JK Rowling may have landed on her feet when her first Harry Book was received well, but she is the exception to the rule.
That first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has sold over 120 million copies since its release in 1997 and is the third best-selling book of all time.
I do like to use JK Rowling as an example of a successful.
She was a single mother on benefits writing her first book during the times when her baby was taking naps. Much of the book was written in café’s in and around Edinburgh, in Scotland.
Her success is a fantastic story, but it should never be used for comparison.
Rule 1 – It’s Ok To Not Smash It Out Of The Park On Your First Go!
If you release your first book/product and it doesn’t do well, you shouldn’t stop and give up just because you didn’t have the same success as JK Rowling.
It is OK and normal to not ‘smash it out of the park’ with your first swing of the bat.
Stephen King and James Patterson are two of the world’s wealthiest and most popular authors, and do you know what?
They were both turned down multiple times.
If memory serves me well, James Patterson was rejected 32 times before a publisher decided to take a chance on one of his books.
Stephen King was rumored to have pinned his rejection letters to the wall and that at one point he had so many, he had to swap the pin for a nail!
Rule 2 – Multiply Your Chances Of Success With Multiple Products
The other point that I want to make is that these authors don’t just write ‘one book’ and then leave it to make money for them.
Obviously, they enjoy writing and crafting stories, and so they want to publish as many as they can, but because they publish ‘multiple books’ they have a far greater chance of success.
This is a business law that happens over and over again.
A person who is prolific and releases multiple products will see one or two of them go wildly crazy and sell loads compared to their other products. See rule 4.
Those products that sell really well, introduce the buyers to their previous work and that can result in more sales of those previous products.
For example; let’s say that you published an Info Product and that it isn’t a big seller and generates a small $1,000 in passive income each year.
When another Info Product goes crazy and sells tens of thousands of copies to new people, some of those people may go and buy that previous book taking its yearly passive income average from $1,000 to $2,500 or more… and you didn’t have to do anything to make that extra $1,500 a year.
Another point I want you to think about is this:
Rule 3 – Passive Income Planning
If you create a digital product, let’s say that it is an eBook, and that eBook generates a modest $1,000 a year in passive income.
You now know that if you were to create a second eBook, that eBook would most likely generate another $1,000 in passive income.
So, if you want an annual passive income of $12,000… you know that you need to create and publish at least 12 eBooks.
Now, as I have already mentioned, one or several of those 12 eBooks could do really well and instead of making just $1,000 a year in passive income, they may make $5,000, $10,000, or more.
They will also help lift up the average annual income rate of those other books.
This is something that you really need to think about if you want a passive income bringing in thousands of dollars each year.
This is planning a passive income correctly.
Far too many people think that they can do a JK Rowling and publish one book and then their life will never be the same again. It doesn’t always work like that.
It can do, and it has for a few… but it’s rarer than hen’s teeth.
You create one product, get it set up online in an automated selling system so that people can buy it without you needing to do anything, and then you get it out in front of as many people as possible.
Focus on getting it so that it is selling as many copies as possible on autopilot, then start on another knowing that the next one is going to either match or better the results of the previous.
The sales record is your benchmark, it is there to be improved on, and you will.
The first book/product is your first attempt and once you know how to sell it, and improve on it, you should be able to beat that result.
Rule 4 – 80/20 Rule
Now, also you need to remember the 80/20 rule.
For most authors… in fact, this is for virtually all industries… 80% of their income will come from 20% of their books and 20% of their customers.
If you have ten products online, two of them will do really well, and the other eight will do OK. Now that’s not to say that the other eight don’t make any money, they may make quite a bit, but it will never be as much as those popular two.
The 80/20 rule is seen in everything, it is a rule of life and although it’s not always 80/20. It could be 75/25… but it is always near enough.
With that in mind, not only is worth focusing on only the 20% that brings in your 80% income… it goes back to rule 3 where you plan to ensure that you have enough products to make that 20% a good earner.
20% of 10 is 2, which means 2 of your products will do better than the other 8.
20% of 20 is 4 which means that you have 4 products doing well and 16 other products doing OK.
And as you know, those that do just OK can actually bring in decent amounts of money. If you want to set up your own passive income, keep these four rules in mind and you can’t go wrong.
