Addiction and goals; making POD work in your life

In my poorly titled chicken post, I talked about how POD is a very unpredictable beast, yet so lucrative it’s hard to ignore. Passive income generally appeals to me so much because of the benefits (I love waking up to sales!), but there is also a dark side.

Hi I’m Jack, and I’m addicted to Redbubble. Before this, I was addicted to one of my information sites that ran affiliate links and Adsense. I’m not even entirely sure what it is.

There is just something so compelling about not trading your time directly for money. It feels like you’ve found a hack for life. “If it goes well, I’ll never have to work again”, is something we’ve probably said to ourselves more than once.

What makes passive income and POD so addictive?

Addiction probably isn’t the best word, I would say that I have an invested and ongoing interest in Redbubble. I want to get better at it, I enjoy it, and as hobbies go, it is quite a positive, productive one!

Recently, there have been days where I would spend hours on Redbubble, uploading work, fixing older uploads, researching niches, creating designs. While this can be good, it’s not the best idea to keep this up. It can get exhausting, it can infect your dreams and daily life.

I would have a monitor dedicated to Redbubble; with half a chrome window on my Gmail filter, and the other half on my Redbubble activity feed.

Looking back I suppose it was for the short dopamine rush every time I saw a sale. It’s great to see that filter light up with a new message. It means nothing though. Seeing a sale as soon as it is made is no different to seeing it tomorrow.

I started limiting my time looking at Redbubble sales. I now check them once in the morning, and only a few times in the day. Passive income really has an unpredictable quality. Just look at this chart of earnings over the past month. Who knows what’s going on there, it’s completely wild.

Apart from Sundays, there is no real pattern to this. The massive bulk payment was something I uploaded a few days before, so I must have hit a niche just right. let’s hope this continues!

It’s because of this wild difference in days that it becomes to exciting.

You just never know if somebody is going to buy that £150 art print and absolutely destroy your day. Other days, you might just get a few sticker sales and nothing else.

Sunday is usually my best day. I suppose people are at home, getting cosy before Monday morning, maybe wanting to buy something to try and buy a slice of happiness before the working week.

You have to accept the nature of passive income and print on demand businesses. With inconsistency and disorder comes a desire for order. While I can’t control who buys things, I can set actionable goals to create a sense of order.

Creating good goals

Actionable goals are things you can do, which only require effort on your part. they are good goals. A recent goal of mine was ‘Get to 300 designs!’ This is a good actionable goal.

It’s clear and achievable and I have the means and ability to do it. There is nothing really stopping me from having 300 designs uploaded. The only party that could have any impact on it was me, and after putting a few days in, I got to 300.

A bad example for a goal would be ‘Sell this product x times before the end of the month’. You just can’t control it directly, it might not even be a popular product, who knows. You might be able to achieve this if you’re certain of a niche and have an advertising budget, but I wouldn’t worry about that.

Between these two goals is ‘I want to make x amount this month’. While you can’t directly make a certain amount every month, you can see it as something to aim for. I am aiming for £1000 a month. It’s a long term goal, and I know I’ll feel achieved when I reach it. There is no time limit, £1000 is just what I want to get out of my passive income.

Remember, it’s not a get rich quick scheme. If you do it well, it’s a get rich slow scheme.

In summary

  • Spend time wisely getting better at something, not just blindly looking at your stats
  • Remember that daily statistics don’t really mean anything at all
  • Focus on long term analytics; visitors month by month
  • Create short term actionable goals
  • Create long term achievable goals

Exciting update

JeezPod now has a Facebook page. If you like it, you’ll see when new posts are up. You can check it out by clicking or tapping below:

I’m not sure how active it will be, but I think it’s better than me manually pasting the link into a few Facebook groups. Thanks for reading.

One thought on “Addiction and goals; making POD work in your life

Comments are closed.