How I Make Money at 55 (And How You Can Too)

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While I share money-making strategies, nothing is "typical", and outcomes are based on each individual. There are no guarantees.

I’m going to be 55 years old this year. I don’t know how that happened — all of a sudden you wake up one day and you’re 55. I don’t have a retirement, and I’m not married. So I want to talk about how I’m making money now, and how I plan to keep making money, even without a retirement waiting for me.

If you’re in this same phase of life — maybe you’re retired and looking to add income to what you’re already making, or you’re heading the same direction I am and wondering, “What am I going to do? How am I going to make money?” — this is for you. And if you’re 30 or 40 reading this, it’s for you too. But I especially want my generation and my mom’s generation, the boomers, to understand one thing: we are not aged out of any of this opportunity.

I make multiple six figures working for myself doing online marketing. But these aren’t the “here are 10 ways to make money with ChatGPT” tricks from someone who never actually tried them. I do every single one of these things. When I pick up a new platform or strategy, it’s because I’m called to it — not because some guru told me it was the next big thing. Some of these I’ve done for years. But you can start any of them now. You don’t have to have been doing them for a decade.

Let me walk you through the buckets my income actually falls into.

1. Product Reviews (And Why the Over-50 Space Is Exploding)

You would not believe how big the over-50 space is in product reviews. Brands are actively looking to partner with us, because we’re the biggest generation and we have the most disposable income by a generation. A lot of us in Gen X are still working or still running successful businesses, so we have real discretionary income to spend — and to talk about.

Product reviews make money through affiliate commissions — you promote a product that isn’t yours and earn a commission when it sells. The commissions can be terrible or fantastic depending on the brand and platform, and there are brand-new opportunities opening up as we speak. Here’s where I do it:

TikTok Shop

I made six figures on TikTok two years in a row. I got on TikTok Shop in 2023, right when it launched — I made $47,000 in my first three months. I’ll be honest, it’s not that easy today. But is there still opportunity? Absolutely. Tons of over-50 creators are doing really well in fashion, beauty, and home and garden. I see women doing makeup tutorials, men doing tools and popup tents and knife sets, people selling QVC-style candles and seasonal wreaths. The catch now is you really have to get in with the brands and be careful about what you promote — it’s not the wild west it used to be. I still make thousands on TikTok, but I’ll be honest, I’ve lost some of the excitement for the brand-deal structure. I’d rather promote an item and earn the commission than treat it like a job.

Amazon Influencer

Amazon is another one where people are doing really well if they do it the way Amazon wants. We used to make thousands just by reviewing a product on Amazon’s product pages. Now Amazon wants us driving traffic to them — making videos on Facebook, pins on Pinterest, videos on YouTube. They’ve shifted the commission structure to reward that off-site traffic. And here’s the gold: inside the Creator Connections program, brands have agreed to pay additional commissions on top of what Amazon pays. Amazon might give you 1–4%, but a brand will throw another 15, 20, even 25% on top. You just have to take the time to go through the program and pick the brands paying the extra.

I’m not the kind of creator who chases free products to review. I’d rather review items I actually use. Just this morning I reviewed a pair of Vionic sandals I bought — I put it on Amazon, on my LTK, and on TikTok. But if getting free products is your jam, there’s a whole business in pitching brands for free samples, reviewing them, then holding big garage sales and pocketing that money too. It’s a sweet little business; it’s just not how I do it.

And don’t let your age scare you off. There’s a woman I watch who’s in her 70s still doing bathing suits and shorts outfits. I’m 55 and I do well with bathing suits. The people your age still want to see someone like them. You do not age out of this.

2. Affiliate Marketing — My #1 Income Earner

Affiliate marketing is my number one income earner — I make about $17,000 a month on it. And it’s not just physical products. I’ve been a software affiliate for a solid 10 years. I share my favorite software, teach people how to use it on YouTube and in webinars, give my link, and earn a commission when they subscribe.

The magic is the recurring commissions. A lot of these pay me every single month for as long as that person stays subscribed, because I was the reason they signed up. I have one software relationship — a real estate tool I started promoting in 2016 — that pays me $9,000 a month. Ten years of building, and people don’t leave it. That’s stickiness. That’s longevity.

Could you repeat that overnight? No. But you can start looking at everything you already use. A finance app, your bank, an investment app. I use SoFi for investing, consolidation loans, my daughter’s college loans, a high-yield savings account — and they run promotions where referring someone for a personal loan pays $300. Tons of credit card companies, banks, and investment apps have programs like that. My organic grocery delivery and my pre-made meal company give me cash back or credit when I share them — same as cash. You don’t have to teach software. You share what you use. You share what you know. Pets are huge here too — food, feeders, leashes, beds. I do really well with cat products.

3. Coaching

My second business is coaching, and I make about $14,000 a month on it. People like when I break the numbers down, because some want to disqualify you — “oh, she just makes money coaching, she’s not actually doing the thing.” I want you to understand: I’m actually doing the thing, and I coach it too. The doing is still my top earner, not the coaching.

If you have a skill set or expertise, think about this. Some people run paid communities where they don’t even teach — they just organize people around a shared interest, do interviews, share value. Mine is a group coaching program with training videos, prompts, and ebooks, plus two live calls a month, two hours each, where I share exactly what I’m doing right now and where we’re pivoting. Because everything changes. I’m not on the same platforms I was on three, five, seven years ago — but the concepts transfer.

4. Publishing — My Six-Figure Content Bucket

My third bucket I just call “publishing.” It’s a six-figure bucket all on its own, with a bunch of line items inside it.

YouTube

When I make YouTube videos with ads turned on, I earn ad revenue — a check from Google AdSense every month, anywhere from $300 to $5,000 (my best was about $7,000, right when ChatGPT launched and I went all in on those videos). I’ve interviewed over-50 creators making $250,000–$300,000 a year from YouTube, but it’s always a combination: maybe $50K in ad revenue plus affiliate commissions plus brand deals. Even a guy sitting in his backyard talking about retirement can mention the chair he’s sitting in, the koozie, the hat, the microphone. Almost everyone with an audience eventually adds affiliate income.

This is why these platforms are so beautiful — they cross over into multiple buckets. My YouTube ad revenue is “publishing,” my YouTube affiliate links feed the affiliate bucket, and my videos drive people into coaching. One channel, three income streams.

Here’s the part I love most: if you can get on camera, you can make money. You don’t even need a skill to teach. People in their 50s, 60s, 70s, even 80s are building YouTube channels just talking about being their age — health, what they eat, dating, gray divorce, retirement, travel, living a slow life, homesteading. If people can relate to you, they’ll watch. Once you hit enough watch time and subscribers, YouTube invites you to monetize, you click a couple buttons, and the checks start coming. You have lived long enough to get paid to exist.

Digital Products & Ebooks

I also sell digital products. You’ll notice ebooks linked under my YouTube videos — I only started that last year and it added another four figures a month to my bottom line, completely organic, no ads. Someone once asked how I make money selling this when people can “just go to AI.” Because they don’t. People still want a person who’s actually doing the thing to teach them, something relevant and right now. Even with AI, there is still a massive market for ebooks, checklists, calendars, spreadsheets, and printables.

Here’s exactly how I create them: I walk two miles every morning with my AirPods in and talk to my AI for 45 minutes. I’ll say, “Hey Claude, I’m writing an ebook for people over 55 who want a side hustle — here’s everything I want to tell them,” and I just spew all my experience. In 45 minutes I can “say” 20,000 words instead of typing them. Then I come back and ask it what’s missing, it asks me questions, and I build the book from there. If you retired early, you’re great at investing, or you know how to budget — anything in the finance space — you have an ebook in you.

Blogging & Pinterest

I’m also a blogger — this very blog. I earn ad revenue when people land here, plus affiliate income inside the posts. I used to drive most of my traffic from Google; now I’m getting a lot from AI search and from Pinterest. I write a post, make an image, pin it, people click over, and I get paid. It’s thousands a month, and again it crosses buckets: ad revenue and affiliate income from one post.

Substack — The One I’m Most Excited About

My newest one, and honestly the one I’m most excited about, is Substack. They call it a paid newsletter, but really it’s a blog — people literally pay to get your article in their inbox. It sounded as crazy to me as people buying ebooks when AI exists. But it works. You post short bursts throughout the week around your main topic, plus a longer piece. My audience there is the mature business person — a lot of them going through transformation, a divorce, a retirement, a career change — and that’s exactly why it works for me. But there are food, travel, gardening, lifestyle, mom, and even political newsletters thriving on there. You just poke around the categories and find your spot.

Within four months I was making $1,400 a month. I became a bestseller in four months — from my first paid subscriber to bestseller. That was rapid growth compared to building a blog, a Pinterest account, or a YouTube channel. And those Substack readers now click over and buy my ebooks and become coaching clients. Once again, it feeds the entire equation.

A Few More Streams (And the Big Picture)

There are creator programs everywhere now. TikTok pays ad revenue on videos over a minute that hit the For You page — I’ve got one with 5,000 views that’s earned 76 cents, but I’ve had videos hit the millions. Whatever you make for YouTube, you can repost on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook and get paid on each. One of my coaching clients couldn’t get YouTube to take off, so she started posting the same content to Facebook as images instead of video — and now she’s making money. There’s never just one way to do any of this.

I also hold a real estate license, but even that’s mostly an affiliate business — I generate the business, my brother works with the clients, and I get a referral fee. It keeps me free. I can go on a cruise for the summer, work from anywhere, anytime.

Here’s what I want you to take from all this: retirement doesn’t have to mean going backwards. Getting older doesn’t mean making less money. It just means finding your spot. Find what you’re good at — and if what you’re good at is simply telling people about your day, you can do that, and you can get paid for it.

I’m Lori Ballen. If you want me to actually teach you how to build these income streams, come join me inside Ballen Academy — and when you’re ready to turn your knowledge into a book, take a look at Ballen Publishing. I’d love to see you there.