Multiple Streams of Income

Remember last time when I had an article here on Virtual Earner, about Earning Money vs. Saving Money? I told about an example where you had to choose between earning more money opposed to saving money.  The conclusion that I came to was that it was basically 6 of one vs. a half dozen of the other.  They both worked!  But, wait.  Why couldn’t you do both?

Using the same example that I used last time, you can either put up ads on your website that will earn you $100 per month, or you can put an ad that will give you a savings of $100 per month on your rent.  But wait…. why not put both ads on your site?  Certainly, you can do that.  Now, let’s think about it.  Not all ad spaces on your site will produce an equal result.  If the best ad spot on your site will earn $100 in a month.  Maybe the second best location on the site will earn you $80 per month.  Perhaps a third location on the site would be good for $50 in income.  No reason why you can’t put an ad on each spot.

Now, hold on…  I know what you are thinking.

“Well, if putting ads on those three spots will earn me a total of $230 per month, why not just put 50 different ads, and I should make $3,000 per month”  (or whatever amount)

I’m sorry, my friend.  It does not work that way.  You can, and will get to the point where you will have way too many ads on the site, and it will be a turn-off.  Especially certain types of ads.  One fellow whom I know has his site loaded with about 20 different ads on each and every page.  I hate visiting his page now because I can barely find his articles through all the ads.  Ads don’t bother me, but this is just way too much.  The real kicker was when my friend recently added some pop-up ads on his site.  Now, I don’t even visit anymore.  It is just way overboard.  So, don’t just keep adding more ads on your site – it won’t bring you more income.

However, within reason, you can put more ads on your site, especially if you have only 1 or 2 ads there.  Monitor how the ads do so that you can determine how good the performance is for each individual spot on the site.

Now, once you have an idea of how the spots perform, you need to determine what to put on each spot.  Try to create ways of earning more than one stream of income.  For example, let’s say that you use Google AdSense.  Don’t use that one every single ad space.  Choose some other ads to put in the other spaces.  This way, if something happens with Google, your income can continue with the others.  Another idea is to advertise your own products or services on some of those spaces.

For example, I have written a number of eBooks.  My books sell for prices between $29 to $49.  If I put an ad for my books on my site, even if it only gets one click per month and the person buys, the income is still very nice.  For example, let’s say that I make $35 when I sell one book.  How many AdSense clicks do you need to make $35?  Usually, you need a lot of clicks to a product that amount of income.  So, choose where you will make the most money, and put those ads in places where they will get the most attention.

There is a catch, though.  Let’s say you find some affiliate ad that will pay you $100 for every conversion (that means whenever anybody buys the product).  You run the ad for a few months and make nothing.  Nobody buys.  My friend, why keep the ad in your prime spot for money making?  Don’t!  Get it off your site, because it doesn’t make any money for you.  Put something else in that prime space, something that will produce money for you.

So the whole idea here is to use those spaces to produce multiple streams of income.  Have 4 or 5 or 6 different people paying you money.  Maybe the money they are paying you (based on your performance) will start out very small, but it will grow.  Just like if you plant a garden, you must work on it.  Pick the weeds.  Water the garden.  Care for the website properly and it will produce many fruits over time.

Having many streams of small amounts of income is much preferable to me compared to having one huge river of income.  I mean, if the mountain collapses and dams up the river, your income could dry up.  If you have many different streams of income, even if one gets dammed up, the others will keep flowing.