My understanding and adventure with multiple streams of income all started back in 1990. I was a stay at home mom at the time with a two-year-old and a newborn. My husband, who managed a major retail shoe store, decided he was tired of working 80 hours a week and quit his job for an outside sales position. Within a few days, he discovered cold calling to be a totally different animal than selling shoes to people in a mall. But there was no turning back. He quit the job and began his search for new employment.

Things were tough. When he couldn’t find a job immediately, he tried selling insurance for a friend, but that wasn’t his bag either. After a few months of this, we began to think that I might need to start looking for a job. I had advanced computer skills and was qualified for most office positions in the newspaper. I remember coming home from my first interview and sitting at my kitchen table with the overwhelming feeling that getting a job and leaving my small children was not the path I should take.

That afternoon in May of 1990, an idea I’d had a few years earlier popped into my mind. I’d always thought it would be fun to teach people computer software from my home – you know, the way people go to an instructor’s house and take piano lessons. They could come to my house and take computer lessons.

Right then, I got the number for the classified ad department out of the newspaper and called to find out how much an advertisement in the help wanted section would cost. It was only about $5 for a Sunday run, something I could easily afford and they’d bill me later. So I hung up the phone and wrote my first advertisement. It went something like this:

“Are you being turned down for jobs because you don’t know WordPerfect, Lotus or PageMaker? Call ###-#### for individual, hands-on computer training that fits your schedule.”

The ad ran the next Sunday, and I immediately had two students enrolled. I was off and running with no curriculum or any idea what or how I was going to teach them. I set to work creating my own computer lessons and the rest was history. In a few more months, in October and November of 1990, I had over 40 hours of training per week booked on my calendar. Many times there were 2-3 people in the classes. To me, it was nothing short of a miracle.

But computer training was a seasonal business. For example, from Thanksgiving through around mid-January no one wanted to take computer classes. So I learned to sell gift certificates for discounted classes. I always got the name and address of anyone who called in response to the newspaper ad so that I could mail them course schedules and outlines. I took this list and mailed everyone who’d ever expressed an interest in my classes around the holidays offering a normally $130 class for only $99. They could put it on a gift certificate for later use or to give to a friend. People bought them to go along with new computers they gave family members for Christmas. Or some people just bought them while they were a good deal, and then took the classes later.

After about three years of teaching computers from home, I had it down to a science. I knew how to structure classes, how to place ads, how to keep people coming back for more and telling their friends about me. As a matter of fact, even now I get the occasional call from someone wanting me to teach them a software program, and I haven’t been doing computer training in over seven years!

In 1993, I first got online with America On-Line, Compuserve and little bulletin boards. I noticed that people would upload reports to the boards and then have information on how to order products or books at the end of the report. So I began documenting everything I’d learned from running a computer training business and wrote my first book, “How to Run a Successful Computer Training Business from Your Home or Office.”  I took a chapter or two and uploaded it to the boards. I remember how floored I was when the checks started coming in the mail! It was so exciting! I had my first multiple income stream!

From there, I got into Web design and online marketing. In 1995, my friend Alanna Webb and I partnered to create the Web’s first online mall. Over the years, I’ve kept writing and kept creating Web sites until I have a plethora of online products and services that continually bring income in increasing ways and means. Today, my revenues come from the following sources:

• Printed books,
• Ebooks,
• Ecourses,
• Advertising revenues from my sites and ezines,
• Marketing services,
• Online subscriptions,
• Online memberships,
• Network marketing commissions,
• Affiliate commissions,
• Audio CD’s,
• And the occasional programming or consulting project

Our family is in a much better place today than we were 15 years ago. When my husband switched jobs then, it devastated our family. Now he’s been able to completely leave his day job and pursue his dream of becoming a personal chef!  

Multiple income streams give you security. You can’t count on one employer, one client or one method of earning money. You have to stay on what Alanna Webb refers to as “the bleeding edge” not just the cutting edge. You can do that by staying in touch with your customers and prospects and by listening to what they need and want. Don’t be satisfied selling them only one product or service. Discover their needs and fill those needs with back-end products and services that will smooth out your cash flow and bullet-proof your business.

Discovering Your Own MSI’s

Everyone is different with different skills and talents. Your multiple income streams will be different than mine. In this book, you’ll learn some standard means and methods for packaging your knowledge in proven ways to not only earn the money you need, but also give the public what they want.

Step 1: Take an Inventory  

It all starts with you assessing your resources. What talents, abilities, strengths and tools do you have? Are you good at sales? Do you communicate well with people? Can you write? Do you have a flair for the artistic? Do you have a unique skill or ability that others do not? Do you know how to sell things on eBay and Amazon? Write down all your skills and talents.  

Then write down all the physical resources you have. Do you own a computer? Do you have a color printer or a scanner or a digital camera? Can you burn CD’s or DVD’s? Do you have an unlimited long distance plan? Do you have one of those little gadgets that can record a phone call? Perhaps you have a cell phone? A parcel of land? A van? A pickup truck? Write it all down – write down anything of value that you have that could be used as a resource.  

Now, think about your friends and family. What do they possess that you have access to? Do you know someone who is a fantastic marketer? Do you know someone who is a copywriter? A lawyer? A mechanic? A chef? Everyone you know is a resource to you. You are not an island! You have access to the talents, skills and resources of everyone around you. You may have to give them something to gain access to what they have, but their knowledge, skills and resources are available to you.  

Let me give you an example of what I mean here. My friend, Alanna Webb, and I have been developing internet communities since 1995. We have lots of friends who are webmasters of large internet communities which represent millions of page views of internet traffic per month. A couple years ago when the bottom fell out of the banner ad industry, many webmasters were struggling financially. Through a serendipitous string of events, Alanna learned about a type of advertising that some advertisers were buying up like hotcakes and paying excellent rates.  

Not only were our sites candidates, but so were those of our friends. So together, we started an advertising network and sold these advertisements on all of our friends’ sites. In a period of 6 months, we sold over $50,000 in advertising revenues for our friends and ourselves. It helped a lot of people put food on the table while solving a marketplace need.  

So as you assess your resources, look beyond yourself! When you think creatively, you make the pie bigger for you and those around you.  

Step 2: Brainstorm Money-Making Ideas

Now that you have your list of resources in front of you on a sheet of paper, read over them and start asking yourself:

• “How can I use these resources to make money?”
• “How can I bundle these talents, tools or things to create products or services that people want?”
• “Who needs what I have or know and how could I fulfill their need?”

Brainstorm a list of at least ten ideas that have the potential for making money. Take some time if you need it. Carry this list around in your pocket or purse and as you think of ideas, add them to the list.

Step 3: Evaluate Your List

Now that you have the ten or more ideas listed, you’ll want to select the one(s) that fit with your overall mission or theme. In “A Christian’s Guide to Surviving a Home Business” I go into depth on how to create a mission statement for your life. Whatever income streams you decide to implement, make sure they fit with your overall mission.

Anytime you develop a new product or service, you should evaluate it against your mission to see if it fits. Sometimes, I don’t stop to consider this and I run off in a direction that feels right without necessarily evaluating it against my mission. For example, for over ten years now, I’ve been writing non-fiction. Then a couple years ago, my distributor suggested I try fiction. There was one particular story about my fourth great-grandmother that I’d always wanted to write, but didn’t think I had what it took to write fiction.  

Through the encouragement of my friends and my distributor, I decided to give it a try and discovered that I absolutely loved it. I started running with the genre and found that not only did I have a knack for it, but it gave me an immense amount of joy.

After I’d written several novels, I took a breath and stepped back and thought, Wait, how does this fit in with my mission? How does writing fiction fit in with my entire business plan? At a glance, one would think, what in the world does writing historical fiction have to do with helping talented professionals deliver their message to the online world? That’s the tagline for my business, after all. I’ll have to admit, it has very little to do with it.  

But, it does have a great deal to do with my mission statement which I wrote over a dozen years ago. Part of it states, “I am a seeker of truth who makes truth an integral part of my life and personality, thus enabling me to share that truth with others…. I am woman who builds others up, helping them to be the best they can be...”  

Fiction is such a wonderful way to share truth. I could preach at you through non-fiction and tell you what to do and how to live and what’s going to work for you and what won’t. Or, I can show you these things and implant them deep into your heart with a moving and compelling story. Fiction has an amazing power to impart truth and reach people who may never pick up a self-help or a non-fiction book.  

So, as you evaluate your ideas, open your mind a bit to the possibilities. Do try to stick with a theme, but evaluate things against who YOU are, not against what your BUSINESS is today. Your business may change. I started out in computer training, then went into consulting, then to Web development and now if someone asks me what I do for a living, I’ll say I’m an author. Occupations change, but who you are at the core – what your mission is – should expand and augment on a central unwavering theme.  

Step 4: Keep a Record of All Your Ideas

Keep a log of the ideas you come up with. The timing may be off on some of them. You may not have the resources or connections you need to accomplish them. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t inspired. Their perfect time may be a year or two from now. So keep a log of all your ideas. Just like my idea to teach computer classes from home came a year or two before I needed it, so may your ideas resurface in the exact moment you need them. If you’ve kept a log, it will be that much easier for you to jog your memory.  

Select one or two ideas and pick the one that is the most logical next step. Which one would be easiest for you to implement? Which one gets you the most excited? Which one feels the best and is most in line with your mission?  

Start with that one and move forward a step at a time. If there are things missing that you’ll need, start with what you have and trust that what you need will come to you as you need it.  

TIP: Listen to customer complaints. I remember when I first started doing Web work. When I’d get a complaint, it would hurt my feelings and I’d get defensive and try to explain why what I was doing was the best way to do it. Then, something changed and I started seriously considering every complaint I received. After all, if one person complains, then there could be hundreds who had the same problem who didn’t take the time to say anything. Once I started doing this, some of my very best improvements, ideas and money-makers started coming from listening to customer complaints.

 Step 5: Don’t Be a One-Hit Wonder  

Once you’ve created one product, immediately put into place back end products. For example, if you’ve got a product that cleans the fuel system of a car like nothing else, then write an ebook on car care secrets. Something like, “Everything You Need to Know to Make Your Car Last 10 Years Longer.” You could sell it as an ebook. You could offer it as a teleclass. You could create a car care video and demonstrate all the ways to self-repair and maintain your car so that it lasts 10 years longer. You could have a car care email newsletter that helps you stay in contact with new customers so you can announce new products and services as they’re developed.  

A good example of evaluating your resources to create back-end products is what Marcia Lynn McClure and I did on her Web site. Marcia’s customers are readers who enjoy romance novels that don’t offend their moral sensitivities. They are typically women, married or not, often religious, who run the gambit from 16-year-old’s to 75-year-old grandmothers. These women have an insatiable appetite for romance without the shock of traditional dime-store romances. Because clean romances are hard to find, they’re always waiting with baited breath for Marcia’s next book.  

When I first met Marcia, we set to work evaluating what she had and what we could do to create some back-end revenue streams for her. She had a Web site and was taking orders with Paypal. The first thing we did was add a secure order form so she could take credit cards. This made a significant impact on her sales. Then, she told me she’d written nine novelettes for friends and family over the years and had done nothing with them. So, I suggested we create ebooks out of them and sell them on her site. Over the course of a year, she released these ebooks one at a time. It brought in a good flow of income and helped curb the voracious appetite of her readers.

Then, because her readers not only like her books, but also read other clean romance authors, we pooled our resources and created “The Clean Romance Club” at http://www.CleanRomanceClub.com so they could get some of my books as well, and we did a revenue split.  

Next, we created a fan site for Marcia called “Captivating Kisses” where her readers can keep up with what she’s working on, read sneak peeks of her new novels, be the first to read new ebooks or gain access to ebooks that she won’t sell anywhere else. They get everything from recipes to funny stories. They can even log on to live chats each month to visit with Marcia personally. It’s basically like playing in the sandbox with the most popular, fun and creative kid on the block.  

Now, when someone buys one of her books or checks one out at the library, they look in the back and see her Web site, visit it and find lots of backend products and services they’ll enjoy.  This is what you want to do. You want to lead people from one product or service to another. Make sure you know what your customers want and give it to them!

Continue on to Chapter 2: Building a Business to Last
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