10 Ideas For Creating New Income Streams
Welcome to Part II of Create New Income Streams.
The first Income Stream article talked about the system you will use to successfully implement any of these ideas. This article is a list of 10 ideas to create another income stream.
It is assumed that these will not be your primary income stream right off the bat, and it is assumed that you have followed the advice of these previous articles:
- How Cutting Specific Expenses Can Lead To Massive Wealth
- How To Destroy Debt and Win Back Your Financial Freedom
These ideas, if implemented will take up your time; time that you might not be able to spare if you are already spending more than you make, and have a lot of debt.
Use these ideas and the strategy outlined in the previous post, to build more income streams, increase your gap of opportunity, and finally set yourself up for financial freedom.
It’s about time, isn’t it?
Personal Services
We’re going to start this list with the personal services section.
These are services you will offer that are (we hope) based on skillsets you already have that others might need.
You’re still trading time for money with these services, which is not ideal, but the point here is to create more income streams to set you up for the next phase of our financial freedom plan, investing.
Of course, these services could also end up making you far more money than your primary day job does right now, which could allow you to leave that day job and be in a better place financially.
And, if you follow the system and implement step four, “Automate or Create a Better Workflow,” you might be able to automate this work by hiring others to do the work for you.
1) Freelancing
This means you are self-employed and offer a service to others for pay.
Examples of this are:
- Writing for a client
- Running Social Media accounts for a client
- Babysitting children or pets
- Photography of many kinds
- Web design
- Graphic design
The list goes on and on.
I used freelancing as my primary example in the system article. That’s because freelancing is a fantastic starting place for another income stream.
There are already massive marketplaces for freelancers to find clients.
Two of the big ones are:
- Fiverr — Lists millions of services on its site, with freelancers charging prices starting at $5 (hence the name) that can go up into the hundreds of dollars.
- Upwork — Probably the largest freelance site there is. You can offer all kinds of services on a dollar per hour bases or on a per-project basis.
It takes less than thirty minutes to set up a profile to start offering your services.
This is one of those income streams that can be grown into an automated business over time. You bring on one client at a time until it’s time to hire out help. Then you train a team to do the work in your stead, while you interface with the clients and collect a check.
Eventually, you could hire a manager to interface with clients for you while you move on to other revenue or investment opportunities.
2) Coaching
The internet has made this an extremely strong option for many people.
There are coaches for everything. There are coaches on how to be a coach.
Coaches for:
- fitness
- business
- public speaking
- social media
- art
- fashion
- writing
- reading
- publishing
You name it, there is an excited person ready and willing to coach you to success. You could be that coach too! You never even have to meet your clients if you don’t want to. Skype, Google Hangouts, Discord and other video conferencing apps exist to connect the world.
Sharing Economy
When I say sharing economy I mean the ecosystem set up to connect someone with exactly what they need in that moment.
Be it a bed for the night, dinner, or a ride to the airport, the sharing economy connects customers with services.
And you could help fulfill some of those services.
3) Airbnb
Years ago this concept seemed foreign and weird.
Rent out a spare bedroom and have a stranger stay there for a night?
Well, obviously it isn’t weird anymore! Do you have a spare bedroom literally taking up space? Put it up on Airbnb!
The site has a ton of great advice on creating that system we talked about in the last article. Many people derive all of their income from Airbnb. If you have space to rent, I strongly recommend you making use of the massive resources Airbnb offers to hosts.
4) Uber/Lyft
You knew this was coming.
Both companies, Uber and Lyft, have become ubiquitous with getting from point A to point B.
You’ve probably thought about this idea already. Well, what is stopping you? The fact that you thought about it means that it works.
You can sign up for both and drive for both. This is a fantastic use of nights and weekend time to bring in extra investing or debt-payoff money.
The best part about Uber and Lyft is that it is on your schedule. You decide when you do it and when you don’t.
You can even cross promote your freelance business in the car if you’re a real hustler. Both of these companies have created a lot of resources that help drivers succeed.
5) Food/Task Delivery
Okay so maybe you don’t want to drive people around.
That’s fine. How about bringing people food or other items they want to pay you to bring to them?
The following companies offer these services at various areas around the United States.
Find one that works for you and go after it.
- TaskRabbit
- UberEats
- Postmates
- Favor
- Zaarly
- Amazon Now
- many, many, many more
Do you have a good book you’ve been wanting to read? Great, get it on audiobook and consume it while running deliveries for a few hours a week.
More money, more knowledge. It’s a win-win.
6) Live Streaming
I consider live streaming to be a part of the sharing economy ecosystem. Streamers use platforms like Twitch and YouTube to reach their audiences and provide entertainment services.
I know one person that has found success through streaming, and he built up a large following on YouTube before moving over to Twitch.
His gamertag is Asmongold and his niche is World of Warcraft. Asmongold started creating WoW specific videos back in 2012 and in the last 6 years has produced somewhere between 500 and 1,000 videos related to World of Warcraft specifically.
Asmongold worked his ass off, was consistent for years. He followed a system, improved his on-screen presence, and mastered his craft.
His YouTube Channel bloomed and he eventually brought a large portion of that audience over to Twitch. He now live streams daily to an average of 30,000 people.
He earns revenue via ads, channel subscribers, and via donations from fans. He gets to play the games that he loves every day and is paid for it. All using the streaming platforms available to him.
Sell Stuff
Of course there is a section on just selling stuff. It’s the ancient way of the merchant.
Sell products other people want.
As it turns out there are quite a few ways to go about doing that these days.
Phew, here we go.
7) Sell on eBay
This is a method popularized by uber salesman Gary Vaynerchuk.
Go to a garage sale, use the eBay app to peruse what buyers are paying for the products being sold at the garage sale.
Then buy the garage sale item cheaply, and flip it on eBay for a nice profit. Do this enough times and you can make some serious money.
Before you go to a garage sale though, why don’t you host one of your own? Clean out your house of all the excess stuff you don’t need, and sell it!
Use this as a training ground for when you start your garage-sale-flipping empire.
Digital Products
There are a lot of ways to sell digital goods online, so I’ve bundled a few of them into this section.
The nice thing about selling digital products is the lack of expenses associated. There is almost zero overhead and the profit margins are massive.
Creating a digital product is a lot of work, but the end results can be a long-term and steady source of income.
You create the product one time and then sell it over and over and over again.
8) Write and sell eBooks
To have any shot of selling a product, you need to find a customer. The fastest way to find a customer is to use a marketplace of some kind.
What is the marketplace for eBooks?
Amazon.
This one location controls 80% of the digital book market. It is almost literally a one-stop-shop for books.
If you have a story to tell, and you do, then maybe it is worth putting into an eBook and selling it to readers through Amazon.
If you don’t think you have anything unique to say, try reading this article. It will change your mind.
9) Online Courses
You have knowledge that could be valuable to others. Especially if you have decided to tackle the coaching income stream in the freelancing section.
The next evolution of that coaching is to create an online course teaching material in that same niche. You create the course once and can sell it to clients.
This is especially effective to onboard beginners to the basics of a subject via an online course, and then offer more advanced coaching personally.
Figuring out where to put the course can be tricky, but the internet has solutions for you. Sites like Udemy and Teachable offer a marketplace for your course.
10) Affiliate Marketing
This one is hard, and requires a lot of work and time, but a lot of people make money using this method, so I feel obligated to share.
Affiliate marketing is basically selling other people’s products for a commission.
The most popular of these programs is the Amazon Affiliates program. You sign up and can link to products. If someone clicks through that link and buys that product, you get a small commission.
Again, this is hard to do. I’ve had an Amazon Affiliate account for years and I think I am getting my first payout this month? Seriously.
Many large-scale bloggers use this program to recommend products to their readers. If your readers want to buy the products you recommend, this could be a great way to build another income stream.
And On and On
To cover all the ways to make money in the world would be an impossible task.
I’ve spelled out ten potential income streams to bring your Gap of Opportunity to new heights, and to prepare you for the Investing stage of our wealth building journey.
If you still want even more ideas, here is a quick list:
- eCommerce
- Print on Demand Tshirt sales
- Ad revenue from YouTube
- Ad revenue from Podcasts
- Patreon
- Cryptocurrency Mining (requires investment in computer hardware)
- Real Estate — likely to be covered in the investment article
Follow The System
Remember, to find success with any of these ideas you need to have a system.
I wrote a precursor article to this one where I lay out this system in detail:
- Brainstorm income ideas and choose the best
- Pick an income stream
- Learn how to do it well
- Make the first $1
- Automate it or create a workflow
- Keep it updated and improved with metrics
- Repeat with another income stream
Follow this system over and over again until you never have to have enough money to begin the next phase of this journey.
Investing — Which you can read about here:
