Hello and welcome to Your Business Online, Your Way. The podcast to help you to achieve success in your small business. I’m Holly Christie, your host. I’m an award winning website designer with 2 ‘web designer of the year’ awards. I’m also the founder of This Demanding Life - helping small businesses to grow with flow (and a killer website) and Simply Sites - for start-ups who are looking for a stellar website, and experience.
This week we’re looking at passive income which can be a brilliant way of bringing in money for your company and there’s a whole host of ways in which you can do it. I’m going to talk you through the most popular, and most suitable, ways for small business owners to bulk out their income, without having to swap time for money. Ready? Let’s get started.
Passive income can be a big earner for some people and if you’re not sure what passive income means, it’s where you make an income with minimal input once the product has been launched. In theory you create a product once, launch it and then it goes on selling in the background (passively), bringing in income, but without you needing to do anything to make this happen. Bearing in mind that the word passive in this case means that you’re not active in it - so no live services or 1-2-1s apply here.
If it sounds a little too good to be true, it’s because there’s a lot of work which needs to go on in the background, or initial stages to get it up and running. But once your passive income method has been launched, you can take a breather and enjoy the sales from your hard work.
I certainly don’t want to put you off but I do want you to be aware of what it takes to create a product ready for passive income. You’ll have costs associated with it, not least your time. Which I’m guessing you’ll probably forget to include as part of the project costs. As well as getting it on your website, building a landing page, setting up a payment portal, launching it, advertising it and keeping it fresh and available in peoples’ minds. You may also set it up as an affiliate product, asking others’ to sell it for you. This will include creating affiliate accounts for them and a percentage of the sales will also go to them.
That’s the hard work bit done, hopefully you’re not put off, but you do have a realistic view of setup. I’m going to give a massive shoutout to my VA, Sharon, who is a whizz at creating a lot of the steps for launching passive income products. If you’d like to create something and you’re not sure you have the time, I’ll happily put you in touch with Sharon. Right, back to it -
Let’s look at the types of products you can make a passive income from.
First up…
Workshops and Webinars
These are possibly my favourite because they do a whole host of things. They showcase you as the expert you are, they can be done in different formats - some people like to present directly to the camera, some like to do a slideshow (which is my favourite) to accompany the talk. You might create videos to go alongside it, there’s loads of opportunities to let people get to know you while learning more about the topic.
The theory here is that you create the webinar once and you sell it over and again. If you’ve created videos or slideshows to go with it, you can also repurpose these, using them in your marketing and other areas of your business.
My experience of these are that you can’t charge a fortune for this pre-recorded training but, as well as making some money from it, you’ll also be able to use it in your marketing and repurpose the content into other areas of your business.
eBooks
Another firm favourite and brilliant way to showcase your expertise. You create an ebook on a topic you’re an expert in. It allows you different ways to showcase your work - as well as writing you can include diagrams, formulas, graphics and any examples you need in your messaging, You can even embed video content into it.
People download it, there’s no time limit for them to view it in and they can work through it in their own time. eBooks are a great product. Again, they don’t tend to sell for a fortune but, if you remember to keep marketing it (and I say this because so many people create something, give it an initial push then drop it), you can do well from these.
Templates
Have you got a way of doing business that you’re fantastic at? Do you have it cracked on how to do something a certain way or process in a certain way? If you do, the chances are you’ve already got the templates set up for it. Selling these templates to others’ who aren’t as far along in their journey as you, can make you money, as well as upskilling the person who is buying it from you. It’s literally win-win.
One of the great things about templates is you usually have the format already so it’s just a case of designing it in whichever software you’re using, branding it and preparing it for sale.
Monetising blogs
If you have a blog which is popular, you may like to monetise it. This can include setting up an AdSense account with Google and having Ad blocks within the content of the blog. You can choose to do this just on individual posts, or the entire website. The adverts shown will be tailored to your audience and if they click through and then make a purchase, you’ll receive an affiliate fee from Google.
If you don’t want to change the style, this being the look and feel of your blog, and you’re a good fit for a local business, you may like to engage them to sponsor your website, or a section of it. This way you can get a set monthly income from your sponsor and, once the setup has been completed the income really is passive.
Content libraries
This is where you curate a load of content and bundle it for sale. This could include images, videos, audio files, hex codes, articles, you name it, if you can make a digital library of it, you can sell it.
These are slightly more niche and industry specific. If you’re new to passive income this is the one I would avoid as, if the content you’re curating doesn’t belong to you, you will have to be very au fait with licensing laws when brining all the content together.
However, if it’s something you’re brilliant at and you do know your stuff, it can be a good earner.
Print on demand
A fabulous option for the creatives out there. Want to monetise your artwork without having a load of up-front costs? Print on demand was setup for this. You only need to create your product once, set it up on your selling platform - this can be your website, it doesn’t need to be on places like Etsy. When people buy it, the order goes directly to the printers, and the remainder of the income, after printing and sales costs, goes straight to you.
You can also use this method if you’re self publishing a book. Amazon is the number one choice for this.
Dropshipping items
Essentially, this is the same as print on demand but applies to items which either are printed for demand like mugs and clothes and things, or they can be for items which are already created and are stored in a warehouse until purchased. The sales process is the same - you advertise it on your website and the tech at the back end of the website will link to the drop shipping company and send the order directly to them. The order will be fulfilled by the drop shipping company and you really don’t have anything else to do with it, other than the initial setup, or handling the occasional complaint or ‘where’s my item’ questions.
Online courses
Online courses, like webinars can be a brilliant way to make money. They also showcase your expertise, upskill the person who’s taking the course and provide a wealth of resources which you can use in your marketing, as well as for individual components like templates, webinars and e-books.
The software for online courses is often a little more complicated as you’ll need to find the right way to give access to you and your clients, this may be sending a course out over email, it could be having them create a user account on your website, you may use a private Vimeo or YouTube channel or there’s also the option of course-specific software like Membervault, Teachable and Thinkiffic.
Membership groups
These won’t be completely passive as you’ll be expected to show up in and add content to them from time to time. But a lot of the materials can be repurposed content you’ve already created, such as blog posts and video training. If you have a podcast, you can stream the episodes there and, with enough of a content library in the group, you can keep your active input in the group to a weekly/fortnightly or monthly presence.
Just with courses, you’ll need specific software to run this well from a tech side of things, the software can be pricey, so do bear that in mind. You may also like to read a blog post I created for Simply Sites called ‘is a membership website right for you?’ Where it goes into more detail about what you need to get started and what your alternatives can be.
Finally - become an affiliate
The first thing I’ll say is this isn’t entirely passive because if you’re selling for someone else, you need to actually do the selling. However you haven’t had to make the time or investment of creating the product, you’re simply recommending it to others’ as a good option to whatever it is they’re looking for. Remember with all affiliate offerings, you need to declare it as an affiliate or an advert to maintain transparency with the people you’re selling it to.
That’s all the passive, and not so passive, income styles I wanted to talk about. There are more, but the more I looked into them, they didn’t really fit the term ‘passive’ and I figured, for this podcast, which I try to keep short, ten types is a great number to end on! As ten is also quite a lot, I’ll remind you of what we’ve just talked about:
Workshops & Webinars
Ebooks
Templates
Monetising blogs
Creating content libraries
Print on demand
Dropshipping
Online courses
Membership groups
And becoming an affiliate
It goes to show that no matter what your business is, there will be a method of making a passive income which is a good fit for you and for your clients. If you’d like to talk through your options, particularly, how to make this happen through your website, then do get in touch with me through my website: thisdemandinglife.com and you can email me directly at: holly@thisdemandinglife.com
That’s all for this week, I hope you’ve enjoyed the Showa and do get in touch and let me know your thoughts on passive income. If there’s one that appealed to you more than others? Or one that really grinds your gears when you see others doing it? Either way, I’d love to hear from you!
Just before you go, if you haven’t already, please could you give the podcast a rating and review from wherever you get your podcasts. It helps people to find the show and I’d love to get this free resource in front of as many small business owners as possible.
Thanks and see you next week!