You are here: Home / Archives for passive income

This is the reason why passive income is so gosh darn important…

By

Do you know what this is?

 

Yes, that would be my shoulder!

But if you go about an inch lower than my shirt, you’ll find a lump. A lump that wasn’t there six months ago, or even two months ago. It’s a lump I discovered a few weeks ago while watching television with the Mister.

It feels like it’s smaller than half a green pea. It’s hard, but it doesn’t hurt. The mammogram tells me I should have a biopsy, which I’m going in for next Wednesday.

My mother’s side of the family, unfortunately, has had two deaths due to breast cancer… my aunt (in her mid 30’s) and most recently my grandmother. My mother and my cousin frequently get lumps, all benign, thank goodness. I’ve never had one until now.

So you can imagine the “Awww shit!” moment I had when I found that lump.

It wasn’t an “Awww shit, I’m gonna die,” moment. Because breast cancer runs in my family, I check myself all the time. Religiously. Even while I’m watching TV with the 3D glasses on.

I can assure you that little lump is as fresh as the morning dew.

Sure, I’m worried. But moreso about losing my hair and the little bit of curves I have, than following the white light.

The “Awww shit!” moment I had was partially because life is going so well right now that I don’t want to deal with a monkey wrench. I met a guy, fell in love, got loved back. I’m in the honeymoon of relationship happiness right now, and here comes this lump!

Yes, this is all very personal, and maybe you think it’s a little sad to hear about my boobie lump, but there is a very important point here. It has to do with all the cackling I’ve been doing about passive income for the past year.

Life is full of surprises, passive income is your insurance policy.

Regardless of what you do, I’ve always said that you should have a few ebooks in the fray just in case.

Just in case you get sick and can’t work on custom projects for a few weeks. Just in case you’re skiing and break a collarbone. Just in case your significant other has a heart attack and you lose ½ of your income.

Life doesn’t come with a smooth sailing guarantee. One day no lump, the next day “Awww shit!” That’s how life operates.

My solace is knowing that yesterday I got ebook orders. Today, I’ll get ebook orders. Tomorrow I’m banking on the fact that I’ll get ebook orders. If I feel like having the granddaddy of all meltdowns, I know that lying in the bed with the covers thrown over my head, I’m probably going to get some ebook orders.

And that’s comforting beyond belief. There’s NOTHING like doing something once and getting paid from it indefinitely.

So here’s what I want you to do…

If you’ve never written an ebook, I want you to come up with an idea for a 10 page report and hash something out in the next seven days.

It doesn’t have to be perfection in a PDF. It may not be something that makes you $5K next week. You may not get the swing of it until your third or fourth report. Get over it! We can’t all be six-month millionaires.

I just want you to feel what it’s like to sit down and put words on paper that you’re going to sell. If you never allow yourself to feel what it’s like you’re always going to look at it as some mysterious unicorn. And it’s really not as difficult as you think.

Don’t wait until an “Awww shit!” moment is breathing down your neck. By then it’s too late to think clearly.

Use your time to create products that will continue to generate income in good times and bad. And get started today. That’s an order.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

“Yeah, but is it really passive income?”

By

In my last post (back in April) I gave you a rundown of my passive income strategy. No need to rehash it, you can check it out here.

Well one of the comments on that post really gave me food for thought. It came from a fellow blogger by the name of Oliver Tausend. Here’s what he said:

“Hi Dahlia,

thanks for sharing your insights and your testimonial about Triberr. I’m just curious, why would you want to create a new product, market it through blog commenting and other efforts and then only make 45 $ -150 $ a day ? I also can’t really see the passive aspect of this type of income.

What do you think ?

Take care

Oliver”

I was moving at the time I made that last post, but when the dust finally settled, I really sat down and thought about Oliver’s comment. According to Wikipedia, passive income is described as “income received on a regular basis, with little effort required to maintain it.”

Writing comments isn’t exactly “nothing.” It does, in fact, require effort. I do like (love) the income I derive from it, but it’s still takes work.

So I decided to challenge myself.

“If I stopped blogging, would I really be able to support myself via e-book sales?”

Thanks to Oliver’s inquiring mind, I needed to know just how viable this operation could be if I took an extended holiday. If all my potential customers had to work with were old blog posts and great product reviews, could my little e-book empire sustain itself? Hmmmmm.

That’s when I stopped blogging. Cold turkey. No warnings… no “here’s-why-I’m-not-going-to-be- blogging”… just crickets and tumbleweeds for all.

Lemme tell you… I missed blogging here. Man did I miss it! I was a little sad not interacting with all of my online homies, which just tells you impactful online friendships are.

During my time away I did manage to crank out several e-books (woot!), including a 150+ page monster that I’ll be talking about later this week (double woot!).

But let’s return to my original order of business… was it really passive income?

The short answer is “Kinda”

During the month of April (my last post was April 1), I generated approximately $1,339 in e-book sales. Most of that came from sales of The BIG LIST of Amazon Products, which is sitting over there in the sidebar.

A good percentage of those sales came about because Alex Whalley over at Build Rank Profit talked about my 86 Resources That’ll Help You Become a Profitable Amazon Affiliate article. The traffic I received that day was so good that it was my best day (traffic-wise) here at That Internet Marketing Thing.

In May sales dropped to $785 and in June they dropped yet again to just under $400. This month I’m already over the $150 mark, which is respectable bit of change, considering most people talk about a lull in sales during the summer.

So yes, I did manage to earn passive income doing absolutely nothing. No blog posts, no witty Twitter banter, no forum postings.

Unfortunately, in my neck of the woods, those earnings definitely weren’t enough to sustain my lifestyle. I must continue blogging and promoting my work in order to keep the sales machine moving.

And whilst periodic breaks are do-able, I cannot truly say this is passive income. I’m okay with that. I’ve never been afraid to work, especially when I can set my own hours and call all the shots.

Does no posting = a traffic slowdown?

As time marched on, my traffic levels definitely decreased here.

In April, I had 1,108 unique visitors. In May that number went down to 765. In June there was a less dramatic drop to 692.

During all three months my most popular post was always 86 Resources That’ll Help You Become a Profitable Amazon Affiliate. I believe having an Amazon-related post definitely helped to keep the momentum moving when it came to my selling my BIG LIST of Amazon Products.

Here’s what you can takeaway from my impromptu experience:

1) Online relationships are worth their weight in gold. Though I did manage to generate sales without any recommendations, I got way more in the past with them.

I attribute my blog commenting strategy to meeting bloggers I wouldn’t have broken bread with in any other place. A lot of internet marketers view commenting as a cheap backlinking strategy, but it’s worth so much more than that when done properly.

2) Heck yeah, you can make money talking about Internet marketing! Internet marketing is one of those topics that people say is oversaturated. I was a teensy bit nervous at first because I thought there might’ve been a shred of truth to that.

Well I’ve been running this site for well under a year – (with a 3 month break, nonetheless) – and I’m making money. My good months were all over the $1K mark.

I know it’s not the proverbial “$50,000 in 30 days” that’s often red headlined across the minisite universe, but it’s not pennies either. And I’m definitely not losing money at this point.

If I can make a thousand dollars a month here, I can make $5K with more consistent blogging and traffic.

3) A ton of mediocre backlinks won’t always trump a good content strategy. Some of the content on this blog has achieved top 10 rank in Google… a feat I was able to accomplish within the first month of launching.

But it wasn’t because I was chasing profile links or salivating over comment opportunities on PR7 blogs.

It’s because I enjoy talking about this stuff so I write for my readers. If Google comes a knockin’ while my blogs a rockin’, super. And if not… well that’s why you keep your marketing game strong, and diversify your efforts.

If Google sets the sun on your site, what are your chances of survival? After you finished bitching on moaning, could you pick up the traffic pace somewhere else? If you can’t answer that question with an affirmative, then you’re hustling backwards.

I guess this whole experience has helped me realize just how important it is to work an interlocking system of strategies that involves contact with other bloggers. It was a good lesson to learn early on, and now I’m ready to live that philosophy once again.

Let’s toast to an endless summer, where flip-flops and bikinis are the required uniform, and e-book sales flow like sunscreen on a family beach!

Filed Under: Passive Income Monthly Reports Tagged With: , ,

FREEDOM = Using What You Know to Make Your Bank Account Grow

By

I was sitting here the other night thinking about Kiesha Easley’s post, How to Get Your Blog Ready to Offer Services.

I don’t know Kiesha personally, but you know how it is when you’re just starting out as a blogger and you’ve got your list of fav’s who you frequent on a regular basis? Well I’ve adopted Kiesha, and a handful of other bloggers, as my informal mentors… men and women whose work and ethics I admire.

When I finished reading Kiesha’s post, it was like the cogs in my brain got a good oiling. They were turning… neurons ablaze… I was inspired.

I mean I’ve done ghostwriting before, so I’m no stranger to selling services. But I did a lot of my selling offline, to people in my local Chamber. I wanted to learn how to bypass that whole morning biz card exchange, and just cut straight to the chase.

An ebook would’ve helped me do just that. An ebook would’ve grabbed me by the PayPal account and given me a good impulse buyers shock into submission.

All bloggers want to make money

Some bloggers do the affiliate marketing thing. Others sell advertising and do very well with it. Then there are bloggers, like Kiesha, who sell their know-how in the form of personalized consultations.

But if you look at around at expert bloggers in general, very few of them sell their own ebooks. Why? I’ve actually spoken to a few bloggers this week about it.

The reasons generally range from:

  • “I don’t know what to write about”;
  • “I’ve got 10 topics swirling in my head and I don’t know which one to cover first”;
  • “I don’t have the time to write about what I do know”;
  • “I don’t know if people will really buy what I wanna write about.”

Understandable, until you realize…

Your one-time outlay of knowledge can be rewarded with a lifetime of profits

A good friend of mine has been selling ebooks and coaching services to a very targeted niche for maybe 2-3 years now. She used to own a company in this field, so she has some very specialized knowledge.

Every single time she publishes something new, there’s a fan base of around 250 (out of 3K) of her blog readers who buy her products without fail. If she writes a $20 e-report today, she knows that’s a guaranteed $4K in the bank within a few days.

I would be a teeny bit envious of her, except she always sends good eye candy for these random blind dates she sends me on. But I digress (and laugh)… Her track record with this stuff is friggin’ jaw dropping. It’s also the main reason why I started off selling ebooks before I even started blogging.

The one thing she said to me that really stuck in my mind is that the sooner you start selling ebooks, the sooner your readers see them, and the sooner they’re encouraged to buy them.

It goes beyond the immediate impulse buyers

Her logic is simple… you may not buy my BIG LIST of Amazon Products today or even next month, and that’s okay.

As one of my readers, you’re into Internet marketing and making money online. If you ever get that spark to build Amazon affiliate sites, you’re gonna remember that large-and-in-charge list of resources for Amazon affiliates I put together. And when you come back, you’ll see The BIG LIST again, and you’ll grab it up.

That’s why the quicker you get your ebook out there, the better. You have to plant the seed so that when one of your readers is ready to buy, you’re already standing in their path.

Using ebooks as a gateway to your more expensive services

Although many bloggers use free ebooks as an incentive for readers to subscribe to their list, you don’t necessarily have to take that route. The only freebies my ebook selling friend gives is the content on her blog.

If you get a PDF from her, you’ve paid for it. Her least expensive title is $12 and her most expensive is $209. The cheaper titles typically serve as an introduction to her coaching services.

Are your neurons ablaze yet?

Think about it — you don’t have to be a blogger with 100 posts under your belt to have a fan base. You just need to have an informational swagger that’s rich and uniquely you.

Readers want a personality. They want someone who’s going to give them a good, solid story, delivered with a bit of ‘high-ho silver’ every now and then. That’s why YOU have repeat visitors.

But the bottom line is that if you’re not selling content to them, someone else with a rich informational swagger will. A hungry brain with a few bucks to spend will always get fed.

My super quickie solution for creating an ebook in record time

It’s not hard… in fact I didn’t invent this one at all. (I only gave it a cool name.)

It’s called The Interview Flip, and here’s how it works… below you’ll find a list of 20 something basic questions.

Depending on your topic, answer as many of them as you can either via a voice transcription program like Dragon Naturally Speaking, or in a tape recorder. The reason you’ll want to speak it versus writing, is speed. You’ll be able to talk your response a lot faster than you type it. Plus, a brain answering a question is much more efficient than a brain presenting an explanation. Same details, simpler approach.

Alternatively, you could hire me to interview you by telephone, and you can record the conversation. The benefit here is that I’m an outsider looking in.

As we’re doing the interview, I’ll be able to add in some follow-up questions to make your ebook even more comprehensive. My cost for the session is $49, which is a steal because I’m going to squeeze the details out of you like a lemon! Contact me if you’d like to set up an interview session.

Introduction to the topic

  • How long have you been _________?
  • How did you get started doing _________? What prompted you to get started?
  • What type of education did you have to get?
  • How long is the educational process?
  • What’s the cost of the educational process?
  • Have you had to do anything recently to ramp up your existing education?
  • What are the clients/customers/readers/prospects like?
  • How do they typically contact you?
  • Do people normally come to you, or do you go to them?
  • Where do you promote/market yourself?
  • How do you promote/market yourself?
  • How do you get paid?
  • How long does it take you to get paid?

About the task

  • What’s a typical day like for you?
  • What are the general steps of the process?
  • What part of _________ takes the longest?
  • What’s the most difficult part of _________?
  • What’s the easiest part of _________?
  • Are there any alternative for completing _________?
  • How much does it cost to complete _________?
  • How long does it take to _________?
  • What do you do when you can’t _________?
  • What mistakes did you make when you first started out?
  • How much time/money did those mistakes cost you?
  • Why do you recommend that others do to avoid those mistakes?
  • What’s the one assumption you think people make about your _______ that’s not true?

Whether you answer your own questions, or you tell me to bring the juicer, get your feet wet and create something.

There’s no substitute for having your own product, where 100% of the profits go in your pocket, and no hand-holding is involved.

 

 

Filed Under: Writing and Blogging Tactics Tagged With: , , , , ,