Why Is Nobody Talking About This Passive Income Method?
It’s not always about the big things.
Whenever we read about passive income, it’s the big stuff like
- real estate
- courses
- investments
These things take a lot of time, and something like real estate requires substantial capital too. Which, let’s be honest, isn’t so easy.
Let’s talk about courses too.
So you record videos and launch a course. What next? Who will buy it? And why will they buy it?
While I have a course, it started after 18 months of writing online and it’s not my cash cow or a passive income source. Because I want to interact and be more present and form a relationship with people, but that's just me.
And even then, the anxiety of why will somebody pay for this takes over me before the cohort launches. So launching a course is much harder but people online make it sound like a money-making thing.
Don’t fall for it.
Here’s something low effort that can help you make money.
The Easy Stuff
I’m going to be honest and tell you this won’t pump in a lot of money upfront. If you want to learn how to make $10,000 while sleeping, this isn’t the place for you.
I can only teach you what I’ve learned, implemented, and got results from.
So let’s start.
How much will an extra $10 make a difference in your life? Or even an extra $100?
Think of it, it’s money made by pretty much no effort.
What Can You Create
Here are things that will take you low effort, but can earn you money.
- 1-page checklist
- ebook
- Short guide (6–30 pages)
Something that comes to you easily. Something you can teach others about.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to be an expert. You just have to know about something a little more than others.
“Anything worth doing is worth doing because you changed someone else.” Seth Godin
Make it Free
I’m a huge law of attraction believer, and a part of me makes all these freebies as service.
There are random people on the internet who helped me with their free resources like articles and videos. It feels like a duty to extend that service to be that ‘random’ person for somebody else.
Also, imitating somebody else is the fastest way to get closer to where they are if that's where you want to be.
Making it free also helps people trust you when you price something later. Think of it as a Netflix trial. If it’s for free, and they like it, people will be more likely to pay $3 or $300 next time.
Earn from ‘Free’
My Side Hustler checklist is free, has earned $100 so far is lying in over 769 inboxes in just 7 weeks.
How? With ‘pay what you want’ model.
I use Gumroad for this where people can add any sum to the box, even zero, and download it. Most people paid nothing, of course.
But then some paid $10-$15, plenty paid $3–5, and $1 was the most common. Cumulatively, it made north of $100 and was released less than two months ago. Not so bad, right?
Can it Help You Make Thousands?
With this, you give value for free but also collect emails. Emails that can help you for future products, that can help you make thousands.
When you build an audience by providing more and more value across platforms, you can productize your service.
Okay, let me break it down.
- Provide value
- Have a freebie
- Provide value in that
- Improve the reach of the freebie with CTA
- Build a mailing list
- Have a paid product
- Send it to your mailing list
My mistake: my first digital product, a free ebook, got over 400 downloads in 2 weeks. Sadly, I didn’t know about the ‘pay what you want’ model so don’t be like me.
It currently lies at nearly 2000 downloads and with this model, those who wanted to pay for it could have.
But I didn’t know about it so I earned nothing. And I’m putting it out there so you don’t make the same mistakes as me.
Before Asking For Money
Greatness lies outside of entitled behaviour and inside of value, service, and work.
Give away as much as you can for free.
The reason being, there's simply too much available for free for people to pay for what you’re offering. When people can learn from an expert on YouTube, why should they spend hundreds of dollars on you?
It’s important to build trust and give away value for free. When that helps somebody, they’ll be more willing to pay you later.
While people online say I’ve had a ‘sudden rise’ and lots of ‘luck’, they don’t see that I’ve been writing online on different platforms for about seven years and started taking it seriously 1.5 years ago.
It's these small things that add up over time.
Please don’t expect money upfront and crib when you don’t get it. Greatness lies outside of entitled behaviour and inside of value, service, and work.
Why Should You Do This
Having a freebie in a pay what you want model is underrated. So far, I haven’t read about it until I joined Twitter and saw creators doing it.
Here’s why you should do this:
- easy to do (a checklist takes under 60 min)
- easy (and free) to publish
- helps you build an email list
- helps you make money
- helps you grow your audience
Not everybody will pay for your freebie. Most won’t. But the fact that some people will, even though it’s free, make it a low hanging fruit to catch.
Think about it.
If you have something that can improve, uplift, or empower others, then use it.
Like Ryan Holiday says,
If not you, then who? If not now, then when?
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