When you’re running a nutrition practice and seeing patients all day, there’s a cap on how much you can make. While you can always raise your consultation fees, there are only so many clients you can see in a day. Trading your time for money is called active income, which is how most of us earn money.
Passive income is different in that it doesn’t require this same trade. To generate passive income, you put in the time upfront to create a valuable product or offer, which will continue to sell without much effort for weeks, months, or years to come.
Creating passive income products is a way to significantly increase your revenue as a nutritionist without having to work more hours seeing clients. It can also help you diversify your income streams, which can help your income stay consistent during slow seasons in your practice.
As a nutritionist or registered dietitian, you have years of expertise under your belt that you can use to create passive income streams for your business. Here are some ways to make passive income that help you repackage your nutrition expertise into a course that can earn money between client visits.
An online program or e-book can be a hands-off way to provide value and education without adding more clients to your practice. While it does take a bit of effort upfront to create the course or e-book, it’s one of the simplest ways to continue to generate passive income over time.
An online course or e-book can sell 24 hours a day (even while you sleep). It can also reach more clients interested in working with you.
Let’s say you help your clients with gut health. An easy way to build your passive income product is to create introductory e-books or mini-courses for various digestion-related conditions. Some examples might include, “The Nutritionists Guide to Constipation Relief” or “Introduction to SIBO: What You Need to Know”.
These resources can help clients who aren't ready for your top-tier service still get valuable information or be used to get potential clients interested in working with you.
With Practice Better, you can host and market your online programs and courses within the software, helping you effortlessly build income-generating products without paying for other expensive platforms.
The software allows you to offer evergreen, fixed-date, or self-paced courses to clients. Practice Better also helps you market your programs with lead magnets, helping you build multiple passive income streams for your practice.
[hubspot portal="20923534" id="080d751b-68d5-44f9-ba3a-f3e0246b6222" type="form"]
Subscriptions and memberships are popular as they allow clients to access you or your educational materials for a monthly price. This is a simple way to add recurring revenue and provide ongoing access to educational content for your clients.
Many types of content can be offered inside a membership or subscription program. It can include offerings such as:
While some of these require creating monthly content to share with your subscribers, you can make one resource to share with all members at once, saving you time.
Building a community can help your clients achieve their goals and receive support from peers dealing with the same issues and concerns. A community can help your clients stay on track with their health goals when others motivate them.
Many different platforms help create membership communities. With Practice Better you can offer group sessions where members can receive support from you and their peers on a group coaching call.
Affiliate marketing is when a business gives you a commission for each customer brought to the business by your marketing efforts. The sales and commissions are typically tracked via a unique link.
One of the simplest ways of adding affiliate revenue to your practice is to become an affiliate for products you already use and recommend for your clients.
For example, if you work with gut health clients and frequently recommend a specific type of probiotic or gluten-free brand, consider becoming an affiliate for these products. This way you can provide your client with a link to use when they purchase from the company, which will result in a percentage of the sale going to you. Sometimes, brands will also offer a discount for your clients to encourage them to use your affiliate link when buying the product.
Social media, email marketing, e-books, and online courses are great places to recommend products and include affiliate links. This can be a way to educate your clients and potential clients about brands you love and recommend, plus earn some additional passive income by monetizing content you are already creating.
While affiliate income can be a great passive income stream, there are a few things to consider before promoting products.
Start by always vetting the company before agreeing to become an affiliate. Select brands you believe in and recommend for your clients, which helps build and maintain trust. Finally, to stay compliant with FTC guidelines, always disclose affiliate relationships on all platforms by stating that you will receive a commission if they purchase via your link. As always, transparency helps build and maintain trust, a health and wellness professional's currency.
If you are blogging to help clients find you, you can monetize the traffic from search engines.
When you write articles for your website, if they are well-written and provide value, they may begin to appear as one of the results in online searches. This means your website will appear when someone searches for a specific, relevant topic. When they find your site, this is an opportunity for them to learn about your practice and encourage them to get on your email list or purchase one of your passive income products.
Blogs can also be monetized in other ways. Brands will often pay for “sponsored” posts that educate your clients about their product or offering. These types of posts may or may not include an affiliate link to purchase the product; the brand will also pay for writing the post itself.
If you can get significant traffic to your website, you can apply for ad networks. These networks display relevant ads on your website and usually pay based on your website's clicks or traffic.
The best way to increase your blog traffic to monetize your articles is to learn SEO (search engine optimization). SEO starts with learning how to determine topics you have a chance to rank for in search engines and then writing the best possible content around that topic.
SEO best practices change frequently, so if this is a passive income stream you want to tackle, you must be passionate about keeping up with the constantly shifting search engine landscape.
As a nutritionist, diversifying your income through passive sources is a way to increase your financial stability and reach a broader audience. Unlike active income, passive income is another way to make a living that doesn't require your continuous time investment, allowing you to earn while still focusing on your core practice.
Online courses and e-books are excellent starting points. They use your expertise to provide valuable information to a wide audience, generating income long after the initial effort is over. Integrating affiliate marketing into your practice by recommending products you trust increases your revenue and strengthens your client relationships.
Subscriptions and membership models offer a steady stream of income and establish a community around your brand, fostering loyalty and offering peer-to-peer support.
Finally, blogging and content monetization, especially when you begin to implement SEO strategies, can attract a larger audience. This positions you as an authority in your field and also opens up opportunities for ad revenue and sponsored content.
In summary, as a nutritionist, tapping into these passive income streams can substantially boost your earnings, reduce dependency on active income, and allow you to impact more lives without working more hours.
Practice Better is the complete practice management platform for nutritionists, dietitians, and wellness professionals. Streamline your practice and begin your 14-day free trial today.
