You’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about the benefits of adding passive a passive income stream to your biz, and there’s no question you want in!
( Toes in the sand while my business runs on auto-pilot!? Sign me up!)
Still, there seem to be a lotttt of steps needed to get the passive income ball rolling, and if you’re being honest, not knowing where to start has kept you from starting at all.
Want to know the surest step you can take towards your passive income goals?
Start to create consistent content.
(Yes, even before you have your idea for a passive income product.)
Before we dive into the why’s, let’s get one other super obvious question out of the way, and that is which platform you should use for your specific business.
When choosing which platform to create and host your content on, you want to try to strike the balance between what is going to be easiest for you to actually commit to and achieve, and which format makes the most sense for your topic or audience.
Deathly afraid of public speaking? You may want to forego a podcast.
Growth and development are important, but when it comes to consistently creating content, you are going to want as few reasons to quit as possible. You might prefer blogging, where you have time to gather your thoughts and rewrite those sentences as many times as needed.
There are instances where your audience or topic may be what rules out certain platforms, making your choice a little easier.
Say you are a meditation coach – in this case, a blog may not be the most effective way to share your expertise. Your audience is going to be more likely to reach for a platform that uses audio or video as its main format.
Are you a gamer who gets paid to review video games? Having a perfectly curated Insta grid probablyyy isn’t going to be a priority when YouTube would be so much easier for sharing your reviews in a meaningful and engaging way.
In the end, the platform you choose is not as important as just showing up consistently.
Why content creation is the first step to successfully generating passive income in your business
Reason #1:
It attracts people who are genuinely invested in learning about your topic
(and therefore are more likely to be interested in a paid offering on that same topic.)
If you plan to sell anything, be it an online course, membership, digital download, template, whatever…you are first going to need someone to sell to.
Consistent content creation is the quickest way to build up a following of people who are legitimately interested in learning more about your area of expertise.
Have more than one area of expertise? Great! But you may want to consider niching things down.
If you post or blog about everything under the sun, you’re not really going to attract any one type of person, so narrowing down your idea for which type passive income product they might be interested in is going to be pretty challenging.
When you consistently create content around one topic, you don’t have to wonder what the people who landed on your site came in search of.
You know the questions they are likely to be asking, and can give genuinely useful answers to them, which is super helpful both for planning future content, and for deciding which content will live inside your future paid offerings.
Then, fast forward to the launch of your first course, group-coaching program, membership, etc…
Because of your genuinely helpful content, your audience will already naturally be made up action takers—people who are clearly willing to do the research and put in the work reach their goals—including investing in your next-level help!
Which leads rather nicely into my next reason for getting serious about content creation!
Reason #2:
Consistent, valuable free content establishes authority & trust
You may feel like you are giving it all away for free, but the hand-holding you provide now will keep those same action takers coming back again and again, making you the obvious choice for future queries.
Some of them may use your content to DIY their thing start to finish, and that’s totally cool.
But they’ve seen the way you hold nothing back, and when and if they are ready to level up, they aren’t going to think twice about grabbing your paid passive product if they think it will allow them to skip weeks, months, and even years of expensive trial and error.
If you want to be seen as the expert on your topic, you need to be providing real answers…and not just one time on some dusty old FAQ page in the footer on your site.
Sticking to a schedule for your content lets people know they can trust you to keep showing up for them and that they don’t have to go it alone. They will trust you have their well-being (and not just your bank account) in mind when you do share the good news about your latest offering!
Bottom line: you can be a total expert on your topic, but if you aren’t putting yourself and your answers out there on the regular, people looking for what you’re offering aren’t going to find you very useful.
Or worse…they won’t find you at all.
Reason #3:
Free long-form content helps people find (and stick around) your site
There are a million reasons why someone might have landed on your site, channel, or profile. All you know is that once they are there, you want to do everything in your power to keep them there for as long as possible…
(Or at least long enough to hit that “buy now button” which—FYI—isn’t likely to happen the 1st, 2nd, or even 3rd time they land on your site.)
One of the ways Google and other search engines or social media platforms determine the usefulness and relevance of your site or profile for certain keyword searches is by paying attention to what visitors do once they get there.
If a bride-to-be discovers your site or profile in their search for a “Seattle Wedding Photographer,” the last thing you want them to do is quickly scan your portfolio, see if you have your prices listed, and then return to their search.
Having weeks and weeks of compelling content for them to peruse through and maybe help them prepare for their wedding is going to make them want to stick around and get to know you for more than just your prices.
Because no matter how cutsie your “About” page or bio is, it isn’t going to be nearly as useful as your content when it comes to letting people see your personality and helping them to picture what it would be like to work with you.
Suggested reading:
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I blogged consistently for 1 year, here’s what happened to my traffic
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If I teach what I do for free on my blog, why would anyone hire me?
Reason #4:
Your free content is the most organic way to promote your list-building freebie
A little birdie told you in this post, that the easiest way to build up your email list is to offer something worth signing up for. So now that you’ve created your free gift, where will you display it?
You could drop a link to a free resources page into your bio or your site’s main navigation, but if you have yet to put out any useful content, people aren’t going to take your free thing very seriously!
Your own content is the most relevant and organic place to be dropping hints about opting in to your email list through the use of freebie opt-in gifts.
If they found your blog post, YouTube video, or podcast extremely useful, they are going to want to get their hands on whatever other free thing you have to offer.
Even if it means giving you access to their inbox!
The more useful content you have, the more opportunities you have for plugging freebies that relate to that content, so you can begin to build your email list.
Suggested reading:
Reason #5:
Your free content can easily be repurposed in the future
Got a launch coming up? In the days and weeks leading up to any launch, you’re going to want to show up with as much free, helpful resources surrounding that specific topic as possible.
Thanks to consistent content creation that you’ve already been doing, you don’t need to lose any sleep over what you will post!
You will already have hundreds of past posts on your topic that are ready to be tweaked and re-released as needed to create hype around your new offering!
Rather than spending hours trying to reinvent the wheel with new content leading up to your big launch, you can take a few minutes here and there to update past content, pop in new and exciting freebies, and add any new insights you’ve learned along the way.
Starting now will mean you are ready to roll when you do finally land on your passive income idea.
Or maybe you just need a break to avoid burnout?
Repurposing past content is a whole lot faster and easier than trying to batch out weeks or months of new content to keep your audience engaged while you go off and recharge.
Reason #6:
Relatable content builds the human connection your audience might be missing with other online businesses
Pumping out endless content may seem a tad one-sided, and like you couldn’t possibly connect with that many people the way that you do with your 1:1 offerings.
But if you inject your own personality and story into every bit of content you put out into the world, your audience will feel they can truly relate to you as a human (and not just some robot spewing out facts about your topic).
I recently did a reader survey, where I asked what was keeping people from adding passive income to their business, and here’s one of the most honest responses I received:
“I don’t want to exploit relationships in order to sell.”
I hear you, and I couldn’t agree more.
You do not want to be the sleazy, 6-figure snake oil seller, showing up out of the blue in people’s Facebook Ads (when the truth is you have yet to start a successful business.)
Instead, you want to be the person who showed up every single week and was super generous in sharing their helpful facts and how-tos, as well as letting them in on your wins, losses, and lessons learned along the way.
Your consistent content is inspiration for those watching you grow your business from the ground up, making them believe their own goals are possible, and that you’ve actually put into practice what it is you are selling.
Reason #7:
Consistent Content is the easiest way to rank for your chosen SEO keywords
You want to make it as easy as possible for people searching for information on your topic to find you, and creating consistent content around your topic is the surest way to let Google know that you are highly relevant to that person’s search.
Once Google decides you are useful, you are suddenly going to rank muchhhh higher in search results (think: Google page 1)!
Meanwhile, your competition, who may have a hella impressive paid offering, but who is not creating consistent content on the topic, will be no where to be found. ♀️
Pro-tip: resist the urge to stuff your content to the brim with every last keyword even remotely related to your topic.
You definitely want to make use of those popular search terms, but Google has caught on to keyword stuffers, and is cracking down on content written for search engine robots.
Focus on making your content genuinely useful and writing it for actual humans, using keywords only as they would naturally appear in a sentence. Do this consistently, those coveted SEO brownie points are sure to follow!
Suggested reading:
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6 tips for creating consistent content in your online business
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How I exploded my business using organic SEO (without spending a cent on ad campaigns)
