You might have heard the holy grail of entrepreneurship is to have multiple streams of income. The idea is that if any of those revenue sources dry up, you won’t take much of a financial hit because you’ve got money coming from other sources. That is 100% true, but there’s a dark underbelly to managing many revenue sources that sometimes gets overlooked.

I’ve applied this idea of diversifying revenue to my freelance business. Here are some of the different income streams I’ve worked on since I started The Web Shop Site Potion:

• Designing or redesigning web sites for clients
• Creating email templates for use in newsletter campaigns
• Retainer fees from marketing companies
• Custom Wordpress themes
• Subscription based web applications
• Monthly hosting fees
• Affiliate programs
• Google Adsense
• Email configuration

Wow. I didn’t realize how long that list was going to be until I started writing it. The problem here is that it takes a lot of energy to keep all these plates spinning. I’ve written before about how I moved away from hosting, and several of the other items on this list have already been relegated to the back burner.

I like all of these ideas. They all can be profitable. So it’s hard to say that I want to pick any to get the axe. But the simple fact is if I try to focus on all of them, I won’t be successful with any of them.

filed under: Running a Business