02 Aug Passive Income Ideas for 2021

Let’s face it—making money while you sleep is very appealing. 

In fact, when I was coming up with the title for one of my books, I did a survey that included the title “Make Money While You Sleep” and that ended up being the winner and subsequently, the  title of my book!

My goal with this article is to give you passive income ideas for 2021 that you can execute quickly.

One of my favorite books is by Dan Norris is called “The 7 Day Startup:  You Don’t Learn Until You Launch”; in it he says that he wasted years on an idea for a business that failed and as a result of that hard lesson, he learned to launch quickly with a minimum viable product that you can improve as time goes on.

In other words, don’t strive for perfection, instead:  Launch and learn.  As Seth Godin preaches, ”Your job isn’t to be creative, your job is to ship.”

Most entrepreneurs and authors spend way too much time either analyzing the product or service they want to create, instead of creating it and launching it quickly to see how the market responds to it.

I had to learn this lesson the hard way as well.  

I started my online business in 2005 after I left a 17 year career in the legal field as a paralegal.  I suffered from “paralysis by analysis” and often didn’t launch programs quickly or efficiently.

Then in 2020, I decided to write a book a month as an experiment to see how much passive income I could generate based on an article I read on Written Word Media which said the average author who makes 6 figures in passive income has 28 books in their catalogue.  A little over a year of writing and launching a book a month, I’m happy to report I’m close to $5000 a month in passive income all because I launched quickly.  I had a monthly schedule to write, publish and launch a book a month and I stuck with it for a year.

After I had the initial 12 books from the year of writing, then I started to repurpose those books into box sets, audio books, hardcovers, foreign languages and more!

The passive income was slow in the beginning, but over time it snowballed and as you can see from the screenshot below, it was worth the wait.

But what if I had given up early on because I didn’t hit BIG numbers?  I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Imagine waking up each day with more money in your bank account than when you went to bed. In 30 days, this can be your reality if you capitalize on your existing experience, knowledge, and wisdom to help others. 

Let me ask you a question…

If you knew you could create $5k in passive income in about 18 months, would you invest the time, money and energy to do so?

It’s incredulous to me that I invested 12 months of my life to writing a book a month and now I’ve created more passive income than I will “one day” get from my social security check (which I worked and contributed to for over 30 years).

The two passive income ideas for 2021 that I would encourage you to create are:

1. An online course which gives you a BUSINESS ASSET that will continually generate money for you and your family.
2. Writing books based on your expertise that create royalties and can also lead to your online course.

According to Forbes, the eLearning market is climbing, and could reach $235 billion by 2025. With the lockdowns and social distancing rules due to the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning is where the world is headed, and it’s time for YOU to get on board the money train.

In January 2021, I created a DIY online course, 28 Books to $100K, that was the next step for readers of my book, 28 Books to $100K, to take and within a year I had generated over $20K in passive income on a $297 course with no paid advertising or marketing – just a private Facebook group and a FREE offer for my training in the front of my book.

To me, there is nothing more exciting to waking up in the morning to more money in your bank account than when you went to bed.

With my online course, it is directly deposited into my bank account and with my books, Amazon deposits the royalties once a month.

So here are the steps for you to start generating passive income in 2021 with online courses:

1. Decide on one topic you are going all in on.  Here are some questions to help you:  What are you an expert in that you can help others with?  What challenges, struggles or obstacles have you overcome?  What do people always ask you to help them with or come to you for advice on?  What are you curious about so much that you read books on the topic, listen to podcasts and are obsessed with? Do you have a hobby that you are really good at?  Pick one topic that you get excited about and then go to step 2.

2. Validate before you Create.  You don’t pick a topic and then “hope” that there is a market for it.  You find a market and then create a product that people already are looking for.  Before you create anything you must VALIDATE BEFORE YOU CREATE. Here are 4 ways you can do this:  
   • METHOD 1: Find courses similar to what you want to create. Check online platforms like: udemy.com, masterclass.com, Lynda.com, or Google your topic with the words “online course.” Write down the title, the length of the course, the cost, and list the main benefits. This is your market research.
   • METHOD 2: Send an email to your list (if you have one) to share that you have a brand new “BETA” program coming out soon called [Working Title of Course]. Include a link to a landing page where they can sign up to receive more information (more about landing pages below). I use FloDesk to collect email addresses for my business (you can use ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, etc.). You don’t need thousands of people to sign up — 25-100 people indicates there is good initial interest. 
   • METHOD 3: Send people from your social media platforms to a landing page to sign up and receive more information about your upcoming program. 
   • METHOD 4: Come up with 4-8 titles around the same topic or niche and create a survey using surveymonkey.com so people can vote on the title. I discovered people loved the title: “Make Money While You Sleep” by conducting a survey. I had other good titles, but that got the most votes! Below are the other titles I included in the survey:
     • From Zero to 6 Figures
     • Your First $5k Day
     • 6 Figures in 90 Days
     • Big Money Coach
     • Your First $10k Day
     • Quit Your Job and Create Work You Love
     • Make Money While You Sleep (MMWYS)

Always look to the market (real people) for real answers. Don’t try to guess or speculate about what people want. I could have gone in a lot of different directions for this book title, but I asked my audience (my email list), and they gave me the answer I needed.

Make sure the people taking the survey are your ideal clients. One way to do this is to start a private Facebook group about your course topic, and once you have 100-250+ members, survey the group.

• Keyword Research.  Last but not least, check the keywords that people are typing in for your topic and make sure there is a demand for that topic.

1. Create your Minimum Viable Product.  Once you have validated your topic, then you can create version 1.0 of your course.  Remember, you are not looking for perfection, just a starting point.  When I created 28 Books to $100K online course, I recorded all my video trainings in one week and launched the next week with my private FB group.  I like Thinkific for hosting my course but you could use Teachable or other platforms that do the same.  Creating the course is similar to creating an outline for a book.  
   1. You want to do a mind dump and write everything you want to teach about your topic and then organize the topics into a step by step program that helps people solve the problem they came to you for. 
   2.  Next, Create your sales page/landing page in Thinkific or Teachable.
   3. Build a Facebook group of people interested in this topic and you have an instant audience to sell to!  In my FB group I do FB Lives every Friday to engage with the group and I also have the links for people to sign up for my course at the top of the page. 
   4. Price your online course from $97 to $497 if you want to make passive income; if you price higher then you may need to have a strategy session with people in order to sign up or n automated webinar or more advanced marketing. Collect money!  This is the fun part.  Use PayPal or Stripe and start collecting passive income!  

You can literally go from idea to execution in 7 days and that is the key to making passive income.  Don’t over-analyze or make excuses like “the market is to saturated on this topic”.  There may be a lot of programs about your topic, but it’s your story and your uniqueness that makes it different.

My top 10 reasons why you should create and sell your online course in the next 30 days

1. You don’t learn until you launch.
2. You can sell an online course before you create the content.
3. A minimum viable product is better than NO product.
4. “People don't know what they want until you show it to them.” – Steve Jobs
5. Execution matters more than ideas; ideas are a dime a dozen.
6. You won’t waste time (weeks, months, years) getting ready to launch or researching your topic; you will spend all of your time on execution and selling your program.
7. When you have a clear end date, it drives you forward.
8. It forces you to focus on paying customers instead of on the myriad of distractions that entrepreneurs typically focus.
9. The technology available today allows you to create and launch quickly.
10. A good plan executed poorly now is better than a perfect plan never executed.

There is no reason you can’t create and sell an online course in 30 days. If you don’t get paying customers, you may be a wanna-preneur and not an entrepreneur. 

Execution is all that matters.

If you want to check out my two online courses where I teach you everything I know about writing, publishing, launching and making money with books, you can go here:

1. Digital Retirement Academy is an 8 week group coaching program that I launch 4 times per year, you can get on the waiting list now
2. 28 Books to $100K is a DIY course that you can sign up anytime.

I can tell you that I sell high ticket programs in my Bestselling Author program and believe me, it’s great, but I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE generating passive income because it doesn’t take any of my time and it gives me true FREEDOM!

I create it once and then profit from it over and over and over.

I wish you the best of luck with creating passive income in 2021!