Diversify your income
This post is sponsored by: Sam Breadstone
“don’t put all your eggs in one basket”
I’m sure you have heard that quote many times before. However, it applies to your online income more than most things. The reason seems pretty obvious, but not everybody gets it, most simply don’t have the time or ideas to make it happen.
Let’s have an example. Google adsense. I know many friends who have been banned from google’s ppc program, for unfair reasons. That’s including me. However I was luckier than most, adsense was making me very little. Basically no income. There are people on the other hand, who only earn from adsense. They may earn a heck of a lot, but are they prepared for that dreaded e-mail from adsense? What happens then? Your basket looks empty. That could be a good $x,xxx monthly income turned to nothing. What a waste. If you don’t have other sources of income, that will hurt you a lot.
This is what I have been trying to do lately. As most of my income has been coming from direct sales, there is a smaller chance of it all going at once. But, the fear of it disappearing is not the only reason you should create multiple income sources. It is simply logical. The more income sources you have, the more money you will make. To what extent? Let’s take a little look at John Chow’s blog earnings for june.
As you can see, John’s income for June was $12,569.61 which is very impressive for somebody, especially if they have even larger websites on the side. But, just break his income down. He has 10 income sources. The largest being reviewme, making $3,800.00 which is just over 30% of his income. Does he stick with that? No. He adds another 9 income sources, all being lower but they add up.
So, what happens if he looses his reviewme income?
I’m sure $8,769.61 from his blog isn’t bad at all 
It is something I have been guilty of, having 1 big income source from 1 site only. What a risk that i don’t want to take. My blog makes very little compared to other sites. I make around $40 a month from a sidebar advert. This is why I may start to monetize projects more. Start branching out into more forms of advertising. I advise you to do the same, but don’t slap every ad network you see on to your blog. Don’t do a reviewme each day. You want to focus on income sources that actually work, and profit you and your visitors. What you don’t want to do is value monetization over traffic.
Very good tips there. Hopefully one of these days I’ll get to a point with my blog where I feel like I can start to monetize it. Right now it wouldn’t be worth it as it’s new and I don’t have a ton of traffic yet, but it’s a work in progress. I’ll definitely be diversifying my income when/if that time comes.
Insighful post. I have wrote a post about this on my blog as well. When you are able to diversify your income stream you are less likely to “starve your family.” On a side note, I have not made any attempt to monotize my blog. For the simple reason that I want to have a better Idea of what people want to read about and therefore make my blog more marketable. Not to mention that my site is not pageranked by Google yet. Great post Sam, and kudos to Josh Buckley.
written*
I couldn’t agree more - it is really important to diversify you revenue streams to ensure stability and consistency for your income. It is also important to have contingency plans.
- Martin Reed
Hey Josh! I’m new to blogging, and I’ve been hearing you name a lot! I liked the post and I’m adding you to my RSS! Thanks!
Shows that cliqued idioms still hold true in the digital age. Very nice! C:
Hi Josh,
Sam sponsored it.
I’ll check out your post, i’m sure it will be a great read. Also, I wrote the post
Hey Graham!
Welcome to the blogsphere. If you ever have any questions, feel free to contact me.
A good point there. You should only monetize when the time is right for you. If you monetize at a bad time, the results could be disastrous
When would you say the time is “right?”
I’ve heard a rule of thumb is around 1000 page views a day…or maybe it was 1000 uniques?
It really matters on your readers. When your traffic is steady/you have respectable feedburner stats then things are looking good.
This blog is getting around 350 uniques daily. So, i’d be well off monetizing from then. I really started to monetize when good offers started to come in.
[…] Diversify your income is the message Josh Buckely is sending us. This is something that has been discussed much lately, especially after more and more people that has relied on Google for all their income has been banned and lost their only source of income. […]
[…] Josh Buckley talks about diversifying your income. […]
When you say that you really started to monetize when the “good offers,” what are you referring to?
Really nice post man, well done.
Another interesting post. I’m looking at doing the same thing right now and trying to spread around the monetization. Before all I had was adsense (like I’m sure a lot of people do).
You should have diversified your google adsense account to many accounts !