Retire Online: Revenue Sources

In the last article we talked about your business model(s). By now you’ve decided on the multiple aspects of your business as a whole. In this article, let’s break it down into revenue sources.

As you retire, you will want multiple sources of revenue. But the golden ticket is recurring revenue. This is the type that comes in regularly without your lifting a finger. It just shows up.

Here are a few types of recurring revenue:

Affiliate income from recurring products. My favorite is an autoresponder engine or a shopping cart. Business owners are reluctant to change either of these so long as they remain active users you receive the affiliate revenue.

Membership sites. Again, as long as they are members, you receive the revenue. But these sites are shorter-lived than autoresponder services—either because the owner stops them, or the members lose interest or move on to other sites.

Book royalties. Depending on the number of books you’ve writ- ten and the promotions you put into them initially, this can be a nice monthly deposit. Many people who “retire online” continue to publish books after they retire, continuing to increase this revenue source.

Course royalties. While a course may be part of a membership site, it can also be part of an online learning portal. Depending on their market, some online colleges pay well, while others don’t. The important thing is that it’s recurring.

While recurring revenue is ideal there are additional sources of income to consider.

You can create a nice income from your current courses by reformat- ting those into products you can license and sell. You can either sell it “as is” or break it into parts and update it. For a higher price, you can limit the number of licenses you offer.

Licensing fees from products you have sold can be recurring; however, the drawback is that once you stop promoting the product, your new fees are likely to fall off rapidly.

You can take those same products and create a series of books from them. Again, this can be recurring revenue. You can also embed affiliate links into the books, creating additional revenue streams.

If you enjoy creating videos, you can continue to review and promote products through your YouTube channel.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to generate revenue—even after you retire online. The key is planning.

Now grab that Retire Online folder and jot down your ideas. Questions to consider:

Which types of recurring revenue do you currently receive? Will those last beyond your retirement? How can you increase both cur- rent revenue and the likelihood that they will continue?

Would you be willing to sell your courses? As is or reformatted?

Do you like to write books? Or could you hire someone to write a book based on your course? Remember, you don’t have to sell the book now—you can wait till you retire!

Keep noting down these ideas. Oh, and you may want to start on some of them sooner than later!