Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Retrospective Autumn 2012

I claimed failure in my October status report. It is time for retrospective.

I have 18 people in my Other Stream Creators blog list. 14 of them are past their deadlines. How are they doing?


Successes (or nearly successes) 

Passive Incoming is almost at her $800 per month goal. She has no deadline date. Her last reported month was nearly $700. She writes small eBooks that she sells at Amazon. As she did not have any previous work to build on, this is an amazing result.

Melissa Rachel Black reached her $50 per month goal by drawing vector illustrations. In addition, she has a new source of active income by drawing commission illustrations.

Pierre Bastien did not reach his original $300 goal and reported that as a failure. I still wanted to list him here, since he got over $150 in September. That is a reasonable bunch of cash - definitely worth mentioning.

Also, Pierre was the only "failed"-reporter that I could find!


What About Everyone Else? 

The other 11 people have not written any reports that I could easily find. I assume those people just did not make it and did not bother to report it. Some of them have stopped blogging altogether. One of them has even removed the blog post where his goal was published.


So, Why Did I Fail?

At first, I went through a set of "make believe explanations" in my head. I would have probably continued to believe in them, but then came the time to write this report.

I did not really fail because:
  • I was out of alignment with my goal 
  • My goal was not phrased in the most motivating way 
  • I chose a slow way to make passive income 
  • I did not work from my strengths 
  • I had no concrete idea how to get to my goal


I failed because I did not provide enough value.

I spent most of my time learning things. The people who succeeded in the challenge were busy publishing valuable stuff. Stuff someone was happy to pay for.

I did publish things... but what is out there is not much. I have about 15 articles in my SBI! site. I have this blog. I planned on creating 2 new passive income streams before Christmas. I have one new stream, and it is *tiny*. The fact that I'm getting at least something tells that my creations are valuable to someone.

Instead of publishing things, I learned things. What I have learned has a huge value to me - but against my goal that work is totally invisible. If I want to reach any monetary goals, I need to start publishing stuff. I need to quiet down my inner self-critic and just do it.

The big question that rises from what I have learned from this passive income challenge is: How do I know (in advance) what people want to buy?

The methods I have learned for finding out niches and evaluating their "profitability" seem to me like first steps to finding an audience to deal with. But my passive-income puzzle is still missing some pieces. I do hope 30x500 delivers them.

In the meantime, I continue to show up.

6 comments:

  1. My goal was to finish my book by 11/1. I need to do a followup blog post.

    I am slightly behind that schedule, but should be finished by months end. What was interesting for me; a random passive income stream idea started to manifest. I make a lot of products and give them away as gifts and people have been asking me how much to buy. I was shocked! I never even thought of it becoming a stream of income. So I am working on a plan for that idea.

    You have done a great job because the information you have learned will help you in the future with coming up with another stream that better suits you. I been following a long with your blog and I love your passion and drive. Keep showing up; because eventually something will happen. Keep up the effort!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Lisa Marie!

      I'm so glad to hear from you. That sounds great! Nothing is better than having people who ask you how they can pay!

      Delete
  2. If you keep showing up, you WILL succeed. I've been busy doing lots of learning myself, which is a big reason my sales have remained the same for a few months. I finally teamed up with some people who have already had great success in my niche (as opposed to my modest success, which is encouraging but only the first step), and the amount of stuff I'm learning is incredible.

    And you're right - finding profitable niches can be tricky. I've had a couple of failures in the last few months that have really highlighted some of the greatest mistakes I've made.

    I really love following your posts and thank you for the shoutout and traffic!

    -Cindy, Passive Incoming

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Cindy!

      I'd love to hear more about things you have learned through mistakes. Maybe you'll write about that in your blog? I love reading your blog, you have just the right attitude for passive income and reaching your dreams.

      I knew when I started that only about 1 out of 20 tries in passive income succeeds. Originally I thought I'd just stick to it and crank out a product after another. But this autumn I've learned that its not that easy! I just need to learn more to up my chances since it will otherwise take me too long to get there.

      Delete
  3. Hey Jaana,

    Thanks for including me in the list.

    I'm not worried for ya, you yourself said you won't quit and in that case there's no possibility of failure.

    Cheers,
    Melissa

    ReplyDelete