The entrepreneurial promise of the web rarely lies in one big, undiscovered secret, which, when discovered, will re-invent your income and set you up for life. Instead, it’s located in the plethora of modest opportunities available — and your ability to combine them into a larger whole.
If I tried to make a living with the revenue generated by Anywired alone, I’d be eeking out an existence on around $125 a week. It’s only because I’ve tapped into four addition sources of income (editing Freelance Switch, freelancing, blog consulting and selling on eBay) that I’m able to earn a modest full-time income online while working significantly less than full-time hours.
One of the primary mistakes I see made by those hoping to earn a living online is that they focus all their efforts into one source of income, only to find that it yields modest results — results that are certainly not enough to live on. They assume this is because they’re doing something wrong, when in fact, most online income generation methods are very deliberately designed to yield modest results. The companies behind them want to get a lot of value for little pay-out. In other cases, results are suppressed because they have to be shared between a thousand other entrepreneurs trying to make money in the same way.
I’d suggest you reconsider pouring hours of work into making a single income stream perform better. Instead, think about how you could diversify and combine multiple income streams into an income river.
If you run a website or blog, you’ve probably already got the advertising part covered. But what about using affiliate links in your content, offering consulting or other services, selling an eBook or products you recommend, working as a freelance blogger or website copywriter, running a membership only newsletter, holding a once-yearly donation drive, selling items you’ve made, reviewing products and including affiliate links, or adding a special ‘members only’ area to your blog? While not all these ideas will appeal to you, thinking about them is a strong step-forward.
Perhaps one of the most effective ways to increase your website or blog’s revenue is to start another one with appeal to a majority of your existing audience. If they like your first project, they’re probably going to follow the second. This method can help you increase your website or blog income by upwards of 50% almost instantly, though you must take the time to prepare your second site for launch and leverage your first.
If you find site #2 too much work, or if you find it doesn’t yield the rewards you were hoping for, you can flip it (sell it), retain the profits, and try something else.
Bright idea: casual freelancing
Freelancing is a fantastic route to creating supplementary income. Industry standard hourly rates are impressive (see figure below) and, best of all, freelancing is highly scalable. You can work anywhere from 1 to 100 hours a week (though, admittedly, the latter is not advised!)
I also want to argue that you are perfectly equipped to freelance, either now or with some self-education. Plenty of freelancers are self-taught in their fields — myself included. If you can write reasonably well, you could work as a freelance writer, blogger, copywriter, editor or proofreader. If you know your way around a stylesheet, you could experiment with web design, or the more basic tasks of customizing a blog or making changes to a website template. If you’re comfortable with Photoshop, you can start with some basic graphic design — like logo design, ad/banner design, website graphic design, and so on. If you’re good with SEO, you could work as a freelance SEO consultant. You might even find that your existing job has a freelance equivalent! Book-keeping, accounting, admin, marketing, sales and research can all be done over the web.
A bit of searching will reveal some great resources to build your skills and get you started on a particular path, but perhaps the best freelance resource of them all is Collis and Cyan Ta’eed’s Rockstar Freelancing. Both the book and eBook will guide you through every single aspect of becoming a casual or full-time freelancer, and it’s created by two people with a deep understanding of the freelancing industry and how it weaves into online entrepreneurship (they own Freelance Switch, PSD Tuts and more). I couldn’t recommend it more highly.
Bright idea: isolated sales pages
A domain name should cost around $10 a year. Once you have hosting space, you can host an almost unlimited amount of isolated sales pages for the cost of a domain. You can use each one to sell an eBook or create a sales page for an affiliate product, then drive traffic to your pages from your own sites or through PPC campaigns. Once again, this is a high-competition method and each page will probably only yield one or two figures a week — unless you’re very lucky, or brilliant. On the positive side, it’s not hard to create a whole heap of these pages, and the combined total revenue can add up to something far more impressive.
Diversify!
There are thousands of ways to earn an income online — the examples here are just a tiny slice of what’s possible. My argument is this:
- Anyone can diversify their sources of income.
- You could add a new income stream to your river, starting today.
- Single income streams are usually modest. Very rarely do they earn a heap of money.
- Most of those who earn a living online have a diverse array of modest income streams, combining into a much larger whole.
- Time-minimal income streams work best. If you can set it and forget it, it really doesn’t matter whether the income stream makes good money or not. It’s has no cost in time.
Photo by Kieran Lynam.
19 Responses
Very good post.
Earlier my only source of income was contextual ad clicks on my own blog. Now, I earn in many other ways - this includes freelance writing for other blogs and also a magazine.
It’s also very safe to have multiple streams of income - when one fails, the other will still be delivering.
Nice Post Skellie. Diversification is the key , no doubt. But I think for new bloggers time is always a factor when they think about venturing out into other fields like free-lancing.
Like I am a new blogger and five days back, on the first day of my disclosing the blog, it hit the Digg front page. After that traffic is rising steadily and income is only through adsense as of now. So I think I should wait for some more time before I can invite private ads on my blog. And I am seriously thinking about venturing into free- lancing too. So I will diversify but the only thing is time.
And yes, as Shankar mentioned above, multiple streams of income online are always safe.
But again, a very insightful post Skellie. And $500 per month from Anywired is awesome, considering it is still new. I think the base was already created by Skelliewag and your reputation in the blogosphere. This means that for an established blogger, starting a new blog later could be another source of diversification.
This post came just on time to prove me that I’m going the right way. My blog is still not fully monetized (I don’t know why I’m a bit hesitant to go all the way in selling ads on it…) but I’m also working on other income sources (freelance blogging, affiliate sales, etc.)
The tricky part here of course is how to find time to build all the other streams when even the first source is taking more than enough of my time? How did you do it? Did you jump right in to full time blogging and online income, or gradually adding one more thing while dropping something old?
This was a great post! Thanks for the inspiration!
I’d like to second Skellie’s recommendation of “How to be a Rockstar Freelancer”. I’m just starting to dip my toes into the world of freelance writing, and bought this book a few weeks ago — it’s packed with great, solid advice, and I can see it being of immense value as I get further in my freelance career.
It’s also convinced me that staying put in the day job might be best for the time being.
Jarkko — I’ve managed to get a couple of regular (2 articles/week) freelance blogging jobs, alongside running my own blog. It’s hard work fitting it in round a full time day job, but I’m really enjoy it and it’s great experience. My tip would be to only take on one new thing at a time, and not bite off more than you can chew (I’ve been having a hectic few weeks as a result of agreeing to do some free website work for a small charity — loving doing it, but it’s taking time that I could have done with for blogging!)
Thanks again for the post, Skellie, it’s definitely alerted me to some income streams I’d not considered, like subscription services and a donation drive.
Best,
Ali
Ayup.
I’ve been telling people this for years. Some of the things I do generate only a few dollars a month - but they cost me nothing and work unattended, so why not?
Other things pay extremely well, but are rare opportunities turning up only a few times a year - again, why not?
The major part is mid-grade: a bit of work, a bit of reward, but steady..
The other obvious thing about diversification is that it gives you protection from income slumps or nose dives: it’s unlikely that all your sources will dry up at once.
Diversification alows you to leverage all of your assets, resources, and income. It’s an important investment and business strategy (Enron). While one is underperforming another is overperforming.
I agree with this. I sort of stumbled onto this idea when I begin to get clients from my blog, and even a free book to review on another blog. Plus I’ve been on ebay since ‘99. I still work fulltime but the additional money that comes in is very nice.
I don not agree to author completely, because if you focus on more than one stream, your attention is diversify and you are not able to get most out of it. So we should alway focus our attention on one particular project or source.
http://www.enovatit.com
I’m a fan of diversification — as a mindset and approach.
Darren Rowes made a point a while back that having multiple blogs helped because he didn’t know which would take off.
My accountant once gave me a bunch of stats on book authors, himself included, and showed how having multiple books was a better strategy than the one-hit wonder (although that’s nice when that happens.)
At work, I think of my deliverables as a portfolio of results. In addition to my sure-fire projects, I add a few higher-risk that might turn out to be the game changers. This lets me experiment more with process and approach, as well as vary my level of involvement and roles, while growing others.
I also use diversification for my learning. While I spend most of my energy on a vital few skills. I invest some energy in expanding to other areas.
The most important thing I learned about diversification is that it helps you stay adaptable and growing, while managing risk. When I get too much bifurcation or don’t get the ROI, I narrow the focus, but this ebb and flow of expand/contract is overall healthy growth.
Hi Skellie,
I agree with your points but I also think there is a lot that one can do with a business project to build it out. Like you say, ebooks etc, there are lots of ideas that you only get to uncover when you are immersed in your business.
So taking you eye off the ball to get the cash in can be risky in my opinion. It needs to be balanced. Perhaps the freelancing can be seen just as a way to deal with paying the bills as you build your empire.
We all know it takes a long time for most good businesses to build. I have two, a blog about midlife crisis & an independent artist’s music site selling relaxation music. But both of them wont be hitting any real numbers for a long while yet.
The other thing is, never give up, keep at it, dont ‘drop the ball’ because your dreams will crawl further away.
All the best
Do people still make money on eBay? Especially the newcomers, I Thought eBay was now reserved for those who are just trying to get rid of junk and those wanting to make an extra hundred dollars a month or so, with the exception of those who already have businesses or really special products. Which brings me neatly to my next point: Is anything special anymore on eBay? I’m sure every imaginable product and niche category has been covered by eBay users. Plus with the new comment and fee structure, I honestly doubt the profitability of eBay, relative to the amount of time and effort to hunt for products, list, administer, and post. What do you think?
Yes, I kind of was already thinking that one blog or website surely isn’t enough to make a fortune. And consulting is a great business. in my opinion - you suggest things, you do not need to finish great projects, you do not need to support the customer 24/7 afterwards… And you can consult the customer from anywhere!
Hi Skellie,
I love reading about ideas that stretch my thinking. This post certainly fits the bill.
I know I was always looking for that “home run” idea but it only caused deep frustration.
Knitting together several income streams is a great way to (eventually) make a full-time living online.
I have some additional thoughts on this article. Diversifying from your existing market is good but you may miss a huge new market you are fully capable of entering and gaining reward from that has nothing to do with your first market. Having said that, the ‘pro’ to diversifying from your existing market is that you know it well and have some track record already.
Secondly, choosing other forms of income: consider the difference between a professional service and an online download-able product: you are not replicatable but a product is and can sell again and again for years to come.
Of course, conversely, a professional service is something that will help with cash flow, but if you put to much time to it you do so at the cost of possibly more successful business ventures (unless you have chosen them to be your core business of course)
Im not suggesting what is right or wrong for any individual here but I think it is interesting to consider these facts when you choose to put time to something for maximum return.
I found your links through Darren Rowse’s blog.
Well I can tell you that diversifying too fast can kill your business.
I tried running 3 business at one time but eventually all 3 turn out unprofitable. Since last April, I began to focus on one and once it was earning enough, I paid a freelancer to update the site on a monthly basis and she’s loving what she does.
Same goes for my trading business.. I did most of the work of looking for shops and distributors. Nowadays when there are orders , I’ll just make a call to one of my distributors to handle it to give them more business. All I need to do now is to advertise and order the stock from my neighbouring country. Of course I need to cover my bottom line and profit from the sales to my distributors.
Hey Skellie - This is really a GREAT post! I just finally had the time to read it through and you make some really valid points.
One site making a hundred bucks a month is not much…but if you can tap into five or ten sites making three or four hundred a month then you are on to something!
Great advice for any any “internet-prenuer”.
I started online about 2 years ago and have been slowly building my business site by site and now have steady little streams flowing.
To all starting out, don’t believe the “get-rich online programs”.
Choose your hobby or job then offer valuable information about it.
then just continue to promote.thru directories, linking, social networks, etc
The traffic will come!
Rich Micheals
Regarding whether it’s possible to still make money on eBay, the short answer is, “Yes, but it depends.” If you have something that few other people are selling and a collector happens to be on the site when you list it, you can make a lot of money. I once paid for my college books for the academic quarter because I had about half a dozen Charmkins toys and there was a collector in Germany who REALLY wanted them. Another time I found an old Dukes of Hazzard board game from the ’80s right about the time the movie was coming out, of which fact I was only dimly aware. I think I paid $2.50 for the game and it sold for about seventeen bucks. Even when you factor in listing fees, that’s a really good ROI.
Certain things are going to be popular there no matter what. Consumables are always a winner, because people use them up and have to buy them again, but that’s true no matter where you are selling. It’s just something you have to play around with and see what works.
I’m just getting starting in building online “revenue streams”, as they say. Your article was very helpful. Thanks.