Back in 2007, I dropped out of college, despite owing about $50,000 in student loans. Believe it or not, it was the smart choice for me at the time. 

None of my friends who'd graduated were landing jobs. I knew I'd need to go even further into debt to finish my degree. And I'd already landed a great position as a public policy assistant. 

Still, starting out on such shaky financial ground was far from ideal.

Feeling uneasy about quitting school, I thought all I could do was grind it out at my job. But I'd found a passion that got me excited outside of work: video creation, which included capturing moments and telling stories. I was thrilled when I discovered this site called YouTube where I could upload my videos for free and share the links with friends.

At the same time, social media platforms like Facebook and then Twitter were becoming popular — and I realized I was pretty good at figuring out how to use them. 

I had no idea how much of a game-changer these discoveries would be. Fifteen years later, my fun hobby has become my career: It allows me to make about $18,000 a month in passive income, according to my calculations from a recent month's deposits, and work only four hours a day.

'The aha moment that changed everything': Realizing I had in-demand skills

A couple years after I dropped out of college, a friend pointed out that I had a knack for understanding video content and social media platforms. She suggested I could do it professionally. 

It was the aha moment that changed everything. My side projects weren't just fun. They were teaching me valuable skills that were increasingly in demand. 

This led me to take the strategies I was learning about content and social media and start a side hustle. I was basically a one-woman show posting on Facebook and Twitter for small businesses to help bring them brand awareness.

I worked evenings and weekends for over a year before I quit my full-time job in 2010 to go all in on my agency.

To market my new business, I leveraged my video editing skills to share tips and tricks around social media marketing, including tutorials, resource recommendations, and content strategies. 

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During a particularly tough month with almost no revenue for the agency, I decided to try something new: selling a course teaching businesses how to create their own videos. I pitched the course to my modest email list of a couple hundred people, offering a special pre-launch price for early sign-ups. 

That was my first taste of passive income — as I recall it, I made about $1,000 in revenue in a single day from one email. 

The early validation and surge to my bank account was all the momentum I needed to create the content, which I delivered via live hour-long webinars once a week for six weeks. 

It took me about 30 hours in total to make and teach the course. But once the course was created, it became an easy source of passive income as I made it available for purchase on my website and social media channels from that point forward. 

Over a decade later, my passive income portfolio has evolved significantly.

How I grew my passive income to about $18,000 a month

I've created more than 1,000 videos about productivity and brand-building for my YouTube channel, AmyTV. Each one takes me about an hour to prepare and another hour to film, and can continue earning money indefinitely through advertising revenue and more. 

For example, a video I posted in December 2020 called "Plan Your Best Year Ever! My 7 Step Goal Setting Process" keeps growing in views every month and directing people to purchase my planner.

My community began asking time and again for something that laid out my philosophy on video content strategy. I realized that my audience was telling me they'd buy books, so I started writing them. 

I began with, "Vlog Like a Boss: How To Kill It Online With Video Blogging." Then "Good Morning, Good Life: 5 Simple Habits to Master Your Mornings and Upgrade Your Life." Most recently, I published "365 Days of Good Morning, Good Life: Daily Reflections to Help You Go After the Life You Want."

I self-published through Amazon's print-on-demand and audiobook creation platforms. Each book took an average of three weeks to write, followed by a couple months of design to get it ready for print and e-book formats. Since 2017, the three books have sold about 40,000 copies.

"Good Morning, Good Life" inspired my first non-book product: a paper planner helping people streamline their morning routines and be more productive. This has brought in over $140,000 in sales.

On average, my personal brand brings in about $18,000 monthly in passive income between YouTube ads, affiliate revenue, brand deals, and books and other products sold. 

I've learned that when you show up in service of others, amazing things can happen — including making more money for a better life.

Amy Landino is a personal brand coach and the award-winning creator of AmyTV on YouTube. She is an instructor in CNBC's online course How to Earn Passive Income Online. Follow her on Instagram.

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