials on my blogs - ed.codes and alioned.com (my agency - discontinued). These blogs were targeted at my clients - answers to questions I was often asked as a Shopify developer.
I didn't even need to do SEO research to create this content. It was all stuff that I was already explaining to my clients by email.
With a blog, I could just send my clients a link to my post instead.
A few of my blog posts went quite well in Google. They were getting around 500 clicks per month. So I threw some affiliate links in there and around 2-3 months later, I got my first $100 payout!
More on that later.
First, I think it's important to understand the niche, because in the content business, your niche and your business model are very tightly intertwined.
What set my blog content apart?
The early content was targeted at my freelance clients (and people like them). Many were not tech-savvy, so I wrote my content in very simple and straight-to-the-point language.
I think this mindset is what led to the success of my blog and later Youtube channel.
I was writing about tech topics, but for a layperson audience.
This was relatively rare amongst Shopify & Web-dev YouTubers, especially with coding videos. Most other creators were only making coding videos for other developers.
I decided to make it a DIY channel for the average Joe, just like a home or car repair channel.
That's why my book is called "The DIY Shopify Coding Handbook".
Why you shouldn't worry about competition
My most successful blog post from 2022 has paid me around $500 monthly to this day.
In that post, I compared three popular Shopify apps, and included affiliate links to all of them.
There was a lot of SEO competition for this topic - lots of articles from large websites with high domain authority, but it was the typical fluff written by content writers who had never actually used the tools themselves. I think they might have clicked around the trial version for an hour max.
But my post was personal - it was based on my experience using all three tools in real projects, multiple times. Not just trying them out.
Think about that - my article comparing these three tools was literally the only article on the internet by someone who had actually used all three tools!
Isn't it wild that most content on the internet is like that? People (or AI) writing about things they honestly don't know anything about. The bar is so low.
I'll quote a favourite fitness influencer of mine, Joe Delaney. I can't find the video, but he once said:
Is the fitness niche oversaturated? Of course it is! But it's oversaturated with idiots!
This really stuck with me.
I'm not scared of competing in a saturated niche anymore, because 90% of content out there is not helpful at all. This was even before AI was invented.
The content business recipe
I hope you can see now what created my niche. The combination of:
- My professional knowledge and experience
- Targeting it to a layperson audience
- A lack of existing helpful content on these topics
I have to admit, that's a pretty rare combo.
You may be an expert in something - like heart surgery - but you won't find a huge audience of laypeople wanting to learn it from blogs and Youtube!
Likewise, on the other end of the scale, you might be an expert in photography, and there is a big audience, but there is already lots of good content out there made by people with real experience.
Don't underestimate yourself, though. Almost everyone has a skill they can teach.
Almost every profession can educate the general public - even the heart surgeon I mentioned above. While he may not teach heart surgery, he can write and make videos about health, or break down cutting-edge research for the general public.
Almost anyone can make content.
My blog earnings
My blogging activity grew to around $500 a month in revenue.
In my most successful post, I had affiliate links to all three apps that I was comparing. This allowed me to make a balanced and honest review, and it meant I profited no matter which tool the reader chose.
Out of the three apps, Pagefly was the best. It was the one people chose most often, and it offered lifetime payouts.
Most programs only pay for one year. Pagefly has continued to pay me around $400 a month for more than 4 years!
So that's a huge tip for you. If you want recurring income for years, try to make affiliate content for a subscription business with lifetime affiliate payouts.
I started a YouTube channel
Blogging is a good way to start, but we all know that these days, barely anyone reads. They just skim (which, by the way, is enough for affiliate marketing to work).
However, if you really want to get eyes on your work and hold people's attention for more than 60 seconds, YouTube is the way to go.
My YouTube content was a natural extension of my written content. There were topics that were difficult to write about - they needed to be shown visually. So I started doing screen recordings.
In the beginning, they were very short: 1-2 minutes - just a quick hack or tip. I didn't even need to edit them (and in fact, I couldn't because my laptop was so old and slow that it couldn't handle Adobe Premiere without major lag).
Later, my videos got longer and more detailed, but they were still tutorials.
The focus was educational content - not reviews, sponsored videos, new app "discoveries", clickbait, or the other trash flooding YouTube these days.
Avoid becoming a "YouTuber"
I think it's important to view YouTube as a video hosting platform, but avoid becoming a "YouTuber".
In other words, don't create content for the sake of creating content - just because you need to create something and you don't care what. Create content only if it's helpful.
I also avoid chasing the money and making sponsored videos, even though I get requests from companies several times a week.
My focus is on keeping each video educational. Monetization is a side effect. My reputation and trustworthiness come first.
We are in the business of giving advice. If you want others to listen, then make sure your advice is consistently good. Don't talk shit.
Many creators say affiliate links were the first way they monetized, long before they were accepted into the Youtube Partner Program. But for me it was the other way around. My first income was from Youtube Adsense.
My YouTube Adsense income
As soon as I was accepted into the Youtube Partner Program (after reaching 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time), I started earning around $500/month from YouTube Adsense.
This was huge for someone with only 1k or 2k subscribers.
Over the next year, this went up to $1000/month - and I still only had around 10k subscribers.
It has stayed at around that level since then. My highest earning month was March 2024 with $1,764.
This is a lot for a small channel like mine, and it's thanks to my ridiculously high RPM of around $20 per 1,000 views.
To give you some context - a more 'normal' RPM for a gaming or a fitness channel, for example, might be around $2 per 1,000 views.
In other words, most channels need ten times more views than me to earn as much. I was punching way above my weight, making as much as a channel with 200k subscribers.
Why was my RPM so high?
If you're not familiar with how YouTube CPM/RPM works, it's mainly down to your niche. In other words:
Does your audience have money? Is it worth showing them ads?
My RPM was so high because my niche is e-commerce, so my audience has money to spend/invest in their business.
You'll find similarly high RPM's in just a few niches:
- Financial products such as ETF's/stocks, budgeting apps, and neo-banks.
These people are literally researching where to put their money. Perfect for ads and affiliate links. - Online Business education and software.
This was my niche. People are happy to spend money to grow their business. - Beauty and Fashion product reviews or tutorials.
More than a quarter of online sales worldwide are beauty or fashion products.
All these people have money to spend, and they are actively searching for a product or solution.
My Affiliate income
I believe this has the biggest unrealised potential.
I have only made 3-4 videos featuring or reviewing products (apps) with affiliate links, but I now earn around $1500 per month in affiliate revenue (combined with my blog content explained above).
The earnings growth from affiliates is painfully slow. You might make a video or blog post and only see the first dollar from it 6 months later.
It takes time for the content to gain traction and for signups and revenue to build up:
- You start getting views and very few clicks. Maybe a few signups a month.
- Users go through the trial period (if it's a software) before they start paying.
- There is usually a $100 payout threshold.
You will think it was a complete failure at first, and then only a year later will you truly see the results.
I've made YouTube videos that I thought flopped - they did in YouTube - but months later they were picked up by Google and get heaps of traffic from Google Search.
However, it's so rewarding to play that long game. To continue getting paid for something you did 3-5 years ago is amazing!
My Digital Products
This is my best money maker, and the hardest to produce.
I sell pre-built (coded) Shopify sections that my audience can copy & paste to use on their websites.
I also have an ebook that provides a good foundation for people who want to modify their store.
I have two online stores:
- I started off using Gumroad: edcodes.gumroad.com
- Later, I opened a Shopify store: shop.ed.codes
Last month, I earned $936 from my Gumroad store, and $1285 from my Shopify store.
Total digital product revenue for March 2025: $2221 USD
This was not my best month, though. I have not made any videos or new products in a while.
Here is my Gumroad dashboard showing my best month - March 2024 with $2,667.
If you're wondering why sales dropped off - that's when I launched my Shopify store and started driving most of my traffic there instead.
How I created my products
A lot of my videos were tutorials on how to add a certain feature to your Shopify website.
At the time, most Shopify merchants were using Shopify apps for this. Apps that had a monthly subscription cost and could slow down your loading speed.
My tutorials were a free alternative - just apply a bit of effort and you could avoid paying for an app subscription.
But some features were too complex to be a tutorial. So I wrote the code myself, and packaged it up as a digital product. Even though it was paid ($30), people prefer a one-time payment rather than an app subscription.
Product + education
They still had to install these products on their store. This was pretty easy but not idiot-proof. So the key to my digital products - what made this business model work - were the instructions that I provided along with the code.
My first digital product came together with an entire YouTube video (published publicly) on how to install and use the code. The video even provided a free version, and the paid "pro" version was available for $20.
I think this is the reason why other developers had not done the same. They were not as good at explaining and teaching how to use the products.
That's why, if you're an educator, you have the opportunity to sell unique products that have a steeper learning curve than normal. Things that, if they were sold alone, would have a tiny market (pros only), but together with some education, could appeal to a much larger market of DIYers.
For example:
- A sewing starter kit + video course
- A photography preset pack + mini-course on how to use them
Notion hosting
All my digital products are not actually downloadable. They are hosted online, like a website, using Notion.
This lets me update them whenever I want. The customer just needs to bookmark the link and they always have access to the most recent version of the product.
Creating a downloadable PDF is much more of a hassle, especially with how code appears inside PDFs - the formatting is often messed up.
Selling on Gumroad
If you're selling your first digital product, I highly recommend getting started on Gumroad. They make it really simple to get started, and the expectations of people shopping on the platform are low because products are mostly quite cheap.
You can even sell products on Gumroad that are "pay what you want" - the buyer inputs how much they would like to pay. They can put zero, but you get their email address. It is a great way to start a loyal mailing list.
Selling on Shopify is much more difficult. I made a video discussing the differences and why I switched.
That's about all for this post.
Any questions? Sign up to leave a comment below.
Discussion