After years of growing her successful Etsy store, Rachel Jimenez is now focusing her efforts on other projects. The store offers printable products like Elf on a Shelf games for Christmas and has generated a six-figure passive income over the past few years. She founded it in 2019.
Etsy generated $77,000 in passive income in 2023, with Jimenez only working about “five to 10 minutes” a day to check her posts, she says. This, along with some of her and her husband’s money-making efforts, made her realize that she could start being more picky about her projects.
Considering her “what now,” 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 shares her wealth of knowledge and expands on her content, including how much each company brought in last year, before taxes.
“Optimize Your Life Academy” grossed $12,250
In early 2023, Jimenez released a virtual course on positive psychology and its ability to succeed, “Optimize Your Life Academy.” This brought in a total of approximately $12,250 in 2023.
She advertises it through various online efforts, such as email blasts and a free webinar she released. “I always have this funnel setup,” she says. “And so it continues to generate leads and people continue to buy the course.” She charges $297 for it.
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In September 2023, Jimenez also launched another course, “Passive Income 101,” on what passive income is, how to start a passive income business, and how to invest. So far, she has only informed people who receive her newsletter. She charges $97 for it and made about $900 last year.
Affiliate links on his blog brought in $24,000
Jimenez launched her blog in 2019 and her weekly newsletter in October 2021. Both cover topics like passive income, personal finance, and positive psychology.
“I will say my blog, I miss some weeks,” she says of trying to maintain her posting routine, “but my newsletter, I’m proud to say I haven’t missed a week.” The newsletter is free and comes out every Thursday. She now has more than 8,000 subscribers, she says.
In total, the two men spend about four hours a week writing. The blog makes money through affiliate links and brought in around $24,000 last year. The newsletter makes money from ads and has brought in over $1,500.
Jimenez is currently working on honing his marketing skills to grow his audience in both. “Pinterest has always been a black box for me,” she says, which is why she’s currently taking a course on “how to use it to drive more traffic to blogs.”
Teaching brought in approximately $10,450
Finally, since the summer of 2023, she has been teaching as an assistant professor at Mt. San Antonio College.
Over the summer, she taught three: Home Business I, Home Business II and a mobile technology course teaching the basics of cell phone use, such as texting.
This semester she’s only doing Home Business II, which focuses on marketing your business. She works three hours a week and earns $66 an hour. Last year, she brought in about $10,450.
The classes give him the opportunity to talk about his content to a potential audience. “I can guess what their problems are,” she says, “but when I have conversations with real people, it’s the best market research you can do.”
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