How to create multiple streams of income: what is “income stacking”, and why should you prioritize it?
Income stacking is a way to decentralize your business – to build up your income over time, with multiple ways of earning money so you’re not too dependent on any one thing.
Sounds great, right?
But what does this ACTUALLY look like to implement?
Here are the 2 important things you need to know about creating multiple streams of income:
1. The income builds over time.
This means that month 1 may not be a huge month. But, by starting small, and adding thoughtful layers to your income strategy-
2. Your security stabilizes over time.
And at some point you can enjoy a full time income without any new sales (I have $8k of cash in August from sales in previous months.)
The two ways I’ve been stacking my income are:
Multiple offers
This is easy to understand. One important thing to remember is that you should be proving ONE offer at a time. Every proven offer (proven = you sold it) is an asset to use for income stacking.
Recurring payments
Recurring payments come from things like:
- Payment plans
- Back end offers
- Memberships.
Here are some examples of income stacking:
Complementary methods
A common way for bloggers to create multiple streams of income is to monetize in multiple ways that compliment each other. Ads + affiliates are a common example (because they both depend on volume).
This is income stacking, because your traffic starts out low (and so does your income.) But as your traffic grows, so does your recurring income.
Creating and stacking courses
You can stack your income by creating your own courses. First, do a live launch. Then, make it evergreen. Do another launch, and make that evergreen.
You can also stack your income with courses by providing:
- payment plans
- upsells
- back-end offers.
Single-offer stacking
You can also stack your income even if you just have one offer, by providing pay-in-full options as well as payment plans.
Additionally, you can promote affiliates to your clients that will be helpful tools for them. For example, I help people build DWY websites, and use some referral links.
Getting innovative
I’m trying to normalize (for bloggers, in particular) this whole idea of income stacking, and also clarify how you actually income stack.
So, all the methods I’ve mentioned so far depend directly on a blog.
Many of my success stories, however, were successful because:
- they worked on their mindset
- they got innovative about HOW to income stack
(Which they were only able to once they, a-hem, hired a coach.)
What I mean by that is:
When you’re building a blogging business, it’s really common to have other opportunities come to you. And if you think the only way to get more sales is ON the blog directly, you’re really missing out.
Here are some examples:
- Melissa used her productivity on her minimalist mom blog to launch her VA services (and has since sold the blog)
- Dawn used “social sales” to do her first launch, to augment her launch’s sales since her email list was so small (it worked)
- Kate didn’t launch at all, but used her existing blog audience to start getting design clients organically
- Dave hasn’t had a successful launch yet, but is starting to get a ton of sales & interest in SEO services
BUT, and here’s a big warning:
Figuring out what to sell and identifying “low hanging fruit” is NOT easy.
You need to figure out how to create multiple streams of income without diverting from your purpose and your passion, and this is truly, truly challenging to do on your own, without guidance.
Here are some tips to get you started:
Setting Goals
The first thing you should do when learning how to stack your income is set goals.
For example: what is your income goal? What do you want your life to look like? Why is making money more important to you?
If your goal is simply to make 10k a month, then you next need to decide your timeline. If you want to make 10k monthly quickly versus being willing to grow to 10k monthly over time, then the way you approach stacking your income can change. Here is more info on ways to make 10k per month.
Relevance
When someone has a blog and they are looking for other income opportunities, I first want to make sure it makes sense.
If the two ways you plan to monetize have absolutely NO relation to each other? They aren’t going to help each other. That’s why services work so well with blogging. People see you doing-the-thing and then they want-the-thing.
Passion
Just because something is low hanging fruit doesn’t mean you should do it.
One of my food blogging clients tried to be a VA before she joined my program. Turns out? She hated it. Just because someone asks you to do something and you know how to do it? That doesn’t mean you should. If you don’t enjoy it, it will drain you too much to fulfill your original mission.
Simplicity
If someone has an idea for income stacking and it requires building complicated systems and funnels, it’s a no-go for me. (Unless you’re me and can do it in minutes, not days.)
Whatever you’re doing to stack your income should feel easy and frictionless. Otherwise – it will drain you and your time and not be worth it.
NEED MORE SUPPORT?
If you need some help making more money with YOUR business, feel free to drop me a comment below.
And, if you are interested in working with me, book a chat at: https://alisonreeves.co/strategy-call
