Small Business Tips

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

 

Running Ads As a Source of Passive Income

Passive Income Challenge Day 16.
Running Ads As a Source of Passive Income

A lot of people get really interested in running advertisements especially with how easy it is to run ads with platforms like Facebook. But, can you really run an advertisement to something and basically set it and forget it for passive income? You can. But it will take some knowledge and practice.

Know Your Audience

Targeting is imperative in this case because you really need to know who to target with the advertisements you create. If you’re iffy on that, you may need to do some research and dig in to find out exactly who to target with your offer.

Know Your Product

Just as you need to know the audience, know your products that you plan to promote enough to know what problems they solve for your audience, why they are the right choice for them, and how to talk about them in a way that gets people to want to buy them. Plus, you need to know what type of free offer relates to the products you are ultimately going to promote.

Running Ads as A Source of Passive Income
running ads as a source of passive income, passive income challenge day 16
Running Ads as A Source of Passive Income

Follow the Rules

Most platforms that allow some form of advertising have rules. Read them and follow them. You don’t want your advertisement pulled because you forgot to dot all your I’s and cross all your T’s, thus wasting time and maybe even money.

Be Prepared to Test

Rarely, an advertisement will work the way you want it out of the gate. You may have to try several variations of your advertisement to get the results you want. You will start the advertisement, give it some time to run, look at the stats, then make tweaks. When you get it performing how you wish, you can up your investment if you keep tabs on your ROI.

Use Ads for List Building

Most of the time, the best use of your advertising dollars is going to be for list building rather than for a product directly. This is not always the case, and you’re free to try different ideas, but you really want to put a lot of focus on list building until you have an established brand. Advertise a freebie that you know your audience will truly want to get them on your list.

Rely on Your Autoresponder Sequence

When you start building your list, you should rely heavily on your email autoresponder sequence to send out information and offers on a regular basis. At least once per week. If you set up evergreen content to go to the subscribers, you can add in more later. I know you’re thinking, but they’re going to be mad. You’re doing them a service by sending them free information. If they are mad that you email them after they signed up to receive your emails, they’re not the right people for your list.

Once you get the parameters right, and you’re steadily building your list with people who are interested in what you have to say, and what you promote, you’ll start noticing your sales are increasing. Often as you build your list, it will become like a snowball effect. At first, it seems like nothing is happening, then it will pick up and start paying off. Therefore, you have to also be willing to give it enough time to work. At first, this might not seem all that passive.

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 MastermindDo

Running Ads as A Source of Passive Income

Your Website is the Cornerstone of Your Passive Income

Passive Income Challenge Day 15.
The Cornerstone of Your Passive Income

You may have heard it before, but it needs to be repeated. Your website should be the center of your business. It’s your home base. It’s where all content should begin so that you can attract your customers and ultimately it should lead to them getting on your email list or becoming a customer and getting on your email list. You can turn your website into a cornerstone of passive income if you plan it right, without taking away from your main objective.

Let’s look at some ways you can add income-producing content to your website without it taking away from your main message.

Review Posts

Any software or product that your clients use or need that you also know a lot about can be turned into a review blog post. A review blog post will explain your impressions of the product along with including a link to the product. It might seem strange, but even if you don’t particularly like the product, if you write a true review and link to it someone may still sign up for the product because it has what they need, and you explained it well.

Resource Pages

This is a page on your site that talks about all the products and services that you yourself use, or that you know your clients need to use. You can list every single one of them on a single page, provide a short blurb about that product or service and the affiliate link. People trust you and will buy from that page.

The Cornerstone of Your Passive Incomepass, cornerstone of your passive incomeThe Cornerstone of Your Passive Income

Lead Pages

You want to collect your visitor’s information and get them on your list whether they buy from you or not. Therefore, the more lead pages you have on your site the better. You can have different pages for different reasons. They can exist within any content you publish as content extras. For example, if you’re talking about something in general, you can create a more specific short report about the topic and link to it via the general content. The link goes to a landing page to collect a name and email and in return, they get the upgrade.

Auto-Responder Sequences

While your autoresponder isn’t on your website, the sign-up form is, and if you’re going to collect email addresses, then you also need content loaded into your autoresponder that is evergreen. You can add more content as you go but try to get a year’s worth of content in the autoresponder – with affiliate links inside – as soon as you can.

If you do these few things, you’ll not only boost your traffic due to having more useful content on your site, but you’ll boost your income without providing a single service. The work you do today creating this information and content for your audience will pay off for a long time to come and build upon itself as you add more.

stop trading hours for dollars

Did you know TVS Launched a new accountability group?

Accountability benefits you in several ways as you pursue your dreams. Being held accountable isn’t only for those who are struggling with a particular issue, but for anyone with a goal. Working with an accountability partner or team is a key to success for anyone who wants their business to grow. If this is something you need, please, join us inside the Study Hall!

Become a founding member of the Study Hall community and gain access to exclusive content from the Studio Library, Mentorship, and experts in all areas of small business.

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The Cornerstone of Your Passive Income

Passive Income Ideas for Local Businesses

Passive Income Challenge Day 14.
Passive Income Ideas for Local Businesses

Did you know that you can even work out passive income deals if you’re a local business? No matter what type of business you have, you should be adding passive income to your repertoire because it adds to your bottom line and builds on itself – providing far into the future.

Promote Related Tools & Services

No matter what type of business you have, there is always something related. If you have a smoothie and juice shop, why not set up a related online membership into a diet club or smoothie club. For example, people can pay a small monthly fee to get a small discount at the store and enable them to order large quantities of juice for their monthly cleanses.

Get Commission Deals

You can work with other businesses to add to our bottom line too. Going back to the Juice shop, there are a lot of health-related items you can promote. For example, you can have a kiosk set up with Amazon Links to health-related items such as bikes, shoes, clothing, and more. This offer can also be on your website. You can even work out a commission deal with the nearest local gym to pay you for all your referrals.

Write a Book

It’s likely if you have a local business, you’re an expert in something. Let’s say you’re a real estate agent. You can write a book about how to get your house ready for selling at the highest price. You could also write a book about before and after for houses that you have sold at high prices where both the buyer and the seller are super happy.

Create an Online Course

What is your business good at? There is no reason any book can’t become an online course that you deliver via the net. Once you set it up, it’s passive because you don’t really have to do more than promote it for people to sign up. How about a course on nutrition and why raw food is good for you when you’re trying to get healthy if you have a Juice shop?

Passive Income Ideas for Local BusinessesPassive , Day 14 passive income ideas for local businessesPassive Income Ideas for Local Businesses

Start a YouTube Channel

Another fun way to get extra money through passive means is to start recording your life at work. Set up a camera and make sure you notify customers that they may be recorded and used on YouTube to get the legalities out of the way. Then just record the day, edit down to just a few minutes and post. People love seeing a “Day in the Life.” That’s why reality TV is so popular, and YouTube is so lucrative.

Host a Podcast

Want to really promote what you stand for in your small local business? Why not start a weekly podcast? The podcast can be about what you want it to be – based on what your audience will enjoy listening to. If you own a lawn and garden shop, it can be all about that. If you own a restaurant, it can be all about the business end, about training employees, or food. It’s up to you.

Sell Your Pictures

If you already take pictures of your products, consider adding them to one of the many stock photo sites. You’ll earn a small commission per download, but you already took the pictures anyway, you may as well make more money from them than just using them in your own ads. This is a great side gig and can turn into a full-time income if you add enough pictures each month.

Adding passive income to any business just requires some thought about what the business is really selling, who they’re selling to, and why they’re doing it. When you get into all that you can find some unique ways to add to your bottom line.

 

Passive Income Ideas for Local Businesses

Passive Income Ideas for Service Providers

Passive Income Challenge Day 13.
Passive Income Ideas for Service Providers

If you’re a service provider, such as a virtual assistant, graphic designer, or even a life coach, there are many ways you can add to your income by creating passive income. Passive income is the best way for you to create more income without having to take on another client. This will give you a lot more leverage to only take the clients you really want to take. Let’s look at some passive income ideas for service providers that you can implement practically right away.

Create a Resources Page

I have probably said this a hundred times but…what resources do you use and love? More than likely, they have an affiliate program enabling you to link to them on a resource page and if someone clicks that link and buys then you’ll get a percentage of sales.

Your resource page can also be products and services that you know your clients will like even if you don’t use them. If your client is going to use them, and you know how to use them and specialize in that software, then you should recommend it with an affiliate link to your clients.

Write a Short Course

Lots of people want to learn how to do what you have to teach. It doesn’t mean they’re not still going to hire you, but why not make some extra money teaching others to do what you do? If you’re good at social media marketing, why not write a course on social media marketing. Keep it simple, about three parts, 10 to 15 minutes each, with a workbook and charge about $47 dollars for it. You can host this on your own site or use a site like Podia.com to host it.

day 13 passive income challenge, passive income ideas for service providers

Write an eBook

Just like you can write a course about what you do, you can also write it in eBook form. The eBook can be a “How to Rock Your Social Media Marketing” based on your years of experience rocking other people’s social media marketing. You can use case studies, examples of the success you’ve had using your methods, and more. What’s more is most of your clients, when asked, will be thrilled to be part of the book.

Recommend Complementary Products with Affiliate Programs

Each time you get a new client, there is an opportunity to make extra money from services and software. For example, let’s say that you’re a Virtual Assistant specializing in customer service. You don’t use customer service software yourself, but you know which software your clients should use, recommend that to each new client and set them up. This is true in almost any service niche. Another example is if you’re a Web Designer or a WordPress Template Bender, you can recommend your favourite hosting, themes, and plugins and make money on the back end from that.

Make a list of all the software you use; your clients use and pick from those based on if you really love them or not and if they have an affiliate program or not. Sometimes you may still love something that doesn’t have an affiliate program, and you can still recommend it, but why not make extra money when you get your clients to use something?

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 MastermindDo

Passive Income Ideas for Service Providers

Dedicate the Time to Growing Your Sources of Passive Income

Passive Income Challenge Day 12.
Dedicate the time.

Now that you are committed to building your passive income, you need to set the intention by setting aside the time to do it. You may have some issues feeling as if you can’t come up with the time to work for free for income that you’re not going to get until later. But, if you start now and set aside a few hours a week to grow your sources of passive income, within a year at the most it will be paying off substantially and you’ll be much more motivated to keep going. For now, you need to rely on intention and scheduling for motivation.

Streamline Your Work

Right now, you may think you have a good schedule, but it’s based on feeling as if you have 8 or even 10 hours a day to work. Figure out ways to streamline your work. Batch tasks and automate what you can and get rid of things that really serve no purpose other than being busy. Sometimes being busy isn’t paying off. Let those things go.

Get Off Social Media

Your social media is important for your business, but you have to be honest and realize when you’re just wasting time and when you’re doing something productive and important. Set times when you can have fun on social media and times for business. Then stick to it. You’ll find if you turn it off and only check email and social media at certain times during the day (no more than three times) you’re going to have much more time in your day.

passive income challenge day 12 dedicate the time.

Work While You Wait

Some types of passive income are really just a matter of sharing affiliate links to your community with your comment about the product or service. You can do that while you’re waiting at the doctor’s office, or in the pick-up line at school. As long as your car is off and stopped, you can work.

Learn to Make Decisions Faster

If you have trouble making decisions, that can take a lot of time. Do you spend hours trying to save five dollars and get the best price on that thing you wanted to buy? What’s the point in that. If you can’t find the savings you want within 10 minutes, just buy it if you need it and want it and now you have more time. Time is something you cannot get back. Money, you can earn more.

Outsource Something

You can outsource some tasks in your business, but you can also outsource tasks at home. Hire a housekeeper, order a meal box, order your groceries. While someone else is spending that hour doing that work, you can spend the hour adding emails to your autoresponder, outlining your next eBook, or creating your own digital product.

The biggest thing is you need to make working on passive income a priority in your day. Schedule it in just like you do your client work. Schedule it in just like you do anything you really want to do. If it’s important, you’ll get it done.


Did you need more help with time management?

Look into the Studio’s Productivity and Time Management Masterclass.

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dedicate the time to growing your passive income

Productivity & Time Management

Productivity is a measure of how much work is done in a given amount of time…Once you take the time to learn the ins and outs of each of the seven steps in the masterclass,  you can take your business and career further than you’ve previously dared to dream possible…

dedicate the time to growing your passive income

dedicate the time to growing your passive income

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

Did you know TVS Launched a new accountability group?

Accountability benefits you in several ways as you pursue your dreams. Being held accountable isn’t only for those who are struggling with a particular issue, but for anyone with a goal. Working with an accountability partner or team is a key to success for anyone who wants their business to grow. If this is something you need, please, join us inside the Study Hall!

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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