Multiple Streams of Income

By Dave Brown
Posted Sunday, September 12, 2004

More and more people are searching for the road to riches online. This program looks great, so they try it. It doesn't work out, so next month they try something else. They continue to search for the thing that will make a killing for them. But rarely does anyone find it. Why not?

The answer is simple. There are very few ways to make a killing online (or offline). And if you do manage it, it sometimes only lasts for a few months before dying out. You make a bundle quick, then you've just got a monthly trickle (or nothing at all).

So how can you do it? The best thing to do may be to forget about it and give up.

Yep. Don't bother trying to hit it big with a single shot. Even if you do, you'll probably have an unstable income.

What you really want is multiple streams flowing in. As many as possible. Even if none of them make a lot by themselves, together they can add up to a lot.

It's important to create as many sources as possible. If you're just relying on a single source of income, then you're always on the edge of disaster. Most people have just one source of income - their jobs.

But look at the dot com crash a few years ago. People with "secure" jobs got laid off and suddenly had no income. And many of them couldn't get another job for months, or even years. Their only source of support disappeared without warning.

It's the same online. Just last year, I saw one person who thought he had it made after he created 2 ebooks that sold like wildfire. He had it made for maybe 10 months, but then his ebooks stopped selling and his cash stopped flowing.

This year, I've seen people find a couple of affiliate programs that started paying out like crazy and they feel like they've struck gold. But with only 2 or 3 products to sell, the gold mine is very small.

You need enough streams flowing that you won't be seriously hurt if a few dry up. Because nothing is completely secure.

Last month, my wife and I had 42 separate sources of income. The smallest only made $6, but I'll take it. Others made a lot more than that. But I'm not at all satisfied with that. I still need to create more.

Here are just a handful of reasons why your sales could suddenly stop:

* If you rely on your email list to generate sales, spam filters could significantly interfere with that.

* If you rely on traffic from other sites, those other sites might remove your links, or they might just disappear all together. So make sure you have *lots* of links.

* If you rely on free traffic from search engines, one or more search engines may change their algorithms and your listings could drop out of sight. This recently happened to a lot of people when Google changed their algorithm. The more web pages you have up, the more secure you'll be.

* If you rely on traffic from ppc search engines, then what happens if your keywords suddenly become competitive? You may not be able to afford them anymore. So use as many keywords as you can. And advertise as many different products as you can.

* If you advertise affiliate products on ppc search engines, then you're really in a delicate position. Your keywords may become too expensive. Your most important ppc search engines could change their policies and disqualify your ads. This could be just about anything - changing policies on popups, requiring you to send traffic to your own site, raising the minimum bid, and on and on. Or the merchant could change their site - add a popup, add a Paypal payment button, add lots of affiliate links or ads, or just shut down the site all together. There are lots of dangers there.

* Whatever you sell could lose popularity. People may just lose interest in it. So try to sell as many products and
services as you possibly can.

There are plenty more reasons, but the point is that you shouldn't rely on just one or a few streams of income. Build as many as possible, and make them as big as possible.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be excited if you find something that makes you $10,000 a month. Just don't make the mistake of thinking you're set for life.

Keep thinking about how you can create more and more streams.

About the Author
Dave Brown is a self-taught marketer and software developer. He also publishes the uncommon and uniquely original newsletter on making the most of your life - A Fresh Perspective. You can learn more at (http://www.dave-brown.com)