Lessons From Making $4,502 of Passive Income
Use these lessons to boost your journey.
After having earned passive income in the last 6 months, I wish I knew certain things earlier.
People online just say ‘launch this and scale it up’. This advice is far from reality.
Anybody can launch a product, but that doesn’t mean people will buy it. That’s a different ball game.
Let me tell you about what I’ve learnt from passive income via digital products (ebooks, guides, and even my freebie checklist).
There are other sources too — platform-based income and affiliates, but we’ll stick to digital products for this article.
[Short] Story Time
I started accidentally six months ago, and here are the results:
3,166 sales out of the above are sales of my free product, where 169 people have paid $619.
While it's free, they paid for it entirely on their own will as a donation.
I initially started by launching a free Side Hustle Checklist.
4 months ago, I launched a Medium Guide. Then, I removed all Medium-specific tips from it and launched an Article Guide, which teaches you how to write a kick-ass article.
This is how you can create two products with the same material and a bit of tweaking, as I did.
I don’t want to sound like I’m selling, so I won’t include any links. Don’t worry.
Recently, I launched my LinkedIn Content Mastery Playbook two weeks ago because ‘how to gain traction on Linkedin’ is something I get asked often.
Now, let’s learn about making the right moves.
Don’t Bluntly Sell
The best thing about social media is that you can see what's going on around you. Instead of mindlessly scrolling and consuming, observe.
What is making people tick?
What are they pissed about?
What problems are they’re facing?
Curate your feed in your niche so you only see relevant information. This way you can look for problems you can solve for.
The solution is your product.
People Don’t Always Know What They Want
This is what a latent need is.
Introduce something because you feel it’ll benefit people, and see if it take off.
When I released my first free ebook, it was a compilation of 13 side-hustle-related articles. I didn’t have a big audience, and I didn’t know how well it would do, but I really wanted to be out there in the market.
So I went ahead, and it got over 1500 downloads in under 5 months.
I created this because a resource like this would’ve helped my past self.
So the target audience for this is where I was a year ago — trying to find a direction around side hustling and monetising it.
Solving for your past self is an underrated target audience.
Why You?
Have some credibility before you launch something.
Anybody can launch a product, but that doesn’t mean people will buy it.
By credibility, I don’t mean lots of followers, a fancy degree, or a giant audience.
Lead by example.
If you’ve done what you’re putting out there, if you have a track record of results, people will trust you because you’ve been there and done that.
Your victories will speak for you.
Make Your Copy Specific
My mate sent me his landing page, and I called BS on it so he can improve. I don’t want him sounding like an idiot. I want him to win because he’s amazing.
He put up something like:
Writing on LinkedIn will help you make friends, create wealth, live a healthy life, smile more, make money… and 12 more fluffy bullet points.
This stuff doesn’t work.
You think you’re telling your audience how awesome your product is, but your audience isn’t stupid. They know you’re fluffing and won’t trust your product.
Instead, write three points about
- who is it for
- who is it not for
- what will they gain
That’s my framework for all products.
Pro tip
Give your product to a few mates for free. Ask them for:
- honest feedback to improve your product
- a testimonial to put up a social proof
This will improve your offering and help you sell.
How to Start?
This is the shortest guide to creating your ebook:
- Write in Google Docs
- Edit it a week later with a fresh mind
- Send it to friends for feedback
- Edit it again
- Format it in Apple Pages (optional)
- Graphics in Canva (optional)
- Upload on Gumroad
It can be as little as 8 pages or as much as a few hundred. Your choice.
For your freebie, use a pay-what-you-want model on Gumroad, so it’s free but is also open to donations.
Final Words
If there’s one piece of advice I’d want you to take away, it’s — don’t do it for the money.
Nobody earns money because they want money. They do it when they add value.
Trust me, everything changes when your intention does.
If you do it for the money, you’d rather hop onto ads and spend a ton of cash there.
But building an audience, making friends, brainstorming ideas, and learning a lot — are much more fun.
It'll come to you when you add value and solve a problem.
