Passive Income Ideas for Counsellors

Passive Income Ideas for Counsellors
Are you a counsellor who’s looking to add passive or semi passive income into your business?
With time (and energy) limiting how many client sessions you can manage each day / week, an additional income stream that doesn’t take up as much time or energy could be a great way to continue to grow your business.
It also provides you with the opportunity to reach a much wider audience of people, and helps you to earn money while focusing on your client work.
*Affiliate Disclosure: Some links in this post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something via the link, I may receive a small commission. This doesn't affect the price you pay.
If you have any questions, reach out for a chat [email protected] or check out my other blogs
Table of Contents
Passive Income Ideas for Counsellors
Let's get straight into some of the passive income ideas for counsellors, coaches, service providers that you can introduce into your business today!
The key with passive income is to tap into your work, expertise, experience as well as a sprinkle of passion!
It can take time to make your passive income earn you money, but this post is about giving your ideas for your business.
E-Book Self Publishing
Publishing an ebook is a great passive income idea for counsellors, coaches or service providers, because it allows you to share your knowledge and expertise.
If you’re a relationship counsellor for example, you could publish a book for either clients to learn from, or fellow counsellors looking to offer relationship counselling themselves.
Some ideas to get you started:
Common mental health issues – Think about some of the common issues your clients present with. What struggles are they currently facing? What tools, resources and knowledge do you have that you could share inside of an ebook? For example, if you work with anxiety, what coping strategies or activities help clients?
Therapy Skills – This could be geared towards clients, fellow counsellors or other professionals wanting to improve their communication skills. Consider some of the key therapy skills you use in your work. What can you tell people about them? How do they support your clients? Are there any practical steps that the reader could take themselves?
Expertise – Do you have a specialism? If you’re a CBT therapist – this is a great topic to discuss. You can provide background on CBT as well as sharing some of the strategies / activities that work well within your practice. A practical aspect to an ebook could be a brilliant selling point.
Personal Experiences – Do you have personal experiences that you feel could be beneficial for others to learn more about? For example, have you experienced grief? Divorce? Low confidence that has improved through therapy?
Niche Marketing – Are you a college / young person therapist? Do you mainly support older people with mental health or is there a specific area that you focus on in your work? A niche like this is a great way to stand out from others.
Online Courses
Online courses are a great option for passive income. Once the initial work has been completed, the time spent will be very brief – just updating things, checking systems are working and following up with student issues / admin.
This can be more semi-passive if you add live training aspects to it, or you promote it frequently, but you can set them up to be evergreen, which means that they are pretty much left once created (other than for the above).
As a counsellor / professional, you will have a tonne of knowledge and experience that you can share with others. You may consider making it CPD friendly for fellow professionals, or you may choose to aim your courses at clients.
You can host your courses on platforms like Udemy or Teachable, or you can opt for systems that allow you to host courses alongside your websites.
I use Smart Growth System – an all-in-one system that lets me create and sell as many courses as I want. It also supports social media scheduling, sales pages, funnels and email marketing – I love it and it’s extremely cost effective.
If you choose SGS and sign up using this link, you can get 30% discount on the monthly or annual cost, when you use the code affiliate30
There is another option Thrivecart where you can grab yourself a lifetime deal using this link! This isn’t an all-in-one like SGS, but it’s a brilliant online shopping cart that allows you to create sales pages and online courses.
Workshops / Training
As well as courses, workshops and training events can be another great source of semi-passive income for counsellors. While this isn’t as passive as evergreen courses, it’s a great way to reach multiple people in one single training session / workshop.
There are various ways you can do this – using zoom to hold your training, or a platform that hosts your website etc. You could opt for Youtube, or reach out to companies like online events to host the training.
Topic Ideas:
Depending on your area of expertise and experience, you may choose to run training to help other professionals work with conditions like anxiety more effectively. Or, you may hold mental health coping strategies for those wanting to learn more.
If you’re experienced in dealing with topics like stress, eating disorders, counselling skills, mindfulness etc., these could all make great courses and training topics.
Another bonus of creating workshops and training is that you then have a wealth of knowledge that you can easily put into a course so that people can DIY the training in their own time!
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another option to explore for passive income opportunities. Affiliate marketing is effectively the promotion of the products or services of others. Through this you can earn a commission each time somebody purchases it through your referral link.
This is something I include in my blogs, sharing things that are relevant to my work and business, and for which I have good experience with.
If you choose to start your own counselling blog with an intention to include affiliate marketing, it’s important to approach this ethically, especially if you are in the mental health field, and is something that I take into consideration before sharing any links in my work.
A few things to consider with affiliate marketing:
Is it relevant to my work / message / course? If you are a counsellor, you don’t necessarily need all of your affiliates to be within the same field. As a counsellor, you are also a business owner. It’s likely you have a website, and use tools to support your work.
What I also love about affiliates is that there is usually a bonus for the person signing up as well as any commission / reward for myself. And even better, for the most part, if you do choose to sign up – you too will also be entitled to become an affiliate and do the same thing!
Affiliates that I happily share include:
Smart Growth System – this is the platform that I use. It hosts my counselling website, handles me emails, email marketing, online courses and more. I love the system and highly recommend it. Reward = 30% commission & 30% discount for you!
Sunsama – As a neurodiverse person who manages low energy, Sunsama is a great option for me. I’ve been using it for a few months now and it has changed the way that I work. I am clear on my weekly objectives, goals and plan my days well. This is key for me with a box-jumping mind, and is something I do recommend. Reward = Free month for both of us and a 2 week free trial for you – giving you 6 wks to try it out!
Canva – Canva is vital in my business, and was before I began focusing on coaching and passive income alongside my practice. It is the best design tool in my opinion, it’s user-friendly and I use it every single day for all aspects of my business. Reward = 15% commission via the empower programme. Annual subs are 20% cheaper than monthly users.
As you can see, these aren’t in the mental health field – but for me, they are all essential in running my business!
Digital Products
Creating digital products is a great way to introduce passive income alongside your 1-1 work, as well as providing valuable resources to clients and other professionals.
There are many different niches in the digital product market, ranging from single worksheets to online courses or Private Label Rights (PLR) products.
You may choose to focus solely on creating and selling mental health based worksheets, or you may expand to supporting other professionals through creating and selling templates that they can use within their own practice.
Types of Digital Products
There are so many types of products you can tap into, including:
Worksheets: Worksheets can be created to help clients (or those who love personal growth but prefer to do it on their own), work through specific issues. For example, worksheets that provide tools and exercise for managing anxiety or dealing with big emotions. Or, they could be designed to focus more on things like goal setting, or self care activities.
How-To Guides: You could choose to create guides that focus in more depth on areas like managing anxiety, coping with stress, or navigating grief. They’re not as in-depth as ebooks, but bigger and more information based than single worksheets.
Templates: Templates are another great option. Templates could include mental health worksheets like thought shifting CBT exercise, daily planners, journals, self-care checklists etc. Or, perhaps you want to reach other therapists, so you could create templates to help them. In my store Quietly Conquer, I provide templates that range from pre-designed (DFY) social media templates, lead magnet templates and more.
E-books: As discussed before, an ebook can be a great way to provide deeper insights as well as practical advice. Due to their digital nature, you don’t have to worry about publishing etc, and can be sold via your stores with ease.
Online Courses: As mentioned, online courses can be another great way to tap into passive or semi-passive income. They don’t need to be huge – you can offer a selection of smaller courses, without adding video training. At a lower price point these can be great sellers.
Other Passive Income Ideas for Counsellors:
Blogging – You can monetize your blog via:
Affiliate marketing – Get rewarded for sharing the products and services of others. (See above).
Syndicating posts – Do you write for platforms like Medium? If so, you can syndicate your posts onto platforms where you can sign up to receive earnings for your writing.
Creating sponsored blogs – You can opt to write posts for others. Or, you could add posts to your own blog that are sponsored by a company. For example, you may write about their products and services on your website, for which you receive commission.
Adverts – Advertising within your posts via Google AdSense. If you look at blogs online you’ll notice that some are filled with ads. This brings in a consistent passive income once you hit certain traffic / engagement levels.
Blogging is a great option, but it’s not passive. The revenue from ads and affiliates is – but a blog takes time and a lot of work. You need to keep your content fresh and continue to add new posts regularly to keep your SEO ranking high.
It is a great option for counsellors as there are so many topics you can write about that people want to read and learn more about.
YouTube or Podcasts
YouTube and podcasts are another great option, and the revenue you can bring to the table would be considered passive if gained through ads, or sponsored videos etc. (similar to blogs).
But it’s something that does take time and energy each week. But if you like showing up and like talking about your work / mental health and helping others – these could be brilliant ideas for you!
For podcasts, you can choose to host on platforms where there’s a cost to listen and subscribe. One of these is Patreon and a favourite amongst other professionals I know. This revenue is considered passive / semi passive and again moves you away from 1-1 work to a 1 – many reach.
Tools Resources & Support
Each post I add my favourite tools and resources, so here are some more just for you!
Sunsama – A brilliant task management that is perfect for busy and neurodiverse minds who easily find themselves overwhelmed and distracted. grab a free 2 week trial and free month!
Thought-Shifting Mini Journal – CBT-Based Thought Shifting Activities + mini journal with prompts
Canva Pro – Upgrade your content design with Canva Pro. Explore the enhanced features available in Pro. Grab your free trial here.
Etsy – Are you ready to create your own online store? Etsy is a brilliant shopping platform that's used by millions. Setting up your store is simple, and when you sign up with this link we both get 40 free listings!
Pinterest Guide – If you're looking to get into Pinterest, I highly recommend Amy's free guide and Pinterest course. It's up-to-date for 2024 & she also has a brilliant course for only $67 that's updated frequently. (I have a 50% discount on the course using this link SEO and the code RANK)
Task Batching – I created this task batching / brain dump workbook to help you get to grips with batching tasks. You can also read the post here for further info!
Final Thoughts
I hope you have found these passive income ideas for counsellors helpful! There are so many things out there that you can introduce into your own business to create a more passive income.
Whilst there will be an initial cost to your time and energy, in time these evergreen-type products will require very limited attention other than to do updates / check links / communicate with clients / buyers.
Although these are passive income ideas for counsellors, they are also relevant for coaches, therapists, specialists and other small business owners.
I would love to hear about your plans or your own experiences – please feel free to share your thoughts below!
If this post helped or you enjoyed reading it, please share one of the images below as it really helps my blog – Thank You!



Meet Lynsey

Hey there! I'm Lynsey, a coach, counsellor, and mentor for low energy, introverted or low confident female coaches & small business owners. With over 5 years’ experience of running businesses, and over a decade as a tutor and trainer, I've learned the value of effective time management that energises you through working with your energy.
I've lived with chronic illness – ME/CFS since 2011 and since then I re-trained as a counsellor, and achieved a distinction for my MA in Counselling and Psychotherapy Practice; all while running 4 businesses! I want that for you as well & it is possible with the right support and pathway to success.
Improving your mindset, finding acceptance and developing a solution-focused approach to achieving your goals is my passion. Blending mental health support where needed, as well as a supportive space and methods to manage your work more effectively.
If you'd like to know more about working with me, you can email [email protected] or find me on socials (links in the menu)
Have you seen my online store Shop.QuietlyConquer? Find DFY templates, downloads & more!