Passive Income Sucks...Until It Doesn't
What People are Getting Wrong
One of the most interesting conversations to have as a digital content creator is one centered around passive income. It quickly becomes clear that most people are confused by the concept and are convinced that passive income is smoke and mirrors. I think this happens because most people think in terms of big numbers.
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The Big Numbers
Here are some examples of “the Big numbers” in content creation.
“I woke up to thousands in my account after sending out an email.”
“Last month I made $50,000 with digital products.”
“My email funnel made me $27,000 in one week.”
Let’s be clear, I LOVE the Big Numbers. What most people forget is that small numbers that scale over time create those Big Numbers.
$514
For me, the number that made the difference was $514. I’d written a romance novel that I sold on Amazon. It wasn’t perfect, I self-edited and self-published it and then I waited to see if someone would buy it.
They did.
Why was $514 such a big deal? It was almost the same amount as my monthly mortgage payment. The small numbers grow and scale and can become big numbers over time.
Focus on the small numbers, don’t overwhelm yourself thinking about the big numbers. With focus, tenacity and a strategy-the small numbers will grow.
What is Passive Income?
Often when I see people on social media, etc. talking about making passive income they seek to gloss over the amount of work it takes to build it.
Here’s a short and sweet breakdown of what passive income is in a digital business.
Passive Income is income built up over a period of months or years that is paid out on a regular basis to the content creator.
Building Passive Income…
Can suck.
Seriously, it sucks for awhile because there’s so much upfront work that has to be done that doesn’t immediately earn income.
How to Make that Happen?
Growing passive income is actually pretty straightforward. I’m sharing a few variations of how you can grow it depending on the digital platform that you prefer.
No matter what, you must GROW A LIST. It’s a non-negotiable part of the process.
Newsletter Passive income:
Newsletter/Email marketing can be quite lucrative. If you’re solely focused on only focusing on newsletter subscriptions you’re leaving money on the table.
Grow your overall subscriber numbers!!
Include affiliate links that help your audience solve a problem. Ideally, the tool that you share is something that you’ve tested out and love. Share no more than 5-7 affiliates regularly-in a very natural way in your content.
Affiliate links should have a long cookie duration. A cookie is basically an electronic tagging of your interaction on someone’s affiliate link. The best affiliate cookies have a longer time duration. For example, 30 days or more.
I don’t love Amazon Affiliates because they have a 24 hour cookie and low affiliate payouts. Amazon Affiliate links also cannot be emailed as that is a violation of program terms. It is a great way to practice affiliate marketing.
Design and share a signature product or program with your newsletter with a goal of a certain number of sales.
Subscription Products
I love subscription products that are similar to a paid newsletter subscription. Here are some ideas of what this could look like:
Monthly paid group coaching program.
Paid Mastermind program.
Subscription box-I love subscription boxes but I don’t love the cost of physical products.
License information products to a client such as a university, financial institution or non-profit.
Software As A Service (SAAS)-Develop a tool that people pay for monthly. Examples:
Email marketing tools that allow you to own your list.
Your favorite AI tool that makes working on content much faster.
Sell Ebooks
Write and self-publish your books! I love how empowered we are to create and share our expertise, interest and creative work via self-publishing. There’s even a group/community called 20BooksTo50K. The goal is to encourage writers to self-publish up to 20 books with the goal of earning $50,000 a year (or, more) via self-publishing.
In fact, the one recurring income stream that has paid me since day #1 is my book income. Right now it’s a tiny amount. In previous years it earned quite a bit more each month. I love self-publishing so much that I plan on writing and self-publishing ASAP.
What People Get Wrong About Growing Passive Income
That it’s hard to do-The strategy typically is pretty straightforward.
Pick a platform
Decide on a strategy that scales your project
Double-down on what is yielding results
Grow an email list
Batch as much of your content as possible so that you can rest.
Many creators think building passive income is fast-Typically it’s not. Give yourself 6-9 months before expecting any earnings from your efforts. Painful.
Social media is necessary to build passive income-Not true. You don’t necessarily need social media to grow your passive income. Instead, you need a strategy.
Small amounts DO matter-Remember, once you learn the strategy…you just have to scale your efforts.
I Share My Passive Income Strategy
Paying Subscribers Listen to the Audio (below)
I’m focused on a passive income strategy within my business. Learn what I’m focusing on moving forward and some lessons learned along the way.
By the way, if you didn’t get a chance to check out last week’s newsletter you can click here to read it.
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