How Creating Digital Products Can Give You Passive Income

 Have you heard the statistic that millionaires have up to seven income streams? That's seven different ways that they're making money each month. Now take a look at your business; how many streams of income do you have?

If the answer is one, then it's time to open up that creative part of your brain and create more income streams. One option is passive income products.

"Passive income" is something of a misnomer. Creating products or setting up different forms of income still takes work. But the difference is that these streams of income can work for you---almost on autopilot---for years to come.

Benefits of Passive Income

1. Increase your bottom line profits. This is the most obvious benefit, but worth mentioning, because who doesn't want to earn more profits? And (as you probably well know) limiting your practice to 1:1 coaching can be a "feast or famine" proposition. Passive income streams can help you get through the "famine" times.

But, even in "feast" times, your income from 1:1 coaching is limited to the number of clients you can handle. Passive income streams can help remove that "income ceiling" and create a cushion.

2. Regain time in your day. Hold up... I know I just said that creating products and other streams of income takes time! But jump ahead with me for a minute and think about the back end of the process, when your income stream is completely set up, and the upfront work is done. With a strong marketing plan, you can easily earn money on these passive income streams even while you sleep. That means you can take off a little earlier or take an entire day off for fun, because your "passive" products are still earning money.

3. Increase your credibility by helping more people. Think of passive income as a way to share your expertise with an ever-expanding audience. Imagine a snowball at the top of a mountain representing you with your inner circle of coaching clients. As the snowball travels downhill, it gathers more and more snow until it reaches mammoth size. The same is true of you. As you reach out to more and more people, and providing guidance through your books, webinars, or courses, increased exposure and word of mouth leverage your knowledge and showcase your expertise to more and more people. This all can lead to increased sales and an army of people who rave about your work. So (at least in this case) the snowball effect is a very good thing!

Planning Your Passive Income

Now that I've hopefully sold you on the benefits of having passive income streams, it's time to plan out what those streams should be for your business. Passive income includes affiliate marketing, membership subscriptions, or writing a book. But by far the most popular and engaging is creating courses or digital products based on your coaching specialty.

Digital products allow you to solve other people's problems from the comfort of your home. And your customers get answers to their particular questions almost immediately, and in a format they can use---their home computer, or smartphone.

"A successful digital product has almost unlimited income potential, and there are dozens of examples of successful digital marketers earning millions of dollars each year from products they released several years ago." - C.M. Burns, BigHappyProfits.com

Imagine what your business & life could look like, say, if you had your own online course...

✓ Students excited to learn from you

✓ Working fewer hours while transforming more lives (and without exhausting yourself with 1:1 clients)

✓ Building your credibility & becoming an authority in your niche

✓ No more cap on your income

By creating a digital course, you will finally have a valuable business asset you can launch & sell again & again.

Creating Your Product

There are many steps involved in creating a product but once you've done one, creating others will be easier. When creating a digital product, you want to be sure to make it relevant to your main topic of interest. So, if you are a health coach, you want your product to be about a health issue, not a career issue. Also, you want to further hone it down by asking your audience what they need. This is something you can determine by quick surveys or just by keeping track of their frequent questions.

Next you need to validate the product, double-checking to make sure it's the right one. Ask clients if it would be helpful and/or relevant. Put out questions about it on forums. You could even do a prelaunch with valued clients to test the product for you. I have a colleague who I give my products to in exchange for her evaluation of them.

Then you will need to write content for launching and promoting your product, and, finally, determine your pricing.

Launching Your Product

When you are launching a product, you need both a series of anticipation emails, and a series of launch emails.

1) Anticipation emails build excitement. They should be educating your audience on a topic you're passionate about (and one that's related to the course you're selling). And give them a teaser for the product.

2) Launch emails make the offer. They say that the product is ready and point to where people can buy it.

As this marketer puts it:

"With my launches I built up to anticipation over a matter of weeks, not months or years. Each time I talk about it, the likely buyers get more and more excited. Then I give a clear date for when the product will launch and be available for purchase.

"The day before launch I send out a detailed email providing every bit of information my subscribers need in order to make a purchase. This email covers the benefits of the product, pricing information, and even answers frequently asked questions (that actually haven't been asked yet).

"The one thing the email doesn't include is a link to buy the product. Instead I tell them exactly when the product will be available (8:00 AM Eastern tomorrow) and to expect another email from me at that time." - Nathan Barry, Founder, ConvertKit.com

If your launch runs for 5 days you'll need at least 5 emails. I've been on some lists where they sent out two emails a day---sometimes the same email but different subject lines. To me that's overdoing it, but it depends on your audience as to how often to email them. Keep in mind that they probably don't read all their emails. So it doesn't hurt to send out more than one.

Creating Urgency

Here are four easy ways that you can get your on-the-fence customers to purchase now:

1. Have sale or promotional pricing ending soon

2. Make the product available for a limited amount of time

3. Provide an additional bonus only available to the first x number of customers

4. Limit the quantity available for sale

Pick one or two of these strategies that will resonate with your audience. With careful planning, the urgency in your launch emails can boost sales.

In Conclusion

Working with clients one-on-one is great, but it shouldn't be your entire business model. You need to have some other sources of income that supplement your coaching program. After all, how many times have you had a month with no new clients? With another source of income, that scenario is less painful.

If people don't know you yet, they're probably not going to drop $1000 on a coaching program. But they might be willing to take a chance on you for something that costs them $50 or less---because it's low risk for them.