Do you ever feel insecure or unsafe about your online income?

Been making money online since 1999. My first business doesn't do much business now, but that's mostly because I lost interest (you should sell any business after 7 years).

If you're a small business you can also change direction in a day. It's only big players that hit icebergs and sink.

Diversify into multiple income streams! For me its real estate, online, personal and technical skills acquired over the years. Goal is to be "financially free" and create multiple passive income streams.

All the best!

I'd say it's as "unsafe" as offline businesses - you are work at a company, but it can go bankrupt any day without you expecting it. But yes, the fact that you expect the payment monthly and have something to look forward to might seem a bit more "secure", even though to me, it's the same thing.

Most small businesses are only one bad decision/health crisis away from the poor house (it doesn't even have to be your bad decision) and nothing is guaranteed. So IMHO the wise entrepreneur should have a few irons in the fire on and offline.

I'm a strong believer in reinvesting and encourage all IMmers not to head to the mall with those fat affiliate checks but invest in something that will help you grow financially.

It seems to me that the essential thing is just to stay away from depending on SEO traffic. Not only because it's not very good traffic anyway (though that's typically true), but because it's completely precarious.

As countless Warriors discovered (some to their very great cost) during 2011, a business that depends on Google for its primary traffic is only ever going to be one algorithm-change away from a potential major accident.

It doesn't matter whether you're a vendor, an affiliate, or what - if your business depends on Google, you're not secure.

Instinctively, I don't agree with this at all. It seems fraught with difficulties, complications, lack of focus, and so on.

For my own business, the thing that concerns me is being ClickBank dependent for a high proportion of my monthly income. True, if ClickBank did disappear overnight, I'd still have my business's assets (my sites, my lists and my relationships with all my subscribers) but it would still be a major inconvenience, and some interruption in my income as well, before I found adequate replacements/arrangements for everything I'm promoting. But the vendors of most (all?) of the products I promote would doubtless get other arrangements set up as quickly as possible, if ClickBank disappeared on them, I imagine.

But I'm careful to stay fully in control of all my affiliate-links and so on, by being in control of all the redirection mechanisms myself, and not being dependent on any unnecessary third-party url forwarding/redirecting/shortening services for that.

Still, I'm trying to diversify a little, now, and add non-ClickBank income-sources, while still retaining all the product-flexibility advantages of being an affiliate.

There is nothing certain in life but you can increase your chances.

Make multiple sources of income, independent of one another, reinvest in your
business in order to make it grow and be more stable.

Everybody feels fear and insecurity, but the successful people just don't allow it to
prevent them from doing what they think should be done.

The issue I have with your reasoning Alexa is that you need traffic to build those lists and it's going to cost you one way or another if it's time writing guest posts, twittering, buying ads or SEO'ing, but I agree that some seo affiliate marketers such as myself are lightyears behind when it comes to building lists and retaining visitors. An area to improve on for sure.

I'm feeling very insecure right now. I've got one site making money, trying to expand as fast as I can.

Got an email from G the other day about un natural link building. Posted a long question for help. Maybe I posted it in the wrong place. It is now sitting in Adsense/PPC/SEO I don't think I put it there. I think it was moved, why to Adsense? haha

I think it was a warning shot. They sent it to Webmaster tools and had been sittting there for a couple of weeks before I found it. I fthey were going to hit me I think they would have. They did bust me on one keyword and it was a good one. I got to number 7 on page one. Now I'm not in the top 50. Hopefully that's all the do to me.

In all my years I can say it is a roller coaster ride... UP Down UP Down with digital products.

You create a new product and sell a bunch then it dies out or the Internet changes or everyone clones your product and under cuts you.

You start all over again (I'm talking IM products) take a look at Warrior Plus Mike had the market and now there are more and more choices to use and even more are on the way. Warrior Plus has took a big hit and it will only get worst.

My tangible items because they are consumables are non going to dye any time soon. Repeat customers they know they can count on my items to be good and delivered on time.

My service graphic design is non stop also. I took down my order links years ago and still have plenty of customers.

So my tangible items and my service items hold the fort down when my downloads get out dated or wear off.

Hope that helps

Richard

Don't live above your means back when I created eCover actions doing 2200.00 days were common that did not give me the right to go out and buy a new car or buy a bunch of stuff... instead I paid off my house paid off my cars then when everyone started copying the eCover actions and started selling them and some giving them away it dropped off I did not freak out because I had paid off just about every loan I had. In 2007 I build a new house with cash I still own my first house and one in FL.

I can't stress enough when the money comes in pay stuff off... if you need a good dept free course check out Dave Ramsey follow the baby steps to the tee.

Not as long as I have my lists...

Yes, there is a sense of uncertainty. But, if you have a steady base of clients, you are somewhat blessed to get some relief by the end of the day.

Regards.

Unless you are sitting on a stockpile of cash with paid off assets, regardless where your income comes from, you should always feel insecure about it.

Here is a list of major corporations that no longer exist due to the economic downturn over the last 5 years.

Circuit City
Comp Usa
Hollywood Video
Borders
Polaroid
Gottschalks

and the list goes on. Diversify your income sources. The rules can change at any moment.

Here is the whole point of my rant though, if you make a better product/website/service, then you can reduce your fears.

I hate to be a party-pooper, but your fears are quite justified. The only problem is that the scenario you just described applies to our entire ultra-fragile global economy.

The entire global economy is a gigantic house of cards waiting for a gust of wind.

There is no safe haven...anywhere.

That being said, diversification and value are the keys to being the "most stable"...short term...relatively speaking..FWIW.

So, yes, definitely split things up.

Being a marketer it is natural to feel uneasiness and insecurities about your business but what matter there is you can able to fight these feelings and convert negative thoughts to positive.

Feel free to do several test for you to determine your strengths and weaknesses.

Save for a rainy day.

Be like Henry Ford, who had the confidence to say that if he ever lost his millions- he'd have it all back within 5 years!

There are business and individual come-back stories all of the time. Even if you do lose your IM business, you can always build another.

I would like to see this online business just as any other offline business , It is just insecure as any other business, I had noticed a restaurant which was doing great for years suddenly started seeing a dip as another good one picked up their business. Now they are investing money in modification works.

So if we look around us we can see this risk is everywhere and relatively capital requirement is very less in online business, but many do a big mistake of starting online business with zero investment.

Diversifying the income stream is always a great idea tho..

HI

whats MMO niche?

Alexa Smith what products or line of business do you sell to have so many branches in bringing in good traffic and working for yourself i take it?

Very interesting across across the board on this topic and learning alot of things reading it from you all..thank you

There's no security offline or online. Forget worrying and concentrate on making hay while the sun is shining. And save some money for the inevitable rain days.

We believe that we always need a back-up to the website, so we have an ebay store and sell on Amazon as well. We are also looking at local events. The more back-up you have, the less likely you will fall (I believe)

Great thoughts, OP.

We've had several offline businesses and have started our first online business just over a year ago and were talking about this very subject a few days ago with some friends that are also business owners.

It seems that this is a concern for MOST business owners whether their business is primarily online or offline. Especially when things are going well...you start to wonder how long it's going to last, whether your suppliers are going to up their rates, how trustworthy is your staff, whether your Google rankings are going to hold, how long you're going to hold your readers/listeners interest, etc.

I'm starting to realize that this is just one of the costs or downsides of running your own company and it's always a concern. For larger organizations, they're able to mitigate this risk a bit through diversification, but for the rest of us struggling to figure it all out, diversification means splitting your time, lack of focus, etc. Most start-ups really need to keep focused on a limited amount of goals, projects, etc. so that they can figure out their industry, their customers, work out the kinks, etc.

i think we should have multiple source of income and also residual income and build a list

This is a great question, and already we've had some awesome responses. So thanks everyone.

I probably share similiar concerns to most making money online, in that, I probably dont diversify as much as I should. A lot of this isnt intentional, its just that Im trying to do too much on my own.

I sat down today and wrote a list of people that I already have on my "team" so to speak, but theres definitely a few skillsets where I need to find employees.

Once I start building a network, I can really start ramping up my product creation and rolling out more sites.

This over time will surely diversify my income.

There just seems to be so much to do, and such little time.

I have some money saved for a rainy day so I don't worry too much, but like anyone else, I get concerned.

Just gotta always be on the offensive and invest every dime you get!

Yes! Everyday. Even when it goes well for months upon end I worry, and with good reason - you never know what could happen. Sites get hacked, hosting companies shut you down, all sorts of stuff. You never know what is going to happen next.

It's something all people in the IM world should get used to, nothing is secure or guaranteed in this world... Especially SEO! One flick of the switch on the other end (Say Google) and it all comes tumbling down.

Though all we can do is try and build businesses that can work around any big changes, have contingency plans put in place ready for any major changes!

Just keeping on top of things and never stop working hard should be enough to keep the income coming in.

Of course I get nervous about online income. No matter how foolproof your business is, there is exposure somewhere that could do some damage. The important thing is being able to recognize the risk and mitigate it somehow.

For me, I relied incredibly on search traffic with my first site. I made great money, but it made me nervous. My next site, I did a few things:

1) Picked a niche that had higher margins, which means I needed less traffic.
2) Picked a niche that was somewhat viral. Meaning customers shared with other customers.
3) Picked a niche that had, at least a %, or recurring sales. Not necessarily monthly sales, but at least high probability of 2nd or 3rd sales.
4) Picked a niche where I could "hustle" and still make money. In other words, put up a sign in my front lawn and still make some money.

All those things helped to reduce exposure to one traffic source. Pretty much each year, I roll out one new thing that helps me reduce my exposure to Google. Now I'm at the point where I could make a great income if I lost 100% of my google traffic.