Smart Passive Income: 10 Top Tips From Expert Pat Flynn
Be sure to check out the related story, How Pat Flynn Made His First $3 Million In Passive Income.
In February 2007, Pat Flynn was working at an architecture firm making $38,000 a year. He mulled boosting his earning power by getting an architecture license, but the process would likely take six to eight years. When he heard about getting a credential in sustainable design and environmentally friendly building called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), he decided to go for that, as no one in his department had it. The one problem? The exam was so challenging, just one-third of test-takers passed.
To make studying more fun and to increase the chances he would actually understand the material, he decided to create a blog about preparing for the exam. After all, in order to explain the subject to others, he would need to understand it himself.
Having the blog allowed him to participate in other forums about the exam, and he found that the more he discussed the topic, the firmer grasp he had on it. In March 2008, he aced the exam, was immediately promoted and began earning $60,000.
But two months later, with the economy slowing down after the financial crisis, his firm began laying people off, and Flynn was informed that after his current projects were finished, he also would be out of a job. At the same time, he couldn’t help but notice that in the LEED exam forums he had frequented, people were referring to him as an expert and directing questions his way. He began to think he might capitalize on that.
He decided to investigate how to turn his blog into something bigger, and so turned to Google Analytics to track visitors. What he saw floored him. “Little did I know it but this little website I created to help me pass this exam was generating thousands of visits a day,” he says.
In June, he put ads on his site with Google Adsense, and within the first hour, earned $1.08 with three clicks. He earned $5 the first day, $7 the second, and then eventually began pulling in $15-$30 a day. In October, he created an ebook exam study guide priced at $19.99. By month’s end, he earned $7,906.55 — more than he had ever previously earned in a month.
“My initial thoughts about doing business online before or about the industry in general was that it was a scummy, scammy, car salesman-y, hype-y type of industry. And here I was actually making money online, providing value,” he says. He was hooked.
Now, six years, 12 websites, 100,000 email subscribers and 9.5 million podcast downloads later, Flynn, 31, has earned roughly $2.7 million dollars online with “passive income” strategies.
Flynn, who blogs at Smart Passive Income and discusses his secrets at the Smart Passive Income podcast, defines passive income as “building online businesses that take advantage of systems of automations that allow transactions, cash flow and growth without requiring a real-time presence. We don’t have to trade our time for money one to one. Instead, we invest our time upfront, creating valuable products and experiences for people, and we reap the benefits of that time invested later,” he says, adding, “It’s not easy. I just want to make sure that’s clear.”
From what he describes, creating passive income definitely does not sound easy. It requires a serious ramp-up -- often requires 80- to 100-hour workweeks in the beginning, says Flynn. But once up and running, and depending on the content, some sites take fairly minimal maintenance. Green Exam Academy, the LEED exam study site he launched in 2008, takes just him four to five hours a month to maintain but brings in $250,000 annually.
Flynn shared his top tips for getting started generating your own passive income.
1. Before you begin, ask yourself, “Am I doing this just for the money?”
Being able to generate passive income largely depends on your audience, and if they detect that you care more about making money than serving them, you won’t succeed. “Whenever I’ve seen people do something just for the money, they’ve failed because their intentions aren’t driving them in the right direction. It should always be about helping people and about the passion of making others feel better. The byproduct of doing that is generating money,” says Flynn.
2. Be prepared to put in serious time upfront.
“I don’t believe the overnight success exists. There’s a lot of hard work and time involved beforehand,” say Flynn. Angry Birds may have seemed like an overnight success but it was the 52nd game that Rovio created. Flynn says it took him a year or year and a half to build audiences for his most successful sites. (Read these time management expert's tips on the work habits of successful people.)
3. Banish the thought that once you’ve created the product, you can sit back and buff your nails.
“There is no such thing as 100% passive income,” says Flynn. “Even with real estate you still have to manage your properties, or even with the stock market, which is potentially passive income, you still have to manage your portfolio. With online business, there is no such thing as 100% passive income — and this is coming from a guy with a blog called SmartPassiveIncome.com. The definition of passive income is ‘building these businesses of automation,’ but in order to keep them automated and keep that trust going with your audience on top of that, you do have to keep it up every once in a while — so a lot of time upfront and a little time after. But there is always time involved.”
This article collect from FORBES.COM
In February 2007, Pat Flynn was working at an architecture firm making $38,000 a year. He mulled boosting his earning power by getting an architecture license, but the process would likely take six to eight years. When he heard about getting a credential in sustainable design and environmentally friendly building called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), he decided to go for that, as no one in his department had it. The one problem? The exam was so challenging, just one-third of test-takers passed.
To make studying more fun and to increase the chances he would actually understand the material, he decided to create a blog about preparing for the exam. After all, in order to explain the subject to others, he would need to understand it himself.
Having the blog allowed him to participate in other forums about the exam, and he found that the more he discussed the topic, the firmer grasp he had on it. In March 2008, he aced the exam, was immediately promoted and began earning $60,000.
But two months later, with the economy slowing down after the financial crisis, his firm began laying people off, and Flynn was informed that after his current projects were finished, he also would be out of a job. At the same time, he couldn’t help but notice that in the LEED exam forums he had frequented, people were referring to him as an expert and directing questions his way. He began to think he might capitalize on that.
He decided to investigate how to turn his blog into something bigger, and so turned to Google Analytics to track visitors. What he saw floored him. “Little did I know it but this little website I created to help me pass this exam was generating thousands of visits a day,” he says.
In June, he put ads on his site with Google Adsense, and within the first hour, earned $1.08 with three clicks. He earned $5 the first day, $7 the second, and then eventually began pulling in $15-$30 a day. In October, he created an ebook exam study guide priced at $19.99. By month’s end, he earned $7,906.55 — more than he had ever previously earned in a month.
“My initial thoughts about doing business online before or about the industry in general was that it was a scummy, scammy, car salesman-y, hype-y type of industry. And here I was actually making money online, providing value,” he says. He was hooked.
Now, six years, 12 websites, 100,000 email subscribers and 9.5 million podcast downloads later, Flynn, 31, has earned roughly $2.7 million dollars online with “passive income” strategies.
Flynn, who blogs at Smart Passive Income and discusses his secrets at the Smart Passive Income podcast, defines passive income as “building online businesses that take advantage of systems of automations that allow transactions, cash flow and growth without requiring a real-time presence. We don’t have to trade our time for money one to one. Instead, we invest our time upfront, creating valuable products and experiences for people, and we reap the benefits of that time invested later,” he says, adding, “It’s not easy. I just want to make sure that’s clear.”
From what he describes, creating passive income definitely does not sound easy. It requires a serious ramp-up -- often requires 80- to 100-hour workweeks in the beginning, says Flynn. But once up and running, and depending on the content, some sites take fairly minimal maintenance. Green Exam Academy, the LEED exam study site he launched in 2008, takes just him four to five hours a month to maintain but brings in $250,000 annually.
Flynn shared his top tips for getting started generating your own passive income.
1. Before you begin, ask yourself, “Am I doing this just for the money?”
Being able to generate passive income largely depends on your audience, and if they detect that you care more about making money than serving them, you won’t succeed. “Whenever I’ve seen people do something just for the money, they’ve failed because their intentions aren’t driving them in the right direction. It should always be about helping people and about the passion of making others feel better. The byproduct of doing that is generating money,” says Flynn.
2. Be prepared to put in serious time upfront.
“I don’t believe the overnight success exists. There’s a lot of hard work and time involved beforehand,” say Flynn. Angry Birds may have seemed like an overnight success but it was the 52nd game that Rovio created. Flynn says it took him a year or year and a half to build audiences for his most successful sites. (Read these time management expert's tips on the work habits of successful people.)
3. Banish the thought that once you’ve created the product, you can sit back and buff your nails.
“There is no such thing as 100% passive income,” says Flynn. “Even with real estate you still have to manage your properties, or even with the stock market, which is potentially passive income, you still have to manage your portfolio. With online business, there is no such thing as 100% passive income — and this is coming from a guy with a blog called SmartPassiveIncome.com. The definition of passive income is ‘building these businesses of automation,’ but in order to keep them automated and keep that trust going with your audience on top of that, you do have to keep it up every once in a while — so a lot of time upfront and a little time after. But there is always time involved.”
This article collect from FORBES.COM
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