Monetize your Business via Multiple Sources of Income
It is imperative that you seek to monetize your business; it's probably equally imperative to do so utilizing multiple sources of income. The diversity of income streams has an amplifying effect when all are working in harmony and a cushioning effect when some are active and vibrant when others are dormant. My goal is to earn passive income every day of the year (actually it's every second of the day but every day of the year is a good goal to start with) via the multiple income streams I've activated in my business.
I do so using the following (to skip directly to the write-up select the underlined portion of each monetization technique):
| Micro Job - Microworker thru Clickworkers.com |
| Peer to Peer Lending thru Prosper.com |
| Options trading via Optionshouse.com |
| Cost per Impression Advertising |
| Affiliate Marketing thru Shareasale.com |
| Affiliate Marketing thru Commission Junction, www.cj.com |
Prosper with Prosper
Quick and sustained monetization of a corporation is critical for 'shoe-string' budget operations. It gets passive income coming in the door while one works on other potentially longer term sources of income.
The first monetization opportunity I'll mention is near and dear to my heart as it potentially rewards investors and borrowers or recipients. This concept likely existed long before the company was established. However, the company, aptly named Prosper is a pioneer in the industry. Its website is Prosper.com. Click the the link below to learn more about income generation opportunities with Prosper.
Peer to peer lending thru Prosper
Clickworkers
In a nutshell micro jobbing or being a micro worker is essentially hiring yourself out for seconds or minutes at a time performing small jobs for companies and entities that have set up working assignments thru Clickworker. Simple jobs are locating and creating bounding boxes around website logos, performing internet searches for certain keywords or taking short surveys. Jobs become available based on your assessment tests skill rating. It is what I call a not quite passive income way of earning money. In my humble opinion however if you were going to spend that time in idle thought or surfing facebook you could just as well use some of that available time to earn some income. The key is not to displace time that you should be using for truly passive activities to support your business. See my three posts series for details on my experience. If you're interested click my referral link here or in the title to this write-up or in the table at the top of the page.
Trading Options (Selling Covered Calls)
The 3rd potential monetization technique is a little more involved. It’s technically derivatives trading but specifically, I am referring to Options trading. “An option is a financial derivative that represents a contract sold by one party (the option writer) to another party (the option holder). The contract offers the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy (call) or sell (put) a security or other financial asset at an agreed-upon price (the strike price) during a certain period of time or on a specific date (exercise date).” A complete definition is at investopedia.com.
The technique I am referring is selling covered call options. You can learn more about this and other basic options trading techniques via my options page.
CPM Ads or Cost per Impression Ads
If / when you establish a web presence you may take the opportunity to enter relationships with website advertisement entities using cost per impression ads. These represent another opportunity to develop multiple income sources. Click here or the title above to review a list of 28 (and counting) ad networks for low traffic websites or those just starting out. And to find out how to monetize a blog via the numerous ad networks available.
Microventures for non-accredited investors (crowd-sourced real estate and crowd-sourced direct equity investments)
I stumbled upon these microventure opportunities searching for other ways to invest funds for income generation. I'll go ahead and give a shout out to Investorjunkie for their microventures reviews, the link to the crowd-sourced real estate article is here.
A quick summary review is that Fundrise, Rich Uncles, Realty Mogul and GroundFloor to one extent or another offer non-accredited investors to invest in Commercial, Residential and Single-Family Real Estate opportunities throughout the US. By way of definition, according to the efcr (electronic code of federal regulation) website an Accredited Investor among other things is:
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Any natural person whose individual net worth, or joint net worth with that person's spouse, exceeds $1,000,000;
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Any natural person who had an individual income in excess of $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with that person's spouse in excess of $300,000 in each of those years and has a reasonable expectation of reaching the same income level in the current year;
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Any organization described in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, corporation, Massachusetts or similar business trust, or partnership, not formed for the specific purpose of acquiring the securities offered, with total assets in excess of $5,000,000;
This list is not inclusive of all considerations, see ecfr.gov for more details. Opportunities to invest in potentially higher yield opportunities has thus been limited for the non-accredited investor. Fundrise was one of the first crowd-sourced real estate opportunities for non-accredited investors.
For the crowd-sourced real estate opportunities, the funding mechanisms differ from eREITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) to debt investments. The minimum investment amounts are relatively low, from $5 t0 $1000 (and open to all investors). This type of investment fits well with the Prosper (peer to peer lending) investment opportunity where funds are theoretically always invested and thus perpetually earning interest or dividends.
Another newer microventure for both accredited and non-accredited investors is crowd-sourced direct equity investments. I could only locate two sites thus far. One features investment in funding for new video game ideas, Gambitions.com. This is the non-accredited investor opportunity. The other for accredited investors is Seedinvest.com. Note that investments at this level offer extremely high-risk vs reward opportunities so if you choose to pursue consult your team, legal and or financial professional. I’ll keep an eye out for more non-accredited opportunities in this area.
Affiliate Marketing
Wikipedia defines affiliate marketing as such, “… a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand'), the network (that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments), the publisher (also known as 'the affiliate'), and the customer.”.
The ‘reward’ to the affiliate does not cost the customer any extra money, i.e. there is no adverse impact to the customer for clicking on an affiliate link. This is critical to understand as it is often a hesitation point for customers who might actually be interested in the product of service. I am affiliated (for lack of better terminology) with two Affiliate Marketing Networks. The networks aggregate the affiliate programs of numerous companies and thus provide publishers (potential affiliates) with numerous choices of products or services to market. Acceptance by the Affiliate Marketing Network, however, does not guarantee acceptance by the individual marketers in the network. Their acceptance is largely based on your website content, quality and traffic. I learned this the hard way as one of my target services, which I personally use and thus felt very comfortable recommending to others, rejected my affiliate relationship based on those criteria. So if you are planning to take this monetization approach be mindful of how far out you’ve built your site, it’s primary focus, it’s quality and the traffic rate. I currently represent one product thru one of my sites and did get signed on as an affiliate when the site was in its infancy with minimal traffic. The two affiliate networks I am associated with are:
Shareasale (referral https://financialindependencemindset.com/ShareASale)
Shareasale is the first affiliate network I joined and the first thru which an advertiser accepted me in a publisher relationship partnership. There are numerous and I mean numerous advertisers in the Shareasale network. You must apply / request to represent a product or service for an advertiser. At a minimum, however, you can always represent the Shareasale platform while you investigate other potential advertiser partnerships.
If Shareasale interests you please link to them thru my affiliate link above or below.
Referral https://financialindependencemindset.com/ShareASale
Commission Junction
Commission Junction (CJ) is another huge affiliate network. They offer top name brands and many others. Similar to shareasale, you will need to apply to represent specific advertisers. Unique to CJ is their request that you complete a profile describing your business interests. They then use this description to generate offers from Advertisers in their network. This is the reverse of you requesting to become an affiliate for a particular company. In this case interested advertisers find you and then you can screen amongst the offers that have come in to select one or several that align(s) with your interests or experience with the product. In some cases these Advertisers are companies you would have never been able to locate on your own since there are so many in the network. I personally think this is an invaluable service for it’s Publisher members as it creates additional potential income streams on the quest for multiple income sources.
So in summary, multiple income sources is paramount for your business. I’ve described a number of monetization methods I am using and there are many many others that I am not. However, as I said on my homepage you are taking the journey with me and this is my progress to date.