37-year-old mom makes $6,300 a month in passive income: 'I don't regret working less so I can spend more time with my toddler'

When I was pregnant with my first child, my mind was still in work mode. Since starting my company Bridesmaid for Hire in 2014, I'd often worked 70-hour weeks, traveled all over the country for business opportunities, and attached my identity to my hustle. I didn't want any of that to change just because I was becoming a mom. 

I planned to take six weeks of maternity leave, lining up childcare and business gigs — working weddings and speaking at conferences — right afterward. 

But after my daughter was born in early 2023, I no longer craved being pulled in a dozen different directions. I still wanted to run my company, but I also wanted to spend quality time with my baby.

At first, I put in 40 to 50 hours a week when my daughter was sleeping during the day and when my husband came home from work. But as she grew out of the baby phase, parenting became more hands-on and I could only manage about half of it. 

I decided that I needed to shift how I was working so that I could still earn money while giving my daughter the attention she deserved. Today, I make about $6,300 a month in passive income. Here's how I made it happen. 

As an entrepreneur, I constantly want to create new products and services. But with less time, I looked instead at how I could monetize the resources and foundations I already established.

For example, I put Google ads on my website, which had about 463,000 users in the last year. Traffic swings mean ad income varies. When I have ads turned on, I earn on average $391 per month, with zero hours of work involved. 

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This monetization method can diminish the user experience on your website and distract from your own messaging and products. So whenever I have a big product launch coming up, I turn off this revenue stream to focus on quality and conversions. 

I send out weekly newsletters to over 100,000 subscribers and post several times a week on TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook to over 90,000 social media followers. A lot of my content is centered around wedding and other suggestions and advice, so I use affiliate links.

Two programs I joined, Amazon Associates and RewardStyle, allow me to create curated storefronts and share links to those lists in my social media profile bios and newsletters. This takes about two hours a week.

If a person buys a product I've recommended (or other products on the same website) after clicking through my affiliate link, I receive a commission. The amount varies based on the platform, product, and other factors. The payout averages $129 a month.

Clients often hire me to write their maid of honor speeches. It's a time-consuming process that takes five or six hours per speech. It wasn't scalable and I frequently had to turn clients away because I didn't have the bandwidth. Sometimes I said yes anyway. Just hours after giving birth, I sat in the hospital bed trying to finish drafting one.

I decided to team up with a developer who helped me build an AI maid of honor speech writing tool. He took over 200 speeches I'd composed and programmed the tool to replicate the writing style, format, and structure I used.

This allowed me to offer my service at a lower price point ($35 instead of $397) and scale it to work with an unlimited number of customers. In the past year, we've expanded to different types of wedding speeches and vows, and even created a similar tool for eulogies. 

These tools bring in an average of $5,380 a month. I usually spend around five hours a week working on marketing, writing SEO-related blog posts, and designing or filming social media content related to these tools. 

One of my first sources of passive income was an online course I launched in 2017. The idea came from a popular request I got from people wanting to start a wedding side hustle like mine. It took me a few weeks to write, film videos, and create the assignments.

I've since launched over a dozen courses, including one on public speaking and another on personal branding. They're available on my website and I often promote them via social media and newsletters. I spend two to three hours a month updating my courses and creating content to market them. 

I also have three books and a newlywed card game. And early last year, I started monetizing my weekly newsletter. I offer a paid subscriber tier that comes with added benefits, like access to newsletter archives, surprise gifts in the mail, and free copies of my books. This takes only an additional hour of time a month to manage.

All together, these digital and physical products generate about $380 a month. 

These passive income streams allow my business to stay afloat and give me time to focus on the projects I'm most excited about, like new products and a podcast. 

Most of all, I don't regret working less so I can spend more time with my toddler.

Jen Glantz is the founder of Bridesmaid for Hire, the author of "Finally the Bride: Finding Love after Walking down Everyone Else's Aisle," and the creator of The Pick-Me-Up newsletter. Follow her adventures on Instagram @jenglantz.

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