- Niki Puls, 30, wanted to find a way to earn passive income for her family.
- She made her first digital product this past March and has earned over $120,000 since.
- She has advice for beginners starting out in this space.
When Niki Puls created her first ebook this past March, she was making $60,000 per year at her 9-to-5 marketing job.
But in just the last two months, the 30-year-old has made roughly $77,000 selling digital products, according to documents provided to Insider, and says she’s only been working “five hours or less” per week.
Since starting in March, Puls says she’s earned roughly $120,000 selling three digital products: an ebook, an email course, and an ebook template. The income allowed her to quit her 9-to-5 in July and achieve her “ultimate goal:” spending more time at home with her two-year-old daughter. That’s about to get even more important given she now has a second child on the way.
“When I was working nine to five, I dropped my daughter off at daycare at 7:00 in the morning, wouldn’t see her until 6:00, see her for an hour before dinner, put her to bed,” she told Insider. “Now she spends all day with me.”
Puls is among the Americans who have found ways to earn passive income, an income stream that often requires some initial time and investment, but then generates cash thereafter with minimal labor. Rental properties, high-yield savings accounts, and dividend stocks are some traditional examples of passive income, but today, some Americans are turning to digital products, online courses, social media ad revenue, cash-back rewards, car-sharing, and even vending machines as new-age ways to work smarter and not harder.
While Puls’ husband still works, she says the income has been huge for her family’s financial stability, and that her flexible work life has helped them avoid steep child care costs.
“It took off and sold like crazy”
In addition to her full-time job, Puls says she’s “always had a side hustle” to make additional money for her family. She used to spend several hours per week consulting small businesses on social media marketing.
But earlier this year, she decided to seek out something that would not only provide her extra income, but more of another valuable resource: time.
In March, she spent a week creating her first digital product — a 50-page ebook about how to live a simplified life priced at $35, “just to see how it would do,” she said.
“It took off and sold like crazy,” she said, and soon …….
