How I build my income streams

"Multiple sources of income is the way to go!" How often do we hear that, and how well are we able to achieve it? It's a very nice idea and concept, nothing revolutionary, but still out of reach to most people who could only dream of it.

Indeed, it's something easy to say, not as easy as it seems to achieve. As humans, we are limited by the constraints of time and energy. This is the reason why leverage is necessary to reduce the amount of time and energy we need for each income stream. By leverage, I refer to leveraging on the time and energy of others, and also leveraging on the power of technology.

A short history of my journey so far:
Since graduation in Jun 2008, my first active income stream is my full-time job, where I serve my scholarship bond. It's a place where I'm being leveraged by others to build their wealth.

After that was settled, I began to teach tuition, restarting a passion that was stopped due to my final year project. This forms my 2nd active income stream. This is where I learned to leverage upon the power of technology to market myself as a qualified tutor.

With these 2 active income streams on the go, I begun investing in dividend stocks and attempted some form of trading. However, the preparation to trade do take up time which I can't really spare, and I have since reduced its amount significantly. I rely on dividend income investing now as my 3rd income stream. I have since build up my average monthly dividends to about $770. Multiply this by 4 to 5 times and it can almost replace my full time job.

My fourth income stream, though super duper small, comes from the ads I have on ExamWorld and WealthBuch. Because I have focussed so much effort initially on the first 3 streams, this stream was rather neglected. It's enough to feed me some coffee every month though.


Of course, I admit that what I have done so far, is common to what many people are doing too; there's nothing revolutionary. In summary, full-time job, part-time sideline, investing, blogging and attempting to make an income online. I'm not doing anything special nor extraordinary. I'm not born with a silver spoon in my mouth either, nor do I eat from a rice bowl made of gold.

I know I cannot stop here and stay in my comfort zone. I have to improve myself continuously to bring and accelerate myself to the next level. I hope to be able to roll out an additional income stream plus improve on my 4th stream by 2011.

My Plan:
1) Starting an Additional Income Stream
I will be creating educational materials for students who are hungry for good books for revision. I have lots to share, lots of ideas to implement, and I hope to see my vision come true. I like to imagine a place where many students see the light on complicated concepts after reading the guides I wrote. As mentioned in an earlier post, I have already started on an A level physics guide. I'm still a little undecided between setting up my own publishing firm or to go through an established firm. At the moment, I'm leaning towards the former.

2) Increasing my online income source
It's pathetically low at the moment, so I hope to be able to spend some time to improve the traffic, and perhaps create additional niche sites for more adsense income. EHow.com looks like a good website to start on writing articles as well. I'm not really into affliate marketing though, but I may try it some day.


Meanwhile, I will continue in my dividend strategy of buying equities. For my tuition sideline, I believed I have reached a plateau with my current strategy. I will need to think of a updated and improved strategy to address this concern eventually.

I can forsee 2011 to be an even busier year for me.