If you are familiar with personal development or read books by and about successful people, you have most likely read about the value of creating multiple streams of income and letting your money work for you rather than working for money.  If you’ve read “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki, you will remember that he talked about how his real dad worked for money while his rich dad’s money worked for him.

What I want to look at today is multiple streams of income that you can use and how to manage it.

We all know that we can’t focus on two things at the same time. Have you ever tried to read a book and wash your car at the same time?  I bet not.  I know this is an extreme example, but sometimes this is what people try to do online.  But before I go there, let’s make a list of different income streams you can work on and then break them down and talk about them one by one.

1. Your day-to-day job

2. Investment money in the bank

3. Property

4. Shares

5. Direct selling

6. MLM or network marketing.

7. Afiliate markiting.

8. Creating your own product for online or offline use to help the world.

OK now that we have a list of different income streams, let’s look at it one at a time.

Your job

We all are or have been at this point at some time in life.  When you step out of school the next usual step is to go and study in college so that we can go out and get a good job someday, or we start work somewhere right away if we don’t go the college route.  This is how it worked out when we Joe Average left school.

Joe needed to get money somewhere to make a living, and that is why he started looking for a job, which is most people’s only income stream for the rest of there life.  But if Joe Average wants to become the next Donald Trump or Steve Jobs on the block, he needs to look for ways that his money can work for him so that he can fire his boss at some point.

So it is not bad to have a job as long as you are on the lookout for ways where you can create more income streams for yourself.

Investment money

One of the first things I have learned from my mentors and from books that I’ve read is to put aside ten percent of your income in some kind of savings or investment.  As they say, “Pay yourself first.”  I wish I had learned that when I left school 25-odd years ago.

Every successful person teaches you to do that, so why not apply what they teach if that is something that will help you become successful?

I will say this is the first step in the right direction, because your money will start to work for you and you won’t need to focus on that every day.  It’s almost like you set it and forget it.  Today there are many ways you can do that.  Just go to your local bank institution or broker, or see if you can find some place were you can do it online.  I personally found one online that is working well for me.

Property

When you have a good job with an income that you can start to use to do property investment, then you are in a sweet spot.  This needs to be every person’s goal when they start their first job. This is the place where most of the successful people make their money work for them.  Again, this is not something that splits your focus, and you do not need to focus on it every day.  Once you have your second or third property, then your money works for you in a nice way.  I recommend you read books like “Rich Dad Poor Dad”.

Shares 

As they say, this is not for everyone.  If you’re not interested in taking at least some risks, then you can skip this one; but this is also one way that you can create another stream of income.  It does need more focus than the above income streams, but if you know what to do and how to work with shares, this can be also a good way to let your money work for you.

Direct Sales

This does take a lot of focus and time, and there are many ways that you can do it.  You can become a part-time rep for a company where they pay you some commission for the sales you make, or you can find it in a network marketing form where you and your team need to have sales every month from customers or out of the team itself in order to generate commissions.  This includes companies such a Herbalife, GNLD(Gold Products), and many others.  If you love selling, then this is a good income stream that you can start on the sideline.

MLM or Network Marketing (Referral Marketing)

Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump said that if they ever started all over again they would do Network (or Referral) Marketing.  If successful people like that make those kinds of statements, perhaps this is something worth considering.

Today there is only one problem with this particular income stream — it seems every Jack and Jill wants you to join their “next big opportunity” online. This can split your focus a lot if you join every MLM or network marketing opportunity that comes along, so let’s look at ways you can run more than one MLM business, what to combine and what not.

Let us first look at MLM businesses that you must not combine and that may have some conflict of interest or divide your focus.  If you belong to a direct sales MLM company in which you have actual physical products that you need to sell, such as nutrition or cleaning products, you don’t want to join both of them with the idea to add just another income stream to your list.  This is like trying to read a book and wash your car at the same time.

So what can you combine if you’ve already joined one of the above mentioned MLMs?

What I suggest is that you look at products that can help your team with their existing MLM business, and today there is an ample supply of them out there — for example, motivational products, video emailing products, conferencing products, and the list goes on and on.  All of these products were created to help network marketers with their existing team or business.

Let’s use an example. You belong to “XYZ” MLM company that sells nutrition or health and wellness products and you have a great team under you, but you want to communicate with your team via video email and would like to do some online training via a webinar, or you want to keep your team motivated every day.  Like Zig Ziglar said, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”

For all the above points that I mentioned, you will find MLM products that you can use and incorporate with your team — products that complement one another and do not split your focus.

So in summary, do not join every MLM that comes along.  If you want to join more than one, combine it with something that will help your team or with products that can help other network marketers with their existing MLM business.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is also a good income stream if you know how to do it or if you can sell the products on your blog via side banners.  It can be almost like “set it and forget it”, or you can learn how pro affiliate marketers are doing it online.

Creating you own Product. 

This is also a good way to create your own income stream, and it can include things like online programs that help people online, books that you sell on Amazon or via your blog, etc., or products that you patent to help the world, both online and off.  I have created one myself.  It is not to the point where it is 100% on the market, but it is a dream that I am working on every day.  To see what it is, click on the banner below.

The bridge to success

So with all of this said, I hope that this has been of help to you in learning how to manage multiple streams of income.  It’s important to have them, but we need also to manage them the right way around in order to become successful in the end.