How did you reach "stability"?

only you can answer that question, depending on your lifestyle and location.

$10/month might be plenty in Pakistan. The same lifestyle might cost $10,000/month in new york city.

calculate your basic monthly expenses - food, clothing, shelter, transportation, et al; add 10% for savings and a bit more for entertainment and miscellaneous things. that's your baseline.

Then look at each income stream and ask yourself, "what would it take for this one income stream to produce enough net profit to meet all of my baseline expenses?"

for each income stream, create a plan to increase it. Identify the next concrete action to take in each plan.

Prioritize the plans if you must (due to time/resources/cost), but pick at least one to focus on immediately.

Then, on a consistent basis, do the next step. Then the next step. And so on.

If your plans work, if you take consistent action, and if you don't do anything to change your baseline expenses radically, you should reach "stability".

Once there, repeat the process, but calculate for "upward mobility" as the baseline

There's no such thing as stability in the IM world......everything will someday somehow get saturated, some slower than others, but that's why you gotta keep trying new things. Then you can concentrate on the things that work.

Stability is a vague desciption, as stability is different for everyone. I mean you dont see a millionaire driving a 94 honda civic? Do you?

Again, just squeeze it all out of everything that works. Goodluck


Jeremy

No matter where you live, first you need to learn how to manage your money.

It took me about 20 years to learn this. lol I used to spend $ like it was going out of style.. Now when I drop below 500-1000 I feel like I need to make more because its not enough.

I dont buy things for myself anymore, just the essentials. Which is funny though, because I will go and buy my mother-in-law a new laptop for her birthday but I won't go spend 20 bucks on a new shirt unless I HAVE to.. LOL

Hell, I just bought a PS3 and MW3 on black friday, but that was literally the first time I've spent any money on something that I know I don't really need in about a year and a half.

You just gotta get your priorities straight.

Great Question. Something that I often catch myself thinking about throughout the day.

Right now IM is just a supplemental income but my job can't last forever. There's nowhere to get promoted, no raises, and it'll literally will end within 5 years. Pretty much your basic definition of dead end job. Don't get me wrong it's great for the time being but just won't cut it down the road.

I'm starting to take everything much more seriously as I hope to be making enough to where when the time comes and I don't have a job I won't have to find one. Hopefully I'll get there sooner rather than later.

I hope the OP doesn't mind but I'd like to post my own question. To those that do this for a living how long did it take you to go "Full Time"?

Normally when people ask me this I recommend to be earning at least double their current job income, consistently for at least 3-4 months, with using at least 2-3 different traffic sources, 2-3 different techniques and 2-3 different networks.

Really you want to make sure that you have found success and can reproduce it as well as be diversified enough so that if something happens to one of your partnering networks you will still be ok. But all of this is just my own personal opinion.

Tell you what no one reaches stability once you meet your goals you want more its human nature

Some good answers so far. I do know IM ain't a stable field, but what i meant from "stability" is that there's probably a way to have a more stable income(if it doesn't go higher). So from those who do live full time from this business, i just wondered what made you get there, how many traffic sources/campaigns is best for that(surely more than 1 or 2 lol).

I do know also that diversification is one thing to do...but whats more to do? I doubt you all live with the fear of working while hoping your campaigns don't all go to 0$ and make you unable to pay your rent or food...lol

Stability, what's that?

Seriously..in IM there is no such thing....but neither is there in a "normal" job.

For me, i am so dependent on google rankings, every movement i immediately feel in my wallet...so the best thing i can do is not depending on a few sites but make a number of them with several offers.

The only way to have any stability in IM is to diversify.

NEVER rely on one big campaign, it will fail eventually.

The IM world is as cut throat as it gets. You can survive and prosper but you've got to be creative.