Advertising is the key to success for any home business, as people can’t turn into customers if they don’t know you exist and don’t know how you can meet their needs. Traditional advertising, such as print media has been around since the invention of the printing press and broadcast media soon came after the birth of radio. But despite all the years of using these types of advertising, the internet has cast a new light on how to successfully market a business without spending a fortune.

While the cost of Internet advertising may seem cheap considering the number of potential customers it can reach for businesses that only offer a local product or service advertising globally just may not make sense. If your business is located in Iowa and your advertising appears in England or in Africa, chances are the return on your advertising investment will not be what you expected.

While internet businesses can gain tremendously from internet marketing, it can get expensive over time depending on the type of advertising venue you choose. The best advertising you can hope for is to have others send your message to their friends, free, without being asked and without complaining. This is known as viral marketing.

The use of viral marketing has been growing and simply involves having internet users distributing your advertising message of their own free will. One of first and most successful uses of viral marketing was when companies such as Yahoo began offering free email accounts. A brief advertising message appears at the bottom of every Yahoo email sent, usually including a link for the advertiser. Then whenever people signed up for the free email service, every email they sent out contained an advertisement.

Talk about viral marketing! Unfortunately your business probably doesn’t have the capability to give out free email accounts but you can come up with other great ideas to virally get your message to the masses. Try giving away an eBook you write that shares useful information about your product, service or industry and of course has your advertisement tagged throughout the copy. Another idea is to create an online ezine that people could subscribe to and share with others.

Whatever idea you come up with just remember that people love free stuff and if what you give away has value then your prospects don’t mind recommending others to your business or website. This means massive exposure for your business and you don’t have to spend a dime.

There is a lot of buzz going around the Internet these days about Multiple Streams of Income. Essentially this concept goes hand in hand with an old saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

So instead of obtaining all your income from one place you want to find “Multiple” opportunities (assets) that can produce income for you and your family. Then if something happens to one of your income sources you still have several others that can pick up the slack.

Sounds great but how does a person go about executing this strategy and actually getting it to work?

Although each person’s situation will be a bit different there are a few basic tips that can get you started on the right path.

Tip #1 - Understand your options

There are literally hundreds of different ways a person can make money. Of course, for the most part, we want to focus on passive income opportunities that allow us to do the work once and get paid on it over and over again. Below are a few of different opportunities that work well for this.

- Network Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Real Estate
- Stock Market
- Info product creation
- eBay
- Google Adsense
- Niche products

Of course there are several others but I like these the best because they are easy and inexpensive industries to get involved with (with the exception of real estate and the stock market).

Tip #2 - Start small - Create something profitable before moving on

Have you ever heard the saying, “Jack of all trades and master of none?” In other words you know a little about everything but don’t excel in one particular area. When it comes to the theory of Multiple Streams of Income, most beginners are coming at it from this perspective. Because of this, it’s important that a person takes small progressive steps towards success.

Pick one single project to concentrate on, and then make it profitable before you move on to something else. For example, if you decide to start with a network marketing opportunity, work at it consistently until it’s producing a nice residual income before you start branching out into an eBay or affiliate marketing opportunity.

Tip #3 - Diversify into different industries

For some reason I run into many different entrepreneurs who are involved with several different network marketing companies and think they are taking advantage of the “Multiple Streams of Income” concept. This is rarely ever the case though.

The truth is that you don’t want to open up different income streams that are going to compete with each other. Otherwise you just stretch yourself to thin that you don’t make money in any of your endeavors.

I suggest picking one network marketing opportunity to take advantage of and then focus on other industries like eBay, affiliate marketing or info product creation. This way you are diversifying into other areas that can compliment each other rather than take away.

Tip #4 – Use profits to create even more income streams

You might have noticed that I mentioned real estate and the stock market in my list of good passive income opportunities. Although you might not have the money to get involved with industries right away, it’s important to enter them at some point.

The best way to do this is to start small with things like network marketing, affiliate marketing or eBay and then set aside some of your profits in an investment account for future use. This way you can build your way up to even more income streams without using out of pocket costs.

In the end, taking advantage of the concept of Multiple Streams of Income has never been easier. The Internet alone can supply you with enough different income sources that you will never have to work a regular 9 to 5 job ever again. The most important thing is to get started right away, take small steps and be consistent. By simply doing those three things there is no telling where you could be 10 to 12 months from now.

This article was written and owned by Josh Bradley

To learn more about producing Multiple Streams of Income I suggest you check out Both of Robert G. Allen’s books that are linked below.