As a consultant or freelancer, your income is tied to your time. You may charge by the hour, or by the project, or by the grants you submit or the words you write, but ultimately how much you make is dictated by how many hours you work.
Increase the Amount You Regularly Earn as a Freelancer or Consultant
You can make a great living as a consultant or freelancer, and there are ways to increase the amount you earn.
For example, you can start charging more, or offering ancillary services along with your standard projects. As your business grows, you may also be able to hire people to work for you so that you can serve more clients and become more of a traditional company.
What if I told you that there was a better way to increase your income? A way that doesn’t require you to add more hours to your day, and that doesn’t include the headaches of hiring staff and meeting payroll every month? What if you could use this method to allow you to stop working for clients altogether… or use it alongside your consulting or freelance work to make more money than ever before?
The best way to make more money as a consultant or freelancer is to add passive income streams to your business.
What is a Passive Income Stream?
Passive income is a way to earn revenue without trading time for money. Passive income means investing your time once — to create something of real value that people are willing and eager to buy — and then selling it over and over again.
When you have a variety of passive income streams in place, your business will make money while you sleep, while you’re at the beach, and while you’re watching your son’s little league game.
When we talk about passive income on this site, we’re not talking about investing in the stock market or buying rental properties, though those are also types of passive income. Instead, we’re talking about creating passive income streams related to the business you are already in.
That means taking what you already know and use in your consulting or freelancing business, and turning it into products and content that you can sell online — things like:
- online classes
- webinars
- coaching sessions
- e-books
I’ve Been Where You Are Today
I know firsthand how important creating passive income streams is for freelancers and consultants. Two decades ago, I launched my first business — a political consulting firm. I had been working in politics, and decided to branch out on my own, working with campaigns to help them win elections.
I started my company for a number of reasons:
- First, I wanted to be in control of my own destiny. I didn’t want my earnings limited to what I was being paid in salary, and I wanted to work on projects that really interested me.
- Second, I wanted to be in control of my own time. I was about to get married and knew I would be starting a family, and I didn’t want to be tied to an office from 9 to 5 everyday (or worse, nights and weekends) and definitely not if I wasn’t being compensated for the extra work.
But I soon realized that consulting wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Yes, I set my own hours and could pick and choose my clients, but I was still trading time for money. And without a salary, no one was guaranteeing my income.
If I wanted to make more money, I had to work longer hours. I also needed to travel quite a bit, which was hard as I was starting a family.
I knew there had to be a better way…
That’s when I realized that people were making money online based on what they knew — their skills and experiences — without trading time for money.
The Power of Passive Income Streams
When I discovered passive income streams, I dove right in.
I started offering e-books on how to run for office. Then, eventually, we started offering online classes on different aspects of political campaigning. For a while, I continued my consulting work along side the classes and e-books, but eventually, I stopped doing consulting and focused solely on the passive income streams.
It was an amazing feeling, creating a class once, but then being able to offer it to new customers over and over again. And, because the classes and e-books were offered online, there was very little cost involved to offering the class to new customers (unlike printed books or in-person seminars, which have high overhead).
Best of all, my customers were happy and loved our work. I was able to help thousands of candidates per year, instead of the handful of candidates I was able to help through my consulting work.
That’s the power of creating passive income streams. You can help far more people, make far more money, and find a level of independence that you can only dream of with client-based work.
You Can Create Passive Income in Any Niche
One of the best things about passive income streams is that you can create them for your business no matter what niche you are in.
After selling political campaign classes and e-books for a number of years, I changed industries, sold my business, and took what I learned about political fundraising into the non-profit world. I worked full-time for two non-profits, then started a fundraising consulting company. I quickly realized that creating passive income streams would work just as well in this niche.
I have since created two different businesses selling classes, webinars, and e-books to teach non-profits how to raise more money. The first business was so successful that I sold it for a very hefty sum, and the second business is still going strong.
The truth is that you can create passive income for your freelance or consulting business no matter what industry you’re in. That’s why I started Go Beyond Clients.
My goal with this site is to teach you what I learned over the years, and to help you create passive income streams for your business without any of the hassle I faced when I was trying to figure it all out on my own!
A Great Way to Get Started
The best way to learn how to generate passive income is to sign-up for the Go Beyond Clients weekly e-mail newsletter. When you sign up, you'll also get our free guide, which covers all the basics that you need to begin building passive income for your business.
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