What is passive income?

Good question, babe. The term ‘passive income’ refers to money you’re making without ‘doing anything’. Under this premise, your day job would be considered ‘active’ income because you show up and actually do something to earn that cheddar.

Examples of passive income would be money you earn through digital downloads on your website, a course you sell, a commission made through affiliate links, etc. Each of those things I’ve listed can be considered ‘passive income assets’ because they’re assets you’ve created with the intention of making money off them while you’re busy at your daily grind.

But is that really the case? LET’S INVESTIGATE!

But first, a little background…

Before I delve in and give you my opinions on passive income, lemme give you some context for my own experiences. I currently have 4 streams of passive income set up in relation to my freelance business:

1) Ko-fi

I have a Ko-fi account tied to my business. It allows people to support me with voluntary donations, starting at £3 (the price of a coffee…hence the name).

I’ve received around 48 donations between starting my account and writing this blog post (about two years), and I promote it in YouTube videos and here on my blog.

2) The Witchy Freelancer eBook

The Witchy Freelancer is a 17-page eBook passion project which I sell for £3 here on my website. I promote it in my monthly newsletter, The Copy Coven, and have made a total of £244 from it to date — that’s about 81 sales since its launch in October 2021.

3) LinkedIn for Humans affiliate link

Does this count as passive income? I’m gonna say it does. After completing Sophie Cross’s LinkedIn for Humans course in early 2021, I signed up to get an affiliate link.

It means I get a £25 kickback every time someone uses my link to purchase the course. Since signing up, I’ve made £150 ish, but the course more than paid for itself anyway — I got roughly £10k directly from LinkedIn after doing it! Ka-ching!

4) Bada$$ Pitch journalism pitching course

Never heard of this before? Not to worry, babe. You’re not outta the loop — I’ve just never promoted it! I created a journalism pitching course in 2021 to give aspiring journalists my own personal guide to scoring feature articles.

The course was hosted on Teachable, and despite never promoting it, I managed to make £100. The course is currently looking for a new home, so it isn’t making any money for me right now.

Now let’s get some context over a year in the life of my affiliate income…

Last year, I made roughly £477 through all four of those passive income channels. That equates to roughly one day at my copywriting day rate.

Not bad, I hear you say. But let’s put that into context again — it took me about a week (maybe more?) to create my course. It took about two weeks to get my eBook written, designed, and ready to sell, complete with testimonials, marketing, and a landing page.

Make of that what you will, babe.

If you’re still sold on the idea of passive income, here are four things you might want to consider before you get involved…

1) Are you making something useful?

Well, are you? Or are you creating something just to make money? If you're just turning out a money spinner, that's going to be quite bad for your brand overall.

People aren't stupid — they can see when something has been made in a soulless, heartless cash grabby way, and they're probably not going to engage with it. So, it's likely that you'll spend a lot of time and effort making something that nobody downloads.

So, my first point of consideration would be: can you find something that is unique to you, even if it's a concept that’s been done before? What will you bring to the concept that is unique to you? What's your special twist going to be? Is anyone actually going to find this shit useful?

So think about what you can bring to the table. And if you have something that you're excited about, then that's the first hurdle checked off!

2) Does it pass the stress test?

So, you’ve got this wicked idea, and you're excited about it. Fab! Now go to your target market and ask whether anyone would be interested in it (I went to my private freelance group on Discord because mine was a product for freelancers).

It'll help you test the water concerning who's going to buy and gives you a pool of potential testers/testimonial-givers when the product is finished.

3) Are you prepared to promote that shit? Like, forever? Under your own name?

…okay, that was three questions. But you get the gist.

When your passive income asset is up and ready to go, you’ll need to promote it. And keep promoting it. For example, Sophie Cross made a LinkedIn group for people taking her course and made the affiliate codes I’ve been using, so her customers could become her marketers!

At the end of the day, you can only get the full value from your asset if you consistently and regularly promote it.

4) Are you ready to track it?

Are you prepared to keep a vigilant eye on that little asset of yours? It's helpful to gain insight into how much money you're making from it (because you wanna know when you've broken even) and where the revenue is coming from. Which channels need more of a push, and which are working wonders?

Keeping tabs is great because it'll be a guide if you decide to level up in the future and do something more ambitious.

Overall thoughts: is passive income worth it?

I've got a pretty conflicted opinion when it comes to passive income. On the one hand, I enjoyed making the things I sell, so they've paid me two-fold because I took such pleasure in making them, and I earned money off them.

It's also worth noting that I scored two very cool opportunities off my Witchy Freelancer eBook — an offer to ghostwrite a book and an offer to write music features for Witchology Magazine. So there’s that to consider!

You'll be sorely disappointed if you think you can just make something, stick it up on your site, leave it, and consistently earn from it. That shit needs regular promoting if you're going to get your money's worth, despite what the hustle bros say.

At the end of the day, if you’ve got an original idea that you’re excited about, then mate — go off. Make that shit, sell that shit, and enjoy the process. It’s fun as hell. Tag me in it when you do, yeah?

Are you toying with the idea of passive income? Have you already done it? Give me a shout on Twitter and share your thoughts.

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