My 19 sources of income at age 34 — Silicon Valley Girl Podcast

Marina Mogilko: I came to the US 9 years ago as an immigrant and an entrepreneur aspiring to build a huge international company. Our startup, Language Trip, just received investment from 500 Startups, and while that might sound impressive, my personal financial situation and startup situation at that time was far from ideal. I was blown away that we had to pay $2,600 to rent a one-bedroom apartment. So all three of us—me, my husband, and our co-founder—lived in this one-bedroom apartment. We barely had money for a car, so we got a $2,500 police interceptor off Craigslist. I was wondering how do people even survive in the US? Back in my hometown, St. Petersburg, Russia, we only needed maybe like $700 to live comfortably. So I just didn't understand how America worked.

Over the years, I've made more mistakes, spent lots of money, and learned valuable lessons along the way. Those lessons have led me to where I am right now, making over $100,000 a month from all 19 income sources. When I calculated all of those income sources, I'm like, this really comes from your insecurity, Marina. This comes from you having lived in a shared apartment back in St. Petersburg, not having a car, nothing like this. It definitely comes from insecurity, coming from a poorer background, not having the resources. Now I'm like, every year I'm adding another extra income stream just to be sure. But this video is for you to start diversifying.

Actually, this year my investments are on par with my business results, which as an entrepreneur I think I could do better, but as an investor I think I'm doing pretty well. If you still believe that the key to financial success is to work harder at your 9-to-5, climb the corporate ladder, and eventually make it, first of all, you're taking a big risk. I don't know how you feel in that environment, but for me I have to be my own manager, so I have all the time in the world to build my different income streams. But I also understand how safe the corporate job feels. Because I pay for my own insurance, I create my own 401K, I am saving for my kids' colleges. I don't get free lunches in the office, I don't get vacations. I don't get whatever. But basically all what a lot of entrepreneurs and creators like me go through—we start with trading our time for money, and then we feel the limit, and then we come up with creative ways to make more money without making more videos or working harder.

Second, if you're just working one job, you're putting all your eggs in one basket, hoping that the single source of income will always be there. There are different types of people. Some people are better built for that. I always talk about how Brian Chesky is so committed to just building Airbnb. I'm a person who wants to be everywhere, to try everything. I'm more like—I really want to compare myself to Elon Musk, but I don't think I'm there at all. But anyway, that guy starts a lot of different things, and I like his approach more because it just suits my personality more. Anyway, I am a huge believer in creating multiple sources of income streams.

So here we go—my 19 sources of income. I'm going to start with my professional and very active sources of income, then we're going to go to more passive sources of income, and then we're going to go to very passive sources of income. For some sections I'm going to mention how much I'm making. Some numbers I'm just not comfortable sharing, but a lot of them I am, and I'm going to share them and how easy it is to start.

Language Trip is how I started my business. I was just super passionate about study abroad, learning languages, taking standardized tests. This is how I started—out of my passion. I did everything manually. I started together with my co-founder and my husband, Dimitri. How much I make? Zero right now, because we're not taking distributions because we are hoping to sell the company in maybe one or two years. We're focused on just growing and growing the revenue and making our costs less and less so that we can have a beautiful P&L for our potential acquirer. How hard is it? Oh my God, it's so hard to run your own business. It's unpredictable, it's unstable, but it's the best thing in the world because you're learning so many jobs. You are doing whatever your imagination dreams up. Definitely not for everyone, but if you can try some kind of entrepreneurship—we're going to talk about other income streams that are connected to entrepreneurship.

The second income stream is selling my digital products. With digital courses, I started my creator career 10 years ago, exactly in December 2014, talking about standardized tests. Since then, I've amassed over 17 million followers, and I'm just sharing how you can do the same, but in 2024 and 2025. How much do I make? For digital products, it's pretty passive because we created those products and my team updates them from time to time, but we just run ads and they sell by themselves. They make over 10K every month, which is pretty good. There are three types of digital products that I'm selling. We have my digital products like PDFs and workbooks on how to start a YouTube channel, how to go viral on Reels, how to monetize your channel, how to build a team, etc. We have various. Then we also have several courses that I pre-recorded that we also sell. This year we just launched a course on UGC—how to make money by making videos for other companies. We launched a course for building a personal brand. Then another type of digital product is actually my one-on-one consultations. I rarely take them, and we make around 12K. That means I take maybe one personal client and a couple consultations, so on average 4K a month with one-on-one consultations.

Those digital products actually sell automatically. I don't actively promote them. We just use them as lead magnets. We sometimes create targeted ads. My team and I have noticed that a significant portion of our revenue—I think around 21%—comes directly from email marketing to a customer database. This highlights how crucial it is to choose the right email marketing platform for your needs.

My active income stream number five is actually brand deals, like that I just mentioned, or other products and companies that we work with. With those deals, we make over 30K a month. But I still feel that there is a huge potential because I'm creating so much content everywhere. I started getting my first brand deals when I had maybe 30,000 followers on this account. With my other accounts, I think I needed like 100K, because this is a very business-specific channel, so I get more advertisers historically here. But I have an educational channel which gets some advertisers from time to time, and another channel is in Russian, so I don't get too many advertisers there. But sometimes brands come, so you need at least—it depends on your niche. With some niches you need like 10K if you're talking about investments or real estate, but if you are a lifestyle creator, the more lifestyle you are, the more subscribers you need to start making money with brand deals. But that's one of the income streams.

The next income stream means you don't need any followers, and it's called UGC content. We've done several deals this year. We make 10 to 20K per deal, and we made four deals this year, so around 4K a month. So what it means is that a company sends me a product and they tell me, "Hey Marina, can you make a video with this product?" Normally they want a beautiful video, not just like something that I filmed in the middle of the day not paying attention. No, I put in a beautiful look. I invite my videographer, we think of a script, we set up lighting. This whole studio is set up professionally to create that type of content as well. UGC is user-generated content. A company sends your product, you make a video, and you get paid. On average, you get paid—it depends. If you're working with tech products or AI companies, they pay a lot. If you're working with fashion or makeup, they don't pay that much. On average, if you register on platforms like Collie, you can register and submit interest in creating UGC content. Yes, you need to be approved. You have to have some content just to showcase how you can film, and of course, subscribers are a bonus. But anyway, they pay from like $300 to $700 per video. I know people are making thousands and thousands of dollars on that.

For the next year, one of my goals is to grow this income stream because again, we see a lot of potential. I already have the studio. I already know how to make videos. Why not just partner with more brands? The way we're going to do it is we're going to register on all the platforms and submit interest.

Public speaking—I talk at large companies. I speak at conferences. Sometimes I do it for free, like if it's a huge conference and they pay for my flight to a remote country, I would just do it for the flight, for the experience. But there are also things that are paid, and I go to conferences, speak, and get a fee. This is not something I do a lot, just because I don't like to travel too far and too often because I have small kids. But an average gig is like 3 to $5,000 per thing, and again, I maybe do like two or three a year, maximum.

Okay, two more active income streams, and then we're going to go to more passive ones that may be more applicable if you're not thinking of creating content in your life at all. Number one is making bonuses on Reels. Like if I post Reels on Instagram once a month, they might pay me. It depends on how they feel. There is no rule, but sometimes they're like, "Marina, I want to pay you a bonus," but that's on average like $300 a month, so not a lot, but still. How hard is it? You need to go viral with your Reels and you need to create original content. It's very—I see it really as a bonus, not as an income stream. It's great when I get it. I wanted to mention it so that you know that Instagram sometimes pays you for Reels.

My last active income stream is actually selling things on eBay. Yes, I do it still. It's like, do you know this meme when a guy stands in the middle of a parking lot in the most dangerous area of their city because his wife wanted to sell a toaster for $9 on eBay? That's my husband. No, I'm kidding. But I normally just ship things to people who buy from me. I sell my old clothes, I sell our furniture, I sell cameras. I just don't like clutter. Sometimes I will just go to stores like Crossroads and Fillmore Fifth—it's here in the Bay Area—and just take a huge bag of clothes that I'm no longer wearing, and they will give me like 20 to $100 per item. Normally it's like $50 to $60 per item, which is again great. Yes, it's a lot less than I paid for them, but if I'm no longer wearing them, I'd rather get some cash. If they don't accept some things, I just donate them.

So these were nine sources of active income. I know the numbers might sound huge, but something that you have to remember is that I have over 50 people working for me—remote contractors, people in the US, a lot of people. So it's not like I'm swimming in cash. Most of it just goes back into business and improving videos and buying cameras and traveling and making content more exciting and investing back into businesses. I'm focused on building equity. I'm not just taking all the money and buying luxury cars and outfits.

Don't forget that there are some semi-active affiliate marketing. Basically, when you see me promoting some kind of company—for example, I'm going to mention Coinbase in this video because this is a platform that I use to buy and sell crypto—and I'm going to leave an affiliate link in the description. If you click it, then Coinbase is going to pay me an affiliate fee. You can do this for anything. You can do this for products on Amazon, you can do this for hotels, you can do this for flights, you can do this for credit cards, you can do this for AI apps. I have this video where I'm mentioning a lot of AI apps, and basically most of the links there are affiliate links. I get paid maybe from like $5 to $40 for people who sign up using my links.

Semi-passive because I still have to create the videos, but once I've created videos, the links just work for me. So it's perfect. I'm not making a lot there—depending on the month, $300 to $500. It's just good to have. But again, it's something I have to work on. Charlie Chang—he's been on my channel. He makes over $200,000 on affiliate links. Like, I have to step up my game. I'm working on it. I'm working on so many things. I hope that next year I will share some updates here, but for now, this is what it is.

As you know, we have an Airbnb that made over $50,000 in less than six months, but all of it went to expenses like paying a mortgage, paying the cleaners, etc. It's semi-active. I still choose the furniture, I still go there and film things, I still think about the whole experience, I still work a lot on finances, whatever. There are still things I do. It's not like it's my full-time job, but I do things there. Just traveling there is amazing. So for now, it's actually losing us money, but in two years it's going to be cash flow positive. But I just wanted to mention it because it's an income source in the making.

Google AdSense—whenever I post videos on YouTube, YouTube pays me. They don't pay me that much these days because my videos just don't go crazy viral. I think this channel pays 2 to $6,000 a month, which is still—I call it semi-passive because I would still post videos regardless of payment, but it's good to have this payment. I have two more channels, so it comes to maybe 13 to 15K every month. I like it. It pays for the team. I pay my editors, I pay my producers, payment managers. It basically just goes to the team, but still, we make 13 to 15K a month, which is great.

And the last semi-passive income, but not least, it's actually one of my favorite sources of income—my credit card points that I spend on flights. This year I think we took maybe four flights for the whole family, transatlantic, bought with miles and business class. That means around $166,000 if we paid in cash. Divide that by 12—let's say like $1,200 a month passive income because we spend those miles on flying business class. Basically, we pay like maybe an extra $300 for taxes, but that's it. I think it's a source of income that you need to consider. If you don't do this yet, please start doing research. The best credit card there is, this American Express card, that pays you well. We bank with Chase, so I use their cards as well. Please check all of them out. I think they're a great way to fly business class for free.

So we've named 13 income streams so far. Now let's talk about my passive income streams and the amount that they made me this year. This has been a good year for the markets, right, especially the last part of this year. The amount that they made me is comparable to what I made with my active business. I ask myself a question: Marina, is your business as effective as you think? But business also comes with a lifestyle, right? Meeting people, making these videos for you, wearing the most amazing outfit. So yes, there is a lot of expense associated with the business, but that's another type of conversation.

Anyway, I'm glad I started investing in 2019. You know how it started? We lived in this high-rise in San Francisco, and I was chilling in the common area. I was pregnant with my first baby, and I saw a book called "Money" by Tony Robbins. I started reading it. It just blew my mind. Like, I was doing everything wrong. I was not investing. I wasn't doing anything. I had a savings account, so I opened my first savings account with a major bank, and they paid me like 0.02%. I was like, oh, doesn't really make sense. So I started researching. I'm like, okay, I'm actually going to invest this money in the stock market. Then COVID happened. The whole stock market crashed, and this was when I made my first investment. But the major growth didn't happen with those assets, and they did well. Obviously, there are a lot of strategic things that I do, like monthly investments, automated investments, hiring a financial person to help me with it. Anyway, I'm going to talk about this in this passive income section of my income streams.

Let's talk about boring stuff first—high yield savings accounts. Don't open a savings account with a major bank. Go to digital banks like SoFi. They maybe—I don't know what they're paying now—but around 4%, which is still better than 0.02%, or LendingClub or Marcus by Goldman Sachs. They're all good banks. They're all FDIC insured. So if you need money throughout the year, but for now it is just sitting in your account, just do the savings account so at least it can bring you some cash.

This could also be done if you have a business and your business has some cash sitting there. Major banks actually offer CDs, and I did it this year with some free cash from my business. I'm actually holding some cash because next year we're launching this food brand, so I'm going to be investing some of it in the food brand and some of it will go back to the stock market. But anyway, it was sitting as cash in my bank account, and I invested it in CDs, and it made like 4%. If you are an individual, you can use high yield savings accounts. For corporate accounts, I would use CDs with your bank. Those made me maybe like $11,000 a month.

Another income stream is investing in T-bills and bonds. They pay around 7%. The ones that I invested in—you can invest up to 10K per person, so I just invested for everyone in our family—but these are like smaller things. Let's talk about bigger things. Let's talk about crypto. You know, this year there was so much thought, like, why did I stop investing in crypto? So my story with crypto: I bought my first crypto in 2016. Sold it to my husband. So I bought Bitcoin for like 6K, and then it was 15K, and I needed something for Christmas, so I sold it to my husband. I think he sold it later at a loss. Anyway, I sold it when it was 15, and then I started buying again when Bitcoin was around maybe 20 to 30. I started buying regularly, but it wasn't a lot. It was like $11,000 every month. I stopped when it hit 67,000 because I was like, that's too much, that's over-inflated. I think I stopped in 2022 when that was this whole NFT time. I also invested in BlockFi, and they were bankrupt, but they actually returned money this year.

Anyway, my crypto returns brought me over $5,000 monthly this year. I did not sell them, and I do not intend to sell, but I intend to start buying again starting next year. It's going to be automated. I'm not going to look at what Bitcoin is selling at. I will just invest a certain amount of money monthly. I'm going to buy through Coinbase, and then I'm going to transfer everything to a Ledger, which is like safer. It's not hard. You just need to be disciplined. It's such a roller coaster. I know a lot of people are like, oh, why did you buy an Airbnb? If you invested in Bitcoin, you would have made so much money. Of course, you know what? If I invested in Bitcoin in 2023, I would just sell everything. That's me. That's my psychology. I need to be safe. So Bitcoin is the lesser part in my portfolio. Super risky because I'm super emotional. That's it. So just investing everything in crypto wouldn't work for me. I like the way I'm diversified with like an Airbnb and crypto and stocks.

Let's talk about the stock market. So actually, you have two portfolios. One of them is managed by my financial adviser and brought over $3,000 monthly in dividends. How it grew—again, I didn't sell it anything. Dividends just come in, and that's income. But the growth has been crazy. Another portfolio is just me playing with a smaller amount, investing in risky stocks. Not risky—I invest in Google, Formula 1 stocks, Nvidia, like all of the tech companies here in the Bay. That one made me $3,600 every month. Again, that's the growth. I might lose it next year. Who knows? But this year the growth has been tremendous. So dividends, risky growth, and non-risky growth.

Again, when it comes to investments, because I'm not selling, I can't really say income. These are unrealized gains that can just be wiped off, and probably some of them will be wiped off next year. But the strategy with investment is set aside part of your income monthly and invest it and don't look at your portfolios. But also stay diversified. I'm glad I have a professional doing that just because I'm super emotional. When I was doing that myself, first of all, I forgot to look at the market, so I lost some money. Then I stopped investing when markets crashed because I thought they were going to crash even further. But he helps me stay on track.

These were my income sources. So that was it. Please don't forget that these income streams—some of them are unrealized, some of them have a lot of expenses attached to them. So I just wanted to provide an honest picture of what I've been doing for the past eight years as an immigrant, hustling from $0 in my bank account to whatever it is these days.

My goal is well, ideally $40 million in savings. I remember I started like 2.5. Ideally, 40. Let's see what happens. Let's see. I'll keep you updated. I feel like it's an ambitious goal, but it's reachable, especially like looking at people around you and you see how much money there is in the world and how much money people are making. It's not like somebody is taking from me or I'm taking from someone. There's more and more money every year. If you're really doing something good for the world and if you're helping people—this is how I feel—the money will come back to you. This is how I feel is the best way to make money.