Diversifying Your Income Streams & Blogging as a Business

Sasha: 0:00

{Ad} One thing that I talk a lot about on this podcast is the balance between self-care and business. And that's because if we don't take care of ourselves, we won't be able to effectively run our businesses. We can't ignore the conversations that happen around being a business owner, and how that affects our stress levels and mental health. I've seen firsthand how running a business can put a strain on our mental health. And what happens if there's no one to talk to that can help. If you've reached a point where you might be feeling stressed, anxious, depressed or overwhelmed, then my sponsor BetterHelp is here to help you. BetterHelp offers licensed therapists who are trained to listen and help you. You can talk to your therapist in a private online environment at your own convenience and with a broad range of expertise and better helps 20,000+ therapists network, you can find access to help that may not otherwise be available in your area, and request a new therapist at no additional charge anytime. Simply fill out a questionnaire to help assess your specific needs, and get matched with a therapist and under 48 hours, schedule secure video and phone sessions. Plus, you can exchange unlimited messages and everything you share is completely confidential. Join the 2 million plus people who have taken charge of their mental health with an experienced BetterHelp therapist. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/strategy. That's betterhelp.com/strategy. {Ad} Welcome to Strategy for Creatives: Business Minus the Bullshit. Whether you're new in business or find yourself in a season of change, get ready to build a strategy, create an action plan and crush those goals. I'm Sasha, host a strategy for creatives. And I help female led businesses grow their brands in authentic, measurable and meaningful ways, without the stress. There's no sugar coated here, I'm serving up real tips and actionable steps you can take to help get you organized, get off the path to burnout and grow your brand like a boss. So go ahead, pull up a chair, grab a notepad, and let's talk business. Welcome to Strategy for Creatives: Business Minus the Bullshit. I, of course, am your host Sasha. And today, we are diving into diversifying your income streams. And it's something that I haven't really talked about before in this kind of way, but blogging as a form of business. Now, I've talked about blogging before, in terms of why it's important in your marketing and why you should focus on blogging to help your SEO ratings and things like that. And blogging was very popular in like the early 2000s for a lot of people to make money off of. But I know that people have questions on how they can still do those things. And so to help us have this conversation today, I am talking with Sadie Smiley, who is the founder of Passive Income Pathways, which is a financially accessible coaching membership that teaches people how to turn their blogs into six-figure businesses. She is a philanthropist who lives in Mexico with her husband, Kevin, and she absolutely loves helping people get out of their own way, get unstuck, and drop the BS to achieve their financial goals and dreams. So Sadie, welcome to the show.

Sadie: 3:28

Thank you for having me.

Sasha: 3:31

So tell us more about this. One. How do you like living in Mexico?

Sadie: 3:36

Oh my goodness, I love it. And I think my best quote that I've said lately was I would rather live in a shack in Mexico than in a mansion in the US. I'm not leaving. I'm not going. I'm here. I love it.

Sasha: 3:51

That's that's Mexico, beautiful country that I've been once, twice. I went when I was a kid and then my husband and I went for our anniversary. So it is a beautiful country. So I'm sure that's why you love living there.

Sadie: 4:05

Yes.

Sasha: 4:07

So how did you start the Passive Income Pathways?

Sadie: 4:11

Passive Income Pathways was built off of a pivot which I know you've talked about because I've been listened to all of your episodes.

Sasha: 4:23

Thank you.

Sadie: 4:25

And I definitely encourage people to listen to those episodes if they haven't, but that's how I mean that's how pips was born was through a pivot, I, we moved to Mexico and everything I thought I was going to be doing online change. I brought on some business partners, we were going to launch this business and when they saw how much work it was going to take they both flaked and

Sasha: 4:50

That's the worst

Sadie: 4:52

It is and I had already told people like I'd already hyped people up about my ideas, and I was really leaning on these people. For a lot of their, like tech expertise and stuff that I lacked, and I still had to launch because people were excited. So I launched I did the thing. And in, I think it was probably within six months, I hit six figures. And I have never experienced anything like that like to get to my first six figures took me 10 years, and then I launched this thing, and it took me not even 10 months, so it kind of took on a life of its own. And it's changed a lot, I've pivoted so much that I've basically turned myself in a circle a few times. But every single pivot has brought me to the next level, to the next step. And I've been able to help so many more people than I could have if everything had gone right from the beginning.

Sasha: 5:54

I know this is not what we're talking about but I just love that you talked about pivoting in that way. Because I I've felt the same way. My business is completely different than when it started. And I think we've learned so much when we pivot and change in our business and the things that didn't work. We know that now. And we can do things differently. And even if your business is completely different than we started, which mines is totally different. It helps you grow into that next step of your business. So I appreciate that, that you reiterated that because I think I talked about it in my pivoting episode. But I appreciate that.

Sadie: 6:31

Yes.

Sasha: 6:32

So what are your best tips for building passive income? Because I think people think that, and maybe you might correct me on this. But that passive income really is just very passive and that you don't have to do a lot for it. Well, my opinion is that that's the endpoint, but there tends to be a lot of upfront heavy lifting to get to that passive income. So if you're starting from nothing, what are your some of your tips to help build that passive income?

Sadie: 7:06

Yeah, so I think you, you nailed it with the fact that a lot of people think it means not doing anything. That's only true for like the rich, old white real estate investors, like if you have millions of dollars to just throw into this real estate game and make the money. Yeah, they might not have to look at anything, they might not have to do anything, just hire someone to do the thing, right. But for the rest of us who don't have that kind of capital and startup funds, we have to invest the time. So where they invest the money, we're investing time, and it's a lot of time. So for me, I tell my people that for my passive income journey and what I take others on, it feels like a long time, but I tell them to gauge about two to three years to get where they're wanting to go. Because you can get to say $10,000 a month as your goal, you can get to $10,000 a month within a year. But the amount of work as well as everything coming together perfectly that has to happen in order for that success to take place like that. There's way too many variables for me to bet on making 10k a month in a year, you know,

Sasha: 8:26

Yeah, I'm so I so appreciate that. Because I think social media especially has, has this warped view has given people this warped view that Oh, like get your first 10k month in like, you know, three months after working with me and you know, get ready for a six figure year and only six months after doing all of this work. And it's not impossible, but the likelihood of that happening.

Sadie: 8:54

Right? There's so many things that have to go right in order for that to happen. And there's so many outside factors that we don't have control over. That is not something that I tell people to bank on. So I tell them if you're starting from scratch today, what you do today is making your money and paying your bills next year. And then you keep going and like I said about three years is a it's like an even not working 15 hours a day like you work maybe four or five hours a day you can do your own thing, make your own schedule and then reach those goals. And there are going to be a lot of pivots in between because what you think you're starting now to make 10k a month. And like what actually happens in a year or two is it's completely different.

Sasha: 9:40

I mean, I know people started in 2019 and they were like, I'm gonna have you know, a six figure year 10k month and then March 2020 happened and everybody pivoted

Sadie: 9:55

Yeah, that definitely smacked a lot of people out of the sky. They were or they were riding comfy and then we all just kind of got thrown out. So, yeah, I mean, the good thing that came out of all of that is now the world is more set up and more receptive to online businesses. So when I tell you like, I make six figures blogging, when I told people that before the pandemic, they were like, huh, and now they're like, oh, okay, how do you do that, and I could teach them how to do it. But it's not something that was really understood before everybody got locked at home.

Sasha: 10:31

Well, so let's talk a little bit about that. Because I know that really, in the early 2000s, blogging was still relatively new. And the people who got into it, then were able to like really monetize their blogs without too much advertisement, you know, things like that they were able to turn blogging into a full time business, making six figures. You don't hear much about that anymore. Because I think people are under the impression people don't read blogs anymore. And so how, how are you going to get views on your page? How are people even coming to your site? So how have you been able to have blogging as a six figure business now when everyone wants, like a seven second video on Instagram?

Sadie: 11:18

It's funny, because I think that our perspective on that is really where we immerse ourselves because I ended up on

Sasha: 11:22

I'm glad you said travel specifically, because when I am a travel Instagram page this morning, and I saw a comment that was like a punch in the gut. Somebody goes, oh, yeah, I used to read a blog about traveling to this place. Remember, when those were still a thing? And I was like wait a second, like, we're still a thing. I'm still blogging. like researching trips, especially international trips, my husband and I were planning to go to Thailand at one point, I literally was like, on Pinterest, and Googling, like, you know, best trips for Thailand, which was taking new people's blog posts of like, where to stay and what to go see. So it's definitely not dead, or I'm just old. But I don't think it's dead.

Sadie: 12:14

Maybe that's what it is. Maybe I'm just getting old? Because I don't think it's that either. But like that actually, is the answer to your question of how you monetize the blog to is you answer people's questions. So anything that you're searching about any topic, if you go to Google, the answers are usually going to be found on blogs, blog, website, whatever people want to call it, it's still, at the end of the day, it's long form content that is serving an audience and answering those questions. And that's how I write every single blog post. Every blog post is just answering someone's question. So I write about, you know, how to blog how to make money online. And I will say, a lot of us blog about this topic, I want you to make sure that you're listening to people who made money blogging, before they made money blogging about blogging. Because there's so many people that are like, oh, you can make six figures blogging, and they're talking about it. And I'm like, so where is your six figure blog? Besides this one? That's almost always the answer. And so I get a little salty about that. Because like, back in my day, I like I actually built a six figure blog that wasn't about blogging. And I feel like that's very important to do before you start teaching people about this, because literally, anyone can Google and figure out how to blog and then teach about it and sell the dream. So I like to, I like to focus on building up blogs that don't have to do with that topic. So I still do that. I have niche blogs that I work on. And as far as making money goes, we do ads, affiliate marketing, digital products. I'm a big fan of financially accessible products. So very low ticket, like you can get into my lowest coaching program on the tier for seven bucks a month.

Sasha: 14:17

oh, wow.

Sadie: 14:19

Like I really want everything to be financially accessible. Coming from a, just a background of a level of poverty, and being homeless multiple times and just feeling like, man, if I just had the money to invest in that thing. I could get out of this rut and I never had money to get out of the rut. So I spent, like I said, 10 years making that first six figures I couldn't afford anyone to help me. You know. So that's a big thing for me is financial accessibility, but you can do digital products. You can do memberships where you're making recurring revenue. You can do coaching, like group coaching is really a good profit model because you're not having to do one on one, and you're not having to charge a fortune. So I like that. And any of those options can fit depending on your niche, some are gonna lend well to ads, because you're gonna have lots of traffic. So put ads and make a lot of money that way. And then others, like, if people are coming to you to learn something that lends really well to digital products, you go hop on Canva, use one of their templates, make some digital products, and just keep building from there and just keep answering their questions.

Sasha: 15:38

You just explained my whole business model, because that's essentially what I do. And I do like that you pointed out that you said, your six figures was 10 years, I tell my clients all the time, and I stress on the podcast all the time, it business is always going to be a marathon. It's it's not something that happens quickly. And I think people don't understand how much work it can take to make actual money in your business. And so I'm glad that you pointed that out, too. I also have the same gripe about coaching as well, where people who are like, oh, I made six figures in my business. So let me teach you. But like have you shown anybody else like you were your only case study or like having helped other people do that as well.

Sadie: 16:29

That is, that is absolutely a perfect thing to mention. Totally. Because, yeah, you couldn't build a business. But unless you've shown someone and you know that that procedure actually works like. Right? Can I do it like yay for you that you did it. But does that mean that I can do it like I need to, I need to know that. Not just you did it and maybe got lucky here and got you know, and you had this extra help that I'm not going to have and you had this extra layer of privilege that someone else isn't going to have all of those things. Show me that you've helped other people do it. And if you're just getting started, and you're wanting to coach and that kind of thing, then just help somebody, you don't have to charge them help somebody make a process works. Yeah, like just make sure it works. And then put yourself out there and say, hey, I can coach this thing. Absolutely.

Sasha: 17:24

Well, and that's why I never, like I never say I never guarantee with any of my clients that you're going to have a certain number of people book you that you're going to have a certain profit coming in. Because it's all dependent on how much work they do. Like I can tell you everything under the sun to do but what you do in that process matters way more than what I'm telling you to do. And so I think that's also important to remember, you talked a little bit on your about your blogging, how you do ads and digital products, I do digital products as well. I use mine, essentially as lead magnets, they're free resources to build up to some of the other paid things. And so that touches a little bit more on like diversifying your income stream. So can you just talk about? Because when we say when people think of oh, how do you make money in blogging? Most of it isn't really in the actual blogging, like it's not from your actual writing. It's from those different things that you mentioned. So how do you not put all of your eggs in one basket and diversify your income streams?

Sadie: 18:30

Yeah, that's actually a good way to put it to the blogging itself. The writing itself isn't what brings in the dollars outside of ad revenue. It's everything else on top of that. So when people ask how much I make blogging, I always get hung up answering that question because it's like the blog makes this much but because of the blog, I make this much coaching and this much with my membership and this much and it's this big, you know, tree of all these different income streams. So yeah, ads are one way but that's only going to happen if you get traffic, which you've got to write the blog post to get the traffic right. And then you have affiliate marketing. So if you're teaching people how to do something, there's usually a tool that you've used that you've discovered that will help save them time or money or make it easier so for me I like I'll talk about Canva and I'll talk about Jasper and other AI tools that make writing faster. So

Sasha: 19:27

What is this Jasper, I've never heard of this. I've never heard of this. Canva I use all day but what is Jasper?

Sadie: 19:33

It's a whole rabbit hole. So there's there's there's a bunch of AI writing tools and I use Jasper and right Sonic myself. But basically you like put your ideas into this robot machine and it spits out like way longer ideas. So say that you put in a sentence, it spits out a paragraph. So then you've like essentially cloned yourself because you can write 234 times faster, like,

Sasha: 20:03

wow,

Sadie: 20:04

it's it's absolutely, I, I love it and I love writing. So I understand if the purists out there are cringing by letting robots help you. But if it's helping your audience, and it's saving you time, and it's making you money,

Sasha: 20:20

I'm always I will forever be advocate of working smarter, not harder. We only have so many hours in the day, and if a computer's gonna save me 10 minutes because it popped out a paragraph. And the time it would take me it would take me to write that, then I'm all for it.

Sadie: 20:38

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, when you asked me about my profile, and how you should introduce me, Jasper wrote that, which is why I said, I don't remember what I wrote.

Sasha: 20:52

And if a computer wrote that, I mean, I read her profile beginning guys, it's it's normal language, like it sounded as if someone wrote that. So that clearly shows that those kinds of things help save time.

Sadie: 21:05

Yeah, and if you're weird about like, writing about yourself, which I am, it really can help you get out of your own head and you know, get away from if you have writer's block or anything like that. So that's, that's the kind of thing I talked about with affiliate marketing. So I'll talk about those tools. And I'll, I'll create entire blog posts, helping people learn how to use the tools, you can do that in any niche, it doesn't matter. If you're talking about organizing your life, you might be promoting Monday, or Clickup, or Asana or, you know, some kind of program, anything that you use, you just go and find their affiliate program search, you know, that name plus affiliate program on Google, you'll almost always find it. And then that's an entirely new income stream. So that's ads, affiliate marketing, digital products, that's three right there. Different ways that you can make money with your blog. And that's just on a very basic level, you know, you can start very small.

Sasha: 22:06

And it's relatively easy, because I think, also people think that diversifying your income means I need to have different businesses like I need to, you know, and I'm, I, I'm guilty of this. But I have my strategy business, and I have a podcast network, and I want to build up my interior design studio. Yes, those are also diversifying income streams, right. The work for all of that is very different. Because it's starting different businesses and all of those, whereas advertising, affiliate marketing, digital products are more of that low level, it doesn't take as much time effort, but can still be passive, once you get it set up, it can still be profitable. In a way that's a little bit more manageable.

Sadie: 22:58

Yes, that's what I was gonna say, like the I'm the same way with different, you know, businesses and things, I've always had things going on. But now, I just focus on blogging as my foundation, and then whatever grows from that. So you know, my membership and coaching and stuff grew from the blogging. But for me, everything comes back to blogging, because if I start a new business entirely, the amount of energy I'm putting into that business, if I would have just put that energy into my blogging business, I would make so much more, because it's already going like it's always it's always easier to make more money. The first 100, the first 1000, those are always the hardest. So if your blog is already making five grand a month, double down on what's working, add something new, if you you know, have ADHD brain like I do, and you need a new shiny object, like add something new, like a new product or a new category, or whatever, but you're doubling down on the money that you're making. So your money just keeps going up. Even if you don't have a ton of energy to build a whole new business.

Sasha: 24:05

I appreciate that. I will feel like you've just been speaking directly to me. And that I just need to sit down. Sometimes I very much have shiny, new object syndrome, though. I'm always like, well, I like doing this. So I want to try that. And I need to stop trying to turn everything into a business. That's really what it boils down to.

Sadie: 24:25

I think it's an addiction. Because everything I do in my life has to make money. I'm like, oh, we can make money doing that. Like I was planning a graduation trip for my daughter, and I'm like, hey, Safar, we can take pictures and we can sell those stock photos and we can do this but she's just like, Mom, does everything have to be monetized?

Sasha: 24:48

Why not make extra, doing the things that I'm already doing anyway.

Sadie: 24:53

Right. When you're already doing it, you might as well and one other thing is once we get to a level of If I'm making enough passive income to breathe and to pay my bills, then you can go do the fun stuff. And you don't have to worry so much about is this going to make me money, I should be working on my business, blah, blah, blah, you don't have as much of that going on, because you're like, oh, well, I can take the week off, and my business is still running, and I'm still making money. Like, anytime I take time off, it doesn't affect my income, which is the most bizarre thing to me coming from the life where you get paid for the amount of hours that you put in. So once that income, the passive income actually kicks in, and you're making it without having to log in and you see your bank account go up by $1,000, overnight. You're like, I was literally sleeping, when that happened, or you take a week off, and you're on vacation, and you don't have to worry about, oh, should we split a meal? So we can save this money? No, I want my own meal. And I know that this is going to make the money. So it's okay. You know,

Sasha: 26:00

I make that same argument for like automating and doing workflows in your business. Because it's I'm very big on self care. Everyone who listens knows that I'm very big on real time. And not I don't think that your business should run you like you run your business, you dictate how often when you want to work on your business, even if you're trying to grow it like yes, it takes time, but we're willing to do like, if be okay with it taking longer if that means that for your sanity, you only do two hours a day, right? Like I'm very big on just that. So I appreciate that.

Sadie: 26:33

Yes, I fully agree. Because it's going to take a while to build up a sustainable business. Regardless if you put 15 hours a day or three hours a day. And so you might as well save your sanity and enjoy your life in the meantime, because you never know what's gonna happen in three years, like you have no idea what's going on in the next three years of your life. We've seen that proven time and time again, right? So just take it the way that you need to take it and I know some people need to make money faster. I acknowledge and you know, understand that but there's also active income you can do, you can pick up a side hustle while you're growing your passive income business, so you don't have to be tied to the computer 1015 hours a day to grow a successful business. I definitely want to make sure people understand that part.

Sasha: 27:24

Well, I think that's a perfect way to end the episode because I agree 100%. Sadie, thank you so much for being on the show. Sadie's offering to those listening a checklist for you guys. I'll put it in the show notes. So diversifying your income checklist. So that way you can figure out easy ways that you can start creating passive income in your business. And to diversify your income streams. You can find out more about Sade at sadiesmiley.com. It's s M I L E y s.com. I don't know why I think smiley should be without the E. But it's S M I L E Y.com. So and I will put all of that in the show notes. But Sadie, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Sadie: 28:07

Thank you for having me. This was fun.

Sasha: 28:10

Thank you. Are you ready to uplevel your business? Join the five day be your own CEO challenge. All the details are available on the website at www.by-sasha.com. If you liked what you heard, make sure you rate and review. It really helps other people find the show. And of course, following subscribe on your favorite podcast platforms. Want to follow me on social? I'm on Instagram and Facebook at Strategy By Sasha. Make sure you tune in next Tuesday for more business tips. Part of the Boundless Audio Podcast Network