Take Your Passive Income to the NEXT LEVEL with These 7 Pro Tips
Easy Passive Income Ideas For Freelancers in 2023 To Earning a Sustainable Side Income
What comes to mind when you hear someone whisper “passive income?” Do you have a picture of you traveling across the world on your private jet making extreme money or if you’re like me, sleeping on your couch till 12 noon while still thousands of $$$ in your bank?
That’s right but you’re wrong. Let me explain.
An artist collecting royalties on music made is a passive income but behind, he had to compose, write, record, release, and promote his song before he could enjoy the passive income of royalties.
You’re not a musician, but how do you start making passive income?
Similarly, passive income requires some background work that you can’t bypass. Passive incomes are not get-rich-quick schemes but a solid business like your freelance business.
Like royalties in music, you’ve done the background work once and you enjoy the benefits later on.
Here are 5 passive income ideas for freelancers with zero experience, students who only lunchtime to make money, professionals, and entrepreneurs while still juggling their main work.
Disclaimer: Many people are actively making money on these passive incomes in 2023.
Selling digital content as a side hustle
You might have read about this on every passive income blog on the web but this is different.
The difference is some people will tell you what to do but they won’t tell you how to do it. This guide will show you the best digital content to sell for the best passive income and how to promote digital products for a stable cash flow.
Images and Photos
You might have an old grandpa’s camera in your family house or an old family snapshot decade ago, these are great as side jobs while enjoying the click of the camera shutter.
Setting an account setup on Getty Images, Shutterstock, and so on can get you off the radar.
Notion productivity kits
As Notion is growing to become one of the best all-in-one apps for productivity, the importance of having a well-designed kit can’t be emphasized enough.
People always want what works for other people.
If you’re a Notion user, selling a notion page online is a great way to start your passive income journey in 2023.
However, creating a Shopify or WordPress e-commerce site for selling a notion template is a stretch. A simple upload on Gumroad can make users donate at least $1 for downloading your content.
A user might even donate $300 (who knows?)
Resumé kit for job seekers
Almost everyone on the internet is seeking some kind of job.
Yet again, people will always want what works for someone rather than coming up with their own original ideas.
A resume kit that has probably worked for you in the past isn’t something you need to start again. You can just take a screenshot and upload the resume with a little backstory and then you’ve got your passive income upfront on the web.
Or if you don’t have a kit, you can build one from the Resume kit and add it as a digital product.
Graphic design templates as side products
This is one of the most common passive incomes for graphic designers. But the mistake new people make here is going on dedicated graphic template websites.
Yes, people make big money with these websites but it’s only a few of them.
But this is simplified for you because there’s another way you can sell and earn your own fair share of the market.
Icons, fonts, or UI/UX kits
These may be similar to design templates but no. During your time as a designer, you’d have made a few designs and have some stock images, fonts, icons, and UI/UX for your work-related templates done which you can just copy and paste on the internet for a passive income.
There are several ways to market these passive income streams which will be shared below.
Ebooks
Almost everyone has heard this on the internet. You can make a full-time living with ebooks but the web is also full of countless (good and bad) ebooks that make selling worrisome.
But your passive income with ebooks will take another dimension here.
Instead of selling a 500-page ebook for the sake of passive income, a 1–5 page ebook can be all you need to start earning good passive income online.
Remember, people love to see what works for someone else and they’d always be triggered to try it out.
Software or Tools
Some of the tools I use online to foster my freelance business are tools that are made by individuals and freelancers like me.
Although some might be in a beta state, some of these tools are one of the best. If you’ve got any tools you developed maybe for your own personal use or public use, this section is for you.
You can sell these tools online and earn passive income while you sleep.
Where To Sell Your Digital Products
Passive income ideas are not important as to how you can sell the ideas, where to sell the ideas, and how you can promote the products for more sales.
Gumroad
If you’re selling something you developed yourself, this platform is the best way to sell your digital products.
Although not a full-fledged e-commerce store, it’s the best platform to navigate the complex passive income industry with a competitive edge.
Gumroad gives you options to charge a specific price for your products or make people pay whatever they want.
Gumroad for passive income calls your product free to download but they’ll need to tip (more like donating) you something before downloading
You can set your minimum donation to $1 and to whatever you want but I’ll advise keeping it between $1-$10.
With the marketing and free promotional ways to promote your product in the last section of this guide, having 1000+ downloads ($1000+) for your digital content won’t be a myth.
Creative Market
Another channel for selling your products is the creative market. It’s a licensing platform where their users can download your creative kits and you get a share from their subscription models.
Creative Market may be a good option because it has enough audiences to sell to but also, there are many sellers on the platform.
But it all depends on the quality of what you’re selling and the outbound marketing you do for your product.
Shopify
Shopify is one of the largest e-commerce platforms that gives users a plethora of choices and makes digital selling simple.
You might have heard of Shopify and how you can list your products on a hosted site, get a domain of your own, and start selling. But the turnoff here is the time, energy, and money it’ll take to set them up.
However, if you’re looking to be professionally branded, Shopify is a good way to earn some passive income.
Similar options to Shopify are Etsy, eBay, and Alibaba. But these are only good options if you’ve got physical products to sell.
Clickbank
Clickbank is another e-commerce platform where selling online can be light and breezy.
It gives users features to make selling digital products easy, active, and passive.
Although you might need to do the promotion yourself and direct users to your product page, Clickbank handles the rest of the logistics for you — from payment to checkout and everything else.
But you might not want a 7.5% commission cut on every sale of your product which makes Clickbank a good choice for new freelancers looking to earn passively.
How To Promote Your Digital Products
Some people will tell you what to do but won’t tell you how to do it.
Here, I’ll be showing you creative ways to promote your digital products and get enough sales in the background.
Social Media is Your Go-To Source
Social media is where people are and that’s where you can get their eyes on your products.
Here is a list of the most effective social media platforms where you can get your digital products off the bat.
One of the biggest forums on the web is Reddit.
You can promote the product of your choice by checking out subreddits that are relevant to your product niche and selling along.
Although, you’ll need to do the manual filtering of posts and include a link to your product page as a solution to their need or to learn more.
Quora
Similar to Reddit is Quora. But Quora is different because it emphasizes questions and answers.
To promote your product on Quora, you’ll have to tailor your search to relevant questions that your target audiences might be asking — or a question around the problem that your product solves.
Filtering your searches and getting your products as a recommendation for solving their problems will go a long way in earning passively.
A big guy in the space of selling your digital product is Twitter.
Twitter is a platform where top influencers live. It’s a plethora of opportunities to get your passive income boosted in just days.
There are many ways you can promote your products on Twitter but using influencers will go a long way.
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
We all know a single recommendation from top influencers can lead to millions of sales but how do you get them on board?
If you tweet your post, your views might be less than 100 and it’ll take time and effort to get a share from an influencer.
In this case, there are influencers in your product niche, find them. Sneak your product into their next few posts.
Here, you don’t want to spam their comment section with excess links like someone with zero marketing knowledge. You want to share a relevant comment that then connects to your product page as a further solution.
Remember, people like using something that someone has used before. So don’t be scared to promote your work.
A billion users mean that the eyes you can get on your product through Facebook can be called unlimited.
Facebook is the biggest platform to get your product out and running and selling without moving two fingers (only if the work has been done upfront).
Find forums on Facebook, check out relevant questions, and follow through with relevant answers referencing your product as the solution you used.
The trick here is to be sincere and not salesy. Anyone can sniff a poser from a mile away.
Big Affiliate Forum
There are some affiliate websites whose purpose is to get buyers and sellers together.
Having your product listed on such big forums can mean a massive spike in sales and engagement for your passive earnings.
As long as your product is already vetted by you (you’ve seen results yourself), engaging on this platform won’t be a hard nut for you to crack.
Some of these affiliate forums include;
- CJ Affiliate
- Awin
- AffiliaXe
- GiddyUp
- Impact
- Word-of-mouth
And the ancient marketing tactic which isn’t going anywhere soon — word-of-mouth still works for passive incomes.
Although this is only limited because you can’t bring up your product in any discussion that isn’t relevant to the problem your product solves.
But either way, word-of-mouth is a great marketing strategy for promoting your digital products locally and to people around you. If they don’t buy it themselves, they might refer you to someone who will buy it.
Reaching Out to Small YouTube Channels for promotion
The best on the list.
And don’t underestimate the importance of small YouTube channels because the audiences you can amass from the 10k views, 3k views, and 1k views from those growing channels is what you don’t want to miss.
If your product is something these channels can use, offer them the product to try it out in return for a shout-out or a link in the description of their next video.
These small channels are still growing, and having a product owner reach out to them is a dopamine reflex that’ll make them think they’re going in the right direction. After all, that’s why they’re on YouTube.
If you do well with communicating, they’ll be willing to promote your product to their viewers.
If you can do this for 10 channels that have about 10k views in each video, that’s about 100k people knowing about your product.
Simple, right?
Rest and enjoy your passive earnings through your past active efforts
Now button up and get to work. In your hands now, you’ve got digital product ideas, passive income ideas, where to sell your products, and how to promote them in creative ways.
If you find anything you enjoy in this article, please feel glad to get me inspired with a comment. Thanks for reading.
