How to create a passive income stream from your blog
I recently shared five highly actionable, but mostly unrelated, tips with you in this space. Today I want to elaborate on one of those tips.
I suggested that you could create a stream of passive income your blog by adding some up-sell items. The general principle is that you write an informative blog on a topic and then offer an additional resource that takes the topic even further or adds other elements that the reader will find useful.
For example, I know an online marketer who is working on an article about the power of inspirational quote graphics in the social media. He has been creating and using these for some time. Each time he creates one of these graphics with his logo on it, he creates another one where he omits the logo. He plans to sell these “unbranded” graphics when he publishes his article on the topic.
If readers are convinced of the usefulness of publishing inspirational quote graphics and they want some graphics where all they have to do is paste on their branding, this little set of graphics will the available for them.
Another good idea is to write an article that outlines a strategy and then sell a white paper or e-book that is a “how-to” on the ways to implement the strategy. Below is a short list of content items you can create that can be used as up-sells in conjunction with one of your blog posts. They all have the potential to create a good stream of passive income from your blog or website in general.
More passive income ideas
- Checklists. If there are specific items that must be done to accomplish something, or there are certain steps that have to be done in a given order, a checklist can be useful
- Worksheets. If you’re explaining a concept or perhaps a process, creating a worksheet to lead your reader through it can be beneficial. A worksheet is preferable over a checklist when steps must be “thought out” when implementing the process.
- Templates. You could consider my friend’s unbranded graphics as a kind of template. Others would include useful “semi-blank” documents. Scroll through the templates provided by various commercial word processing, graphics and spreadsheet software for ideas.
- Excel files. Maybe you’ve created a killer inventory control spreadsheet or prospect follow-up spreadsheet. Make it look pretty and sell it in conjunction with related content on your website.
- Calendars, planners or to-do lists. If you’re in the B2B field, for example, and your clients are retailers, you could put together a planner or calendar that helps them get prepared for the various holidays and special events that happen throughout the year.
- Resource lists. Think of a master list of free resources, best books on a niche topic, or where to get difficult-to-find items. The possibilities are endless.
- Webinar Recordings. Follow up a webinar with an article that provides a “high altitude overview,” but also allow people who missed the webinar view a recording for a small fee.
- Case Studies. Case studies are powerful and very engaging. As with the webinar, you can provide a useful summary in the article, but go in-depth with a white paper case study.
With these ideas in mind, here’s what you should do right now to monetize your blog using this strategy:
- Look at your analytics and find your top five blogs.
- Brainstorm up-sell items for as many of these five blogs as possible.
- Create the marketable content and the infrastructure to sell it, if you don’t already have this functionality. Short on time? Use freelancers. This is the ideal job for virtual workers.
- Promote this new marketable content from within each blog.
- Promote the blogs regularly throughout your social media accounts, newsletters and any other marketing strategies you use.
After you’ve taken these steps, consider adding the new content as stand-alone items in an online store on your website. You might have to do some editing – perhaps by adding the original articles – to make this work. Ask yourself this: Does it make sense selling this to someone who hasn’t read the original article? If the answer is no, then some editing and repackaging are in order.
Always keep this strategy in mind. In fact, start to create articles that you know will give you the opportunity to create up-sell content. Before long, you should have a pretty good stream of passive income and that will open all kinds of new doors for you with your small business and your lifestyle.