Don has officially banned exclamation points from post titles. Usually I’d be a pain in the ass and throw one in anyway, but considering our main page was littered with them, I found it hard to argue. We’ve been persistently delving away at potential business ideas, and along the way came across a great post over at ittybiz. It’s a great post that sums up our recent efforts.
The gist of it is something that we’ve been striving to for a long time now. Having one job as your sole breadwinner is a great way to set sail for fail (My fiance hates that phrase so much that I had to use it). If anything goes wrong, like say, *ahem*, the economy goes in the dumper, you’re screwed because your income immediately goes to zero. If you’re looking to obtain financial security, it’s not about a giant house with ubermortgage and an SUV in the driveway, it’s how many income producing eggs you can fit into your basket.
Of course, not all eggs are created equal. I’m not saying you should go pick up 3 jobs at once or run yourself into the ground. You can build up other income sources through hobbies or by passive and residual means. Let’s look at my current breakdown of income sources:
- Adsense
- Freelance Writing (This includes blogs, financial columns, and one-time assignments)
- Link Sales
- Affiliate Sales (Go Amazon!)
- My brokerage account (This produces a MASSIVE $10.00 a month in dividends)
Now, I’m getting by right now with these sources, but there are some areas that I’d like to bolster. My brokerage account in particular needs an injection of funds to take advantage of depressed stock prices and to provide a more reliable source of income. As a result, I may actually *gasp* take on a full time job on top of my current work load in order to flesh out additional sources of residual and passive income. My brother is not a particular fan of the idea since making money from investments does take a significant amount of money, but I feel like it could be an important source of passive income.
What about you? What keeps you diversified across different income sources?