If you’re looking for a flowery post that helps you ‘get rich quick, this isn’t that.
What I’m going to talk about is the reality based on my experience. If we talk numbers, my LinkedIn Guide I released 2 months ago has made over $5000 and has got great reviews. And then I have four more products that get in some ‘passive income.
But each time somebody tells me their goal is to make passive income, I want to tell them this first. Once you accept this, your journey will get much easier.
1. Lots of active work
“Passive income requires a lot of active work”
This is something my favorite YouTuber, Ali Abdaal, repeats in a lot of his videos about making money. And it’s true.
You can’t release an ebook today and make sales.
You need to build an audience and that audience should have a need that you’re giving a solution. Both require a lot of work.
Everyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
To do
Don’t create a product, solve a problem.
2. Credibility
Why should people buy from you?
Why would they trust you with their money?
People need to trust you and believe that you know what you’re talking about. Establishing this credibility takes a lot of time, but isn’t impossible.
It helps when:
- you have an engaged audience (not just followers)
- people talk about your products and spread the word
To do
If you’re going to do this online, then create valuable content around the subject you’re an expert in. ‘Valuable’ is the key work here.
3. Highs are high, lows can mess with you
On rare days, I’ve made hundreds of dollars, sometimes as much as north of $800. I feel like a queen when that happens.
This especially happens when you just launch a product because there’s lots of excitement around it.
On many days, you even make $0.
It's difficult in the beginning, but you’ll get okay once you're in the game long enough.
To do
This gets easier with time, so don’t be affected by it. My friend who’s into the stock market, tells me:
“Your stocks and business aren’t a rocket. They don’t keep going up all the time. Allow them to dip occasionally”
4. Don’t overlook the foundation
If you’ve read it till here, you’d know that the foundation of all this is building an audience.
It’s easy for somebody with a mailing list of 30,000 people to sell a $600 digital course than it is for someone with 300 followers to sell a $0.99 ebook.
The good part — we can all build an audience.
I’m building an audience from the scratch on YouTube at the time of typing this. Don’t be in a rush. Being a beginner is great because you can make mistakes and learn and hardly anyone will catch them.
Treat it like a playground.
To do
Pick a platform and create. No, you’re not too late.
(I didn’t plan on it to rhyme.)
5. Affiliates
Help a lot.
It’s a win-win, that too. Your affiliate earns passive income and you tap into their audience. Here are the two things I’ve done:
- Friends: bump the percentage for them and ask them if they’d like to come on board.
- Existing customers: all my existing customers can be affiliates. This hasn’t been really successful though because all my customers do not have email lists (or probably just don’t want to ‘sell’).
However, don’t be too pushy for people to join and depend on them for spreading the word.
To do
Create a system that a customer can automatically become an affiliate (Gumroad has that).
Ask friends to spread the word if it doesn’t clash with their business.
6. This is the last step
Passive income is the last step of your business.
Let’s take my LinkedIn Guide, for example. Before the guide, I:
- grew my account from 2500 to 35000 followers in a year
- became LinkedIn Top Voice 2022
- was invited to LinkedIn Creator Management Program
- got selected for LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program
All this looks shiny, right? And it’s because people asked me how I did it (a problem/ need), and I created a guide (solution).
So relating to the first point, it’s after a lot of work should you think of passive income. You could think of it before too, of course, but it just works better this way.
To do
Make passive income the last step. Make it a consequence of doing good work, not a financial goal.
Last
We have all the tools we need right now. Passive income isn’t just real estate rental anymore (thank god), it can be as easy as creating something on Canva and uploading it on Gumroad.
You just have to put in the work, consistently.
Do it consistently for two years and you’ll find a problem that you can be an expert at solving. And that is your product.
All the best!