Can You Drive Passive Income With A Small Mailing List?
On feeding your sales funnel to drive consistent passive income
Dear Josephine
I always associate passive income sales with huge, massive mailing lists.
Does passive income truly work with smaller mailing lists?
I'm definitely interested in driving passive income because I have health issues that slow me down at times and keep me from being as present as I would like.
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Okkkk LOTS to get into here and I'm excited to dive in.
First up - yes passive income sounds like the silver bullet doesn't it. 🪄
Across the internets we see passive income branded as the easiest way to make millions... overnight... whilst doing nothing... 🙄💤
Online; passive income is branded as... well... PASSIVE.
But there's an important distinction between passive income 💸 and passive marketing 📈
Passive income basically means you create a product once, and there's no limit on the amount of times you can sell it.
If you create a self-led online course, or a website template for example ~ there's no limit to the amount of times you can sell that thing.
AND, what's more, delivering that product doesn't take ANY more effort on your part, whether you sell 5 or 500.
So you've got a passive income stream... how do you make sales?
You build a sales funnel - which automates your sales:
🎁 People opt-into to a related-to-your-offer freebee.
💌 They receive your emails
🧑💻 They read your sales page
💸 and then... like magic... you make sales ~ AKA passive income.
All sounds verrrry easy doesn't it.
It all sounds like you're ready to put your launches on autopilot and board a flight to the Caribbean. 🍹🌴 Right?
Well... here's the deal.
Sales funnels are a game changer, having a passive income stream is a game changer...
BUT your sales funnel is like a car 🏎
You can build the BEST car in the world... but it still needs fuel to take you places. ⛽️
In much the same way - it doesn't matter how epic your sales funnels is...
You need to feed your sales funnel with leads. (AKA people who LOVE 🤎 what you do and want to hear from you 💌).
And this is so often the part that's left out of the narrative when you hear shouty entrepreneurs talking about passive income online.
So as you say... you need SUBSCRIBERS consistently joining your list.
And sure to make millions each year (I literally just opened IG to see an ad from someone telling me they'd made $3million last year in course sales 💤) you will need a LOAD of leads...
... and that probably requires a hefty investment in ads (as a side note I'd love to see the actual breakdown of that person's 💰 investment in ads, 📈 sales and 📊 profit - but that chat is for another day).
If however you're not after 'breaking the 7-figure ceiling' this year, and like me you're more about creating real freedom 🏔🌅 and doing the work you love, you may not need as big of a list, or as many subscribers as you think.
Time for a bit of maths...
Perhaps an extra £1k/month would be a nice little extra income...
Let's say your course or online offer costs £490...
... and you have an average of 3 or 4 people joining your mailing list each day, so you get around 100 new subscribers each month...
... With an industry standard conversion rate for your sales funnel of 2% (although my clients often see higher ~ but let's be conservative here) you'd drive 2 sales a month = £980/month.
That's £11,760/year. Tasty huh?
But maybe you want an extra £2k/month and an extra £23,340 a year...
... well, you've gotta bump your 3/4 subscribers per day up to 7.
Maybe that sounds like a breeze 😌 or maybe that sounds a stretch given where you're at right now. 😳
All I know is that passive income is a game changer.
There's nothing like that feeling of the ping 💌 'you've made a sale' email landing in your inbox.
But also… to drive passive income, you can't sit about and do nothing.
You've gotta get those subscribers joining your mailing list. And not any old subscribers - people who LOVE 🤎 what you do and want to hear from you. 💌
Boosting your mailing list subscribers
Powering up your monthly subscriber count is all about focussing on your 'discover' marketing - AKA where you're getting in front of new people.
Marketing channels for getting in front of new people:
🧑💻 Blogging (a couple of my done-for-you clients get looottts of subscribers via their blog posts - which are discovered through SEO - google search)
🎙 Outreach and collaborations (eg speaking on other people's podcasts or at events)
📱 IG reels
🎬 YouTube
💰 Ads
It's NOT a case of trying to do all of these things. God no!
It's a case of picking one or two and doing it well.
In the case of most of these channels - they tend to drive more and more traffic over time as your content builds.
The one thing you do *need* to be doing though, whichever 'discover' channel you lean into ~ is ALWAYS talking about your free lead magnet and inviting people onto your mailing list in your content.
👆 That's how you feed your mailing list with consistent subscribers, and drive your 'passive' income.
And it's not 'passive' but it's a hell of a lot more sustainable than always having to be present to drive sales.
If you're doing some of those things *anyway* - reels, outreach, blogging - doesn't it make sense to have somewhere to send your audience to - ie your sales funnel that can drive sales on autopilot?
Here's the BIG win when it comes to passive income...
To recap first, your marketing is simply taking people on a journey of:
👀 Discover: Discovering you
🤎 Nurture: Getting to know like and trust you
🛍 Sell: Buying from you
Right now you're showing up in person, hustling to do all of the above and it's... exhausting 😅
When you automate some of your sales activity, by building a sales funnel, that takes the pressure off you having to launch every two months and be present to drive every click, sign up and sale. 🙌
When you have a sales funnel, your marketing becomes a load more sustainable, because you're not trying to do all of the jobs up there 👆
You're free-d up to focus on your 👋 discover and 🤎 nurture marketing... (the bits that so often slip off your to-do list because there's only so much you can juggle!).
...AND you get to enjoy more FREEDOM, now that your funnel is doing the hard work to drive sales. Hello sales in your sleep. 😍
I'm so glad you asked this question, because it's one of my BIG bug bears with a lot of the passive income and funnels content I see online.
I’ll say it once again for the people at the back…
You need to FEED your sales funnel, as well as HAVE a sales funnel, to create passive income.
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