A Fun Product Business for People Who Love Their Community
You don't need any special skills and it's not subject to tariffs.
Imagine this: A customer buys a pocket-sized “Coffee Passport” for their neighbourhood. It lists 20 indie coffee shops. Each shop offers a free drink, BOGO deal, or special discount just for passport holders.
Customers love it. Coffee shops get new faces in the door.
And the person who created the passport? They’re making money while feeling good about contributing positively to their community.
Welcome to the world of community passports: a surprisingly untapped business model that blends commerce, curation, and community to create a business opportunity unlike anything else, all in a single physical (or digital) product.
Why Community Passports Are a Great Business Opportunity
Community passports are such a fun business model that anyone can start, and they can have a hugely positive impact on their entire community. It’s totally manageable as a side hustle, but with plenty of potential to scale up to a full-time business.
The business model benefits everyone involved.
With community passports, you can create a business in a niche you’re passionate about that benefits both consumers and local businesses.
You curate a themed passport for your community filled with special offers from local businesses you love.
Consumers get to explore recommended spots and take advantage of their special offers.
Local businesses attract new customers who are primed to have a great experience that will make them want to return.
It’s highly monetizable and scalable.
Community passports are easy to monetize because your partner businesses provide the product through rewards and incentives, while you curate it and package it into something you can sell. The more value you can include in the passport from participating businesses and the perks they offer, the more you can charge for it.
At $25 a pop, you only need to sell 1,000 passports yearly to earn a nice side income of $25K in revenue. But if you choose a high-demand niche or increase the value of your passport, you can scale your revenue even higher. Plus, the more passports you print, the lower your printing costs.
Additional Monetization
This business isn’t restricted to only passport sales. You can scale your revenue in several other ways, even within a smaller niche.
Sponsored placement: Some businesses will pay to be featured in a premium spot (like the back cover or a highlighted page) or for marketing opportunities on your social media accounts
Upsells: You can offer premium passport packages that include merch or prizes after completion.
Affiliate deals: Digital passports can include affiliate links for relevant platforms and offers.
Future Expansion
Your business will grow naturally as your community grows and you dial in your marketing strategy and sales funnel.
But you can scale it even further by turning your themed passport into a playbook for launching passports in new locations and on different themes.
How to Start a Community Passport Business
Choose Your Theme. Pick your niche + location. Start local. Choose a theme with passion and discoverability.
Recruit Local Businesses. Emphasize: no upfront cost, just a small offer to attract new customers.
Create Your Passport. Design it for printing in Canva or use a no-code mobile app builder.
Launch Your Passport for Sale. Set up an online store and partner with local businesses to sell your passport.
Promote Your Passport. Use social media and get featured by local media and related organizations.
Step 1: Choose Your Theme
The first step is to choose a theme for your passport. For example:
Best of Block Island Restaurants 🍴
Brooklyn Craft Breweries 🍻
Hidden Bookstores in San Francisco 📚
Ice Cream Crawl: LA Edition 🍦
Nashville Live Music Passport 🎶
A good theme has the following characteristics:
It’s something you’re passionate about. You’ll be recruiting local participants to participate and marketing the passport to consumers, so you’ll be much more successful if it’s a theme you’re personally interested in.
It’s geographically restricted. For a passport to work well, it should be limited to a specific geographic area. This could be a city, a neighborhood, or sometimes something broader (like California golf courses or New England ski hills), but it needs a clear delineation.
There are at least 20 businesses you can include. Your passport doesn’t need to contain exactly 20 businesses, but it’s a good starting point. Make sure that whatever theme you choose has enough potential companies to participate. Remember, they may not all say yes.
You know how to reach potential customers. This business only works if you can actually sell the passports. Whether in person or online, you need to have a plan for how to reach the people who will be interested in it. For example, if I were creating a passport for NYC running stores, I might partner with local running clubs to promote the passport.
💡 Need help coming up with a theme? I put together 52 theme ideas that can be applied to many locations. It’s in the Bonus section at the end of this article.
Step 2: Recruit Local Businesses
The next step is to recruit your passport members. Reach out to local businesses that you want to feature in your passport and ask them to join. Remind them that they get publicity and new customers just by offering an incentive you can feature, such as:
A complimentary drink with purchase.
10% off.
A secret menu item.
A free item, like a tote or sticker.
Generally, passports are valid for a year, and passport customers can use each incentive once. They’ll get a stamp or other mark in their passport to indicate when an incentive has been redeemed.
💡 Need help drafting an email you can use to pitch partner businesses? I put together a template you can modify for your passport. I also put together an FAQ template that covers the most common questions partner businesses will have. Both are in the Bonus section at the end of this article.
Step 3: Create Your Passport
You have three options for creating your passport: physical, digital, or both.
A physical passport will be easier for most people to create and to sell in a variety of locations, such as participating businesses and local gift shops. Plus, holding a physical passport creates the same fun sense of adventure that maps or guidebooks provide.
Creating a Physical Passport
Creating a polished, professional-looking passport doesn’t require expensive software or a design team. With Canva, you can build, brand, and print your own Passport booklet in just a few steps.
Design a cover with your passport name and logo in your brand font and colors.
Create an introduction page that explains how to use it and how long it’s valid.
Add a page for each participating business that includes the business name, address, and the incentives being offered, as well as an area to stamp or check off when redeemed.
Once ready, have it printed on both sides using saddle-stitch binding for a booklet feel.
Creating a Digital Passport
If you want to offer a digital passport instead of or in addition to a physical passport, you can create it using a no-code mobile app builder and sell it directly in the app stores.
Step 4: Launch Your Passport for Sale
Once you’ve created your passport, you’re ready to price it and sell it.
How to Price Your Passport
$1 per participating business is a good starting point for pricing your passport. This means if you have 25 participating businesses, you should charge around $25. Depending on how valuable the included rewards are, you can increase or decrease your price accordingly.
However you price it, make sure your printing costs are not more than 20% of the price. You want to have a lot of funds left over for marketing and profit.
Potential Sales Channels
Online Store: Set up a Shopify store and sell your passport online.
Physical Passports: Customers buy passports using your online store, and you mail physical passports to the customer.
Digital Passports: Customers buy an access code for a mobile app version of the passport. They then download the app and use the access code to activate their account.
Partner Businesses: Ask the participating businesses to sell passports for you. You can sell them to the businesses at a wholesale price, and they will profit from the markup.
Gift Shops and Tourism Businesses: Sell physical passports through gift shops and businesses that cater to tourists. They can buy them wholesale and make a profit on the markup.
App Stores: Sell digital passports directly through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Just don’t forget that the Apple App Store will take a 30% commission.
Step 5: Promote Your Passport
Finally, it’s time to promote your passport. Your marketing strategy will vary based on your niche, but you should use all the marketing channels at your disposal to get the word out! Here are a few ideas that everyone should consider:
Build a social media audience in your niche (especially on Instagram) and use it to promote the passport and participating businesses.
Create assets (like images and copy they can share on Instagram) that make it easier for participating businesses to promote the passport.
Engage with community groups in your niche both online and in person.
Reach out to local media and community organizations for public relations support.
Place ads in local and niche-specific media or use online advertising platforms like Meta.
Reach out to influencers and thought leaders in your niche to form a promotional partnership.
💡 PS. You don’t need to wait until your passport is printed to start marketing and selling it. You can run a presale ahead of the launch date to reduce risk, validate demand and start collecting revenue before you go to print. You can repeat this every year when you launch the updated passport.
Create Your Community Passport Business and Make Money Sending People on Micro Adventures
When you start a community passport business, you’re not just making a booklet. You’re creating experiences. You’re helping people discover new places, support small businesses, and get more out of their cities or communities.
Best of all? It scales. This isn’t just a fun side project; it’s a real business with real growth potential.
Start with one location and one theme. Refine the model. Then, roll it out to more niches and areas. Before long, you’ll have a local media brand, a product line, and maybe even a licensing opportunity.
Need help getting started with this opportunity? Remember, Premium subscribers can access Premium Perks like business coaching through office hours appointments and Substack DMs.
🎉 And my 50% off birthday promo runs until Friday, so I hope you’ll join me!
To endless possibilities,
Casandra
PS. If you found this useful, please tap the ❤️ below. It helps me out a lot!
Bonus: Community Passport Starter Kit
Are you interested in this idea? I’ve created a starter kit to help you pick a theme, recruit partners, and get them on board.
52 Community Passport Theme Ideas
Partner Business Pitch Email Template
FAQ Template for Partner Business Questions