After years of developing the successful Etsy store she established in 2019, Rachel Jimenez shared with CNBC Make It that she is now directing her attention to other endeavors, offering printables such as Elf on Shelf games for Christmas, which has generated six figures in passive income in previous years.
In 2023, Etsy generated $77,000 in passive income for Jimenez, who spent just "five to ten minutes" per day checking messages, which, along with other income streams from her and her husband's ventures, led her to realize she could be more selective about her projects.
As she contemplated her next steps, Jimenez recognized her desire to pursue projects that could significantly impact people, such as her blog and newsletter.
Here's how the 36-year-old is leveraging her expertise, expanding her content, and pre-tax earnings from each venture last year.
Optimize Your Life Academy Brought In $12,250
In early 2023, Jimenez introduced a virtual course titled Optimize Your Life Academy, which focused on positive psychology and its impact on achieving success. The course generated approximately $12,250 in total earnings for the year. Jimenez promoted it through various online channels, such as email campaigns and a free webinar. She maintains the funnel set up, which continues to attract leads and drive sales of the course, priced at $297.
In September 2023, Jimenez also launched another course called "Passive Income 101," covering topics like understanding passive income, starting a passive income business, and investment strategies. So far, she has only informed her newsletter subscribers about it. The course is priced at $97 and generated around $900 in earnings last year.
Affiliate Blog Links Brought in $24,000
Jimenez established her blog in 2019 and began her weekly newsletter in October 2021. Both platforms cover passive income, personal finance, and positive psychology.
She mentions that while she occasionally misses posting on her blog, she takes pride in maintaining a consistent schedule with her newsletter, which was distributed free of charge every Thursday and currently has over 8,000 subscribers.
Writing content for both platforms consumes approximately four hours per week. The blog generates revenue from affiliate links and earned around $24,000 last year. Meanwhile, the newsletter is monetized through advertisements and earns over $1,500.
Currently, Jimenez is focusing on enhancing her marketing skills to expand her audience for both platforms. She admits that Pinterest has been a challenge for her, so she's enrolled in a course to learn how to utilize it to drive more traffic to her blog effectively.
Teaching Brought in About $10,450
As of summer 2023, she teaches classes as an adjunct professor at Mt. San Antonio College. During the summer, she taught three classes: Home-Based Business I, Home-Based Business II, and a mobile technology class covering basic cell phone use, such as texting. This semester, she teaches only one class, home-based business II, which focuses on marketing. She dedicates three hours per week to teaching and earns $66 per hour, which helped her gain approximately $10,450 last year.
Teaching these classes allows her to engage with a potential audience for her content, noting that while she can speculate about their challenges, having conversations with real people provides valuable market research.
