Setting Up An Automated Passive Income Stream For Your Coaching Business

We’ve all dreamed of making money without having to put in all those hours of hard work every day. Lucky for you, with some upfront work you can create continuous income streams without continuous effort. 

Now, I can’t say you won’t ever have to work again. The more work you put in, the better the results will be, just like anything in life.

This way of making money is referred to as passive income. You’ve probably heard the term if you’ve used the internet lately. Confusingly, it’s often mistaken for a get rich quick scheme.

You can indeed get rich through passive income streams. But it takes time and, initially, effort. Investing in passive income is a great idea. Especially for coaches who get to supplement their services with products that will help their clients, and provide consistent cashflow.

Why Is Passive Income A Good Idea For Your Coaching Business?

Get New Coaching Customers

Attract new customers and establish yourself as an authority in your niche. By growing your brand recognition, you are positioning yourself to be a more likely candidate, when your audience goes looking for a solution to a problem that you can help with.

This brand recognition is so important for gaining a professional reputation online.

You can lure in new customers with freebies or low-priced products like eBooks or checklists, even planners.

By working on your brand, you have the opportunity to expand your audience and reach new people who could potentially become clients.

Giveaways are a good way to bring in new potential clients too, use one of your products as the main prize, and you will find that you can target your ideal audience. Or run a group giveaway, as I discussed in another article.

Increase Exposure and Opportunities

You can seek out opportunities to speak at events. Engage in media activities and promotions. Organizers are always on the lookout for knowledgeable speakers to attend their conferences. Or to be a part of interviews. HARO (Help A Reporter Out) lists callouts for subject-matter experts to interview daily. Keep up to date with their list of media requests. Be ready to offer your opinions when it’s relevant.

If you’re consistently marketing your products, these opportunities are likely to seek you out. Your online presence will enable them to easily find you when there is an event in the works related to your niche. Participating in these kinds of events will propel your authority level faster than you may think.

Backup Plans Are Rarely A Bad Idea

Have a plan B, for when clients cancel their coaching contracts with you. It’s inevitable that this will happen from time to time, despite not wanting to dwell on that possibility. It’s wise to be prepared.

With passive income coming in, you need not worry about losing income, you can just focus on making more sales and promoting your products.

So the next time a top-tier client threatens to cancel seeking a monthly discount, you can let him or her. No longer will be dependent on your individual clients to pay your bills.

Products Provide A Superior Marketing Strategy

Products are a great part of an overall marketing plan. You can promote these products on social media and gain attention that way. Offer your audience a free chapter of your book or something they can use that won’t take you too long to create, like a checklist or step-by-step plan to achieve their goal.

Your main offering can further go into detail explaining each step you have summarized in your free offer. These types of freebies act as a teaser for your main products and entice custom to buy. Especially if you implement the next tip well.

Your Sales Funnel Will Do The Selling For You

Create a well-designed funnel which ushers them through to your main offerings and high ticket products and coaching packages. Sales funnels are essential to market your products well and to lead your audience through the stages of the buying process. You can start by offering a low-priced or free product as your lead magnet. Then, depending on the action they take, either offer an upsell to a more expensive product. Or down sell to something more affordable but still desirable.

These products should demonstrate your knowledge and ability to achieve results, so that your audience is enticed into buying your high-ticket coaching programs and products, after they have gotten to know you through the more low-priced items they’ve purchased.

It makes sense that you would need to prove yourself to clients before they fork out thousands of dollars, and this type of system is a great way to do it while making some income in the process.

Creating the Right Products for the Right Audience

Digital products are a fantastic way for coaches to create a whole new stream of income. Some coaches may think their current coaching services are enough for them to earn a good income. While this may be true, if you can earn more money with less effort in the long run, all the while helping your clients, why wouldn’t you want to do it?

In fact, you will have the chance to help more people by providing products that are affordable to those who can’t afford your coaching packages. And who doesn’t want more money? You can save for your retirement if you don’t want or need it now.

Find out what your audience wants but can’t buy easily or affordably.

One obstacle can be deciding on what type of product to create. There is one simple way to find out what your audience needs or wants. Ask them. Ask your current clients when you talk to them.

Knowing what problems your clients are facing is also essential to providing them with valuable coaching.

Ask what their pain points are in the right way to get the answer you need.

For your product research, don’t just ask what they want. Ask what problems they need solved. What are the things they need to learn or do better? What’s bothering them?

With the knowledge of their pain points, you can design the right product to deliver the right solution to them.

Don’t be afraid to just ask using a survey.

If you find yourself without ideas or inspiration (but before you even think about crowdsourcing in Facebook Groups) consider a survey.

You can use a service like survey monkey or even Google Forms. You can also set up some website forms to include survey questions, so consider asking your website visitors what their main problems are that led them to your site.

Create a solution to their problem.

From there when you know what some main problems your audience faces you can decide on the best next step to help them reach their solution.

How you go about presenting this information will depend on what the problem is and what the solution is. How involved the transformation process will be. You could create a basic checklist for them for more simple solutions. Or as a low-ticket item, which can build up to the more in-depth course you might create, diving deep into each step of the process you have outlined.

Common Successful Coaching Products

There is no limit to the kinds of things you can create. Just use your imagination. But there are some commonly sold items that do well on the internet. Some of these include:

  • Digital courses
  • eBooks
  • workbooks
  • Planners
  • Monthly membership sites
  • Checklists
  • Audio files
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • Live streams

Identify Your Target Client or Audience

Most likely, you have already worked on your desired audience or buyer persona and figured out who your ideal client is. Now is the time to reassess those personas and look at your situation. Has anything changed in your business? Have things gone according to your initial business plans?

Did you manage to attract the type of audience you had planned to? Is their financial situation in line with your pricing structure, or are they often unable to afford your services? How are you finding new clients and fans?

By taking all that into consideration, you can re-evaluate your customer avatars and create more up-to-date versions that match your new plan. Which includes creating digital products for them. Low-end products will be more available to a wider audience of people. There will be more people who can afford it.

These people can still be a valuable part of your sales funnel. They are right at the top of the funnel when they accept an offer from you to take you up on a freebie or very low-priced item. Some of them may progress through the funnel and end up someday earning more money. Maybe even thanks to your help. Then they may end up buying your higher priced offerings, that’s when they reach the bottom of the funnel.

But by creating the lower priced items, you are opening up a whole new set of prospective customers. And by creating products to suit people at all stages of awareness and the buyer’s journey, you are helping to move people through your funnel right to the bottom when they do fork out for your high-priced items. Then in a perfect world, they’ll go through the same buyer’s journey to solve their next problem. Which you can be there to help with.

Repeat Customers Provide Continuous Value

As they consume your products, they will begin to look to you as a trusted adviser and knowledgeable authority in your niche. Which makes them more likely to fork out for the more expensive products you offer.

They will trust you, know you, and hopefully like you. Or they at least resonate with you when they hear your message. Probably after they’ve achieved desirable results by going through your process that was laid out in one of your products they purchased and used.

These customers are the ones most likely to become repeat customers. They may even tell their friends and colleagues about your services and products. Helping you get free word of mouth marketing, which is the best kind. Their in-person testimonials are persuasive and encourage others to trust you and try your services too.

If you can, ask these clients for a written testimonial for use on your website and in marketing materials.

An effective sales page proudly displays testimonials as social proof. Along with the photo of the person giving the endorsement, so people are more likely to trust what is said.

Megan Brain
Megan Brain
Megan Brain is a freelance writer from Australia. She enjoys writing about her interests, digital marketing, social media management and blogging. When she is not studying online, she enjoys crafting and creating artisanal journals. Connect with Megan on Facebook at Megan’s Media or @MegansMediaAu on Twitter.