Robert Allen’s book first introduced me to the idea multiple streams of income: instead of having one income stream (such as a job), you have lots of different income streams (a main job, rental properties, some internet income, maybe a sideline doing something else, etc).

In internet marketing it makes sense to aim for multiple income streams.

That way if one of them gets hit by Google or a change in people’s methods of buying or an affiliate program that disappears, you’re not left stranded with no income.

A few years ago, I remember trying to explain to a friend where my internet income came from.

It just got more and more complicated:

• Clickbank sales – some from my own products, some from products I promoted on various websites, some from messages in autoresponder sequences
• Sales of my own products – not many at that stage but definitely going in the right direction now – and affiliate products linked from them
• Affiliate sales from my own sites – hypnosis downloads, self help products, Commission Junction products, RAP Bank products, etc
• Affiliate sales from pages on sites like Blogger

And those were just the main ones.

Those didn’t happen overnight.

Most sites take time to work – Google is taking longer and longer to show most sites and is forever changing its mind about what it thinks are good sites to show on the first page of the results. Always assuming people scroll past the inordinate number of adverts and get to the real results.

Not every site works – some seem a good idea at the time but a few years later are like flogging a dead horse and you have not renew them, putting the site and yourself out of the misery.

Some sites work well for a while and then you neglect them, which usually means that traffic dwindles and the site that was getting a few hundred visitors a day now gets just a few.

Those are frustrating – sometimes it’s something you’ve done (neglected to do), sometimes it’s other factors. But they seem to be very awkward to turn round.

But whatever the reasons and the ups and downs, it pays to have multiple streams of income in internet marketing.

Start with one stream and get it up to speed so that it’s at least getting a consistent – and slightly growing – number of visitors.

Then add another stream but keep the first one going.

It’s a bit like spinning plates…

If you aim to start one new project every month or two months or three months, that will build up over time.

Often I’ll start a site and let it “mature” in the rankings.

Which is shorthand for saying I’ll near enough neglect it until it gets indexed and occasionally shows up in the search results.

If that fits with you and how you work, that’s a good way to work.

If you prefer to work on bigger projects, that’s OK too. But personally I find that big projects often never quite get finished.

That’s not just me either – a group of friends have been working on a big membership site they were going to launch on Clickbank this time last year but it’s still in beta testing twelve months later and my best guess is that will still be the case this time next year.

The group have moved on.

Their personal objectives have changed.

Life has changed.

So I’d strongly suggest that you start with smaller projects – a simple affiliate website or whatever – and keep doing those even if you decide to work on a larger project as well.

Multiple streams of income also means that you’re a bit more immune to changes.

Look away if you’re squeamish but there’s the old story that you can put a frog in a pan of cold water and gradually heat the water and the frog won’t notice (but will get boiled).

That happens with our internet marketing.

We’re comparing visitors day by day or week by week and we don’t notice small declines until they’re too late.

Step back occasionally and look at the bigger picture.

But definitely have other streams of income.

Anyone who relied on Geocites or mySpace a few years ago would have nothing now, even if they’d kept their page in top condition.

Personally I think that Google’s influence – at least as far as search is concerned – will reduce over the next few years. I created a product in 2013 that covered my thoughts – you can check it out here.

The market is fragmenting and we all need to adapt to that.

Free is becoming the norm.

As part of your multiple streams, think about how you can work that in to your mix.

Free usually means that a high percentage of your users will never pay you anything else but the money you get from the small number who do pay you makes a lot of cash.

That’s certainly a direction I’m looking into at the moment.

If you’ve not currently got a plan for your internet marketing, make one!

If you have got a plan, refer to it on a regular basis and tweak it as necessary.

And set yourself a target so that this time next year you’ll have a number of extra streams of income from your internet marketing.

Feel free to add your thoughts and comments in the box below.