Coaching can be a lucrative business to build, especially since it doesn’t involve a lot of expense to get started and run it. However, there’s always a pivotal moment when you realize that your income is limited by the number of hours in the day. The fact is that you can’t scale any coaching business further without sacrificing the quality of your work and your life.
It’s possible to crack six figures by coaching clients one-on-one, but if you want to reach seven figures, then you’ll need to change things up a bit. Luckily, raising prices isn’t the only way to grow revenue for your business. You can take advantage of passive income as well.
Passive income allows you to add more revenue to your coaching business without being actively involved most of the time. This means finding ways to generate cash that don’t require much of your time and attention, such as through digital products and courses that will sell even when you’re doing something else.
Read on for my seven favorite passive income streams that will grow your business without adding loads of time to your calendar. At the end of this article, I’ll share my secret to speeding each of these streams up to build passive income fast!
What is Passive Income?
When most people hear “passive income,” they think it means earning money while they sleep.
That may be partially true (you very well could make a sale while you sleep!), but a more accurate way to define it is to earn income that you aren’t actively involved in on a daily basis.
For example, coaching is not passive because not only are you directly involved in the sales process to close a new client, you then have to spend the one-on-one time to deliver your services. On the other hand, while selling a digital product does require upfront work, once you have an audience and a landing page, you can make sales without being involved every day.
For coaches, passive income is a way to diversify revenue streams and earn more than traditional one-on-one coaching sessions or live workshops. This allows you to leverage your expertise and experience to generate income without having to sacrifice time.
Passive income comes in many forms (I’ll show you seven later), but common ones coaches start with are:
Passive income isn’t just about earning more though. It’s about maximizing the impact that you can make and reaching a broader audience. As a coach, you might be able to serve 10-15 clients one at a time, but with these passive revenue streams, you could reach thousands!
Why Coaching is Not (Always) Passive Income
While you might find ways to streamline your coaching process, the inherent nature of a time-for-money business model will always limit your scalability. Since each coaching session is for a specific client (or group of clients), you can’t sell it multiple times.
Here’s why coaching is not passive:
While you can put coaching in cruise control mode to a degree, it always requires at least one hand on the wheel.
So let’s now look at seven passive income streams that tackle this scaling challenge. These are streams you can add to your coaching business that can double, or even triple, your revenue without taking up much more of your time once they’re set up.
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7 Passive Income Streams For Coaches That Will Grow Your Revenue
As I said above, passive income can take a variety of forms. My favorite passive income streams that we’ll explore are:
Coaching Programs
While a coaching program still requires time to create and set up, you can make it passive by creating a partially self-paced program that does not require your direct involvement all the time. These programs can be structured so that your students work through the content at their own pace in combinate with scheduled live discussions with you.
By adding a live element, such as a group workshop or check-in, you can add more value to the program with just a few hours of your time. And it will scale much better than one-on-one coaching.
Online Courses
Online courses are one of the hottest and most popular ways to package up your expertise and offer instruction and guidance at scale. For example, a business strategy coach could develop an online course on how to use outsourcing to scale a small business - with everything delivered via online videos on a course platform..
These types of courses, once you create them, require little to no daily management, allowing you to reach and teach a broader audience without the constraints of time and location. All you need to do is set up your course content, choose a platform to sell your course, and voilà! You can launch your course to the world!
Digital Products
A course is a kind of digital product, but there are other options available for coaches to sell. If there’s a way to package up your expertise, you can sell it to build passive income. Some digital products could be:
For example, a leadership coach could create an interactive, online (or downloadable) leadership assessment tool for a low-ticket price that you sell through a landing page or on the back-end of a free resource. That could even be the start of a sales funnel for larger ticket offers.
These types of digital products, downloadable and accessible around the world, provide value to clients while generating revenue with minimal effort on your part.
Membership Sites
While you’re creating courses and digital products, you can also jumpstart your revenue by creating a membership site for students that involves paying for monthly access to your library!
For example, a marketing coach could launch a members-only portal that gives exclusive access to marketing resources and monthly webinars (with recordings). You could even do some webinars for your followers, but only members get access to recordings.
Creating a membership program can offer new customers ongoing access to exclusive content, community forums, and regular coaching materials. This ensures a steady, recurring income and builds a loyal client base. It will take some effort on your part to create content, but this can all be done asynchronously.
Paid Newsletters
Have an audience that opens and eats up your emails? Why not monetize it?
Monetizing expertise through paid newsletters is a growing trend for coaches and can be a great way to earn more passive income. You can offer your unique insights, tips, and content to subscribers for a small fee, which then gives you a consistent and recurring income stream.
Note that this won’t be the best passive income stream for coaches who do not yet have an audience or are working on growing one.
Masterminds
Like a coaching program, hosting mastermind groups is not purely passive but it is more scalable than one-on-one coaching.
Running a mastermind involves gathering with clients for high-level brainstorming, networking, and support. These groups often command premium prices and can effectively generate significant income while fostering community and collaboration. By leveraging platforms like Slack, WhatsApp, or Facebook Groups you can provide interaction both live and asynchronously without booking too many calls.
Affiliate Marketing
Lastly, for coaches with solid on their websites and an engaged following, affiliate marketing is a prime way to generate more income with the least time and effort on your part.
Many products offer affiliate programs. It’s just a matter of finding the right ones and taking advantage of the followers you already have on your blog and newsletter. Every time someone makes a purchase using your affiliate link, you’ll earn a commission that provides you with a source of passive income.
For example, you probably already have a lot of tools you use in your business, such as an email platform, software, hosting, and even courses you’ve taken from other people. Many of these will have affiliate programs that you can sign up for. Then give your personal recommendation to your followers through an evergreen blog post, video review, automated email series, or even inside one of your own products.
Like email, this works best if you already have an audience and following.
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Tips For Growing Passive Income For Your Coaching Business
Armed with these seven types of passive income streams there is no stopping you from scaling your business to new heights! To help you on your way, here are my best tips for growing passive income for your coaching business.
Know and Cater to Your Audience
Knowing your audience is absolutely essential to the success of any income stream for your business. You need a rock-solid understanding of:
Use this insight to tailor your offerings, whether it’s an online course, a digital guide, or a membership program. For example, if you specialize in helping start-ups, you might focus on creating digital resources that address common early-stage business challenges like budgeting and building an audience.
The more your products align with your audience's needs, the more valuable they become and that means more engagement and sales.
Focus on Your Top Marketing Channels
Here’s a little-known secret to marketing success: achieving success in marketing is about saying “no” to the wrong channels as much as it is saying “yes” to the right ones.
One of the most common mistakes I see people make in marketing is thinking they need to do something on every marketing channel. Coaches constantly scramble for time, thinking they need to master SEO, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
For instance, a business coach who specializes in LinkedIn ads might be wasting time and resources if they’re promoting their services on Instagram - a platform less relevant for their target audience.
This is a recipe for spending a lot of time and having little to show for it (except stress and a few sleepless nights).
I pulled together a list of 19 marketing and promotion channels and my best advice is to pick three that you think will work the best for your audience and offer. Once you nail your top channels, nurture them. Showing up in front of your audience and adding value will boost your visibility, increase your ROI, and drive sales.
Choose a Few Income Streams to Diversify
With seven passive income streams at your disposal, it’s tempting to try them all.
My advice is, don’t. Pick your favorites and start from there. Otherwise, you will spread yourself too thin. On the flipside, don’t choose just one, since putting all your eggs in one basket is risky. Mix and match income streams in a way that you can easily balance them - and remember it’s okay if one doesn’t work out. You always have more to choose from!
Speed up Content Creation with PLR
Creating courses, writing an eBook, launching a membership site - who has the time for all this?
Unless you’re a superhero and can slow down time, I don’t blame you for wondering this. Allow me to let you in on a little secret: you can launch a course, eBook, and coaching program without breaking a sweat thanks to PLR.
PLR, or private label rights, is pre-made materials that you buy a license to. That license allows you to use the content in pretty much any way you want, selling it to your audience under your own name and brand. PLR is a fantastic, time-saving way to scale up content production and make more (passive) income for your coaching business.
Jumpstart your way to passive income with PLR products
These seven passive income streams can all boost your business, but creating content (especially if you never created a course before) can be intimidating.
Let me stop you right there.
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Check Out Our Full Range of PLR Content You Can Rebrand and Use as Your Own
When you purchase a license to any of our ready-to-go course kits, you get the rights to edit it any way you want (or leave as-is) and add your own name and branding.
Then use your new course to:
- Attract new clients and customers (such as with a free training, webinar, or eCourse)
- Add a new stream of income (such as with a paid course or workshop)
- Keep your current customers successful and coming back for more (such as with bonus webinars, videos, and other learning resources).
Enjoy!
