7 Simple Ways to Create an Extra Income Stream
In this newsletter I want to talk about income streams.
A lot of people preach about having multiple income streams. It makes sense, to me at least. You have multiple ways of earning and if one of those streams fails in the future, you have the other income streams to keep you afloat.
This happened to me and I was grateful to have multiple sources of income so I didn’t go broke that month.
More on that in this story.
This happened to me a few months into the pandemic and with no warning at all. I didn’t get a notice period, I just had that income fall from underneath me.
A friend of mine recently lamented to me about not being happy with her income.
She was doing great in her job, in that position for around 3 years or so straight out of college. She had gotten at least 3 sizable raises in her time there and she was really killing it.
But, she wanted more.
I told her if she plans on staying with that company, to make up the difference in pay she wanted with a side hustle.
She rolled her eyes at me and the conversation quickly ended.
But, an extra income of just $500 to $1,000 per month is felt. It’s impactful and makes a difference. You can achieve this by adding an extra income stream to your income.
Today, I’m happy to have over 5 income streams that pay me month after month and I hope to add more in the future.
Anyway, if you want more income, the good news is, you can get it.
Is it easy?
Is it fast?
It depends.
If you’re going for this, you’re in it for the long haul and you shouldn’t let anything come in your way, like if it takes a little time to build up the income or has some challenges along the way.
With that said, check out these 7 simple ways to create an extra income stream.
7 income streams to build for your financial future
Start a business
Invest
Freelance
Sell stuff
Flipping
Social media
Create
1. Start a business
This is exactly what I did to leave my 9-to-5 job.
I started an e-commerce store in women’s fashion/accessories. It took me a few months to start making $1,000/month and within a year or so of starting, I replaced my day job income and quit!
Read more on the story of how I quit my 9-to-5 job.
Starting a business can begin with your passions and interests. You can go service-based or product-based.
Service-based businesses are going to be driven by your skills:
Writing
Accounting
Bookkeeping
Coaching/consulting
Auditing
Design
Product-based businesses are going to revolve around products that you either make or curate and sell:
Candles
Coffee mugs
T-shirts
Dresses
Home decor goods
Picture frames
Body butter
Once you decide what kind of business you want to build, make a business plan to lay out all your ideas.
Consider your income goals, resources needed to get started, what your vision is one year, three years, or five years down the road, etc.
Make sure to get the right business permits or licenses for your area and set up your business form (sole proprietor, LLC, etc.).
Difficulty level: moderate
2. Invest
Next, if you have money to invest then your money can make you money. You can invest in stocks, cryptocurrency, real estate, etc., and make money this way.
The direction you take will be based on several factors, one of which is if you want to grow this as an income stream to reinvest to build your assets or if you want to draw dividends for spending.
I’m no financial advisor so I won’t go too deeply into this but, there are many options available.
One company I just learned about and will be publishing a Medium story about soon is Arrived.
They help you invest in real estate with as little as $100. You can invest in multiple properties to diversify your portfolio and it’s perfect if you’ve been itching to get into the real estate market but don’t want to or can’t pursue buying real estate right now.
Difficulty level: moderate
3. Freelance
Freelancing is about using your skills to do independent contractor work. You can do this on the side or as your full-time income source.
Think about what skills you have and how you can monetize them as a freelancer:
Knowledge/ability to use Adobe Photoshop = graphic design freelance work
Attention to detail/well-organized = virtual assistant freelance work
Hobby YouTuber = video editing freelance work
My favorite social networks to find freelance clients are LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.
LinkedIn is just about positioning yourself as a professional in your industry. Set up your bio to perfection, engage on the platform a bit, network, and watch job offers pour in. Sometimes all you have to do is tweak your bio and you’ll start getting people who reach out to you to work together.
On Instagram, set up an account and start posting regularly in your niche. I started this on a brand new account less than a week ago and I’m almost at 100 followers with 2 people that have reached out to me.
Facebook is good to find gigs in specialized Facebook groups.
Join groups where your clients hang out or groups where freelancers in your industry are. Search the group to look for posts from people asking for help or even consider making a post yourself, sharing a bit about yourself and your skills, and asking for clients to contact you.
I’m in a Facebook group in my niche and there are job offers posted left and right, literally at least several times a month. It’s all about finding the right group.
Then of course, there are freelance job boards and websites you can check out:
Upwork
Media Bistro
Problogger Job Board
These are a few that I check out on the regular as a freelance writer. If you’re working in a different field, a quick Google search can find you websites and job boards in your niche that you can check out.
Difficulty level: easy
4. Sell stuff
Selling is one of the fastest ways to make money.
I talk about all the time how I used to sell stuff around the house every holiday season to raise Christmas cash and do winter cleaning at the same time.
I would pull in around $300 to $500 in November-December.
You can start by selling stuff around your home and put it up for sale on Ebay or other auction sites. You can go to consignment stores in person or online. You can visit pawn shops. You can host a garage sale.
Here’s a list of places you can sell your things:
OpenSky (I was making $4K to $7K per month selling here at one point)
If you want to take it up a notch and look at selling for a more stable income stream, look at flipping.
5. Flipping
Flipping goes hand in hand with selling, of course.
Buy something at a low price, sell it at a high price, keep the difference as profit.
Example: Buy a used designer handbag for $10, resell online for $100, keep the $90 profit (before fees).
What can you flip?
Virtually anything you can buy in a store like Walmart, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Ross, Walgreens, etc.
Websites
Domains
Books
Designer goods
Cars
Houses
Vintage items/antiques
Furniture
Shoes
The list goes on and on.
I like website flipping because it’s all online. I don’t have to leave my house to scour the stores for clearance items then take pictures, post online, etc. Flipping sites has me sitting at my computer for an hour, making a cool $100 or more per site.
Here’s my flipping ebook and my flipping course if you’re interested in learning more.
Domain flipping is cool too. It can be done all at your computer like website flipping and no website has to be built to make a profit.
It’s all in the domain.
For example, I bought a domain for under $20 around a month ago. As soon as I purchased it, I valued it and it was worth over $1,200!
This was actually the website I sold in under 24 hours, from this article.
I sold it as a website but I could’ve actually just sold it as the domain only.
There’s so much info about flipping online. If you’re curious about book flipping, Jarry Lew on Tik Tok has some great content about it.
Flea Market Flipper is a good site to check out if you want to look at flea market flipping.
And then YouTube is a resource for looking into sneaker flipping, flipping goods from Walmart or retail stores, real estate flipping, car flipping, etc.
6. Social media
Social media can pay you, either setting up a business or side hustle that can make you money from your audience or the network directly.
Making money from your social media audience
Selling products or services
Affiliate marketing
Brand deals or sponsorships
Create a social media account, post stuff, gain an audience and then funnel them to your products, whether you’re selling in an e-commerce store, promoting affiliate links or trying to promote products/services through brand deals.
Making money from social media networks
This is about the social network paying you for your content. Lots of networks are doing this now:
Facebook
Instagram
Tik Tok
YouTube
Pinterest
This story on Medium I just published, details my experience with the Pinterest Creator Rewards Program so far.
Spoiler alert…
Facebook is offering their Facebook reels bonus up to $35,000/month. Creators like this are earning that (she’s earned the max amount, $35K).
YouTube has their $100M YouTube Shorts Fund where they pay creators a bonus on their shorts videos.
Tik Tok has the Tik Tok Creator Fund and other networks have similar programs.
I’m taking on a challenge to build up a new Instagram account for 90 days. My hope is to have it reach at least 1,000 followers.
My main IG account for millennialnextdoor has just hit over 300 followers from very inconsistent posting over the past several years and the growth is just incredibly slow.
Hoping that posting multiple times a day and engaging with my viewers will help my new IG account out. I’m at nearly 100 followers so far in the first week!
At the end of 90 days, I’m going to try to monetize it!
7. Create
Content creation.
This can be creating content for your own personal brand or content creation for companies that pay you.
I usually create content for my own personal brand but I have done content creation for other brands too.
With this, the expectation is to make content that you just hand over to the brand. They will own full rights. There’s no posting required by you, it’s just pretty much user generated content.
One company I worked for would pay me $750 per piece of content to make for them.
Tons of brands are looking for help with this.
Upwork is a good place to find jobs. Also, social media networks and groups can be helpful to spot these job opportunities.
And, joining networks like CreatorX and others can partner you with brands that want to pay you $1,000 to $5,000 per month to make them content for the month!
What do you think?
Lots of info, I know but all good ideas to create an extra income stream for yourself.
Which income stream will you start with?
Jenn