Making Passive Income As A Shopify Developer
About two years ago, I started to realize that there was a common theme with my web design clients. They would come to me wanting a website, but they wouldn’t know the steps they needed to take to get there. I would often start by walking them through how to sign up for domain hosting. I would explain that basically a domain host is the company that stores and serves your website files via the internet. Every website must use one and the options can be a little overwhelming. I could understand my clients’ uncertainty as they picked their host. (Fortunately, I had experience with a wide range of hosting companies and could navigate them through the process, as questions would inevitably arise.)
Then one day, as I was searching out different ways to make passive income on the internet, I was reminded of something called affiliate marketing. If you’re not familiar with the term, its basically a partnership with a company. For every client you design up to use their service, you receive a set amount of income. I quickly realized two things:
1. If I worked with with primarily one domain host, it would simplify the process for my clients.
2. I was missing out on free money by not utilizing affiliate marketing.
Maintaining Trust With Your Clients
Now before I go any further, let me issue a disclaimer. The most important thing to me is not the passive income, but making sure I am signing my customers up with reputable services that I know and trust. I want my relationship to my clients to be built on trust, and to provide excellent experience, first and foremost. Therefore, I suggest only partnering with affiliate programs that you feel comfortable signing your clients up for.
So, I signed up for the affiliate marketing program through Bluehost, who was my domain hosting company of choice. The approval process was quick and easy, and from that day on I was getting $65 extra dollars for each web client I signed up for hosting.
Set Goals To Stay Focused
Fast forward to 2019. Many of my clients are now starting e-commerce stores and prefer different online selling platforms. Shopify is one of the quickest growing, customer preferred e-commerce platforms on the market. So this year, I decided to dive into Shopify website development, and the Shopify affiliate marketing program. Their approval process was pretty simple and they were offering an ongoing monthly revenue share of 20%, which is a much more lucrative system in the long run. If my website client purchases the basic Shopify plan at $30 per month, Shopify pays me $6 as the affiliate as long as they are a customer.
To date, I have signed up two Shopify clients with two more currently on the way. I am nearly halfway to my 2019 goal of 10 Shopify sign-ups! This will net $60 per month in passive income, which will pay for my small business’s monthly internet bill.
Affiliate marketing is a fantastic way to add passive streams of income to your business. I encourage you to go all in today and take those next steps to growing your business!
For more great tips and passive income ideas check out my blog on 3 ways to make passive income as a graphic or web designer.