After years of building out her successful Etsy store, Rachel Jimenez is now focusing her efforts on other projects. The store features printables like Elf on a Shelf games for Christmas and has made six figures in passive income in past years. She founded it in 2019.
Etsy brought in $77,000 in passive income in 2023, with Jimenez working just “five-to-ten minutes” per day or so checking messages, she says. That, plus some of her and her husband’s other moneymaking efforts made her realize she could start being pickier about her projects.
In considering her “now what,” Jimenez realized she wanted to focus on projects that could both “have a bigger impact and help people,” she says, like her blog and newsletter.
Here’s how the 36-year-old is sharing her wealth of knowledge and building out her content, including how much each venture brought in last year, pre-tax.
‘Optimize Your Life Academy’ brought in $12,250
In early 2023, Jimenez released a virtual course about positive psychology and its ability to bring about success, “Optimize Your Life Academy.” That brought in about $12,250 in 2023 altogether.
She publicizes it through various online efforts like email blasts and a free webinar she released. “I still have that funnel setup,” she says. “And so it’s still bringing leads in and people are still buying the course.” She charges $297 for it.
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In September 2023, Jimenez also launched another course, “Passive Income 101,” about what passive income is, how to start a passive income business and how to invest. Thus far, she’s only let the people receiving her newsletter know about it. She charges $97 for it and made about $900 from it last year.
Affiliate links in her blog brought in $24,000
Jimenez started her blog in 2019 and her weekly newsletter in October 2021. Both cover topics such as passive income, personal finance and positive psychology.
“I will say my blog, some weeks I miss,” she says about trying to keep up her posting routine, “but my newsletter I am proud to say I have not missed a week.” The newsletter is free and comes out every Thursday. It now boasts more than 8,000 subscribers, she says.
Altogether, the two take about four hours to write per week. The blog makes money through affiliate links and brought in about $24,000 last year. The newsletter makes money through ads and brought in more than $1,500.
Jimenez is currently working on sharpening her marketing skills to grow her audience in both. “Pinterest has always been a black box for me,” she says, so she’s currently taking a course about “how to use that to drive more traffic to blogs.”
Teaching brought in about $10,450
Finally, as of summer 2023, she’s teaching classes as an adjunct professor at Mt. San Antonio College.
Over the summer, she taught three: home-based business I, home-based business II and a mobile technology class teaching the basics of cell phone use like texting.
This semester, she’s down to just one, home-based business II, which focuses on marketing your business. She works three hours per week and makes $66 per hour. Last year she brought in about $10,450.
The classes give her an opportunity to talk to a potential audience of her content. “I can guess at what their problems are,” she says, “but when I have conversations with real people, that’s the best market research you can do.”
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