Intro
Hey everyone, it’s Tom here with thisonlineworld.com. I hope you’re all having a fantastic day today. So there’s a saying that the average millionaire has seven streams of income on average, and you know, there’s no denying that creating multiple streams of income and that sweet, sweet passive income is how a lot of people make a lot of money. But I think it can be pretty daunting to kind of get started, especially if you’re younger and you’re just getting out of school and you’re kind of getting your life together. So in this video, I’m covering how I created six different income streams by the age of [blank], how much each one of them makes, and some tips you can use to also create multiple streams of income without any experience. At the end of the video, I’m also sharing some of the worst advice I’ve heard on this topic and some major mistakes I’ve made along the way, so hopefully, there’s a valuable lesson in there for someone. Let’s get to it.
My Blog
The first and largest income stream I’ve built over the years is thisonlineworld.com, my blog. So I started the blog actually way back in January [blank], and at the time it was kind of just this little corner of the internet where I’d write things about phone farming or ways to make money online or whatever side hustle I was trying at the time. And I know it took a long time, and in my first year, it made [blank]. So it took [blank] months to make [blank]. It was not a hit, but over the last five years of just chipping away at it and learning, it’s grown into a pretty sizable blog. It reaches about [blank] plus monthly readers, and there are three main ways the blog makes money.
The first is Mediavine ads. These are the ads people see when they come to the site and read content, and that makes between $8,000 and $12,000 per month. The second stream on the blog is affiliate income. So I recommend products and services, and if people convert, I get paid, and that makes anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 per month, really depending on conversion rates and a bit of luck. And then the third income stream is brand deals, and this is a newer one, and I’ve really scratched the surface with it. I haven’t really done that much, and I maybe make like [blank], once in a blue moon, maybe a thousand. It’s only happened, I think, three times this year—getting a sponsored post on the blog or some kind of brand deal.
Now, of course, the blog has plenty of operational expenses. There are five people who write for the site, there’s hosting, there’s some software as well, so I’ll break that down at the end of the year in my blogging income recap. But for all intents and purposes, the blog makes about, you know, anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 plus per month, and then there’s a bunch of expenses. Now, the blog took a very long time to get here. Like I mentioned, in the first year it made $1,700, and in its fourth year, it made [blank]. So it’s kind of been, you know, slowly inching its way up. Every year, it grows a little bit, and that is basically number one, the main income stream that I’ve spent the last five years building.
Writing Job
So my second income stream is just my day job. So I was actually a freelance writer for the last two and a half, kind of three years, and I honestly got approached by a client I was writing for, and they said, “Hey, do you want to write for us full-time?” And, you know, I thought I would give it a try. So the company I work for is called Excel Media, and the site I write for is called investorjunkie.com. It’s been a pretty weird shift from freelance to full-time, but I kind of wanted to, you know, have vacation again, some benefits. It’s a really cool team. Some of my friends are on that team, so I wanted to try working with them as well. And now, my actual job title is called commercial writer. I’m not going to share the exact salary, but I’m going to put a picture up on the screen that kind of shows the range you might expect as a commercial writer for a U.S. company. So you can see there’s actually quite a range, and from interviews I’ve had with other writing jobs, there is honestly a very wide range in pay. But, you know, the higher end is quite nice; the lower end is still really good.
So writing is, you know, one of my favorite side hustles, and I think it’s a pretty cool career path. But yeah, this is basically my main active income, so it’s my 9 to 5 PM kind of job. It’s when I’m writing content about or making videos for them now and things like that. So that’s my second income stream, and by far where I spend the most time.
YouTube Income
Right, so my third income stream is YouTube. So I started this channel back in about [blank], and it was really a way for me to kind of cross-promote this online world and to branch out onto a new platform. Since then, it’s grown to over [blank] subscribers, so guys, thank you for the support and for watching in the comments. You know, I try and read and respond to as many comments as I can, and it is pretty crazy how the channel has grown. You know, I’m really, really appreciative of that fact.
So in terms of an income stream, YouTube’s kind of been a slow play, but it’s making about [blank] to [blank] dollars in AdSense revenue per day right now. So about [blank] to [blank], and YouTube is not passive by any means. I’m never going to call it a passive income stream, but I have a video editor who helps out now, and so it’s kind of turned into this, like, semi-passive income source. And that’s why I think YouTube is really, really cool.
Investing
My fourth income stream is just good old-fashioned dividend stocks and ETFs. And, you know, I’m not a crazy trader, swing trader, or day trader or anything like that. I pretty much dollar-cost average my way through the market, you know, in a tax-free savings account and a cash investment account. I keep things really simple, like Vanguard ETFs, some bank stock, some energy stocks that pay dividends, things like that. Like, I’m not really a stock-picking guy. I just don’t really have the time or interest necessarily to research individual companies, and so the end result is just a bit of dividend income, like a couple hundred dollars per year. Again, nothing crazy, but I really like this idea as an income stream for people because it’s one of the easiest ones to start. You can open an online brokerage, you know, pretty much anywhere, start trading stocks and ETFs commission-free, and build a, you know, growth/dividend portfolio without any experience.
Side Projects
The fifth income stream I’m going to call crypto and random stuff, and this one’s actually tanking. Like, this is… I wanted to include it in this video because it’s when I started trying to build this year, and it went horribly wrong, so I thought I’d share. But basically, I bought some, you know, Bitcoin and Ethereum at, like, the worst point. I put $5,000 into crypto, and I think I’m down, like [blank]. And I have, like, [blank]% of Cardano sitting on Nexo where it earns a little bit of interest. But this whole thing has been an absolute travesty. I’m making no money. I’m losing money in crypto. I’m done with crypto for the time being. But I wanted to include it because I feel like a lot of people probably have these little, like, random side projects. And even if that’s taking some money and putting it in a really good online savings account that pays, you know, 3, 4, 5% APY—like you can find in the United States right now—that could be a little tiny income stream where you hold your emergency fund. Maybe you are trying crypto staking or something like that, or, you know, some kind of more creative, out-of-the-box thing. So this is my, like, fifth little bucket. It’s going terribly. It’s just leaking all the money. It’s an awful one, but I wanted to include it in this video because hopefully I can turn it around, and if I spend more time in crypto, I might make a video on that. But for now, it’s absolutely tanking. Rip.
Niche Blog
Alright, and the sixth and final income stream is another niche blog I’ve spent the last two years kind of building. And so this blog is much different than thisonlineworld.com. It’s actually in the male lifestyle development dating niche. I started it about two years ago, but I only started putting effort into it really about a year ago. So it’s in Mediavine now, and it makes about [blank] per month in ad revenue for Mediavine and then maybe $[blank] to $[blank] on a good month from Amazon affiliate income. So it’s more of a hybrid site, you know, a lot of affiliate products, a lot of things men could buy. Talks about dating apps a lot, talks about, you know, different games people can play. It’s kind of a weird site. I like it, though, and I might make more videos on the process of scaling that niche site up in revenue if you guys are curious about that. But that’s my sixth and final income stream, and it’s probably the one with the most growth opportunity right now and where I’m going to spend more time next year.
Tip
Alright, so those are my six different streams of income, and now that I’ve covered them, I kind of want to cover some of the advice I’ve heard about building multiple streams of income, some really valuable lessons I’ve learned, and some awful mistakes I really think people should avoid. And so I’m just going to start out by tackling what I think is the worst piece of advice people give on this subject, and it was something, you know, a mistake I was making as well for over a year, and that is to not solidify your active income before branching out into new income streams. So a lot of the advice out there is always talking about building passive income, starting side hustles, diversifying income, but if your active income source where you spend eight plus hours a day isn’t at its full potential, I think it’s a mistake to jump from that ship, you know, before it’s actually sailing and doing its thing.
I did this exact thing when I graduated college. I had a psych degree. I got a [blank] per year job at a marketing agency. It paid a little bit of commission, and that was my day job. That was where I was spending eight or nine hours. There were a lot of nights I had to work as well. I worked weekends too, so there’s a lot of active time going into this job. And don’t get me wrong, for a psych grad, that was great pay. But the job wasn’t paying as much as other jobs in that field or even, you know, different industries. And so at the time, I remember trying all these different side hustles, like Etsy, POD, writing on HubPages, Amazon affiliate sites about headphones, and, you know, none of these side hustles were going well, and I was spending all this extra time on these things, but my active income wasn’t really as high as it could have been. And so I think the first question to ask yourself is what’s better for your current situation: branching into these multiple streams of income or maybe spending more time on career building? You know, sprucing up your resume, learning more marketable skills, kind of hitting the job market and trying to job-hop. I mean, if you job-hop somewhere and you all of a sudden have a $5,000 to $10,000 raise or even more, I think that’s a lot more impactful to your life and also immediate impact than trying a side hustle that might or might not work.
And again, you can learn so many skills on the internet for free or very cheap on websites like Udemy or Skillshare or just good old-fashioned YouTube. You can take certificate programs at a local college or again online for free. So there’s a lot of ways to kind of spend time on your career in career building and then job hopping a bunch, and I think for young people, that might be the fastest way to really increase your actual income. But anyways, tip number two on building multiple streams of income is to start diversifying on things that are complementary to your active income.
Tip
So once you actually establish that, you know, solid base of income, your active income is going really, really well, it’s scaling, it’s, you know, reaching its potential, perhaps I think that is a good time to start creating that second stream or third stream of income, but I think it helps if it’s complementary to what you’re already doing. So for me, I was working at the digital marketing agency. I was learning a lot about SEO and affiliate marketing and paid ads. I had my blog from college, this online world that was kind of, you know, on the side. I was chipping away at it. And so I just doubled down on that. I didn’t get into dropshipping or Amazon FBA or print on demand in the end because, really, the skills I was learning at my day job and using every day were super complementary to blogging. It really helped accelerate my learning there, and so I applied that to a new income stream. And so there’s probably skills you can take from your day job or your experience that you could apply to a side hustle or income stream you’re starting.
Tip
The third tip I found really helpful in creating different income streams was to kind of set these yearly goals but to have monthly milestones. So this is kind of just like a scheduling and roadmap thing that I found really helpful. But I remember when I was blogging back in [blank], I had read these Mediavine income reports, and I knew Mediavine was the key. I knew once I got into Mediavine, my blog would be making passive income I could reinvest into the blog and scale it, and that’s exactly what happened. But I didn’t know how to get into Mediavine. It needed at the time [blank] monthly readers. Now it’s [blank], and that just seemed like such a big number. I was at about [blank] readers per month, and I had no idea how to get there. So I set that yearly goal of getting into Mediavine, but then I set little monthly goals, and I realized my publishing schedule wasn’t high enough. So I committed to publishing like [blank] posts a month. I really started grinding that out. I set monthly traffic goals, you know, grow [blank] month over month, kind of thing. And, you know, after about six to eight months of grinding in my second year of blogging, I think I got into Mediavine, and the ads were on my site by that December. So really, when creating these different income streams, have that North Star still—know exactly what you’re going for—but maybe chunk it into quarterly or monthly kind of mini-goals that you try and accomplish first.
Conclusion
Honestly, guys, I know this was a pretty different video than I normally make on the channel, but I’ve seen a lot of creators make these kinds of videos where they share a little bit more about their income streams or the different businesses they’re working on and things like that. And I have to say, there are some crazy successful people out there. I was watching a few of these videos, you know, guys running three different e-commerce businesses, making a million dollars from dropshipping or people with million-dollar investment portfolios, and I thought it was really cool. So I thought I’d make my own little version, and honestly, this is a pretty, I think, realistic version—someone who just has a day job and maybe one or two little side things going on, and they invest a little bit on the side, and then they tank their crypto portfolio. That seems pretty standard. So hopefully some of the ideas in this video at least stand out to you or some of the tips do. And again, I think the overarching one is maximize your active income first and then branch out, and honestly, if you go with that game plan, I think within a year or two, it’s pretty realistic to have a couple of income streams under your belt.
Anyways, guys, that does it for this one. If there’s an income stream you’re building right now or there’s some kind of passive income idea you’re testing out, I’d love to know about it down below in the comments as well so we can chat about it. Thank you guys again so much for watching, and the support recently has honestly really meant a lot, and I’m excited to get more YouTube videos out. I’m trying to do it faster, and so I’m going to try my best here, but anyways, guys, that does it for this one. I hope you all have a fantastic day, and as always, don’t forget to check out thisonlineworld.com for more unique ways to make and save money. I’ll catch you guys in the next one.
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