A Business with Recurring Revenue Creates Lifestyle Freedom!
Building a Sustainable Business with recurring revenue is one very effective way to free up time and get to do more things you want in LIFE.
I created my first recurring revenue income stream around 2010 when I started a membership.
This was because I was absolutely EXHAUSTED from the income roller coaster of launching a course, making five figures in one month, and then having close to no income for two months. It was feast or famine!
I wanted OFF that roller coaster.
This is why I’m passionate about helping you find recurring revenue income streams (bonus if it’s passive) for your business!
So let’s talk about three major types of recurring revenue:
- Affiliate Marketing
- Subscription Offers
- Membership Site
- Course Payment Plans or Subscriptions
- Recurring Services or Coaching Offers
- Paid Community
Details on each revenue stream:
1. Affiliate Marketing:
It costs no money to join an affiliate program. If you pick one that is on a recurring payment, like Aweber (affiliate link), you can get paid year after year for making ONE sale. You did the work one time and then a person pays month after month and Aweber sends you that commission monthly (or yearly if they pay yearly).
Pretty awesome, right?
Take a look!
Here’s my Aweber stats. I haven’t promoted this program since around 2016-2017 and yet I’m still making money. A small bit, for sure, but if I’d had put more than minimum effort in that could still be a nice recurring income right now:
The key to making this kind of recurring income work is to find affiliate programs that have staying power, like email software.
2. Subscription Offers
You can easily add subscription offers to a product or service you offer regularly.
It’s less of a commitment than a membership site but with the same kind of perks!
I’ve often done a monthly training workshop and then created a monthly subscription to that. These could be live or pre-recorded.
About half the people who signed up for those workshops took the subscription! That was a fast way to start building my recurring income with my own offer.
3. Membership Site
The membership is the “all-in” option when you know that you want to really dig in with your community and offers for the long-term.
A membership site has so many rewards but it’s a big commitment so you want to be ready.
The power of community can’t be denied.
It creates amazing bonds with your community and can lead to even bigger things (think coaching, group training and conferences/ retreats, etc).
If you want to learn about how to build a highly successful membership site I teach my method you could use for a subscription style or a bigger membership – it’s here: Quick Class-Based Memberships.
4. Course Payment Plans or Subscriptions
Do you have a course that is on the higher end for pricing (like $100 and up)?
You might want to consider offering a payment plan for the course so that you make more sales and you get a short-term recurring income boost from those sales.
Another option is to add a monthly subscription on to the course as an upgrade. This could be to a coaching group, one on one coaching, course updates, or maybe even a private course community.
5. Recurring Services or Coaching Offers
One of the quickest ways to add recurring income where there is none to a services business is to create recurring services offers.
Whether you’re a coach, virtual assistant or any kind of freelancer you can immediately start to stabilize your income with a recurring service.
Rather than a la cart you could do coaching or services packages that your clients subscribe to via PayPal or your shopping cart – that automatically renew. Use automation in your favorite and boost your business with recurring revenue!
6. Paid Community
Finally, if community is your jam you can simply create a community and charge a monthly fee for people to join.
You could do this in a tool like Heartbeat, which I favor greatly over Facebook groups.
The key here is to be engaging with your community and getting them connecting. I like to do a monthly challenge to help them get actively participating in my community. I don’t do a monthly paid community as mine is currently free for customers.
There is a TON of value in a great community, though. So you might consider doing something like this if you’re good at connecting and engaging and communicating with your people!
A Business With Recurring Revenue is a More Stable Business
I hope these ideas have helped you see how you could add recurring revenue to your business.
This was a game changer for me. Rather than living on the income roller coaster I greatly leveled out my income and could focus on doing great work for my customers.
Wishing you all the best as you do the same!
