 Imagine what it would be like to have a system that earns you income even while you sleep. It sounds like a dream, but you can make it a reality by building passive income streams. With a bit of hard work and time upfront, anybody can do it. How do people build passive income streams? Many of them get started with one of the most popular methods, affiliate marketing. What is Affiliate Marketing? Affiliate marketing is an online business model where you earn income through a commission by promoting other people’s products or services. You start by joining an affiliate network and searching there for products or services in your niche. Choose something your audience could use, or you’d love to use yourself. Through your content, you promote this vendor’s product and receive a commission on sales by telling your audience about it. How Much Can You Earn with Affiliate Marketing? There is no upper limit to how much you can earn using this business model. It depends on how much work you want to put into it. Affiliate marketing commissions are high and, as many products are digital, there is no overhead such as warehousing and shipping. For example, you might promote an eBook priced at $37. If you have a 50% commission, just selling 20 will get you $370. As you can see, there is great earning potential. You have to create a great deal of content and build your audience, but much of the process can be outsourced or automated. This allows you to multiply the amount you can earn with little extra effort. Know Your Audience and Know Your Product The key to success in affiliate marketing is to choose products and services that are right for your audience. You really need to know your audience’s tastes, values, and behaviors well so you can choose things they would love and purchase. Your niche should be something you’re passionate about. Your passion will be contagious and inspire your audience to check out the offerings you’re promoting. This will also make your marketing authentic, which will build strong relationships with members of your audience. Leverage Metrics to Streamline Your Strategy Since affiliate marketing is done online, there are numerous tools you can use to monitor the results of your efforts. You can track sales data, website visitor behavior, trends in the market, and the activity of your competitors. Monitoring helps you to understand what’s working and what’s not. For example, you might find that one particular blog post converts at a higher rate than the others. This post may be longer and more in-depth. This tells you that your audience responds best to long-form content, and then produce more. Add Your Next Revenue Stream Once you get your first affiliate marketing campaign up and running, it’s time to launch your next. You can create multiple streams of income using this business model and earn a passive income. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.
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 With a bit of planning and work, anyone can set up passive income streams online. There are many business models you can use. Before you get started choosing one that’s right for you, here are the pros and cons of passive income. Pro: You can earn money while you sleep.
About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  Whether you’re interested in starting an online business as an entrepreneur, or just finding a way to make some supplemental cash, passive income streams are the way to go. A passive income stream is something where you set it up once, and then you make money automatically afterward without doing much, if any, additional work. There are many ways you can earn in this way. Here are the most popular and easiest methods of earning a passive income. Sell Information Products Information products are digital products such as eBooks and reports that you can easily create and distribute online. They offer tips and help, teaching the buyer how to solve various problems they face. It takes some work upfront to create an info product, but once it’s published, it creates a passive income as people buy it. If you put out a number of info products, you can earn a significant income. Affiliate Marketing Affiliate marketing involves selling the products of other vendors online. You sign up on an affiliate network and choose products that would offer value to your audience, and then promote them for a generous commission. Podcasting Create a podcast where you discuss topics of interest to your audience and interview experts in your niche. There are several ways to monetize a podcast including selling your own products, promoting affiliate products, selling advertising spots, or offering premium episodes. Create an App Is there some everyday problem your audience faces that a handy app would help? Once you finish the work of creating an app and working out the bugs, you can sell it for a passive income. If you’re not a programmer, create the plan and design for your app and you can hire a programmer to realize it for you. Dropshipping With dropshipping, you can create an ecommerce store to sell products in your niche. What makes it convenient is that you don’t need to hold and manage stock, which eliminates any overhead cost. When orders are placed, the supplier ships out the product directly to your customers. Online Courses Create an online course teaching something you know how to do that most people don’t. It can be anything from playing guitar to setting up an online business, getting started doing yoga or higher mathematics. The key is that you create the course once, then make it available for anyone to take online at any time. There are many platforms available to sell your courses on, and they’re only growing in popularity. Stock Content If you like photography, you can put your photos on stock image websites like Shutterstock. You can decide how much you earn per image and businesses will purchase, download, and use them. Once you post an image there, you’ll get paid each time someone buys it. Every type of passive income is different, but they all work in basically the same way. It takes a bit of work to plan and set up, but once you’re up and running, you’ll earn automatically with little or no effort whatsoever. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  Imagine having multiple passive income streams that inject money into your bank account with little to no work on your part. Sounds great, doesn’t it? While you can set up easy passive income streams and earn exponentially more, there are a few commonly held myths about passive income to dispel first. Myth: The harder you work, the more you earn. Fact: A passive income allows you to create something once and earn from it for years to come.
Myth: It takes money to make money. Fact: You can set up passive income streams with very little overhead.
Myth: You can set it and forget it. Fact: Passive income streams usually require some maintenance.
Myth: You can start earning today. Fact: This business model is a long game that takes time before you’re earning a full-time income.
Myth: Just plug and play and start earning! Fact: It takes work upfront, but this work will pay you back later.
Setting up a passive income and finding success takes some time and hard work. It’s a long game, but the eventual return on investment is well worth it. You can eventually quit your full-time job, or build income streams you can use for savings, retirement, investments, or as a buffer against economic uncertainty. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  Hiring a virtual assistant is a major step in growing your company. With a VA taking over certain tasks and aspects of your business, you can do more. They give you more time to plan and strategize, and more room to scale. The key to hiring and working with a VA successfully is to plan well. What Tasks Can You Outsource? Start by thinking about what tasks you want to outsource. Consider tasks you’d like to outsource today, as well as those you might find helpful as your business grows. For example, you may have some routine daily activities you can get rid of now, but also plan to turn over your social media and blog writing to someone in the future. You need to clarify which tasks you’ll outsource so you can find a qualified person to handle them. This will determine the skills and experience you’re looking for. Training and Onboarding Your VA When you first hire a virtual assistant, you’ll need to onboard them. This is the process of kicking off your relationship and getting them started. It includes:
This process is important at the beginning of your relationship with your VA, but you won’t need to continue after the first few months or so (though it never hurts to give feedback). What’s important here is to have everything planned and in place before you hire them. Create a Communication and Workflow Plan Before hiring a virtual assistant, you’ll need to set up a plan for working together. This includes any tools you’ll use, such as a project management software program or special platform for communicating. Since you’re working together virtually, you’ll have to choose a method and frequency for communicating with your VA. Even if they know what to do and the work is going smoothly, it’s good to touch base regularly and see if they’re having any issues. There may also be changes you need to tell them about. The Growth Mindset Finally, there’s a certain mindset you have to cultivate in order to hire a virtual assistant. There are risks involved and you’ll be handing over some aspects of your business to someone else. During the process of hiring and working with a VA, keep in mind the benefits of this working relationship and the future growth it will enable. We’ve only scratched the surface here and I have much more I can tell you about hiring and working with a VA. Are you ready to start growing your business with your first employee? I’m offering a full course that teaches you step-by-step how to find the right Virtual Assistant and work with them, complete with learning exercises so that you get started as you learn. Check it out HERE Don’t Wait!!! About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  Hiring a virtual assistant is a huge step for any entrepreneur. It means giving up some control over your business. But it's also your first move towards scaling up your business so that it can grow beyond its current limitations. If you’re thinking about taking this crucial first step, there’s a certain mindset you need to cultivate first. Learning to Let Go When you hire a VA, you’re not giving away the keys to the kingdom. But you are letting go of some part of your business operations, even if it’s just a handful of tasks. Your business is your baby. Up until now, you’ve done everything yourself. It’s easy to understand why outsourcing tasks is scary. The way to overcome this fear is to focus on the positive. Think about the immediate benefits you’ll receive from outsourcing some aspects of your business. You can also mitigate this fear by being careful about what you hand over. Hire a VA you can trust and only share with them what they need to get the job done. Outsourcing Costs Money It’s certainly true that hiring a virtual assistant costs money. How much does it cost? This depends on what you need done. It’s also not a good idea to cut corners. If you pay as little as possible, it’s only natural that you’ll get what you pay for. You can mitigate this risk by allocating a budget you can afford. Work out the numbers beforehand and make an offer that doesn’t break the bank. Hiring a virtual assistant, if done right, will earn you greater profits in the future. One way to adjust your mindset is to think of hiring a VA as buying time. You pay for the VA to take tasks off your hands so that you have time to focus on more important things. Managing Others Is No Fun One mindset challenge that many face is that they don’t want to become managers. Up to this point, you’ve only had to manage yourself and, for some of us, that’s enough of a monumental challenge. But now you have an employee and you are their boss. Working with a VA isn’t the same as managing a busy office. First of all, as the name suggests, it’s “virtual.” You give the VA tasks to do and check in regularly to see how they’re doing. Once the training and onboarding is finished, they’ll require little management, and the investment you make in training will pay off with the time you gain. So Many Things Can Go Wrong You may have heard horror stories about virtual assistants who caused terrible headaches for other businesses. Especially the first time, hiring a VA isn’t easy and there are many things that can go wrong. While it’s true that it’s a complex and often difficult process, you can overcome this by being prepared. Carefully consider the jobs you need done, search for the right person, and prepare a good training and onboarding process to get them on track. It also helps to realize that a bad VA experience isn’t a business-ending event but a learning opportunity. I’m offering a full course that teaches you step-by-step how to find the right Virtual Assistant and work with them, complete with learning exercises so that you get started as you learn. Check it out HERE About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  Onboarding is an important part of hiring your virtual assistant. It gets them "on board" with your company so that they're ready to start working on the tasks you're giving them. It also kicks off your relationship with your VA on the right foot. Share Your Business's Vision and Values Your virtual assistant needs to understand exactly what your business is all about. Start your onboarding by teaching them the unique value you offer to the market. Show them what sets you apart and convey to them the principles that are at the core of your business. You need to be on the same page before you start delegating work to them. Training Your VA A major part of your VA's development is the training you give them when they are first hired. Even with years of experience doing the work you want them to do, they won't know your unique systems and processes. Training is especially challenging because you don't see them face to face, but you can take advantage of online tools. What's important is to create a good training plan before you hire a VA. Your Training Content Create content that you can use along with your online training sessions. Even if you explain the process step-by-step, this content will still be extremely helpful. Your VA can refer back to it when needed. This content could be:
Hold Regular Sessions It depends on the nature of the work you're outsourcing, but you'll probably need more than one training session. Your VA might have questions or issues along the way. It's best to set up regular training sessions where you can take their questions, offer feedback, and help them if they're getting stuck somewhere. Tips and Best Practices for Onboarding Your VA
Are you ready to get started building your business with a virtual assistant? This course teaches you how to do it step-by-step so that hiring a Virtual Assistant is as smooth and effective as possible. Check it out HERE Hiring and Onboarding a Virtual Assistant  Hiring a virtual assistant frees up your time, adds new skills to your organization, and allows your business to scale up. It’s a natural step for solo entrepreneurs who are ready to grow. Things are much easier with a skilled VA at your side, but the first challenge is finding the right person. Skills and Experience Start by figuring out exactly what you need done. What skills and experience are necessary to do the tasks you want to outsource? Clarifying this will help you create a job ad that will attract the right kind of help and it will weed out those who don’t have the skills you need. Set Your Budget Decide how much you’re willing to spend to hire a virtual assistant. You can pay them a recurring salary or for each individual project they do for you. You should put the payment details in your job ad. This prevents the back and forth of negotiating on payment terms. Location and Language Your virtual assistant can be located anywhere in the world and some countries offer cheaper rates than others. As part of the specifications of the job, decide on location and language. Keep in mind that if your VA is on the other side of the world, you’ll need to arrange times to communicate. You should also consider whether native-level English is a must. Shop Around Before you write and post your ad, look around at virtual assistants offering their services online. This will give you a good idea of what they are proposing and the going rate. You may also want to look at VA job ads to get ideas for writing your own. Short List Applicants Once you post your job ad, start a list of applicants who meet your criteria. Look at each one carefully and narrow it down. Once you have a few who you particularly like, make contact with them. Ask for samples of the kind of work you need done if applicable. You can also vet them by asking for references and talking to past clients. The Final Decision Set up interviews with applicants who seem suitable. Ask them about their work experience and skills, but also get a feel for their personality. You’ll need to create a good connection with this person, so it’s important that you can communicate and that you get along well. Set Job Standards Determine standards for the work you need done so your VA knows what you expect. Design step-by-step processes for the key tasks you want your VA to handle. Go through each one to examine how you do things now and in what order, and lay this out in a document. For example, you might turn the information into a checklist or flow chart. Think About Scaling As your business grows, you may need a virtual assistant with additional skills. Think about this when you hire someone. They might have other skills that you can use in your business in the future. Keep in mind that hiring a virtual assistant is a process. It’s not always easy and there could be problems that arise. If you want to learn how to hire and work with a VA stress-free, check out my full course. It covers all the steps from beginning to end including Action Steps. Check it out here: Hiring and Onboarding The Right Virtual Assistant  Even if you run a brick-and-mortar offline business, an email list can help you grow your customer base and build deeper relationships with them. Through the content you share with them there, they’ll become buyers and brand advocates.
Here’s how it works. Get People to Sign up for Your List The first step is to get people to sign up for your list. You can advertise your list in your offline marketing materials, but the best way is to do it online. Offer a lead magnet that people can download for free in exchange for their name and email address. Customers download the free gift and enjoy the unique value it offers, and then start receiving email messages from you. The key here is to ask for as little as possible. Name and email address is enough. If you make it difficult, people won’t sign up. The other key is that the lead magnet has to be valuable. It could be an eBook, a free report, a video, or any other type of content that helps people solve their problems. Engage Subscribers with Valuable Content Don’t start promoting to new subscribers right away. You’ve started a relationship with them by offering helpful free content, so keep the content coming, at least at first. Give subscribers helpful tips and information that they can only receive through your list. For example, if you’re a plumber or hardware store, offer ideas on DIY home improvement. A law firm can offer tips on legal matters. A car repair shop can teach its customers more about their cars. Share your knowledge with your email subscribers and this will start to build a relationship with them. Offering free content through your email list will also help you gather feedback from your market. You’ll see which sub-topic areas they like and how they react. For example, you might have a link in an email leading people to a free resource on your website. Your email autoresponder program will give you data on what people click and don’t click. Make Exclusive Offers to Your Engaged Subscribers Gradually start making offers and promoting products and services, such as online deals or coupons for your offline store. Create a balanced mix between informational content and offers. Just like with your content, exclusivity is enticing. Emphasize that these deals are only available to your email subscribers. You’ll earn directly from the offers you make to your list, but you’ll also gain valuable strategic information. You’ll likely find that some subscribers take advantage of offers while others don’t. Some will just enjoy the free content. The ones that buy are your qualified leads. You can lead them to make bigger and bigger purchases. It takes a great deal of effort to successfully build and run a list. You need to provide constant high-value content. You also have to first gain a keen understanding into your target market and what issues they face. But this highly personal method for building relationships, earning directly, and getting to know your audience is invaluable. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality. Follow Us on Facebook For More Business Tips.  Building an email list takes time and effort. Some say it’s the hardest work an online business does. But the benefits are well worth it. It’s an excellent way to gather and qualify leads and build relationships with your audience.
While it takes a bit of work, here are some ways to speed it up and grow your list faster. Make Your Sign-up Forms Stand Out Create sign-up forms that grab people’s attention and place your forms in a prominent spot on your site. Design the form so it’s different from the rest of the page and surround it with benefit-laden calls-to-action telling people what they can expect from signing up. Placement is also important for getting people’s attention. Put your sign-up form multiple places on your website. Put it in a sidebar but also at the bottom, and add an exit pop-up to catch people before they leave. Name and Email Address Only Your form should have just two fields to fill in – name and email address. Don’t ask for anything more than that. This personal information is already a big ask and if you make it harder or more complicated to sign up, people won’t do it. Advertise Your Email List Everywhere In addition to your site, tell people about your email list everywhere you talk to your audience. Advertise it on social media (including your profile), email signature, marketing materials, and anywhere else people might potentially see it. Emphasize the Benefits of Your List What unique value does your list offer? Identify this and explain it everywhere you talk about your list. Understand your target buyer well and offer them something irresistible. Frame it in terms of how your email content will improve their life. Use a Lead Magnet You can entice more people to sign up by using a lead magnet. This is a free piece of content that people can get in exchange for their name and email address. The lead magnet also gives people a taste of the value they can expect from your list. Offer a Content Upgrade Another way to offer a taste of your list’s value is to offer a content upgrade. Give people a blog post, podcast, or other free content that shows what they’ll be receiving from your list. Then, tell them if they want more help with issues they’re facing, they can sign up here. Tell People Offline Don’t forget to tell people you meet offline about your list as well. If you have an offline store, advertise and tell customers personally. Include it on offline marketing materials as well as online. Monitor Your Marketing Results Keep track of where the bulk of your new subscribers are coming from. For example, if you find that your Facebook page is driving more traffic, focus your efforts there. You may also try other social media sites to see if you get similar results. Alternatively, if you find that some marketing channel isn’t sending new subscribers, drop it and try another. This is how you discover what works best for your market. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality. Follow Us on Facebook For More Business Tips. |
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