The 3 Steps I Took to Multiply my Passive Income Stream from $1000 to $5000
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to wake up to find that you’ve made money in your sleep? For years, I thought that this was reserved only for the privileged few.
It always seemed like those who were succeeding were either smarter, luckier, or had better timing than me.
But as I learned more about passive income streams, I realized that making money while you sleep is actually within reach for anyone who is willing to put in the work — and has some knowledge of how to do it.
Today, the first thing I check every morning is my overnight earnings.
I’ve usually sold a couple of Etsy printables, and I’ve often also made either affiliate sales, sold a course – or both.
And as I walk to my 9–5 job, Medium normally publishes the earnings from the day before, adding to the overnight income earnings.
In total, I’ve normally made somewhere between $50 and $100 before getting to the office and starting my «real» job.
Sounds too good to be true?
Well, let me walk you through it, showing the three main steps I’ve taken – steps I think could help anybody wanting to make passive income, regardless of niche.
Make a proper business plan
You see, I didn’t fall into making passive income this way.
I planned it before I started, and then took the necessary baby-steps that was needed to reach the goal.
I make strategies and business plans in my day job, so it was natural for me to make a business plan when I realized that it was possible to make passive income.
Business plans can be simple or conplicated. In this case, I preferred a very simple one.
The important questions here were how I would make money (Etsy, affiliate, writing on Medium etc) and how I would find an audience (in this case: Through Medium and by participating in bundles).
It may sound overly simplistic, but it is of course a little bit more complicated than this.
For instance, once I decided that one of the ways I would find an audience was Medium, I had to figure out which income streams that could contribute to (in my case: Partner Program, affiliate marketing, selling online courses) — and in order for the second two to happen, I needed to take steps to get people from readers to subscribers through offering free products and build an email list.
But that’s it, really.
By knowing the main parts of the business plan and how the different ways of attracting an audience would link to the different passive income streams, it was not that hard to see what I needed to learn, and which steps I had to take to get the snowball rolling.
Learn from others & invest in education
And that brings me to my second point: Learning.
I love education. I’ve done a Master’s degree and numerous extra master courses while working full time. None of these courses taught me much about passive income, though.
To learn making passive income, you need specific courses. I remember being hesitant of investing in the Gold City Ventures E-Printables Side Hustle course that I took before starting with Etsy printables. The price tag of $197 seemed a bit steep.
Therefore, I made a goal for myself to earn back the investment within a year — and decided that my main goal with the course was to learn SEO in a fun way. In other words, my main goal was not to get rich — only to learn.
I think that was a healthy goal, which made it easier to have fun, experiment with SEO and not be stressed that I was “wasting time” while doing it.
In the end, I learned a lot about SEO which has helped me build subsequent income streams — and I did earn back the investment in six weeks, not a year. In only a couple of months, I went from 0 to $1000 in monthly income from the shop.
After succeeding with Etsy printables and getting it up to $1000/month last summer, it was possible to keep the shop quite passive. I had read enough about affiliate marketing to know that I wanted to try that.
But before starting, I had to learn more about affiliate marketing.
I spent a lot of time finding out which courses were the best option for me – and when I was ready, I made the investment (I took this one, if you are interested — and I’ve later taken this one as well.)
Again, I made the investments back quickly. Now, I am considering memberships and making more courses – and again, I am taking courses to learn how to do it properly.
Of course, it is possible to piece information together by watching YouTube videos. I’ve just decided that it is not always worth it for me.
I want to build quickly, and in order to do so, I need a path to follow and someone to guide me. Therefore, investing in a course or two every month is one of the best choices I’ve made, and has contributed strongly to my earnings.
However, a word of advice here: I do this by investing back a small amount of what I am making. If I hadn’t made anything, I would probably have spent more time on free YouTube videos.
ROI of my time
After making a business plan and invest in the learnings of how to sell on Etsy, do affiliate marketing, write on Medium and participate in bundles, I had a sort of list of things I needed to do.
That list of tasks, of course, can feel overwhelmingly long.
Therefore, I always need a bit of guidance on what to do first and how to prioritize all of these tasks.
In order to do these prioritization, I use this matrix to consider every task I do, always looking for tasks that give the maximum value from minimum time invested:
Here, I compare two possible tasks: Designing a new logo (which would take some time, and probably not add very much to my business in terms of income) with making a salespage (which is pretty quick and usually leads in income straight away).
This helps me choose the right tasks to focus on, every day. I use the matrix both to prioritize tasks on a daily and weekly basis, and for making annual strategies.
I’ve written about this more extensively here.
So, that’s it really - the three steps I took to multiply my passive income stream from $1000 to $5000. Does it sound like steps you could follow, too?
