Two sides to passive income

People love the idea of passive income.

And why the heck wouldn’t they?

It’s the digital equivalent of strangers pushing money through your letterbox on a regular basis. 🤑

And although most people suspect it’s more complicated than other people make it sound, they don’t really understand why.

So let’s try to clear that up, shall we?

Passive income is all about trying to reduce (to zero) the effort it takes for you to make money from your expertise.

And there are really two “buckets” of effort here:

There’s the effort it takes to get people to buy your course (or other product or service).

And there’s the effort it takes to deliver your course.

Let’s call these the Selling phase and the Delivery phase.

If your course is 100% self-guided and you set things up just right, you can run the Delivery phase pretty much on autopilot.

People can land on your website, see your course, click the buy button, get their login details, and start receiving emails explaining how to get the most out of what they just bought.

And with a modern course platform, that’s actually not too hard to set up.

Then there’s the Selling phase.

To make that more passive you can create a simple sales funnel that offers people a relevant freebie, then leads them along an email journey ending with an offer to buy your course.

But you still need to get people into that funnel.

Here are three scenarios where that’s passive too:

1. Your website already gets a good amount of relevant traffic, and you put interested visitors into your funnel.
2. You know how to run ads (or hire someone who does) and you run paid ads that put people into your funnel.
3. You know people who’ll promote your course for a commission. And then they put people into your funnel.

Notice how each of these requires work upfront: writing content for your website to attract traffic, or learning about and optimising ads, or building relationships with partners.

It’s doable, but it’s a journey, not a done-in-one effort.

But if this all sounds daunting, there’s a simpler way of selling your course.

First, you build a simple version of your course with the help of some “beta” students who already trust you.

In parallel you talk about the process publicly (social media, newsletter, etc.) to get your course “in the ether”.

Taking feedback from your beta group, you revise the course content and make the delivery as passive as possible.

Then you simply make your course one of the things you talk about when promoting yourself and your business.

So if you post on social media every day, you talk about your course at least once a week.

When you speak to potential clients, you mention your course as one of the ways people can work with you.

When you meet someone whose audience overlaps with yours, you offer them free access to your course and then see if they’d like to promote it.

It’s not passive, but it’s more passive than just trading your time for money.

And the great thing is that your course isn’t this whole separate thing that requires a whole different approach.

It’s just another way that you do what you do.

See you soon,

Glen