Do you know the statistic that millionaires have up to seven streams of income? That’s seven different ways they make money each month. Take a look at your company now. How many revenue streams do you have?
If the answer is one, then it’s time to open the creative Businessacademy1 part of your brain and find more revenue streams. One possibility is passive income products.
“Passive income” is a misleading term. Developing products or building different forms of income still requires work. The difference, however, is that these revenue streams can work for you—almost on autopilot—for years to come.
Benefits of passive income
1. Increase your profit.
This is the most obvious benefit, but one worth mentioning, because who doesn’t want to make more profit? And (as you probably know) limiting your practice to 1:1 coaching can be a “feast or a famine” proposition. Passive sources of income can help you get through the times of “famine”.
But even in “festive” times, your income from 1:1 coaching is limited to the number of clients you can serve. Passive income sources can help remove this “income cap” and create a cushion.
2. Gain time in your day.
Wait a minute… I know I just said that developing products and other revenue streams takes time! But carry on with me for a moment and think about the back end of the process, when your revenue stream is fully set up and the groundwork is done. With a strong marketing plan, you can easily make money from these passive income streams even while you sleep. That means you can get started a little earlier or take a whole day off for fun because you’re still making money from your “passive” products.
3. Increase your credibility by helping more people.
Think of passive income as a way to share your expertise with an ever-expanding audience. Imagine a snowball on top of a mountain representing you and your inner circle of coaching clients. As the snowball travels downhill, it accumulates more and more snow until it reaches the size of a mammoth. The same applies to you. As you reach more and more people and provide guidance through your books, webinars or courses, increasing awareness and word of mouth will leverage your knowledge and showcase your expertise to more and more people. All of this can result in increased sales and a throng of people raving about your work. So the snowball effect is (at least in this case) a very good thing!
Plan your passive income
Now that I’ve hopefully convinced you of the benefits of passive income sources, it’s time to start planning what you want these sources to do for your business. Passive income includes affiliate marketing, membership subscriptions , or writing a book. However, the most popular and engaging is to create courses or digital products based on your coaching specialty.
With digital products, you can solve other people’s problems from the comfort of your own home. And your customers get answers to their specific questions almost instantly, in a format they can use—on their home computer or smartphone.
Imagine what your business and life could be like if you had your own online course, for example…
- Students look forward to learning from you
- Work fewer hours while changing more lives (and without exhausting yourself with 1:1 customers)
- Build your credibility and become an authority in your niche
- No more cap on your income
By creating a digital course, you finally have a valuable business asset that you can launch and sell again and again.
Create your product
Creating a product requires many steps, but once you’ve completed one, creating additional steps will be easier. When you create a digital product, you want to make sure it’s relevant to your main topic of interest. So if you’re a health coach, you want your product to be about a health topic and not a career topic. Also, you want to refine it further by asking your audience what they need. You can find out by taking quick polls or simply by following their FAQ.
Next, you need to validate the product and double-check that it’s the right one. Ask customers if it would be helpful and/or relevant. Ask questions about it on forums. They could even do a pre-launch with valued customers to test the product for you. I have a colleague who I give my products to in exchange for her review.
You then need to write content to launch and promote your product, and finally set your pricing.
Introduction of your product
When you launch a product, you need both a set of anticipation emails and a set of introductory emails.
1) Anticipation emails create excitement.
You should educate your audience about a topic that is close to your heart (and related to the course you are offering). And give them a teaser for the product.
2) Start emails make the offer.
They say the product is ready and point out where people can buy it.
If your launch is 5 days, you need at least 5 emails. I’ve been on a few lists that send two emails a day – sometimes the same email but different subject lines. To me that’s overkill, but it depends on your audience how often you email them. Keep in mind that they probably don’t read all of their email. So there’s no harm in sending more than one.