Forget ‘Passive Income’ — You Need to Focus on Scaleable Income

If you believe in passive income then you’re setting yourself up for failure. Here are the steps to take to create scaleable income.

If you look online you’ll find thousands of self-help gurus trying to sell you the dream of sitting on a beach in Mexico and drinking cocktails while relying on passive income to pay your way. According to them, you can earn money while you are sleeping with little to no effort. If you think this way, I am here to burst your bubble.

There is no such thing as passive income

Anything that is labelled as ‘passive income’ actually requires varying amounts of work to achieve it. Even the most passive kind of all, stocks, requires you to take the time to research which shares or mutual funds to purchase. Then you actually have to earn the money needed to buy those stocks. That is all work. Instead, stocks, like an online business, is a scaleable income that will increase exponentially with an upfront investment.

Now let’s go back to those gurus.

Often you find them online spouting on about how creating an online course and printables will ‘earn you money in your sleep’. Yes, you can make sales in your sleep, but you must remember that to sell these resources online you need to:

• find a platform that works for you
• learn how to best utilise the platform
• create consistent content
• establish a loyal audience
• spend hours creating your course (filming and editing) or designing your printables (and you would need a lot of them)
• advertise your paid product to your loyal audience
• put it on the market
• receive feedback and make changes to the product if necessary
• provide support to customers

Passive income is defined as money earned from little to no work. The steps listed above are definitely plenty of work and will take a long time to establish.

Now, some people reading this article might be thinking, ‘of course it takes a lot of work to become a creator’. But with the large volume of blogs, YouTube channels, business Instagram, TikTok, and other accounts being created daily, there are definitely a lot of people out there thinking it is an easy and passive way to earn an income.

While it’s definitely not all of them, a lot of those digital marketing mentors are simply using the ‘earn while you sleep’ line as clickbait. They are just trying to sell their product.

I am not trying to ridicule online courses or printables at all. I am trying to point out that it can be detrimental to your business to be thinking of it as earning passive income. Actually, I think they are a great business model because I have purchased some fantastic products in the past and I would like to establish my own in the future. I have bought courses about blogging and selling digital products, but I personally only trust the people who admit that it is not a get-rich-quick scheme and that it takes work.

Why it is detrimental to consider your business as passive income

Firstly, the concept of ‘passive income’ can be detrimental as a content creator, because it can lead you to actually be passive. To gain a following, you need to create high-quality content consistently. Keeping the ‘set and forget’ concept in your head can be a mental block stopping you from creating. Remember, your audience wants to see your videos, blog posts, photos, etc. They are expecting you to deliver, and if they don’t get what they’re after, they won’t stay loyal to you.

It can also lead to the comparison trap. If you don’t earn the desired result, you might wonder what’s wrong with you. Why are other creators making bank by ‘passively’ selling their digital products, while you can’t even find an audience? Some people honestly can’t see the hard work behind the scenes and think that other creators just have it easy. I want to help you avoid that comparison.

Furthermore, I believe this constant fixation can lead to you ending your business early. You might begin your YouTube channel after buying a course that guarantees it will become passive income, struggle with the demands of filming and uploading for free, and then end it before you really gave it a red-hot go. It can take at least a year to be monetised and earn your first few pennies per day on YouTube. That same example could be applied to any other online platform.

Finally, you simply can’t scale a business passively. If you want to grow your business, eventually you will need to recruit help, which will require meetings and management. Staying with the notion of ‘passive income’ doesn’t align with ‘scaleable income’.

Think of it as a high return on investment instead

Now is the time that I am going get you to get rid of the concept of passive income. Instead, you need to think of it as scalable income: work that will begin with very little financial reward but can lead to increase exponentially with hard work. This new mindset shift will open you up to the possibilities for your brand.

You can invest two things: your money and your time. You would normally invest money into something like stocks or real estate to hopefully get a high return. In the instance of content creation, you will likely be investing your time more than money.

The time you spend for free creating your content now is an investment. It may not be a payoff immediately, but with consistency, patience, and using audience feedback, you will find a higher, more scalable income later on.

All of the current big content creators began by working for free. Yes, they might be earning big bucks now, but don’t discount all those hours they put in at the beginning. Furthermore, all those creators have been working for so long they have a large inventory of past content contributing to their income. As I said: a high return on the previous investment of time.

What you can do

It is absolutely possible for anyone to make an income online doing what they love the most. And, it is possible for you to scale it considerably. I want you to set realistic goals and to realise the work involved because that is what will help you continue to create. Not the notion of it being passive income ‘earning money in your sleep’.

Here are my recommendations:

1. Get rid of the words ‘passive income’ from your business model.
2. Prepare yourself mentally, emotionally, and financially to create content for free for the foreseeable future. Plan out rest periods from creating content. Have enough savings in case you need some time off from your day job for a bit. Try to only work on your content a little bit every day in the beginning and work out how to increase it later. Do anything you can so you don’t burn out quickly because you’re in it for a long haul.
3. Find yourself a niche and a platform that you honestly enjoy. Something you just love doing and talking about for free.
4. Create a business plan and think about how you can generate at least two to three streams of income. These streams could be ads, affiliate marketing, sponsorships, paid digital products, physical products, etc. Pick the ones that resonate the most with you, and make a plan of when you will achieve them.
5. Find a community that will give you advice or simply support you on your hard days when you start wondering if it is all worth it. This is crucial for your longevity. It could be a Facebook group, your family and friends, or people with who you communicate through your chosen platform.
6. Don’t give up too quickly. Expect it to take a while to generate enough income to quit your job. This is completely normal.
7. Enjoy your ‘passive’ income and see others marvel at how ‘quickly and easily’ you were able to become a successful digital content creator.

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