When I started looking into ways to generate multiple streams of income, I started with one thing I loved.  Painting and drawing portraits. I used the little time I had outside of my low-paying job (the “pay the rent” job) after my layoff from a higher paying professional job, and devoted just about every waking moment on starting and generating this second stream of income. While I got commissions for portraits after doing all the legwork of marketing to veterinary clinics, there was no way I was going to be able to keep up the pace and add yet another way to make money, as the low-paying job and the commissions weren’t going to be enough to get ahead or even break even.

Make way for a lesson learned. Unless you’re one of those big money men whose “multiple streams of income” are things like investment banking, diversifying stocks, buying lots of buildings and splitting them off in buyouts (I’m making this stuff up from all the movies I’ve seen about rich fellas, fyi), you have to find a way to earn passive income. The portrait thing will make a little money – but it requires hard work, and the work is ongoing. “Active income” like this leaves no room to develop multiple streams of income, because you’re working too hard and taking too much time to do it.

Enter fitting what you love into a passive income format.  Now don’t get me wrong – making “passive income” is NOT a no-work solution.  There is a LOT of work up front in order to start generating profit, and ongoing “touch up” work as you go along. Working like a maniac to get my flyers into circulation, and then working like a maniac on the back end takes too much time to do more than one stream of income.

So what’s a prospective worker to do?  As we know, there are very few jobs out there that don’t require a lot of work for a little money. The rich can do it, to a point. Ever heard the saying that they let their money work for them?  But most of us can’t do that – we don’t have the up-front capital. So we need to turn that active income into passive income.  How could I change my love for art, for portraits of both animals and people, into something that was passive income? The key, frankly, is the Internet.  If you’re not a good writer (or a passable one, really), then it’s time to hone your writing skills.

There are a lot of writing sites online to start with, while honing your skills and making a little (and I do mean a little) residual income.  Sites like hubpages, Infobarrel, and Demand Media (though that’s drying up fast) can help you hone your writing skills. Then there is the all-important creation of your own blog. There are free sites out there such as blogspot or wordpress, and both offer some good skill-building opportunities to write your blog. Once you are able, you’ll want to get your own server with your own dot com like this one, but free sites are fine to begin with, and can still help you with your interests – and to begin making income.

I have a few other blogs, including my art blog (currently being re-vamped) at kristopiastudios, as well as a few other blogs on another dot com address. Each one is in a different stage of development, but each one is moving toward making more passive income.  I’ll address how in a future blog post.  And, look for my upcoming Ebook on developing multiple, passive streams of income on your own. We’ll talk about that, too.

That is the crux of the matter.  Where in the world should you start when you’re trying to create multiple streams of income?  You probably have a job at the
very least, but family matters, household chores, and various other things make it difficult enough to work on one other source of income, rather than several. How do you choose where to start?  How do you choose from your multiple talents or interests?  Which one do you start with?  I went with the old cliche:

Start with what you love.  You can’t start working with five projects at a time.  Start with something you love – something you’d do even if you never made a penny off of it.  Make a list of those things you really enjoy doing.  For example, I very much enjoy drawing and painting, especially faces, whether they be of people or animals. Drawing and painting portraits of both pets and people seemed like a natural extension of my love for faces. First, I perfected my abilities and the time it took me to draw, at the same time building a portfolio to put on a website.  After researching art sales on the web, I realized it was an iffy proposition. Places like Ebay or Etsy might be okay for selling parts of something, but aren’t so hot for selling original art.

So, I researched those places in my area that might help me advertise. I worked part time (this was my “rent paying job” after my layoff) in a specialty veterinary hospital. This hospital relied on referrals from other veterinarians, so I had access to a good spreadsheet list of all the veterinarians in the area. You could find something like this in a phone book, but inside access helped.  I compiled a list of all the veterinarians in a 20-mile radious (I wasn’t willing to use a lot of gas to get around). I added to that list all of the pet boarding facilities around as well. I then cold-called each one, asking if they had a public  bulletin board or notebook where I could place a flyer offering my portrait services.  I created a one-page flyer with my chosen business name, and two quality portraits depicting the photo I worked off of and the portrait, and printed enough to place one at each business that gave me a positive response.

That’s it.  Aside from keeping on top of whether any new hospitals or businesses are opening in the area, or whether my flyer was still on a board or not, I simply allowed orders to trickle in, remembering that even one would make up more than the cost of materials thus far, and more than one would be a profit, aside from my time creating them.  In turn, I did the same with offers for portraits for people. I focused on children and older folks – for some reason, those seem to be the portraits people most highly demand, and looked for the businesses that would help me find customers.  After time, word of mouth can bring business.

I did get some business. The problem with this was that it was very time consuming at the front end, and continued to be so as I got commissions for portraits.  The above is considered an active income pursuit, as it takes time in marketing as well as time in creating a quality piece of artwork for a client. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have that kind of time – and if we do, we certainly don’t have time for more than one stream of income outside a “regular job”.  This is where finding more “passive income” pursuits come in, which we’ll talk about in our next post.

Welcome to my grand experiment in carving out multiple streams of income in an ever-changing economy.  This blog (and upcoming eBook) was borne of necessity. Let’s face it – the world economy has fluctuated for years, and looks like it will continue to do so. The last several years have brought on a huge spate of layoffs, budget cuts and shrinking of incomes in nearly every industry…even those that seemed like they would survive any economic crisis.

In early 2010, I was laid off from my job in the mental health industry – I had 20 years’ experience in mental health, education, training and workshops, and in writing, editing and analyzing data in those areas. Suddenly, my college degrees and years’ of experience accounted for virtually…nothing. I was up against 200 or more people for every job, and prospective employers would rather hire an inexperienced worker right out of college (they’d take less pay and were looked at as somehow “moldable” by employers).

With state cuts in mental health and education funding, my career was pretty much at a standstill. I could live (barely) on unemployment for awhile, but struggling to find a job, no matter how good my resume looked and how well I did in the interview just wasn’t working. I began to  seriously think about a few things.

What would I do in an economy that makes every job lower-paying and more soul-sucking than the last? Moreover, I’ve always struggled with landing on just one thing for a career.  I wanted to be an artist growing up, but life circumstances and a rural location sent me toward a Psychology degree instead, then on into special education. I enjoyed both of these, but also wished I could own my own business, or make a living as an artist, or go into law, or sing in a band, or become a journalist.  The list went on and on.  I was always a bit jealous of those who could pick one career and be happy there before.  Now I felt badly for them, because many of them were getting laid off, too.  And their options for changing careers were even lower than mine.

I looked at all my options, and couldn’t see just one that could make me a decent living in a  fluctuating economy alone. I felt stuck.  But then I started thinking…dangerous, I know.  Why was I looking for just one choice for making money, and seeing the rest as merely hobbies? While I might not be able to make enough money to my satisfaction with just my art, for example, I could make a partial income from something I enjoy and am good at. While I might not find enough freelance writing or editing jobs to make a living, I might find enough to supplement as well.

This meager thought process is what started me on the road to making a living through multiple streams of income rather than just one. After all, I thought…if you lose one job but have seven, it’s not going to hurt as much as by diversification. Then, I realized something that made me stop thinking in “small potatoes” (as in, just barely getting by) and got me on the road to actual financial freedom – I was reading  other websites on multiple streams of income and while many of them talked of “get rich quick” schemes, which it not what this site is about, many had one good point.

A “regular” job – whether salaried or hourly – has limited chance of growth, whether in promotion or income. If I make $42,000 a year in a salaried position, in other words, it’s likely I’ll never break into a job in that organization that pays much over that.  It’s pretty static, if you look at it statistically.  So, it is unlikely I’ll generate any kind of wealth in a regular, salaried job.  I’d potentially be comfortable, but never “get ahead” or be able to do the things I’ve always dreamed of doing, such as traveling much more, or being able to take my work with me when I’m not home.

So, not only has this become a way to simply pay the rent while hoping I’ll do well in the next job interview.  It has become the way to achieve my dreams, and enjoy the process.  Did I have to keep another job while working on this?  Yes – unemployment runs out. Frankly, if I’d gotten started sooner I probably wouldn’t have had to take another low-paying job to pay the rent while working on my dreams.  But hopefully this blog will help you get along faster than I did, and grow your multiple streams of income at a higher rate.

So, welcome to the world of multiple-income-stream entrepreneurship. With the advent of Internet technology, you can take your business pursuits to the world – and not just one of them!