by: Fred Farah
Multiple income streams, do you find the term confusing? Don't, it's really quite simple.
In the world of Niche Markets in Internet Marketing, multiple income streams simply means having more than one source of income. This is achieved by making money from more than just one online business.
Each different web site would generally be a different business. They could relate to each other, but not necessarily. You could have businesses that have nothing to do with each other. Both methods are quite successful.
Let's look at different scenarios. How to market unrelated products? In the offline world, we are quite accustomed to seeing a little bit of just about everything sold in department stores, from razor blades to baby clothes to fashion dresses to living room furniture to washers and dryers, and so on.
Is this how it's done in the online world? Absolutely, but it is not the only method. Mega Internet stores have evolved in such a way that to compete, you must be huge, and have tons of money to finance the operation, including the cost of the ever-changing web site. The competition and horrendous costs leave no room for the little guy, so he has to find another way to do business.
Enter the newcomer, looking for a way to make a living on the Internet. Seeing he can't compete selling a large mix of hard goods and soft goods, he can decide on a "niche" product to market. A niche product simply means specializing in one key product, or just a few related products.
This concept applies to both hard goods (items that must be shipped), as well as to downloadable information products.
This opens up a whole new world of possibilities, and it means a whole different way of conducting business. Specialization is often achieved using mini-sites that sell only one product. The mini web site might have from one to five pages, but usually just a single page.
Your information product that you want to sell needs a web site, hosted by a web hosting provider that provides you their service at a reasonable cost. Let's assume you started selling your product, and after a few months it is bringing in some income. It might amount to $1,000 up to $3,000 per year.
That's not too bad, and is worth keeping, but certainly not enough to make a living with. This is where the concept of multiple income streams comes in. During the months that your business is building, you could be looking for other ideas. You find one that excites you, and more importantly you do the research and discover a good potential for attracting customers. So you go ahead with a second web site.
You have now achieved multiple income streams! Over time you have other great ideas. Actually, you are now up to four web sites with different ideas. Two of them are related information products, and the other two are hard goods.
All four are successful. Each one separately does not make enough to live on, but the combined four bring you in respectable dollars.
But how are we controlling our costs? This is important to do, seeing we have the cost of some advertising as well as the web site costs. We found it necessary to build a customer list for each different product, and periodical emails are sent to your list. All these costs can become quite extensive, almost prohibitive.
So, what do we do? How can we maintain our buinesses, yet keep our overhead down to where it isn't cutting hugely into profits?
One critical aspect to look at is your hosting and to look for a web site hosting service that includes all or as many tools that you need in order to do some serious Internet business.
The tools aren't all you need to consider. Sure having a hosting service that gives you an autoresponder is certainly a huge help. But, we have four sites here to market and at the average rate of $24.95 a business, that's close to $100 a month, a pretty steep bill especially if you are just starting out.
Now we are looking for a host that will provide all the tools we need to run our businesses, plus we want one that will allow sub-domains in case we have closely related businesses. Can we get it all at one low and affordable price.
In addition to the tools we need and the overall hosting package we need for FOUR businesses, we are all about multiple income streams, so let's see if there is a way to benefit (PROFIT) from the hosting company as well.
Many hosting companies now offer an affiliate program where you can earn a commission by referring a business and gaining customers. That's pretty much a given, however the KEY is to ensure that the commission is recurring and not just a one time commission. Not sure what I mean about recurring income? Check the link out below for more information on recurring income streams
This is all great but the question now "Is there really a hosting company out there that will give me all the tools, let me host multiple sites for one reasonable price AND on top of that let me build another income stream?"
The answer is yes and you can read my review of Recurring Income Streams and how a company called "ThirdSphere" is an excellent example. At the same time you can learn the difference between Multiple Income and Recurring Income Streams. Read about it here: http://www.bestaffiliateproducts.com/thirdsphere.html
Having Multiple Income Streams from Niche Marketing is mandatory in today's Internet Marketing world, if that is, you want to make any serious money. Internet Marketing today has become much too competitive, and the newcomer has very little chance of breaking in.
Niche Markets, each with their own web site and relevant content is THE best solution. Niche Marketing is the hottest topic on the Net today. Niche Marketing is featured on my web site at Best Affiliate Products, and you can learn much more about it at http://www.bestaffiliateproducts.com/nichemarketing.html
I'll catch up to you in my back yard in Niche Country.
Fred Farah
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Copyright 2004