This is the definitive Passive Income Unlocked review.
Specifically, this is a review of The Passive Income Unlocked Protocol, a course by Jeff Bridenstine and Ben Esman of the website and YouTube channel Passive Income Unlocked.
Their course aims to teach you how to build profitable niche websites. My team and I have researched the training thoroughly and shared our insights below.
(Have you taken this course? Add your rating!)
If you’d like to know…
- What exactly Passive Income Unlocked teaches
- How it compares to similar courses
- The pros and cons of Passive Income Unlocked
- If Jeff and Ben are legit
Then you’re in the right place.
Jump to…
About the Author
Hey, I’m Niall Doherty.
I quit my last 9-to-5 job back in 2010.
Since then, I’ve earned my living online in various ways. Over the last 4 years (through 2023) I’ve earned $842,000 from my laptop.
I’m on a mission to accurately rate and review all the best online business courses. My team and I are spending many hours investigating these courses and getting feedback from real students.
All that to say: we know a thing or two about such courses and making money online.
The Best Affiliate Marketing Course?
We’re on a mission to find the best affiliate marketing training, based on our own extensive research plus feedback from verified students.
While The Passive Income Unlocked Protocol is NOT primarily an affiliate marketing course – it’s more focused on monetizing niche sites with display ads – it does cover a lot of the same ground.
With that in mind, while Passive Income Unlocked is quite good, it doesn’t beat out some similar courses…
🏆 Best Affiliate Marketing Courses 🏆
How does Passive Income Unlocked help you make money?
Passive Income Unlocked aims to help you build and grow a niche website / blog that gets tons of traffic from Google and other search engines.
They also show you how to monetize that traffic, in order of priority…
- Display ads
- Affiliate marketing
- Digital products
As Jeff states on the course sales page…
Learn the exact process that we’ve used to grow our niche sites to over 1 million pageviews and $50,000+ per month.
Most of that revenue seems to come from display ads.
Here is one of their sites with the display ads highlighted in red…
How much money you make from display ads depends on a few factors, but generally the more people you can get to visit your site, the more you can earn.
As Jeff says within the training:
[Display ads] is the easiest way to make money with an informational site. However, the reason that a lot of people don’t like to build informational sites is because you need quite a bit of traffic to make money from display ads… We produce a lot of content, and each piece of content brings in a small amount of money, but those small amounts of money do add up over time.
That certainly seems to be the case for the PIU guys. Here’s Jeff reporting almost $40,000 in revenue from six of their own niche sites in one month…
In a blog post accompanying that video, they note that the vast majority of that revenue came via display ads.
As mentioned, Jeff and Ben also teach the monetization methods of affiliate marketing and digital products within the course.
Affiliate marketing is when you promote other people’s products or services, and collect a commission for each successful referral.
And a digital product is something like a short PDF or ebook that you can sell via your website, or offer as an incentive so people sign up to your mailing list.
Who is Passive Income Unlocked for?
Passive Income Unlocked sells itself as a platform for beginners.
As stated in the sales page’s FAQ section…
This course covers the exact strategies that we’ve used to build our niche sites, step by step. While it will provide the most benefit to beginners, those of you with some experience building sites should find value in it as well. If you’re already an expert, there are other, more technical courses out there to consider instead.
I haven’t seen such honesty in quite a while, so I was pleasantly surprised with that description.
And having seen inside the course, I tend to agree: The Passive Income Unlocked Protocol is an ideal course for beginners who like the idea of creating and monetizing niche websites.
- 70+ ways how to make money online (including easy options)
Do Jeff and Ben have a good reputation?
Yes.
They don’t have a huge audience yet, but I think that’s only a matter of time.
I’ve watched a bunch of their YouTube videos and read through interviews with both of them. They seem like genuine guys who have worked hard to achieve their own niche site success. And now they’re sharing what they’ve learned via their free and paid material.
You can also tell they are the real deal because they’ve revealed one of their niche sites publicly…
And they reveal another two within their premium training.
So these guys clearly walk their talk.
Are Passive Income Unlocked students getting results?
It’s too early to tell.
As I’m writing this, The Passive Income Unlocked Protocol is still quite new. Not many students have gone through the training yet, and so have not had time to implement the teachings and see significant results.
However, the course seems solid, and I don’t doubt that we will eventually see numerous success stories coming out of it.
How much does Passive Income Unlocked cost?
You have two payment options to access the Passive Income Unlocked premium training…
- $150 for an annual subscription
- $90 for a 6-month subscription
Each option gives you access to both the course materials and the private community.
Keep in mind that you’ll need to put a little bit of extra money aside for hosting and a domain name for your website. These are the only expenses that the PIU guys consider necessary.
There are some paid tools recommended within the training to speed things up, but you can go without these if you’re on a tight budget.
Passive Income Unlocked Discount?
I’ve looked everywhere for a discount or coupon code, but I haven’t found one.
But given that this is one of the least expensive courses I’ve seen on this topic, you can consider the full price to be a great deal.
Refund Policy
The sales page for PIU specifies a 14-day refund period…
A full refund request can be made via email within 14 days of the purchase date of the course.
It’s not specified whether there’s any action that you need to perform to be eligible for a refund.
How is Passive Income Unlocked structured?
This is what the training looks like once you’re logged in…
The core training is broken up into nearly 20 modules. They have a total of 50 videos that last more than 10 hours.
Each module covers one step of building (and monetizing) your blog. I found the training easy to follow. Jeff gives you the same spreadsheets that he uses in his videos so you can follow along with your own research and analysis.
The training is quite comprehensive for such a low-priced course. And I like that they encourage you to produce quality content, helping you set up a site that brings value to your audience.
One thing I found a little lacking was the monetization section. They cover monetizing with display ads quite well, but I would have liked to see more info on affiliate marketing and digital products. This isn’t a big issue though if you mainly want to monetize with display ads, like the PIU guys do on their own sites.
Passive Income Unlocked has a built-in forum rather than a Facebook group. There wasn’t a ton of activity in there when I checked it out, which was understandable since the course had just launched and not many people had joined yet.
I did find the forum interface clean and easy to navigate.
Green Lights 🟢
Here are a few things to like about Passive Income Unlocked…
- Low price compared to similar courses; especially affordable with yearly subscription.
- Minimal additional expense.
- 14-day money-back guarantee.
- Clear instruction, easy to follow step by step.
- Strong emphasis on creating quality content.
- No misleading marketing tactics.
- Jeff and Ben clearly walk their talk.
Red Flags 🚩
A few things about Passive Income Unlocked that might give you pause…
- Lack of significant success stories from students (understandable: the course is still new).
- Brief info on monetization options beyond display ads.
- No search function or text version of the lessons; hard to quickly find or refer back to specifics.
Other things you should know
- An easy way to understand PIU’s premium training: Jeff and Ben reveal every step they’ve taken to build their own profitable niche sites. Enroll in the course, and this exclusive material is yours to use.
- You’ll have access to useful downloads during the training, containing things like checklists.
- Keep in mind that the course was launched only a few months before this writing. It may be missing some key things such as success stories, but I believe we’ll see plenty of them in time.
- What can you learn from the premium PIU training that you can’t learn from the free content on their YouTube channel? They answered this very question in a YouTube comment…
As far as niche selection, topic research, and keyword research, we do cover many of the same strategies [in the course] as on YT, but we go quite a bit deeper in some areas and cover some methods we didn’t touch on in those videos. With keyword research in particular, we’ve improved our process quite a bit over the last year, especially in terms of making sure we’re capturing all the low-hanging fruit with low and zero-volume keywords, while avoiding duplicate content at the same time.
I’m not one to tell you to spend your hard-earned money on something that may or may not be worth it for you, but I think you’ll find value in the course and pick up some new techniques that you can apply to your site or sites.
Should you join Passive Income Unlocked?
Passive Income Unlocked is still a new course, but I’m happy to recommend it.
The strategy that Jeff and Ben teach is sound. They’ve laid it out clearly and concisely. And they’ve made it all available for a very low price, especially compared to other courses that teach the same business model.
I also appreciate that their training puts an emphasis on creating quality content.
Overall, I consider The Passive Income Unlocked Protocol to be one of the best-value courses we’ve reviewed to date. If you like the idea of building and monetizing informational niche websites, definitely give it a look.
Just keep in mind that such sites usually require several months or even years of work before they can generate a good income, especially if you’re starting one from scratch.
Passive Income Unlocked Alternatives
Here are the top affiliate marketing programs we’ve reviewed…
Your Thoughts on Passive Income Unlocked
- Have you taken this course yourself?
Add your rating so others can see if it’s worthwhile. - Do you have a question about this course?
Let us know below and we’ll try find the answer.
Hello Niall,
With the advent of AI tools like ChatGPT which gives clear and concise information, do you still think informational niche sites will survive? And is it wise to monetise an informational niche site with display ads only? (as the general trend is to go after affiliate links)
Hey Sam. I don’t consider the information from ChatGPT to be very reliable. Plenty of examples of that posted online. Maybe it will get better over time but I think there will still be plenty of room for niche sites created by real people who care deeply about the topic, provide reliable info, and cite their sources. As for monetization, the best approach depends on the content, IMO. If you are creating content that naturally fits with affiliate offers (eg. a product review), then you would primarily monetize that way. Display ads are better for monetizing general content that doesn’t have any buyer intent (eg. a page about the highest mountains in the world).
Hello Niall,
I am a newbie to SEO, affiliate marketing and display ads. Can I begin my online journey with this course? I mean, build an informational site with display ads, make some money, understand how it works and then take an advanced course like TASS or the Affiliate Lab for affiliate marketing…
Your guidance will be helpful…
Hi Joanna. I’d say yes, this is a great beginner course. It covers a lot but it’s low cost – both to buy the training and to implement it – and they have the 30-day money-back guarantee. Just make sure you have the right expectations going into this: expect not to earn much money at all the first year, as there is a lot you’ll need to learn and practice.