Starting an online passive income business is a long-term process, and rarely is a quick thing. If you’re just starting from scratch with an online business, growing it can take time and it does really put a strain on your patience.
So when you’re starting, how do you get past the first few weeks or months that don’t show much progress when it comes to traffic or sales?
1. Set some achievable long-term targets
I find this essential to not getting frustrated with slow moving websites. I obviously want(and dream) of seeing huge traffic coming to brand new websites right from the beginning, but without spending money on ads, or buying into existing websites, traffic will come slowly. I’ve found that it takes Google 2 weeks – 2 months to really get site’s ranking well, even with great content.
So when you’re first starting out, set some good long-term goals that you can strive towards and not get depressed with the first few weeks.
When I say achievable goals, here’s an example. With a new site I’ve been building, I set income goals for every 3 months:
End of 3 months: $5 a day
End of 6 months: $10 a day
End of 9 months: $20 a day
End of 12 months: $30 a day
So from the start, you have three months to get your niche site making (consistently) $5 a day. Its really not that high, and looks fairly achievable. Don’t worry about the 12 month target – that will come when you get there. Only think about that simple, initial target and it looks a lot better.
2. Wake Up With A Plan
I do this every morning. Right when I wake up, I lay in bed for a minute, and think about what I can do that day. Some things will not be for my online business – meeting with a client for my day job (not exciting at all). Some things will be personal – golfing after work (super exciting). And some things will be for the online business – need to plan out new posts for site “X”(really exciting).
I find that even if you know your day will be shot with tasks that are not for your own business, if you focus and get excited for the tasks that are, you’ll get out of bed much more motivated.
3. Create Lists
You may hate writing out lists, and it may be what you’re trying to get away from with your own business, but when it comes to motivation, lists are great!
If you find that you can’t get yourself motivated to write/create/sell, then start with a list. Break down the tasks you need to do to make your business grow, and when you accomplish one, make sure you scratch it out!
I’m a fan of simply writing out tasks on a notepad each day and crossing them out when completed. It feels great to start with a long list and slowly get them down.
Feeling like you can’t even start a list? Here’s an idea.
So say you’re needing to create articles for your niche site, rather than list out ‘Create Articles’, get more specific. Start with “Create 5 blog titles”. Simple enough. When you get 5 decent blog titles down for your niche site, scratch that item off the list. Then celebrate because you completed a hard task, but it probably didn’t take much time!
Now go onto the second item: “Create outline for article 1, article 2, etc. You don’t need to jump into writing a full article here. Just put down 5 points you want to touch on when you do write it.
Then when you’ve done that, cross off each item. Easy!
I find that I create three lists each day: personal (go to bank, etc), day job work (client emails, work on project X, etc), and my business list (read Chris Guillebeau’s new blog post, post new product on Pinterest, write article for niche site 1, etc).
It will honestly feel good to write out what needs to be done and get it crossed off your list!
4. Think Of Your Long Term Goals Daily
What makes you want to have your own passive income business? More money? Freedom of time? Freedom to travel? Maybe just to create a retirement account that you’ll use in the future. Whatever the goal is, its something you really want, or else you wouldn’t be going into your own business.
Take moments each day, especially when you’re feeling frustrated and think of why you want to do this. That should be motivation enough to write that blog post or take that extra hour to learn more about a marketing technique.
Whatever you are doing this for, keep that in mind and always work towards your goal. There will be times when you think it isn’t going to happen, and times when you think its just too hard/annoying/impossible to do anything, but you will get through it and if you continue to push, you will achieve your goals!