This will sound cliché, but then again all great advice and proclamations resonate with people as such. So without further ado, my lesson for you today is this: Love what you do, or don’t do it t all.

In my experience, it truly is the secret to gas pedaling to new heights in your career in lieu of going through the motions on a daily basis. Case in point: I am a blogger and while working on a new blog — without knowing the exact monetization strategy for the site — I started thinking back to a time when I was grasping for straws at “what to do and how to do it” online. It was certainly a turning point for me, and eventually, an entire industry.

I had been through a few intense startup failures, but while toying around with the features on my new iMac I fell in love with making short video reels. I eventually turned these reels into well-received online video product reviews for YouTube; discovering my passion for creating fact-filled videos with a side of comic relief. I had stumbled into something I really loved doing, figured out how to monetize it (i.e., make money doing it), and learned how others could leverage my experiences to do the same.

How to Profit From Your Passion

If you’re looking for ways to turn your passion into a profitable venture – but you’re unsure what your passion truly is — here are a few exercises to get started:

• Write down your daily activities for one month. Everything. If you start off with a certain coffee, that’s the first thing you need to write down.
• Look for trends and repeated activities. Start a short-list of these items.
• Take this list and study it hard. Look for items that may be frequently searched online. Don’t rule out anything yet, however.

Next, with this list, perform the following two tasks:

• Use various searches to find websites about the subjects you’ve identified. Make a short-list of the top sites you find interesting.
• Look to see if they have advertisements on them, affiliate links, or sponsored content. These are just a few ways a website could make money.

For example, if you find yourself drinking coffee three times per day (and you truly enjoy it) make that one of your activities. Then Google “best coffee blogs” and find out who is blogging about coffee. Next, move to step number two and look for ways they may have monetized their site.

A Case Study Example of Profitable Blogging

My friend is really into fitness. Bodybuilding, eating right, proper sleep habits, supplementation, the whole nine yards. So, I walked him through the above-mentioned formula and in our research we found a site doing exactly what he wants to do. That site, the one we identified as the leader (because we felt the content was humorous, compelling and overall we liked the site and everything it gave us) was SpotMeBro.com.

Check it out and you’ll find it’s what I call an Authority Site. (I have no affiliation with the site or the owners, so it’s a serious tip of the cap for me to not only mention them here, but also to link to them and call them an Authority Site.

Now, I don’t know if this is true, but I’m probably on point with my assumptions of how they make money:

• They offer original merchandise. You know you’ve got a good thing when you can sell apparel with your website name on it!
• They utilize affiliate programs. They are aligned with BodyBuilding.com, and I’m sure they do pretty well with that large audience.
• They sell ad space. The site has enough authority and content that they can easily earn money by serving banners or other CPM or paid insert ads.

In a nutshell, these guys are blogging for profit – and they do it well. They write witty content that really clicks with their target audience on a regular basis while mixing in some hilarious video content that really made me laugh. Without knowing the owners or contributors to the site, I can say with 100 percent certainty that they are passionate about their site.

Ultimately, blogging for profit is far from a job, it’s a way of life. And that, my friends, is just one of many examples of how people like you are crushing it online and having a lot of fun doing it.

This article has been edited and condensed.

Timothy Schmidt has been a self-employed entrepreneur since 2001. He is the President and Founder of Skin Pro International, Inc., Bull Smoke, Inc. and many brands of consumer packaged goods products for distribution online housed under the South Beach Herbals, Inc, family of companies. A version of this post originally appeared on Timothy Schmidt’s blog.

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