You love your clients. You love helping them solve their biggest problems and watching them succeed. It’s an amazing feeling, right?
However, no matter how much you love your work, two things are keeping you from scaling infinitely:
- There are 24 hours in a day and only one of you. That ain’t changing.
- The hours you sleep, eat, rest, and vacation earn you zero!
That’s a big ol’ cap on your earning potential, and the potential reach you have. You can’t make an impact on people you don’t have the time to reach. Plus, you don’t want to spend all of your time working — that’s why you’re not punching a clock for corporate, right?
You need to work more to grow your business and finances, but the life you really want can’t be had if you’re working all the time.
The answer? Passive income.
Passive income is kind of a deceptive name, in that there is some serious action taking that needs to happen when you first start. And the place I see most entrepreneurs stumble here isn’t in making a product — it’s in planning. Planning the marketing. Planning affiliates. Planning social posts. If you don’t plan how people will find your passive income products, you won’t get the income part!
So, that’s what we’re focusing on. Here comes the 1st part:
Plan a Course, Program, or Product
This is going to be the cornerstone of your plan. All you have to do is create it.
Don’t freak out on me! I promise it’s not as scary as it sounds. You might even have something ready to go without realizing!
Answer these questions to start brainstorming:
- What problem does your ideal client struggle with the most? Is she tech challenged and needs a step-by-step on how to create a landing page? Does he lack confidence, and suffer from mindset issues? Does she want/need to write a book but just can’t seem to get started?
Whatever the trouble spot, a small training product or course will help. You only need to solve this one problem right now — keep it simple so you don’t get overwhelmed. (Bonus points if it can funnel the most qualified buyers into your high-touch programs for less-effort leads.) - What format does your ideal client prefer for training? Your product can be video, audio, written, or any combination. It’s completely up to you and what you’re comfortable offering.
- What resources do you have that you can repurpose? See, I said you might have something already! You probably have blog posts, past webinar recordings, ebooks and other material you can quickly pull together to create a complete training. If you have trackers or worksheets you use behind the scenes, consider including them in a paid product.
Plan Your Marketing
Once you have a digital product to sell, you need to drive traffic to it. You can…
- Mail your list
- Post about it on social media
- Use ads
- Start/Expand your affiliate program
- List it on directory sites such as ClickBank or JVZoo
- Blog about it
- Ask others to blog about it
- Share it in forums and groups
- Host a webinar
There are dozens of ways to drive traffic to your sales page so you can begin building your passive income.
Answer these questions to start your marketing plan:
- Do you have any clients, or potential clients, that would be open to beta-testing or doing a soft launch with you? Consider launching the product to a small group of your ideal clients — this allows you to collect testimonials and iron out any wrinkles in your product. You can offer this for free, or with a deep discount, but make sure you have a feedback system in place.
- Where do you already connect with your ideal client the most? If they hang out in your Facebook Group, plan on doing lots of posts there, maybe a Live stream, and pinning a post about your new product. If it’s Twitter or Instagram, come up with a fun #hashtag to use and consider mentioning any beta-testers to get some interaction started. If Pinterest rocks your business world, get heavy on the graphics and consider getting/making an infographic.
- Are there any events that might conflict with your launch date? I’ve seen first hand that if you forget about a holiday or big event and try to launch then, your results may be sub-par. Avoiding big holidays and maybe other known large launches in your industry can help you stand out, make it more likely for your emails to be opened, and will make it easier for any affiliates you choose to bring on.
- Do you have affiliates? If you want to use affiliates with this launch, what will you provide to them in advance? If you’re at all considering the use of affiliates, please don’t just tell them the launch date and their link then send them on their way. Give them graphics, email copy, social media posts — the less effort they need to put in the more likely they will be to promote you well, and the better your results will be.
If a new product isn’t in your plans, check out the rest of the series!
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