Passive Income Streams: Create Them Now and Watch What Happens
Building streams of passive income is the natural next step for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs even before they get established, but many are hesitant to take that next step. It’s a natural shift – you build passive streams of income so that you can stop exclusively trading your hours of work for bits of cash. Your passive stream brings in revenue whether you work or not. If you haven’t yet set up passive income streams, here is what might be happening for you…
Where’s the Excitement in Passive Income?
Setting up passive streams of income isn’t the sexiest part of running a business. It’s also something that often doesn’t produce results quickly. Somehow, it doesn’t quite offer the sense of challenge and excitement that other areas of your business do. However, the truth is that many entrepreneurs feel this way because they’ve never done it successfully before. It takes various skills to set up streams of revenue in this way. You have to come up with a good idea, drive traffic, build relationships, write copy, experiment with monetization strategies – it really has all the same challenges of any online marketing endeavour.
And once you receive the first big payment that came into your account overnight while you slept, there’s no turning back. In my case, my first passive income came when I received notification that someone had purchased an information product about dog training through my affiliate link. Even though my commission was only $21.60, I danced around as though I had just received a huge windfall. It was a windfall from my perspective. I had written a blog post and then submitted the post as an article to one of the directories that were popular back in 2006. When someone clicked on my link and it resulted in a purchase, I was the recipient of the affiliate commission.
Passive Income Streams are Actually Hard Work
Many info products and marketers promote the idea of passive income as an easy way to make money. You put up a website and then it’s time to relax on the beach while the money rolls right in. Then, you’re disappointed to discover that it actually takes a great deal of work to start earning passive money.
Creating passive streams of income takes some work and time to set up. It also takes some maintenance once things are up and running. But if you compare your passive income versus working for pay directly, it’s easy to see that it’s a much better deal. Plus, you’re assured earnings for a long time to come if you do it right.
Where Are Those Huge Profits?
Another common reason entrepreneurs don’t start building passive streams of income is that the money doesn’t seem like it’s enough to make it worth it. The profit margin seems small. You could be on to something here. But with anything you do, you have to start small and build. You can’t expect a sudden jackpot the first time you put out an eBook.
The profits from a single stream of passive income probably won’t be anywhere near what you make in your regular business. Not at first, anyway. The key is to create one system for automated revenue and, once it’s perfected and getting results, move on to the next. Each new stream brings you higher earnings, and this can add up considerably over a short period of time. Success with passive income comes from having a good system in place. It takes some planning and background work. But once implemented, it can bring you considerable earnings with just a little maintenance.
Passive Income Streams: Ideas You Can Start Today
A passive income can supplement your regular income and help your online business scale. It takes some work upfront and maintenance, but you’ll get paid around the clock, even when you sleep. So, how do you set up a passive income? Here are some ideas that you can start today.
Add a recommended product to your download page. When customers arrive at your download page, you can offer an additional product that relates to the one they’re purchasing. Another idea is to offer the product after the download page, once they’ve already purchased.
Add a “Latest Product” to your email signature. Your email subscribers can see your new product at the bottom of your email, and click through to buy.
Offer a product in your follow-up emails. When you follow up with customers who recently made a purchase, offer them a product they might like. Bundle multiple products. Take a group of products you released before and put them together into a bundle. This is a good way to repurpose old content to create something new.
Create a membership site. Members can pay a monthly fee to share ideas, ask questions, and enjoy exclusive content. If the site is valuable, they’ll pay monthly and it takes little maintenance on your part.
Try affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is where you advertise the products of others on your website or blog and get a commission. This involves some content writing, but if done well, you’ll send customers to the vendor you’re promoting then reap the benefits. Or, focus on the opposite of that and become a vendor. Rather than selling the products of others, you can create your own products to put on affiliate networks. You can let others do the selling for you for a commission. I like to do both – earn passive income streams as an affiliate and a vendor.
Recommend products and resources. Create a page on your website where you recommend tools, resources, and other products. You can offer both free resources here as well as premium tools and products that make you a profit.
Sell advertising on your site. You have to have a high-traffic website or blog to do this, but you can sell space on your site for advertisers. Just make sure the ads are relevant. And, think about adding Google AdSense or another advertising method to your site. When someone clicks on the ad, you’ll receive a pay check (although this tends to be a small, incremental income and I prefer it for my niche sites). Sell space in your newsletter. If you have an email newsletter with a number of engaged subscribers, you can sell space on your newsletter to advertisers. Again, make sure the ads are totally relevant to your audience or it’ll turn them off.
Automate coupons to boost sales. Send automated coupons for your products to customers after they’ve signed up for your site. You can also send automated coupons to your email subscribers. Make recommendations inside products. Inside your products, advertise other products or offer discounts. You can also put out free products such as eBooks to lead people to your other paid products.
All of the above solutions leverage your current sales funnel and customers, and make use of automation so that you don’t have to do all the work manually. Consider your business and its goals. Which of the above ideas could you implement? It just takes some planning and background work to set up.
I’m author, publisher, and entrepreneur Connie Ragen Green and would love to connect with you. If you are new to the world of online entrepreneurship please check out my comprehensive training on how to set up Funnels That Click and learn how to gain an unfair advantage when it comes to building a lucrative online business.
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