05 Jul How to Make Passive Income Online

Years ago, I was working with a brilliant coach and his mentorship tripled my income in 90 days. At the time I had been doing a lot of one-on-one work for clients and undercharging considerably.  My coach helped me increase the value I was bringing my clients and to increase my fees.

I went from struggling to pay the bills, to making 6 figures almost instantly.  I doubled and then tripled my income that year because of investing with this incredible coach.

Although high ticket one-on-one work is great, it wasn’t giving me the freedom I craved. I couldn’t just take off because I was usually managing a dozen clients at a time.

Many business coaches believe “high ticket” is the only way to make an income online.  And while it can be very lucrative, I still had the desire to make passive income.

My coach warned me that passive income is an “illusion” and informed me that I was wasting my time.

I understood a part of what he was saying in that there is “work” involved to create the product or program and you need more sales to equal the high ticket 1:1 work; however, after that, the income can be 80-95% totally passive depending on how you set it up.

In 2019 I was fortunate to read an article on the blog. Written Word Media, which said authors who make 6 figures in passive income typically have 28 books in their catalogue.  At the time, I only had a few books published with a small monthly passive income, but I definitely didn’t have 6 figures in income.

In 2020, I decided to do an experiment and write one short book a month for one year to test this theory.  I have to tell you that I was shocked when I created $3335 a month in passive income from my books in just 12 months.

Now some coaches might think that is a waste of time to do this when I could be focusing all of my energy on my high-ticket, 1:1 done for you services.  I get it.  

But here’s the thing…

I love writing!  

It’s my passion and I’ve also discovered I love passive income! So why not combine the two!

I would get so excited when on the 29th of every month when Amazon would make a big deposit into my bank account from the royalties of my books and I loved that it began to cover all of my bills!

In fact, the number exceeded what I might one day get from social security when I reach the magical age of 67.

Here’s how those numbers compounded month-after-month:

Of course, there was a lot of work involved in writing, publishing and launching a book a month, but it was worth it to me.  In 18 months, I was close to $5K per month in passive income with only writing and publishing one more book.

In January 2023, I created an 8-week online course and coaching program, Digital Retirement Academy, then generated close to 6-figure from that course in the first year.  I’m now running this coaching program 4x a year which means that I have passive income coming in on a regular basis.

I love this new business model that is generating 6-figures a year and it is 85% passive in that I created all the content once and it now sells over and over.  Yes, I am doing 8 coaching calls each time I run it, but that is much better than hours and hours of service work that lasts 3-4 months where my team and I are responsible for everything in order to take authors from no book to #1 bestselling author.

Passive Income can give you not only more freedom, but more options.

In February of 2023, my 86 year old father became ill and I was blessed to be able to take off 3 months and care for him in his final days.  It was ALL because I had passive income.

I recently heard from someone on my email list who has over one dozen books published which is no small feat!  It made me sad when I looked at the income from those books and the total was only $73 per month. And this person has top notch credentials!

If this person had used my Digital Retirement strategy, they would not have wasted all that time, energy and money publishing the wrong books, the wrong way.

Here are 6 of the biggest mistakes I see authors make that BLOCK PASSIVE INCOME…

1. They don't pick one niche and instead they become a “niche' hopper” which blocks passive income.  It's important to go deep, not wide. Many creators make this common mistake. 
2. They publish haphazardly.  No schedule.  No consistency.  Writing a book a month is what creates consistent passive income. 
3. They pick low-profit topics.  This is a big one.  If you're not doing research to see what people are searching for on Amazon, then you are probably picking low-profit topics that will never make you any money.  I teach people exactly how to find high-profit topics and that is a game changer. 
4. Bad title. Bad cover. Bad Book Description – Because creators don't always understand how to create magnetic topics, covers and book descriptions… their book flops. Despite valuable content, authors miss sales as buyers make quick decisions based on title, cover, and book description. 
5. They don't do a bestseller book launch.  In the world of Amazon, which is a very crowded marketplace, if your book is not on the top of the bestseller list, then you are invisible.  Most authors spend months or years writing and publishing their book, and then abandon their book once it's done.  They never put the time or effort into doing a proper book launch. 
6. They ignore Amazon Ads – Because they don't know anything about amazon ads, most authors ignore them.  But the learning curve is pretty minimal and without ads, you will probably not do very well at keeping your book on the top of the bestsellers list.  Amazon ads allow you to be seen for thousands of keywords and they say it takes multiple touches for people to make a buying decision.  Using amazon ads, allows your book to be seen in a big way.

If you want to make passive income, you can’t give up when the going gets hard.  In fact, that’s what separate the successful passive income earners from the “try-ers”.  The successful people keep going even (and especially) when it gets hard.

Writing a book a month for one year was one of the hardest things I ever did (besides child birth and being a single mom of 3 incredible kids) and I wanted to give up on multiple occasions, but I didn’t.  Even when sales were up and down, I kept going.  I didn’t know the outcome, but I kept going.

So I encourage you, whatever path you choose to make passive income, that you commit to it and never ever give up on it.

So many new opportunities and doors have opened up for me because I wrote a book a month including lots of passive income from not only my books, but also from my 8-week coaching program (which is based on my bestselling book), Digital Retirement Academy.

If passive income is something you love too and you want to take your wisdom and knowledge and transfer it from your brain to books and even to online courses, then join us for the next cohort of Digital Retirement Academy.