Unlocking Passive Income: Turbocharge your Business with Automated Revenue

Imagine unlocking the doors to a steady stream of income, even when you're not actively working, and transforming that into a reality for your business. This episode unravels the mysteries of implementing passive income strategies and how these can turbocharge your business growth. 

From exploring the riveting world of email marketing to the allure of loyalty programs, we'll give you a front-row seat to the power of automated emails and the magic of personalized customer service. Discover how these strategies can upsell your products and make your loyal customers feel like VIPs, driving repeat business and boosting your bottom line.

Ever wondered how successful businesses leverage podcast promotion and listener engagement to drive income? We've got you covered! We'll pull back the curtain on the various types of passive income and spotlight their unique pros and cons. Ready to dip your toes into the passive income stream? We've stocked this episode with practical tips on how to get started and maximize your returns. Plus, we share our personal voyage in the e-commerce industry, imparting our firsthand experiences, hard-learned lessons, and winning strategies. 

Stay tuned till the end to learn how you can connect with us and share your thoughts, queries, or comments.

Mentioned Resources: 

Email Marketing – The Key to Unlocking Customer Loyalty and Revenue

Customer Loyalty – Strategies for Turning One-Time Buyers into Lifelong Customers

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Chapters

• 0:00 Passive Income Options for Businesses
• 14:31 Promoting Podcast and Encouraging Engagement

Transcript

Carrie: 0:00

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you were making money in your business while you were asleep or in off hours? What would that mean for your business growth? What about your financial freedom? This week we're talking about passive income for businesses, what it is and why you would want it, and options to consider. Some of them may even surprise you.

Carrie: 0:23

Welcome to the Ecommerce Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine-month-old. My main goal To help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech and to easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together.

Carrie: 0:56

Welcome back to this week's episode of Ecommerce Made Easy podcast. Today, we're diving into passive income for your business, what it is, what options are out there, and we're going to try to help you choose a few that might be a good fit. So one of the first ones we're going to talk about is something we've already talked about some on this podcast, which is email marketing. So I will be linking in the show notes our podcast about email marketing so you can get a bit bigger picture of it if you haven't already listened to that one. But what automated email marketing is is it's a great way to utilize the customers you already have and some potential newbies to you, to be able to really hone in on them, get to know them better and then, when the time is right, also offer them offers in your email and create leads and income for you while you're asleep. One of the great ways to do this is to have automated emails. You're going to want automated emails whenever somebody signs up to your list, welcoming them to your list and helping them get to know you and your brand a bit better. You're going to probably want some automated emails after purchasing. I highly recommend this. This is not something that I see very many businesses doing, but it's such a great personal touch if you get an email, say a week or two later, after you've either received the product or utilized the services, to check in on that customer and see how they like their product, if they have any questions or need any help with it. So setting up automated emails for something like this is just really great customer service and I highly recommend it. You can even upsell in these emails. I suggest you don't do it super hard and it's like a soft upsell. But you can also showcase what your other offers are, in case you think it would be appropriate for them. So in the show notes that we will link to the email marketing episode we've already done, and here in a few weeks we're going to actually bring on a guest speaker who is going to talk to us a lot more about email marketing. So be sure to subscribe to our podcast, whatever you're listening, so that you can get notified when that one goes live, because I think it's going to be super exciting.

Carrie: 3:12

Some of the other things that email marketing can do, while we're on that subject, still is it can save you a lot of time and resources, especially if you have that automated, like I'm talking about. It also makes you very consistent in your customer services and you can personalize it to the consumer. So if you use something like the tool we use, a Webber, or the other tool that we also recommend, convertkit, you can actually have it tag your users whenever they click on a link or do certain things in the email, and then you can spawn off automated emails based upon those and do recommendations or just more information for them based upon what they're interested in. So I highly recommend you listen to the episode we're going to link to and make sure that you look out for our new one coming up, which we will link to in the show notes after that one airs too. Another thing we've talked about in a previous podcast episode, which again we'll link to in the show notes to make it easier for you to find, is loyalty programs.

Carrie: 4:11

Loyalty programs are vastly popular with consumers. I know I personally will shop with somebody with a loyalty program, even if maybe their prices are a little bit more expensive than, say, if I got it off of a generic store. You probably know what I'm talking about Because I want to support that business for appreciating me and giving me loyalty rewards for it. There is one online that I love to use. It's actually Primal Kitchen. I love to use Primal Kitchen because it's safe for me. I have celiac and I can't eat any gluten or anything cross-contaminated with it. So I love Primal Kitchen because I know all their products are safe for me and they have a loyalty reward program, so I'm more likely to buy their products from there than from the big generic general online store that I'm sure you can guess which one I'm talking about.

Carrie: 5:05

Also, I have a local pet store here that sells dog food and cat food and you get rewards. You get your 11th bag free. I mentioned this on one of my other episodes too. You get your 11th bag free. I just love that because I feel appreciated, I feel seen by this small local store. I could get this same dog food on that big website that's online. I could also get it at a corporate place around here, but I choose to support my local business One because I love supporting local businesses, because it's just one of the things I do, but also because they have the loyalty program. I actually built oh gosh, it was probably in 2004, maybe A loyalty program for one of the shopping carts we worked for at the time, a customer rewards program, so people earned points for every dollar they spent on my store, and then this was also something other people could buy and plug into their store, and then they could redeem those points for a discount later. People loved it. So look at what the options are for you and your e-commerce system or your WordPress system. If you're using WordPress and selling services, look at what the options are for a loyalty program. People really appreciate that and find it very valuable, so look into that and see what options you have.

Carrie: 6:33

So something else you can do to create money while you are asleep or not actively doing something in your business is content monetization. I kind of find that a little bit of a mouthful, but basically what it means is giving out valuable existing content through blogs, youtube podcasts etc. But having a way either whether it's through Google advertisements or YouTube advertisements or things like that If you do it tastefully, that is one way you can create a little bit of generate some revenue on your business when you're not actively working. It's a passive way to get income. It's definitely something you need to be very careful with it, because I was actually on a website the other day of a client that had a ton of ads on it and it was so distracting. I actually didn't know they had ads on their website until I went to it in Chrome, because in Firefox I have an ad locker on purpose, because that's the one I use the most to do work and I wanted to check the website out in Chrome and, oh my goodness, I was overwhelmed with ads along the side and along the bottom and they were following me wherever I went. So I will say a word of caution If you do something like Google ads on your website, please make sure it's appropriate and tastefully put in and not distracting for the user, because we've talked a lot on this podcast about making sure your website's effective, so that's one way you can make it not effective, and I'm actually going to be giving this person some advice on that and helping them through that to make sure they create the best balance there for them. But definitely advertisements on your site is definitely an option if you think that's appropriate for you and your audience.

Carrie: 8:17

Now here's something people don't always necessarily think about and that's digital products. So the digital products could be courses, they could be ebooks, they could be templates, they could be printables, they could be graphics, etc. So really think about what your business does and who it serves. Do any of these items resonate with them and would they find value in them? I feel like a lot of businesses would be able to monetize on ebooks and potentially, digital courses especially, and the reason I say that is it's just another way for the consumer to really get to know you, get to know your brand, and for you to provide great value to them.

Carrie: 9:05

So if you have some really good resources on your topic say, you sell dog food online and pet products and cat food well, maybe you were previously a dog trainer and you have a lot of knowledge on training dogs you could have an ebook that's maybe $5, $10, something small. That might be a great thing for your consumers to purchase if they're struggling with their dog and really need to help train it, or maybe they have a new puppy and they want to know the right way to train their new puppy. So creating an ebook around that could be great. Now, if you have more time and resources, doing something like a digital course as well would also be great to do, so you could do this again. You could do this on dog training. You could do videos on how to teach your dog to sit, how to teach your dog to lie down all the basic trainings. You could even do more advanced trainings with your dog how to heal, how to stay, things like that. So I would really take a look at not only ebooks but also digital courses.

Carrie: 10:18

Now, for us, for example, one of the things that we have done with our business is we provide a free Google Analytics 4 course. Now, what that does for us is it provides a way for our customers to learn and navigate the new Google Analytics 4, which went into effect in July of 2023 for mandatory use. They retired Universal Analytics then Is it helps them really dive in and dig into Google Analytics 4 on their own? We also have some upsells with it some done for use services, some consulting services that upsell to it, but it's a great way for us to give value to our consumers. So sometimes you can even do a course where it's maybe a small, short mini course and then you do it for free. So this can bring you in qualified leads and things like that for people who want to get to know more about you and your services. So also think outside the box, in that these digital products could be free products and they are there to help you bring in more consumers into your circle so they can get to know you better. So, outside the box there, what are you always teaching, answering questions on, etc. That you could put in the form of an ebook, a PDF flyer or a digital course, something people might think about, but they might also have potentially a bad taste in their mouth on, which is affiliate marketing.

Carrie: 11:54

Now, I feel like affiliate marketing can be a great thing, especially if you do it right and do it with products and services that you personally use yourself that also resonate with your ideal clients. Now, what affiliate marketing can do for you is, say, you use a certain product or service, you really believe in that product, you have gotten a lot of value out of it and it really has helped you, say, propel your business, or it's helped you personally, and the things you sell in your business are things that other people would also buy and that you. That's why you create your business, because you love these things that you are selling. So providing an affiliate link to these products or services that you already know and utilize can be a great way to make passive income on the side, and I do really suggest that you only become an affiliate for people and for things that you personally use and believe in. Nothing can get more uncomfortable than promoting and supporting a product that you either not used or you just think is mediocre. That's going to leave a bad taste in your consumers mouth and your customers mouth. So make sure any affiliate marketing you do, you get clear information from that person on or the company on what type of percentage you're going to get from your sales, and make sure that it is something that you use and love yourself, because this is so very important that you do that. Like I said, nobody wants to be referred to something and then get disappointed and then they kind of start wondering about you too. So really make sure you vet those affiliate marketing things because it can really bring in a lot of good passive income if you're doing it correctly.

Carrie: 13:48

Alright, so that's it for this week's episode of eCommerce, made easy. I hope I've given you some really good ideas on some ways to make some passive income in your business and I don't feel like you need to pick from all of these things and do them all. If you're not doing any of these at all, I recommend picking the one that resonates with you the most first, work with that for, say, three to six months or more. Make sure you've got it nailed down and are doing it well before you pick and add another thing to your list and don't feel like you have to do them all in the long run. This is your business. You need to pick what makes sense for you in your business, and I hope these options were very helpful.

Carrie: 14:31

Be sure to visit our show notes at eCommercemadeeasypodcastcom. Forward slash 19. Subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss out on any future upcoming episodes, and we'll be forever grateful if you rated us in your favorite podcast app. That is how our word gets out more and we can then help other businesses even more with their businesses. Do you have questions or thoughts to send us our way? Make sure to email us at podcast at bcsengineeringcom, or drop us a note on social media. We can't wait to hear from you and we will see you again next week.