Aaahhh the elusive “passive income” lifestyle! Sign me up! Where you only work 4 hours a week, you make money while you sleep, and you’re “changing lives” in the process, just for stepping into your power, speaking your truth, and shilling your affiliate link while you fake it ‘till you make it!
Shout out to fans of Silicon Valley!
If you’re detecting strong sarcasm (maybe some bitterness?) you’ve hit the mark. Like many side hustlers, my journey began with a few quick google searches for “building a business” (admittedly, often during office hours while working my day job when I was running the clock after finishing my workload early).
Ask anyone who has been self-employed for a few years and they’ll nod in agreement that many of us started as Beachbody “coaches,” and then eventually veering off to do our own, more lucrative and way more fulfilling things. Feel free to replace Beachbody with the MLM of your choice (Mary Kay, Young Living, some lash or magic wrap something-or-other, etc.)
I’m hoping to instill some optimism in you when it comes to passive income, especially if you’re stuck in information overload from one too many internet rabbit holes or experimental ventures that never panned out as promised.
You may be interested in attending one of my FREE Passive Income workshops, if you like what you read here and would like a deeper dive on how to create a sustainable and compassionate passive income stream for your business.
Let’s get started!
What is passive income?
Passive Income is money that you make with little to no effort. In a truly passive environment, you would have other people’s money (while we still live in a capitalistic culture, anyway) willingly transferred from their bank account to your bank account in exchange for a product of value to the customer, all without any manual effort on your part.
This is where the "make money while you sleep" anthem usually gets (over) used.
It's possible for every person and for every kind of business and comes in many forms:
- Real estate investing
- Stock market
- Drop shipping
- Affiliate sales/ads
- Essential Oils
- Beachbody, etc.
In more simplified terms, you can define it as income that you make that doesn't require your butt to be in a chair or performing labor for a certain number of hours per week.
Why don't more people make passive income, then?
Well, when you search the almighty internet for answers and directions about setting up passive income, things get complicated.
To clarify, making passive income in itself isn't actually that complicated of a process.
- Step 1: Make your product available for purchase (have a place online where they can learn about it and put in their credit card number) and set up your bank account to receive the money you make, directly.
- Step 2: Send qualified traffic to the website where your product is being advertised (via a call to action in your online content or with Facebook or Google ads that you pay for)
Where the process usually gets stalled or abandoned is in the conceptual stage or the implementation stage.
What simple steps can I take to get started?
Maybe you're reading this blog because you're interested in adding a passive income stream to your established business. Great! Before you go any further into your research or post in another Facebook group in search for an "affordable" virtual assistant to set up your entire Clickfunnels funnel, take some time to journal your answers to these prompts:
If you consider yourself a newbie in the passive income arena, then I have some tips for you.
Get clear on why you want passive income.
Reflect on what it means to you at this point in your entrepreneurial journey. What would it prove to you? To your loved ones?
Reflect on how you feel about making "easy" money.
Notice the quotations -- it's not really easy and it does take work, but once you have a system in place, it sure feels easy later on. But thanks to capitalism culture, embracing additional income with ease may take some internal work.
Are you willing to have your passive income source be something OTHER than a physical product that you and thousands of other representatives are also selling?
Contrary to what affiliate marketers would have you believe, selling oils or shakes may not be the best source of passive income for your brand. If you're a 100% ultimate fan of the product, great! But more often than not, people who are new to the passive income profession spend a lot of time convincing ourselves that it has to be this and nothing else. There are plenty of options out there!
Do you love recruiting people to do what you want them to do?
Because that's how a lot of MLM passive income opportunities operate. Yes, you start out making money recommending a product you already use and love, but the big money comes in the recruitment process.
Are you already making money, and this is truly an add-on to the income your brand is bringing in? Or are you hoping to start making money with this product?
For what it's worth, I strongly recommend building your side hustle with something OTHER than passive income as your first income stream. Consulting is a good place to start! To learn more, make sure you attend my next passive income workshop. I'll walk you through the pros and cons.
What's your timeline? Do you want it now, or are you just curious and interested in learning more about the possibilities?
Note: Immediacy and curiosity are BOTH viable answers. It's important to know which one is #1 for you at this point, though, to keep the (usually self-imposed) pressure off.
Remember: setting up a passive income sales funnel is more techie and monotonous than the apps would have you believe, and it takes longer to set up than you'll prefer.
- Unless you consider yourself "techie" and you genuinely love to dig into back end settings and troubleshoot, call or chat with help desks, you should not set it up yourself. Hire it out. Honest advice from a project manager to a business owner.
- Prepare yourself for simpler, less "impressive" funnels as you start out. There's no trophy for biggest investment into the latest and hottest tool on the market. Start small and take baby steps!
Choose a passive income stream with longevity -- not something you may want to take down or quit in the next 1-2 years.
Focus on something you didn't just learn about in the last year but have a lifetime of experience implementing. Yes, you can charge for an hour of 1:1 time giving your best advice on something you know well. Don't let anyone convince you that you need a certification or educational degree before you can charge for your knowledge.
Hire out the application of it (the building of "the funnels") if you can.
Ask your business coach or go to Upwork to look for an agency that specializes in passive income funnels. Expect to pay them the $5,000+ to have it DONE and done right. Make sure you have an ongoing retainer with them, too, so that when things don't work, you have someone knows how to fix it quickly.
Remember that Passive Income is PERSONAL. Just like your personal brand.
There are all kinds of ways to make passive income. Having your own business is personal (that's the whole point of you working for yourself, right?), so stop trying to change yourself to fit the product that an algorithm happened to show on your social media feed. The product that brings you passive income should match you, not the other way around.
Make sure you have a solid brand vision first. Then add an information product as your passive income stream. My 1:1 Side Hustle Strategy calls are a great place to start mapping out your next few steps!