If you’re an entrepreneur searching for ways to increase your passive income, here are five tips you can start using right away:
1. Ask for advice from multiple, successful entrepreneurs
Advice is subjective and will always be given according to the experience of the person providing the advice. You could ask 100 entrepreneurs the same question and receive 100 different answers, and some of the answers will probably contradict each other. Does that mean some people are wrong and some are right? Not exactly. It just means there’s more than one way to solve a problem.
Entrepreneurs know what works for them, and that’s all they can tell you. Their method may not always be consistent with your business model, your skills, and your knowledge, but don’t let that stop you from seeking advice.
When you ask for the same advice from multiple people, you’ll get access to a wide range of techniques and strategies that work, and you can choose the best one for you. If you don’t know who to ask, here are some tips from 11 well known entrepreneurs to get you started.
2. Avoid joining MLM programs
MLM programs only work for those who understand how to play the game and love to hustle. They’re touted as the perfect opportunity for anyone to generate passive income, but that’s not how they really work. This article perfectly and logically explains why MLM programs are not legitimate business opportunities.
Joining a multi-level marketing program when you have no experience in aggressive network marketing is a bad idea because instead of making money, you’re just going to be giving your hard earned cash to the MLM company in the form of monthly fees, and buying the required products you don’t really want.
Unless you’re highly adept or experienced in the MLM scene, avoid joining these programs. If you’ve already joined and you’re not making progress, get out as fast as possible and put your membership dues to better use.
3. Choose less risky side ventures
If you’re going to start some side ventures, choose opportunities that limit your risk of not getting paid, and don’t require endless marketing to close a sale.
If you want to own a business that you don’t need to market, consider buying a FedEx delivery route. As a contractor, you are only required to maintain the trucks and retain your employees. The company does all the marketing for you, and you get paid weekly by FedEx. This beats doing all of your own marketing and chasing down clients with overdue invoices.
4. Build a single authority website, skip the micro sites
Well known internet marketers will tell you a great way to generate passive income is to create several micro websites in different niches, and make money from selling downloads and sponsored advertisements. This works for some people, but it requires years of intense effort. Why so much effort?
When you don’t have any firsthand expertise in the niches you choose, it will take more effort to create content, and the content quality will suffer. People will know you’re an “armchair expert.” You’ll spend your time and money perpetually generating traffic, because your visitors won’t have any reason to come back. Instead of being able to leverage the ease of selling to returning customers, you have to work harder to make every sale from scratch.
Enter the authority site. The massive, towering, explosion of amazing, cutting-edge information and content on a given subject you know extremely well. This is the kind of website that reels people in and makes them want more.
You can create an authority website on any subject, no matter how obscure. There’s a captive audience for every niche.
If you’re not convinced you can create a massive authority website about anything, consider that websites like lolcats (funny cat pictures with hilarious captions) and icanhas.cheezburger often generate over 30,000 likes for a single meme. When was the last time your business’ Facebook posts got that much action?
5. Add upsells to your sales process
Providing upsells throughout the sales process is a good way to increase the amount of money your customers spend per transaction. Your upsell can be as simple as adding a bonus coaching session for $20, or unlimited access to your digital library of resources for $10/month. If you generate 100 sales with a $20 upsell, that’s an extra $2,000 in your pocket.
Your upsells can be anything, as long as they follow the basic principles of marketing. They need to be relevant to your customers, and your copywriting should be flawlessly effective.
