Interior design businesses typically have two main revenue streams – product sales and professional services. Historically these two revenue steams are tied directly to your project pipeline. However, it’s not uncommon to have times of a year with a slower project pipeline. Having additional revenue steams to fill the low times is essential to the health of your design business.
Passive income is generated with no hands on involvement.
There are two main types of passive income for interior designers.
The first is affiliate product sales. Essentially you’re setting up relationships with affiliated marketing channels and recommending their products. When products are purchased through your unique URL’s you’re paid an affiliate fee.
The second is “selling digital goods”. You’ll put the effort in up front to create the digital good, think ebook, or guide. You’ll market the product and sell it multiple times. These two aren’t mutually exclusive and the digital product can include affiliate links.
When executed properly, passive income is a viable solution to adding additional revenue steams to your business.
Fill in the blank. “I am the expert in [paint colours, planning, budgeting, trends]. Your knowledge is valuable. Take what you know and create a digital asset you can sell.
Consider creating ebooks, look books, rooms-to-go, guides or courses. These are digital assets you can create with your expertise and sell. Imagine you’re a consumer, what digital content would you buy from a designer? The content should invoke trust, be transparent and paint you as the true expert. The passive income will provide revenue but also a super targeted list of potential future full-service clients.
Check out this “room-in-a-box” design package that can be purchased directly from the website of Shawna Percival‘s design firm, Sourced Kit.
Want the ability to easily create and embed purchasable packages on your website like Shawna? (and make fulfilling them a breeze?) then sign up for a demo of Mydoma, or, try it out yourself with a free 15-day trial!
Once you’ve decided on the content to create, ensure you leverage software to make the digital product engaging and beautiful. Consider using Canva, a free software with beautiful templates for an assortment of digital products!
Make the buying process as simple as possible by embedding the digital product on your website using Mydoma. Easily customize the colors, and fonts to match your branding.
For affiliate product sales, you can create beautiful design boards in Mydoma, add affiliate links to products using NEW hotspots in the design boards, and offer the design boards as a free lead generation tool and make some passive income through the affiliate links.
Experimenting with different digital products is key because some will perform well, while others will not. Don’t be afraid to A/B test by changing pricing, images and copy. Watch for key indicators that your digital product is performing well. These often include number of times purchased, shared or clicked on. Be sure to continue to do maintenance on your digital products. Set reminders to review that the content is still relevant, links aren’t broken and affiliate products are still available.
To be successful with passive income you must focus on driving as much traffic as possible to your website.
Create engaging, helpful content for your ideal customer on your blog that supports the digital product you’re ultimately hoping to sell.
Promote that content on your social media and drive traffic back to your website. Most visitors to your website won’t buy immediately. Leverage email opt-ins with free content to create a targeted email list. Take advantage of closed loop marketing by sending targeted emails about the problems you solve, your services, and the digital products you sell. Keep the visitors coming back to your website until you’ve built trust and they buy.
As an expert in your field, you have value and knowledge you can monetize to consumers or other design professionals. Remember, passive income is not everyone. It takes a bit of upfront time, and a continued time investment with solid strategy before you will likely see a return on investment. When you have right product and marketing formula, passive income can be extraordinarily lucrative.
At Mydoma Studio we make it easy to create, sell and market your digital products. Consider us your passive income partner. We have webinars, templates and designers on staff to help you on your passive income journey! See a demo today to learn more.
