One of the most outrageous claims I hear from Online Business ‘experts’ is that developing passive income products e.g. online courses can help you stop ‘trading time for money’. 

Because what these Online ‘Gurus’ typically don't tell you is: you may wind up investing more time and earning less money.

That’s not to say passive income isn’t possible - it totally is. 

But if you want to go down that route, you need to go in with your eyes wide open - otherwise, you could end up feeling disappointed. And feeling like you’ve failed when you absolutely haven’t. 

In this episode of the Courageous Content Podcast, I share my advice on how not to get sucked in by the ‘trading time for money’ myth. 

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IMPORTANT: THIS TRANSCRIPT IS AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED. WE GIVE IT A QUICK CHECK THROUGH BUT WE DON’T CORRECT EVERYTHING AS IT’S INTENDED TO HELP YOU FIND PARTS YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO AGAIN - NOT AS AN EXACT TRANSCRIPT. SO THERE MIGHT BE A FEW QUIRKY WORDS/PHRASES HERE!

One of the most outrageous claims I have from online business experts is that developing passive income products. For example, online courses or memberships can help you stop trading time for money. Why is this outrageous? Because you can deliver high quality one-to-one or dump services in a fraction of the time it takes to create and sell a digital product. I'm Janet Murray I'm a content and online business strategist.

And in this podcast episode, I'll challenge the idea that creating so-called passive income products can stop you trading time for money. And yes, I'm saying that as someone who's built a multi six figure business selling digital products Last week, I ran a one day content intensive with a one-to-one clients. I've got a process and content templates in place for this service. So the content intensive itself is six hours and there's a couple of hours for preparation and follow-up,

there are no overhead sport. This service, I don't even have a sales page because my clients generally come via referral or they just email or direct message and ask whether I do any kind of VIP day or content intensive. I also have the satisfaction of knowing I'm making a big difference. For example, one of the podcasts we planned in a previous content intensive with this particular client adds to a 20,000 pound contract.

So let's compare this with one of my so-called passive income products, my launch content kit. This is a resource that contains every piece of content you would need for any type of launch sales page, copy, email marketing, copy, onboarding, and offboarding emails, any product you want to sell. It's all there. And about 10,000 words of copy, but I'd have to sell 30 of my launch content kits to match the revenue from that one day intensive eight hours of work to put this into context for you.

Then it took me about eight hours just to collate the content for my new watch care. And actually that was pretty quick because I already had a ton of content. I was just repurposing it, but I also had to write sales, copy sales page content. I had to build a sales page and I didn't do that personally, but I'll tell you more about that.

In a second. I also had to build out a sales funnels. And by that, I mean, map out the journey that someone might take from not having my courageous launch content kits to being a customer of that particular product. I also had to create an email marketing campaign. So that was a good seven or so sales emails, plus three looked not bulls emails,

and that was probably another eight hours or so for me personally, possibly longer. But I am quite quick because I've been doing it for a long time. And also I'm a writer by trade. So I tend to get that kind of stuff done quicker than other people might do, and also have my own templates to use as well, which does save me time,

the templates that are actually in that launch content kit. But of course, I also had to pay people to help me get the launch content kit on sales. So I had to budget some time for my web developer or they, we built the page myself, my tech VA, Julie built it, but whenever we're building something new, we often need to talk to our developer troubleshoot problems as they come up.

So of course, then I had Julie's time building the page, connecting it up with my email marketing, testing it, troubleshooting, building the email campaigns because she does that as well. And also I had to consider customer service. So if you're selling a new products, you're going to get questions. You're going to get people who buy the product. And then for whatever reason,

perhaps they've bought with a different email address than usual or something else has gone to, right? They've not been able to access the content that they've bought. You need someone on hands to help them out and to do that quickly and efficiently and all of that needs to be paid for. So we're already up to about 16 hours of my time. And given the fact I'm not particularly good at tracking my time,

it's probably more, but it gives you a bit of an idea plus what amounts to thousands of pounds worth of contractors time. So which products offers a better return on investment? My one-to-one content intensive, which was around eight hours of work or limb or my launch content care. I think, you know the answer already, and you might argue that this is a digital product.

So I'm likely to sell many more of this particular kit, further down the lines though, isn't it about upfront costs. But remember, I've been doing this for a while. I've got a lot of experience to draw from and crucially, I also have a decent sized email list. I've currently got about 22,000 on my email list. Now I'm sharing this not to be a neti Nora and not to put you off launching a digital product.

I've shared it so many times on this podcast before, but I love selling on too many and of teaching on too many. And it's why I keep doing it, but it's definitely not the easy path. And it's definitely not the quick path. And I share it just to remind you not to get taken in by all the hype about passive income, because sure you can start selling your online course tomorrow without any of this stuff.

And I would absolutely recommend that you do, perhaps what the online gurus typically don't tell you is that if you want to replace the income from your one-to-one or done for you services, you need to sell a heck of a lot of your digital products or you need to charge premium prices. But of course, people who invest in premium priced services expect premium service,

and they also expect premium results, which is difficult to provide at scale, if there's just you. So typically you'll need additional resources, which of course means additional costs. You can build out a funnel. As I have say, you can have a range of digital products at different price that lead to higher ticket offers. So like my content intensive, and that means that you've got products for people at different income levels and at different stages of their business journey.

If you're selling B2B and this is the model I use, but it's not something you can create overnight or without an audience I've already shared. I've got an email list of 22,000. I am paying for Facebook ads every single week to continue to grow that audience. I'm not spending loads, but I'm putting time and money into grabbing my audience through paid content as well as organic content.

And I'm doing it consistently. So I've always got an audience to sell to, and I've always got new people coming into my world, but even then, it's not easy. The average conversion rate for online sales is just one to 2%. Typically when I do any kinds of launch, I don't even sell to my full list. I tend to segment.

So that means that I pick out the sections of my audience that are most suitable for that particular product or service. So at any one time, I may only be targeting half my list or maybe even less than half my list. And I do that because sending out blanket emails to my whole list will services that might not be relevant to them harms your delivery weights.

And this is the kind of stuff that you only learn when you've been doing it for awhile. So all I'm saying here is please do your due diligence. If you're considering investing in products or services, that's promised to help you earn money in your sleep or stop trading time for money or any of that stuff. Because not only is there a lot more work and time involved than it,

many online coaches will have you believe when you actually do the maths. And this absolutely blows my mind. You can often find that selling so-called passive income products would actually mean trading more of your time for less money. So let me repeat that again. When you actually take the time to do the maths, you can often find that selling so-called passive income products means trading more of your time for less money and more of other people's time,

which costs you money. Now, if you're can afford to take the financial hits in the short term, or you don't mind putting in extra hours for little or no financial gain, then this can actually be a smart move. So make your money from one-to-one or dumb for you services while you're building up your audience and building up the expertise and the skills to sell one to many.

That way you'll be laying the foundations you need to generate semi-passive income and believe me, it is truly never passive. I mean, talk to me about passive income on Christmas day when people are in my inbox, complaining about their planner, not arriving and I'm really not joking or exaggerating, but if you're expecting to replace your income from one-to-one or done For your by next month or even,

maybe next year, you could be setting yourself up for disappointment. So you found that bit of tough love useful as ever. I do love hearing from you say, do you connect with me on social media? If you've got any questions or perhaps there are other topics you'd like me to cover in future episodes? The best place to connect with me is on social media.

I'm at Jan Murray UK on most social media platforms.