If your interaction with your clients is on a 1:1 basis, then you’re charging for your time. This is an example of ‘active income’. With active income your earnings are directly tied to the amount of time you spend with each client. If you have 8 clients a day, you’ll get paid 8 times. If you go on holiday and have zero clients a day, you’ll have no money coming in.
While this 1:1 premise can be profitable with high-end clients, you’ll still reach that glass ceiling because you only have so much time in a day to devote to clients. So, if you want to break that glass ceiling and earn more while still doing the 1:1 client work you enjoy, it’s time to develop some passive income streams.
FREE Checklist: How To Create & Sell An Online Course
3 Ways to Turn Your Active Income into Passive Income
Passive income is a way to leverage your 1:1 client time by reaching more people at one time. What’s the best way to do that? The choice is up to you. Start off by choosing one passive income idea and when that is complete and you see sales, try creating a different stream of income. Ideally, your passive income and active income are like gears in a clock, all working in perfect harmony to increase your profits and expand your name recognition.
1. Write an eBook
A passive income stream means you put forth a little bit of effort, and continue to make money from that initial effort without taking any further actions in the future. That is one of the incredible benefits of writing an ebook or POD (print on demand) book.
Do you have to put forth a little work in the beginning? Of course you do. You may think it is a pretty simple process. On the other hand, you might think researching, writing, formatting, publishing and marketing your ebook is incredibly difficult and detailed. The truth of the matter is, the reality of the situation is somewhere in the middle of those two schools of thought. The secret is to follow a proven system that has worked for others. You could handle it yourself, or simply pay a freelancer.
However you deal with getting your book written, once you have it done and listed on Amazon for Kindle, CreateSpace as POD, or uploaded on any number of other book seller sites, your job is usually done as they do the marketing, delivery and paying you royalties for the books sold.
When you sell your ebook through your own website, you get to keep 100% of the profits. Writing a book can open up doors to media interviews and speaking gigs, which in turn expose you to brand new, bigger audiences. Plus, the clients who can’t afford or access your 1:1 services will be extremely happy because they can still learn something from you in printed form.
2. Sell Your Recordings
Whether you record webinars, podcast interviews, or organize a summit of business leaders, selling the recordings after the event is another way to earn passive income. As always, there’s work to be done getting these webinars, interviews, and summits organized and running without a hitch. But offering a paid product for those who couldn’t attend live earns you some extra cash but also endears you to those fans who will still benefit from your services.
Have you ever considered making money by giving stuff away? When you host a free webinar, you automatically have an informative product that you can sell for the rest of your life. A free webinar that blows the socks off of your audience with the value it delivers and the problems it solves could lead to sales and profits in the future.
3. Create a Course…or a Series
Creating courses is a way to delve deeper into your expertise than a published book will allow. Consider this a passive way to offer your services to clients in the comfort of their own homes but on a grander scale. Your target audience can follow along in DIY fashion, with your words guiding them to their next steps, without you having to schedule each person into your already-busy calendar. Plus your they can work at their own pace instead of worrying about deadlines or having to attend webinars live. Give them what they want but allow them to work at their own pace.
An online course is a prime example of passive income. You can create the content once, and continue to sell it to new students again and again. An online course can be accessed by everybody, making it a great way for people to learn. Your course could be on anything that relates to your business. People from around the world will be able to access the same thing, which means you are able to share information much more widely. This helps you to spread any messages that you are trying to communicate, or share your skills and expertise with people of different backgrounds and experience levels.
Delegate some of the prep work to ghostwriters or a virtual assistant to make your part of the upfront work even more passive. You’ll pay those contractors to organize and produce the finished product but consider that an investment in your business. Remember…you’ll have these finished products for years to come after this initial investment.
Free Checklist: How To Create An Online Course
People create online courses for all sorts of reasons, but if yours is successful, people will enjoy doing the course and learning will have been made a lot easier for them. This will then encourage people to look at any other products and services that you may have available, which is a great way to build customer rapport and a solid customer base.
If you’re considering creating, marketing and selling or giving away an online course, there has never been a better time to do so. Thanks to the global reach of the internet there are billions of people who can get access to your course. If you’re ready to turn your active income into passive income, download my free checklist, How To Create An Online Course. Remember, you can never create your best course until you create your first course.