Passive Income Challenge

Start Small and Scale Up with Your Passive Income

Passive Income Challenge Day 20.
Start Small and Scale Up

When you decide to add passive income to your business model, don’t think that you need to replace all your income with passive income. You want to keep earning the way you earn now, and slowly add sources of passive income as you go. Always remember to learn and master one strategy before moving on to the next.

Start with What You Know

The easiest thing you can do when it comes to earning passive income is to start with what you have now and what you know. Stay within your genre and don’t go out on a limb with something totally new. For example, if you’re a virtual assistant who has created standard contracts, forms, and processes for your business – why not turn that into an information product to sell. That requires very little work to put together and is starting with what you already know.

Schedule Your Time Wisely

When you first start with your passive income goals, it can be tempting to spend more time than you should on it. Try to figure out how many hours a week you can reasonably devote to passive income (even if it’s just one hour) and stick to that for the first year. You want to still have a life while you’re building your passive income.

Keep Making Money

Don’t quit your day job whether that is a regular job or if you’re a small business owner such as a graphic designer or virtual assistant. Keep the money coming in so that you can afford to invest in passive income. When you first start, you’ll see money going out and time spent rather than having it come in and that can be a hard pill to swallow at first. But over time it will pay off.

Start Small and Scale Upstart small and scale up, passive income challengeStart Small and Scale Up

Use More than One Method

While you do want to learn one strategy at a time that you physically have to do yourself, you also want to use several methods that are essentially hands-off like investing in your IRA, buying stocks, and paying off debt. This simply involves setting up automatic payments one time and you’re done. Doing these things will also help you in the long run to achieve more than almost anything else.

Reinvest Earnings to Scale Up

When you do start earning from your passive income efforts, invest half of it back into the passive income portion of your business. For example, if you earn $100 from your eBook, use $50 to hire someone to write the next one based on your outline or pay a VA to turn it into an eCourse and get that published so that you can expand your income streams.

Don’t ever forget that earning passive income requires that you invest in active income first. You need money to make money, as they say. But, you also don’t want to do anything to jeopardize your future potential by getting into debt or spending money you cannot afford. Keep your day job and understand this is a long-term financial plan that will pay off after time. You’ll need both time and money to invest.

 

 

Delayed Gratification – How to Stay Motivated

Passive Income Challenge Day 19.
How to Stay Motivated.

Working on passive income doesn’t feel very passive at the time you’re first starting. In fact, it can feel a lot like working for free. That’s partially why very few people succeed. It’s not because it doesn’t work – it does work. If you work a couple of hours a week on your passive income generation, in a year you will see results and at that time it’ll be super easy to get the motivation to keep doing it. But, right now when you’re first starting it’s all about delayed gratification.

Here are a few ways to stay motivated:

Find Your Tribe

You need others around you who are doing what you want to do. Don’t look at them as your competitors, look at them as people you can collaborate with and learn from. There are numerous groups that you can join on Facebook, as well as paid Mastermind groups that are focused on passive income generation.

Get a Coach or Mentor

There are numerous coaches who love to help and encourage people to build their passive income empire. Find a coach who has done it. Don’t work with someone who doesn’t have a good reputation and proof of their success in producing passive income.

Intern with Someone Successful

If you cannot afford a coach you can roll up your sleeves and put in some sweat equity to learn. Find someone that you admire who works in a complementary niche as you want to work in. Then approach them and ask them if you can help them with their work so that you can learn. Tell them how many hours a week you can devote and for how long and then stick to it.

Don’t Overwork Yourself

One risk outside of lack of motivation is the risk of overworking yourself trying to build passive income. It’s understandable that you want it to start generating income now, but you also have a life to live right now. Don’t forget that.

Stay Motivatedpassive in day 19, how to stay motivated

Schedule Everything In

Get out your trusty calendar and put in everything you have to do for yourself, your family, and your clients. Look for space to add your passive income ideas. Add that in. That way you know it’s inked in and you need to do it, but that also includes date night with the spouse, storytime with your child, and even your monthly massage.

Know Your Why

If you have ever taken one of my courses, you know I am big on knowing your why. One way to stay motivated is to look at why you’re doing this. Often people have more reasons than just making money. It’s to give a better life to their kids. It’s to gain more time freedom for themselves. Think of your why every day. Put a quote where you can see it that reminds you of your why.

Follow Successful People

Find some successful people such as affiliate marketers and known “super affiliates” who are experts at producing passive income and follow them. Join their lists. See how they do things and use this as motivation for your own.

Celebrate Your Successes

Even if you make an extra dollar due to your passive income activity, take time to be thankful and celebrate. Anytime you create a new landing page, a freebie, set up an autoresponder – take the time to celebrate your accomplishments. This is really a fun thing to do.

The truth of the matter is, passive income will pay off. If you do a little every week with a goal in mind, within a year you’ll start seeing the results of your labour. I know, it can be hard to do that sometimes but consider the fact that a year is going to pass anyway. No matter what you do, a year will pass. You may as well work on your passive income ideas a little at a time. A year from now you might even be relaxing on the beach while raking in the dough, but if you don’t do it, you absolutely won’t be on that beach.

Don’t Overlook Investment Opportunities

Passive Income Challenge Day 18.
Investment Opportunities

One way to earn more passive income is to invest money. You can invest in other businesses, real estate, stocks, and bonds. Each has its own risks and rewards. But, when you work for yourself, saving for retirement isn’t as easy as having a corporate payroll to withdraw each month with matching funds. Instead, it’s all on you. Regardless of what type of other passive income you invest in, you should choose some of these to get involved in as well.

Real Estate

Even though real estate is volatile, if you invest in individual rental properties, single-family dwellings, you can do quite well. When you have rental properties, someone else pays the mortgage but when the market is high you can “cash-out” and get a nice gain in your investment which can be as low as zero dollars and as high as 20 percent of the value of the property.

Stock Market

You can invest in the stock market in many ways, including getting a broker and buying individual stocks that you want. Often this costs a lot to enter the market but there are also less expensive funds called DRIPS that let you start for as little as 50 dollars a month.

Savings

Every bank has the option of opening a savings account. Often the interest rate is quite low but there is little to no risk with this type of savings. It’s a good idea to use this type of savings accounts for short-term saving. For example, if you know you want to buy a house in 5 years, you can set up a savings account to keep these funds safely.

Don’t Overlook Investment OpportunitiesDon't Overlook Investment Opportunities, passive income challenge day 18Don’t Overlook Investment Opportunities

Individual Retirement Accounts

Many IRAs are set up so that you can invest small amounts each month into the account. Often, you’ll choose a fund named after the year you want to retire and then it’s completely managed for you. For example, it might be called the 2048 fund. This means you’re expecting to retire in 2048 and start taking the money. In this way, the fund automatically adjusts your risk based on this information.

Education Savings

If you have children or grandchildren who may want to go to college later, you can invest in a Registered Education Savings Plan or, if you are in the U.S., your state’s 529 funds. These are safe investments and if the child doesn’t choose to go to school, the money can be accessed for other reasons later or transferred to other family members such as your child’s child.

Small Business Investing

Today crowdfunding is a very popular way for people to get money for their idea, but it’s also an opportunity for you to invest. You can invest in startups using a platform like Kickstarter.com or Indiegogo.com. Remember when you invest, you can lose your investment. But, with the high risk, you may get a huge reward.

The biggest thing to learn about investing is that nothing is a sure thing. Not even CPP or social security can be counted on today. But, more than likely if you start small, and only invest what you can afford to lose, in 20 years the effort will pay off in a big way for you. On average, most people come out ahead if they are smart, make educated decisions, and focus on the long-term instead of the short-term.

TVS has launched the Inspired Action Mastermind!

A premium mastermind for mission-driven, service-based women entrepreneurs who are ready and willing to put in the work it takes to reach the next level!

Inside the Inspired Action Mastermind, we are an intimate group of entrepreneurs, all of which are committed to the success of one another’s businesses. It is a mastermind that provides the support and guidance you need to help you move your business forward. Because, when you’re in the right mastermind group, you can start to see your business and yourself through someone else’s eyes as you support one another and leverage each other’s experiences.

If you are ready and willing to shift your mindset and tackle all the hard questions to accomplish your dreams, then join us.

Learn about the Inspired Action MastermindDon’t Overlook Investment Opportunities

Think Outside the Box to Boost Your Passive Income

Passive Income Challenge Day 17.
Think Outside the Box

There is always more than one way to do something. When you are trying to build your passive income, it can at first seem like the learning curve is never-ending. But, if you stick to it you’ll soon discover that all the work you’re doing today is going to pay off again and again tomorrow. Tomorrow, you’ll have that much more freedom to devote your time to what you desire instead of trading hours for dollars.

Shorten the Learning Curve by Hiring a Mentor

One way to shorten that learning curve is to find a mentor. A mentor who is already experienced with building passive income can help you come up with more ideas to grow your own passive income. As a mentor, I have different groups, masterminds, and programs to offer, to help you grow your passive income.

Put in Sweat Equity or Hire a Coach

Be willing to pay for coaching or offer your sweat equity to learn what they can teach you by spending a certain number of hours helping them in the passive income portion of their business so that you can learn how it all works. If you hire a coach that is experienced, you may be better off. However, if you can’t afford one, offering to intern for someone is an excellent way to gain a mentor. If you do a good job likely they’ll keep encouraging you, for life. After all, eventually, you’ll be a colleague and they will be able to promote your stuff as much as you can promote theirs.

Think Outside The BoxThink outside the box, passive income challenge day 17 Think Outside The Box

Return the Favour and Help Someone

Then, when you’re experienced at doing it yourself, you can return the favour by taking someone under your wing to teach them about passive income and the best ways to go about building it. Let them learn how to set up an autoresponder, create a resource page, and maybe even publish your next Kindle book too. After all, we are better together! Be sure to support others on their business journey.

There are many ways to learn about how to do all the things that you need to do to generate passive income. You can get a mentor, hire a coach, and an intern. You can also take a course for each of the areas you need to learn, such as making a good landing page or setting up your Flodesk Autoresponder.

Keep in mind that different people have different ideas of what works and what doesn’t work. Your mileage may vary from person to person. But usually, you can take something good from everyone you talk to or work with to help you build your passive income.

The Virtual Studio is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

TVS has launched the Inspired Action Mastermind!

A premium mastermind for mission-driven, service-based women entrepreneurs who are ready and willing to put in the work it takes to reach the next level!

Inside the Inspired Action Mastermind, we are an intimate group of entrepreneurs, all of which are committed to the success of one another’s businesses. It is a mastermind that provides the support and guidance you need to help you move your business forward. Because, when you’re in the right mastermind group, you can start to see your business and yourself through someone else’s eyes as you support one another and leverage each other’s experiences.

If you are ready and willing to shift your mindset and tackle all the hard questions to accomplish your dreams, then join us.

Learn about the Inspired Action Mastermind

 

Think Outside The Box

 

Mindset Time: Stop Trading Hours for Dollars

Passive Income Challenge Day 11.
Stop Trading Hours for Dollars

Before we get started, let me say there is nothing wrong with performing services for income. The service economy is what keeps the world going. But, you must look into the future a little bit and imagine what you will do next. What is your end game? When do you plan to retire? If you only perform services and never diversify your income with passive options, you may never be able to stop working or take a vacation. This is not a good business plan. In fact, to sustain a business long term, you really need both active and passive income.

Reasons You Need Passive Income

The truth is, time is much more valuable than money. When you produce passive income, you do the work once and make money on it multiple times, maybe even forever. The stock market, insurance sales, rental income, affiliate marketing, and advertising are all forms of passive income that can really pay off.

But, they don’t pay off on day one, which can sometimes make them feel not passive at all when you need the money right now. But, instead of thinking only of today, let’s think of reasons you need to invest in passive income opportunities today for your future success.

Time Freedom

If you invest in passive income today, in a year’s time it will be paying off and that will give you more time to invest in other aspects of your life like going to the beach, going skiing, or playing with your kids. You won’t have to take on more clients than you want, and you can be pickier because now you have time freedom.

Stop trading hours for dollars passive income challenge mindset

Ends Money Stress

You know it’s true. If you’re a service provider and trading hours for dollars and you need extra money, it can add a lot of stress taking on yet another project when you have already stretched your time to the limit. Because be honest, a service provider does not have 40 hours a week to provide services. You’re lucky to be able to get 30 hours a week because you still need to work in your business, do your bookkeeping, marketing, and networking.

Allows You to Grow

When you perform services, you only have so many hours in the day. If you spend some of that time building up passive income, you will get to grow your business without spending more time on your business. Yes, it takes time, but it’s the best way to grow your income without adding to your time load.

You Can Live Anywhere

If your service-based business requires you to be at a certain place, once your passive income outpaces your hourly income, you can let that go and move if you want to. You can travel, you can take time off, you can gain freedom from time and place that you cannot even imagine right now.

Now, this is not to say that providing services is a bad thing to do. No, you should do both as you’re building your income. Plus, you may always want to do both. But, what if you started today building your passive income so that you have choices tomorrow?

stop trading hours for dollars

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stop trading hours for dollars

stop trading hours for dollars

Reviews and Tutorials Work Well as Passive Income Generators

Passive Income Challenge Day 10.
Reviews and Tutorials

One fun and lucrative way to add passive income to your business is to do product reviews, even film reviews, and tutorials. You can write them, take pictures, screenshots, and even do a demo with a video on some products. Then link to every product you used to make that demo. So, if you demonstrated a blender, you’d link to the blender – but you can also link to the ingredients in the recipe you used. (using affiliate links, of course!)

When you write any type of review, it’s best to follow certain guidelines to ensure that you rank well for good keywords, encourage sharing by viewers, and make the affiliate links less noticeable by creating pretty links and linking to them within the content that you want to monetize. The possibilities with reviews and tutorials are endless.

Understand What You’re Reviewing

You can’t review anything if you’ve not used it for yourself for a while. Your lack of knowledge will become apparent in your review if you do that. Instead, use the product, watch the movie, use the service and then when you really understand it, the good and the bad, then you’re ready to start creating your review.

Know What the Audience Searches

When you decide to write the review, you need to know what the audience is searching for. They may not be searing for the name of the product. They may be searching for the results of the product. For example, with a movie review, they may know the title and want to see what you think, but they also might be looking up “Best Scary Movies” instead. You need to know the audience enough to get this right.

Take Notes During Your Use

When you’re using the product, especially if you know you’re going to want to do a review of it, take notes. When an issue comes up, write it down. When something really pleases you, write it down. Did you have to contact customer service? Did you have to look up some extra information to understand the movie? All of that is important information for your review.

woman at her desk doing the 30 day passive income challenge day 11 reviews and tutorials

Get Out Your Camera

Now, you can’t take a picture of the movie or show if that is what you are reviewing. But if it’s a product or service, there may be ways to take pictures of it that help you explain your review better. You may need to do a screenshot for a digital product, and for a physical product, you may want to take pictures and video. This is going to make your review much better. Even for a movie, you could take a picture of yourself and your friends in front of the movie sign to make it more personal.

Determine the Story You’ll Tell

Everyone loves stories and writing a review doesn’t have to be a boring ‘this, then, that’ event. It can be a story. It can involve you explaining why you wanted to try it, why you like it, (or don’t like it), what could be better, and so forth while relating it to your life and your business, if relevant. Tell the story in a new way instead of being too technical about it so that people want to read it – but cover the techie details too.

Use a Lot of Detail

A product review is a time that you can use all those flowery words your English teacher told you not to use. You want your audience to feel as if they’re experiencing the product with you. Explain the fine details to them. Compare and contrast to other products, services, movies, songs, etc.… this is going to help your audience understand what it’s like to view or use this one. Always use complete sentences using a lot of descriptive words in your reviews so that the words flow.

If possible after the review, offer your audience a discount, a bonus, or something special if they order or use this product. Link to the product within the text of the review but also link to it under the review so that they have ample opportunity to get the product and use it.

 Reviews and Tutorials

Reviews and Tutorials

Creating Auto-Responder Series as a Source of Passive Income

Passive Income Challenge Day 9.
Creating Auto-Responder Series

In every niche, there are products and services that you can recommend that pretty much stay solid for years to come. If you can identify those products and services, then you can create evergreen content around those products and services so that you can promote them on a schedule via autoresponder to each subscriber based on when they subscribed.

When you set up an autoresponder you can set it up in a way that delivers messages on a schedule based on when the person signed up. Using tags, you can also set everything up so that it delivers certain messages to your subscriber on various days. For example, after they get the welcome information, you can schedule that every day a single email goes out in the series to your subscriber.

A subscriber who signed up 30 days ago will be on a different schedule than someone who signed up a week ago. The messages are evergreen, so it doesn’t matter what time of year they are sent out. These messages may last for several years and still seem fresh if you word them right.

If you choose the right content and products, you shouldn’t have to update it that much. If a product goes out of popularity and isn’t working anymore, you can change and edit the emails that promote that product. That way the content and information is still good, you just change the product you recommend.

Here are some examples of evergreen content:

Niche: Life Coach
Email Series Topic: 365 Days of Positive Affirmations

Niche: Keto Diet Support
Email Series Topic: 365 Keto Lunch Recipes

Niche: Money Mindset
Email Series Topic: 365 Days to Retraining Your Money Mindset

Niche: Getting Through Divorce
Email Series Topic: 365 Days to Moving On

Each email doesn’t have to be lengthy. It can be 250 words of solid information that helps your subscriber solve their problems and promote a product or service to them at the same time.

creating auto-responder series passive income challenge

Remember that for the most part, you can break up content to make it fit a year-long series. For example, if you have a lot of content that has several points per article, you can break down those points to one point per email to spread out the information and to make it last longer. You can also break down a book into more than one email too. Use your imagination and think outside the box to create your 365-day evergreen email series. Find five to ten products to promote and spread them out through the emails to monetize your effort.

 

Writing and Publishing Books as a Source of Passive Income

Passive Income Challenge Day 7.

Creating passive income can be challenging, yes, but it can be a fun challenge. One great way to make passive income is through publishing books and today, it’s easier than ever to start writing and publishing books yourself. Who knows, you could be the next Stephenie Meyer. Heck, if you are not a writer, you can hire someone to do it for you! (but where is the fun in that?)

Choose a Niche

This is very important when it comes to creating books for Kindle. Look at the types of books that sell the best and try to create something in that niche if you understand it and can do the research or hire someone who can. Writing and Publishing Books

Hire a Writer

If you don’t want to write, or would rather have someone else do it – then hire a writer. You just give them the idea, a brief outline of what you’d like in the book, and let them do the work. You can use your name as the author or a pen name. It’s up to you how you want to proceed in this case. Note of caution: If you hire writers, run the work through a plagiarism checker.

[Tweet ““A book is simply the container of an idea—like a bottle; what is inside the book is what matters.” ~ Angela Carter”]

Edit the Book

Don’t have the writer edit the book, even if the writer is you. Always have someone else do the editing. You can hire an editor as easily as you can hire a writer. The editor can check for plagiarism issues, grammar, and fact check as well as improve the overall writing in the book before it’s published.

Create a Book Cover

Hire a graphic designer to create the book cover. You can also create book covers using software like Canva.com. Remember, you want the book cover to look really good and professional. When it comes to books, people really do buy by the cover, so it’s essential to get that right.

Layout the Book

A Kindle book needs to be laid out the way that Amazon wants it laid out. They have directions on their site.  It does change sometimes, so it’s best to use their guidelines when laying out a book. It can be challenging to layout a book with a lot of images, so you may need to hire a professional to do that too.

Upload it to Amazon Kindle

Once the book is finished and the cover is done, it’s time to upload the book. Again, you can hire someone to do this for you, making this mostly hands-off other than the up-front financial investment required to get started publishing when you outsource.

The great thing about Amazon is that they take care of customer service, payments, returns, and even sales taxes for you. Each month, they send you a payment directly to your bank account for your sales. With the right types of books, you can build a portfolio that earns six figures a year. You just must find the right niche that is a good seller.

Writing and Publishing BooksWoman sitting on couch writing in a book with laptop and textbook beside her, writing and publishing books

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TVS has launched the Inspired Action Mastermind!

A premium mastermind for mission-driven, service-based women entrepreneurs who are ready and willing to put in the work it takes to reach the next level!

Inside the Inspired Action Mastermind, we are an intimate group of entrepreneurs, all of which are committed to the success of one another’s businesses. It is a mastermind that provides the support and guidance you need to help you move your business forward. Because, when you’re in the right mastermind group, you can start to see your business and yourself through someone else’s eyes as you support one another and leverage each other’s experiences.

If you are ready and willing to shift your mindset and tackle all the hard questions to accomplish your dreams, then join us.

Learn about the Inspired Action Mastermind

iting and Publishing Books

Creating Info Products as a Source of Passive Income

Passive Income Challenge Day 6.
Creating Info Products

You may not realize it, but information products, known as Info Products, have been around longer than the internet. An info product is simply a way to provide information to the customer about a specific issue, problem, or circulate information. The info product can be any type of medium, such as a book, video, membership site, podcast, the list goes on. It can also be a combination of all the above.

If your audience needs the information, then you should create it. Period. It can be something like “How to Become a Minimalist” or “Lose Weight in 30 Days” or it can be a book about your journey to success with tips for the reader to follow. It can be in a variety of forms, a combination of forms, and if it covers information that your audience wants, it can also be a source of passive income for you.

Here is how to make that happen:

Create the Content

Once you decide what you want to create as an information product then you need to decide how you’ll create it. You can create it yourself, you can get help by hiring someone else to do it for you. You can sift through all of the content you already have and piece it together into one info product. You can even combine several types of information products together, such as a podcast episode with a workbook, and create an amazing info product that everyone in your niche will want.

Get it Up for Sale

Once you’ve created and packaged the product, you’ll want to sell it. The best way to sell it is in a way that you can get affiliates to also promote it and earn a commission on it. It’s a lot cheaper to pay commissions than it is to pay for reaching people on your own via advertisements on social media. If you can attract super-affiliates, that’s going to explode your sales.

Set Up Promotions

You can set up promotions in a passive way. Once you load the information into your autoresponder, into your social media schedule, and get it up on your blog as a post and a page, all you must do is promote it and let others promote it. Then you’ll start raking in the income passively from here on out.

Provide Customer Service

Once you start selling the info product, you will need to provide customer service. You can set up some automation on this process by using a searchable helpdesk and ticketing system. But, you will only have to create that one product one time.

Once it’s set up, providing customer service will be your only role in making money on the sales. If you create a product that is more evergreen content, then it will last a long time and you can almost create an entire business off of one great information product!

creating info products, passive income challenge day 6