Wikipedia describes the term passive income as a type of unearned income that is acquired automatically with minimal labour to earn or maintain.
Right, the dream we dream.
Is there a secret about that sought after passive income?
And how do we approach it without the risk of disappointment?
What should we anticipate from it?
Great Expectations
It is important to look at passive income and what it means with the correct expectations. Thought of it loosely one can easily form the image of making a lot of income with very little effort.
This could not be farther from the truth. It does not mean getting money for nothing. Contrary to the notion of making easy money it means putting in a good amount of effort intelligently. Passive does not mean without an active response.
There have been instances where a good number of people are told to go buy a domain name and build a website, write in a few posts, include a product, and bam money will start to stream in. Wrong.
To their great disappointment they soon find out the truth. The easy part is buying a domain name, building the website to a good level of health will require many and I mean many hours of effort and know-how.
Earning thousands of dollars through that website will come but it will take some time depending on other factors.
The options of paid advertisement or growing organic traffic will be available with one producing faster result for the cost of advertising $dollars$ and the other perhaps with a lower cost will take a longer time.
And thus, it follows that you need to get as many visitors as possible to make any serious money. How many visitors? That depends on numerous factors including just how well you have optimized your ad placement and how good the niche you initially chose is.
How many views does it take?
But what you can rest assured is that it’s going to require at least a couple hundred thousand. In fact, if you read around the web and do your research, you’ll likely find that the average advice is that it takes somewhere in the region of 150,000 views for your website to make $200.
How long does it take to get to those kinds of numbers daily? I’d argue that it can take at least a couple of years for most people.
And that’s only if you put in a huge amount of work to consistently flood your site with excellent quality content and to continuously promote your site and your brand in the meantime.
The same goes for selling digital products.
The Right Approach
Why is this important?
Simple: because if you head into this expecting to make $100 a day immediately, you are going to be disappointed and you are probably going to quit out of frustration before you get anywhere.
This is what happens to most people. It is best for you not to quit your day job just yet. What you need to do, is scale back your expectations and make a steady attempt to increase your earnings and to build a business.
Your aim is not to give up your day job. Not right away anyway! Rather, your aim is to make yourself some extra money on the side that will make your day-to-day life that much comfier and more enjoyable.
It’s to fund your lifestyle and it’s to follow something you’re passionate about.
To begin with, you’re not going to quit your day job or stop providing services online.
Instead, you’re going to start devoting just a short amount of time in the evenings or whenever you have the time for writing content, creating a sales page, developing the pages of your website, and learning more about the products you need to promote to earn those affiliate commissions.
What say the experts
I have heard and have read from the “experts” to choose something you’re passionate about and that you enjoy and do it for the love of creating.
Interestingly a very successful online marketer said not necessarily so to that statement, adding that while you need to keep a good measure of that passion you need to go where the hungry buyers are, the people who are needy for help and solutions, because the purpose of our online presence is to help them with information and with tools offering resources and solutions for their needs.
If you make a little money on the side, then you should consider that to be a bonus – not the main reason you’re getting started.
If you do that, then in a few months you might start earning an extra $20 a week – enough to treat yourself to something nice at the end of the month. In time, that might climb to $30, $60 or $150 a week. Build upon that.
Having goals and expectations is a very good thing, without them believe me I would have quit a long time ago. I do not say this referring to the online business only but also regarding the offline business or job but keeping the right perspective is crucial to avoid us having a crashing experience that may lead us to give up.
Giving up is no option.
So, keep on learning searching applying and testing through this exercise you will develop an instinct to identify what works and what does not you will also learn to recognize the b-e-s-e-r-s from the group of so-called experts and gurus. And when you find a good fountain of free and helpful information to increase your knowledge and improve your chances of success remember to go back and tell that fountain “Thank you”
Look to your online options carefully
I’ve lost a good amount of $dollars$ pursuing business before I made any back. Why? Because in my eagerness to succeed money was spent in buying several domain names, I felt were good for the niches I was after. All good intentions but not enough understanding of the word niche and too early into market exploration.
Here what I needed to do first was
- Search in the search engines the keywords for the niche I was studying (digital products)
- Digital products were too general.
- Narrow it down to a more specific group of digital products.
- Narrow it even more into a more specific group of users (those searching for these products, people who needed the products and were likely ready to buy them
I had a small to medium size budget to invest therefore reading more in depth about the segment should have been a must before going ahead to buy domain names.
The cost for each domain name purchased was about $9.97 (this varies depending on the online service to buy and register) some services charge about $14.95 per domain name.
Note, annual renewal registrations may increase without notice. Recently I renewed a good domain name (a dot com) I’ve owned for at least the past 15 years from the original $4 annual to $20.
It adds up, because of this I will be looking at moving it to a better priced registrar before the year is up.
Once you have a domain name, remember you will need.
- A website builder, WordPress or other (I use and recommend DIVI check the link below at the end of page)
- Hosting service for your website (see some recommended resources at the end of page)
- Optimizing your website pages for SEO
- Creating and building your website pages, posts
- Adding quality content
Unless you are a website developer or hire one, I suggest you focus on the one website and build it up. You will become more comfortable with the process as you add pages and content.
The next challenge is driving traffic or viewers to your website and turning them into paying customers. This do when affiliate products have been added. Some options are:
- Create a page in social media associated to your new website/business.
- Paid advertisement on social media through that page
(Focus on one social media for starters and learn how to use it well)
- Set a maximum amount to spend per day x how many days.
(Try $5 and test how it does)
Capture website visitors by having a sign-up registration form. If you have built your website with WordPress a free or paid versions are available through mail plugins.
If you need to become familiar in how to prepare the registration form search in WP for a simple form plugin, download it, read the instruction in how to use, follow the instruction, create a draft, preview, and make changes until you have it how you want it.
Autoresponders
These are great and organized to help you communicate with your subscribers regularly schedule your messages as you prefer. This service is offered through a wide selection of providers.
Research your options online carefully with special consideration on the amount of contacts to your monthly subscription cost. Prices vary widely.
Sign-up form design templates along with mail formats are user friendly and after a few adjustments to include your individual information they are ready to go.
Learn, do, test, and test again. In all you do in this effort remember giving up is no option.
PERSEVERE!
Priscilla Hudson
Recommended Resources: DIVI Website Builder
For Hosting: VodaHost is straightforward
GOGVO Global Virtual Opportunities is hosting plus other promotions and opportunities
(Should you make a purchase I may be paid a commission)
