11 Forms Of Income For The Solo Creator

Bookmark this one so you can come back to it later if you don’t have the time to read it right now because this is one of the most valuable articles I’ve ever written.

Years ago when I was first starting out I heard that you need multiple streams of income. Since I didn’t know what they were talking about, my brain told me that was silly.

“I’m good at one thing. I get paid for that one thing. Why would I want to do something other than what I’m good at?”

And that misunderstanding kept me locked out of a lot of opportunities.

I don’t want you to fall into the same trap as I did, so I’m making this relatively short guide so you can open your mind to the possibilities that are sitting right in front of you.

Assumption

I’m going to assume that you’re already 1) good at something 2) that people will pay money for.

Whether it’s web design, graphic design, writing, being funny, being gorgeous, or whatever.

You have some marketable skill that can earn you money.

If not, then that’s step one for you. Learn something valuable. My recommendation is to learn sales. Every company needs great sales people, and anyone looking to do something great has to sell other people on the idea of helping out, so it’s the highest leverage skill you could possibly learn.

But this isn’t a sales ‘how to’ post.

Let’s get to making money.

The Two Types Of Making Money

But first, let’s talk about category theory.

I don’t believe in anything close to what you would call “passive income.”

Nothing worthwhile in life happens because you’re passive.

The science of Alchemy demands an equivalent exchange of value + energy to transform reality from what it is to what you imagine.

So, when it comes to income it all comes down to how much leverage you have on the effort you put in.

But, that’s a clunky way of saying it.

We’ll use passive to talk about something that makes more than one payday from the effort you put in, and active is something that makes you money once from the effort you put in.

This will make more sense as we go through, I promise.

Revenue 001

The service.

What are you good at? What do people pay you to do?

Whatever that is, go get paid for it.

Simple.

And there are two shapes that takes.

1. Freelance
2. Job

Pretty much it.

With freelance you take all the risk of not finding clients, managing your own books, wearing all the hats, etc.

With the job you get to sit back & just focus on doing what you do.

Now, this is the situation most people are in. And you might think I’m one of those people to tell you that you should quit your job immediately to go all in on your creator journey.

And you’d be wrong.

I think having a job is a fantastic way to bankroll your creator vision.

If you have a good paying job & insurance, then you are better suited to make strategic choices without the pressure of “I have to take this awful client because I’ll get evicted if I don’t. The money isn’t coming from anywhere else.”

Ask me how I know that can happen. . .

So, yeah. Revenue stream 001 is doing the thing you’re paid to do. Just do that and make money. Simple.

Now it gets more complex.

Revenue Stream 002

Run an agency.

If you’re used to delivering the service & you’ve built up a client base that starts to max out the time you have to do the thing, then it makes sense to start farming out those opportunities to other people you know who are also great at doing the thing.

You now take on the risk of finding clients & opportunities. The other folks you work with sit back and do what they’re good at.

Congratulations, you have an agency.

Your expenses are higher, yes, but so is your earning potential for each hour of the day since you can sell that hour times however many people you can find to do the work.

Now you’re starting to edge into passive income.

You, yourself, don’t have to do the work & you’re getting paid from coordinating the work getting done.

Kinda cool to benefit from helping other creators find work & opportunity.

So that’s neat.

SIDENOTE

Maybe I should have talked about the first, but here we are & I’m not going back.

But, everything I’m talking about in this whole article depends on you being good at the thing you get paid for (we already talked about that).

It ALSO depends on the world knowing about what you can do.

And that means you have to promote yourself.

You have to be a Recognized Genius. ←(a term I came up with)

That means you have to show what you can do. You have to tell people what you can do. They have to hear about what you can do.

And you start to build a two-flavor audience.

1. clients
2. colleagues

Clients are people who want to pay you to do the thing. Colleagues are people who want you tell them how you get paid to do the thing.

The bigger your audience, the easier your creator life is going to be.

That’s why audience building & sales are your one-two knockout combo of meta-skills that make all other skills more valuable.

You can’t be a hermit, help nobody, and still win big as a creator. Sorry. It doesn’t work that way.

All these revenue streams are more valuable when you have an audience.

Learn how to be your own Personal Media Company ←(another term I came up with) and promote yourself to the world. The rest is easy.

Revenue Stream 003

Courses.

“Here’s how you can do what I do.”

This can work for clients & colleagues.

For clients it can help them go from “I’ll do this myself with your course” to “I now see how big of a pain this is for me to do so why don’t I just hire you to do this for me?”

Double bonus payday!

And for colleagues, you can help them save years learning things the hard way by going through your 30 minute course.

That’s a massive benefit.

Revenue Stream 004

Sell products.

Merch baby! You can sell t-shirts, mugs, posters, whatever.

(courses can fall under products, so it might be the same stream, but you get the idea of why I’m making these two separate things.)

Or, maybe you want to be taken seriously in your market so you write a book or two.

Whatever it is, you’re selling something that people can wear, read, or use.

(Digital products count too, like guides, pdfs, templates, workflows, checklists, etc.)

Revenue Stream 005

Affiliate sales.

Do you use a lot of gear? Did you know that you can sign up for affiliate payments on Amazon & other online retailers who will give you a small percentage of the stuff they sell because you sent someone to them to buy it?

You can make a gear recommendation, someone buys it, and you get paid (without that person having to pay extra for the thing).

Pretty cool.

You win. The store wins. The other person wins because they’re getting exactly what they need. Triple win scenario.

And it’s about as passive as it gets. Set up the link once & there’s no end to how many people can click to buy.

Revenue Stream 006

Sponsorships!

This is kind of like affiliate marketing, but more intentional on the side of the gear-maker.

That company likes you (and your audience) enough to give you dollars before you (and your audience) spend money with them.

They’re basically buying an advertising channel which is your relationship with your audience.

While the dollar amounts can make this suuuuuuuper attractive, it can go wrong real fast if you partner up with any random company that’s willing to pay you.

If there’s not a tight alignment to your mission / vibe / philosophy / everything, then your audience can feel like you’re a “sell out” and that seriously undermines the trust you’ve built with them.

The wrong sponsor can get you paid in the short term, but at the cost of long term trust.

So pick the right sponsor & you’ll be happier in the long run.

Revenue Stream 007

Advertisements

This is kind of a balance between sponsorships & affiliate marketing.

If you’re on YouTube and you get monetized, you’re not included in the money that was already trading hands from the videos that people were watching.

But you’ve demonstrated enough “buy in” to the YouTube platform that Google now considers you worthy of including in their lucrative system.

And it can apply to other places besides YouTube.

If you have a blog that gets lots of traffic, you could put Google Display ads on your site and make money off the impressions.

You can choose how many & how intrusive they are.

Depends on how comfortable you are with the tension between the information that people are coming to your site to find (signal) vs the advertisements selling stuff to those people (noise).

Revenue Stream 008

Memberships

This pairs nicely with the courses.

You can build a powerful community of other people who like to do what you can do.

Maybe they want to hear from other creators. Maybe they want to feel like they belong to the cool kid’s club. Maybe they want to get other perspectives on their challenges beyond what you explain in your course.

Great! Sign up for membership!

It’s recurring revenue (mostly passive) that you can depend on month over month.

Offer hang outs, weekly mastermind calls, or whatever.

Revenue Stream 009

Coaching

If they want direct access to you then they’re probably willing to pay for your time.

A single hour one-on-one with you might be able to transform their life.

Or, maybe, you work on challenges that take 6 months to properly address.

Cool.

Offer that connection at a premium.

This should be one of your more expensive offerings.

Some coaches only work with 5-8 clients at a time and make hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It works if they know how to solve problems that cost their client’s business millions. . .

Or maybe you can offer a lower tier for a cohort of people who go through the coaching process as a group. So it’s kind of like if a membership mated with coaching and gave birth to this kind of centaur of guidance.

ˉ\_(ツ)_/ˉ

Revenue Stream 010

Live Events

Host a conference. Host a limited time mastermind. Host a VIP day with your best clients.

These can be wildly successful.

It can be a lot of work, but so worth it.

Spend 3 days in an exotic location where everyone present is focused on you & your message.

Crazy awesome.

Revenue Stream 011

Investments

What do you do with all that money you’re making?

Help other people make money by funding other businesses & then getting a share of the profits that they make.

Boom. Making money with money!

Play the stock market, do real estate, whatever.

Put your money to use instead of just throwing it under a mattress somewhere.

Conclusion

There you have it. It’s a whole ecosystem of value that all feeds into itself.

The book promotes the workshops which lead to coaching which leads to live events which leads to selling more books etc etc.

Now, this can be overwhelming to think about.

And it can be easy to think you’ll never have this.

So start small.

Focus on building out one pdf to sell on GumRoad and then go tell Twitter about it.

Start with what you have to build what you can to get what you want.

Over time you can expand into more and more streams and your life gets way more stable.

The job becomes one of your streams instead of the only stream.

Now, your whole financial life isn’t hanging by a single thread that your boss can cut at any time.

So the sooner you start working on creating these other ways of making money, the more secure you’ll be & that gives you the space to make better choices about the projects & clients you work with.

Hope this helps you figure out what to do next, and I’d love to hear how it goes.

If you’d like to find out more about how to do all this stuff, I have built out some courses, myself, and you can find those at the Academy of Applied Mentalism.

I’ve also written books, sell merch, offer cohort training, and more.

They’re all focused on helping you get paid more for the ideas you have in your head.

And now, hopefully, you can see a clearer path to getting there.

Best thoughts, ~Jonathan “want to see you get paid” Pritchard

?? Jonathan Pritchard is a mentalist-turned-consultant & the founder of ZAVANT enterprises, Institute of Applied Mentalism, & ROI Trade Shows.

Each project helps clients have more successful businesses through the power of better communication skills. He’s also the author of several books focused on the power of applied psychology, memory, and motivation.

Connect with him on Twitter and YouTube for more behind-the-scenes stories from the road & boardrooms across the world.