Set it and forget it systems vs passion project, what are they? It was an ebook purchase which first clued me up to “set it and forget it” sales systems. I had bought an ebook from eBay and realised what an effective sales system an ebook was. You can make the sale and deliver the product completely on autopilot. It’s the perfect “set it and forget it system” for selling online. There was no dealing with customers or delivering of the product. The product is digital, so it can be downloaded over the internet.
It was nice and neat, so simple in fact that I decided I wanted to learn how to make money through selling my own ebook.
So I set about writing an ebook of my own and tried to sell it from a website. Little did I know how difficult this would be. The set up of the ebook, Paypal button and delivery was within my remit of technical ability, although I had to learn how to do it. Once set up though, there was another problem – getting people to my ebook. More specifically it was getting people to my ebook who wanted it!
Set It And Forget It Systems Vs Passion Project
I had virtually zero website traffic to my ebook web page. So, I bought a course which taught online marketing with the intention of learning how to get more traffic to my ebook. However, I discovered a business model known as affiliate marketing which led me in a different direction.
I soon realised that I could sell other people’s products online using the affiliate model. I also could choose products which were far better that my ebook. With digital products especially, the same automation could be applied to that of an ebook. The product could be accessed online and there was no need for postage.
This factor of a digital affiliate product had another benefit for affiliates – you could earn larger commissions on a digital product than you could on a physical product. With a physical product, like you’d find on Amazon, for example, you can only earn up to 10% commission. Whereas with digital products typically you get paid 30-40% commission for a referral. So I realised that by selling someone else’s product, I could earn much more than through a sale of my own ebook where I’d make 100% of the fee!
My ebook sold for $10, but one of my first online sales was a $100 product which paid 40% commission.
Set It And Forget It Systems Vs Passion Project
I got pretty good at setting up systems to sell other people’s products. That was the easy part. Many online courses even provide you with a “set it and forget it” system, all set up with products ready to sell. What they (sometimes) don’t tell you is that like with my ebook discovery, you must drive traffic to the digital storefront or you won’t make any sales!
Set it and forget it systems are what I used to focus on. I wanted the website to do all the selling for me. I even built hundreds of websites after following a course online which told me I could do it. They were all set up to make money through the sale of digital products – many of which I found on Clickbank, and had zero interest in personally.
Today they are all gone but a few and most of them didn’t sell a single thing! So what is the answer when someone tells you about “set it and forget it” systems that sell online? While they can and do work, they only do so when you drive traffic to them. There’s two main ways to drive traffic to a “set it and forget it” sales system/website. One is through using paid advertising platforms. The other is through creating content.
The Passion Project Strategy
A passion project is something you’re passionate about which you can align with your “sales system” in order to drive qualified traffic towards your online offer. In my first few years of being an affiliate marketer, I tried all kinds of things which only really addressed the “set it and forget it” part of an online business; the sales system, in effect.
I gave little attention to the passion project side of it, thinking that the passion was in the building of these online sales systems. I floated them out there in the vain hope that Google, or someone, would rank them and that I would get free traffic and make sales automatically, just because of my websites.
But sadly it doesn’t work like that. My websites mostly failed with only a single sale to show for all my websites and hard work. I threw in the towel, but came back to affiliate marketing several times with a new mindset and fresh perspective.
Paid Ads Versus Passion Project
Paid advertising is the fastest way to grow and scale an online business. But you need help and support because it’s pretty difficult if you’re starting from scratch. Then you need a marketing budget in order to test out your advertising methods.
You need to do that for long enough to break through and see some tangible results – sales! When you have some data, you can analyse it, and learn from it. As you get better and better at running paid advertising campaigns, you can figure out which ads to run and which to cut.
But if you consistently run out of budget, and you don’t have the resources to keep going for long, your choices dwindle back to content marketing. I’ve always used content to sell affiliate products. My first online sale was from a piece of content – a review of a product. But it was short lived, and I couldn’t repeat it.
But over time I started realising that my real passion was in the journey. I learned from my failures and eventually came to enjoy them – knowing they were the stepping stones to success.
A Passion Project
A passion project is something you have intrinsic motivation for. Your motivation comes from within. Before I realised this, I was focused only on what I could get from affiliate marketing, not what I could give. If you can find your ideal topic for creating content in, you will enjoy the journey while attracting a specific audience to your affiliate products.
It is at this juncture where the set it and forget it systems meet your passion project. Once you have a well monetised website, with an affiliate product to sell, you only need targeted traffic. If you can’t (or aren’t prepared to) pay for traffic, you must generate it by providing some kind of value through content creation.
To generate enough content, and at a high enough quality to attract your audience, you must align your niche with your interest/passion. Creating content in a topic which you love, is enjoyable. But creating content for the purposes of only making sales, isn’t. Therefore, it’s much more difficult to sustain the effort required if your intention isn’t heart aligned.
When you find your niche, love what you do, and make sales from it, you’ll know you’ve found your path! Good luck!