Easier than you think.

Disclaimer: I am not your financial adviser. Do your own due diligence before investing in any financial products! (Because I would only ask you to invest in yourself!)

Before I was ever doing YouTube videos or coaching people on finance, I dedicated all my time to building my career.

I love being in finance. I thought that would be what my life was all about.

And thank God I was really able to climb that corporate ladder and be that leader I had dreamt of being since I was a kid.

It wasn’t until I got into that job where the boss was honestly a sexist (in my opinion) that I felt so trapped in my job and miserable every day.

In fact, just thinking about it makes me emotional because I remember how my job had challenged my worth because after all, I spent most of my time and energy there.

I wanted to quit, almost every day, but I didn’t have other income sources to support my living expenses…

It then dawned on me that I was being passive in my life if I just relied on one source of income, and my boss, for my livelihood and happiness.

It wasn’t until then I decided to finally take ownership of my financial life and learn everything about passive income and diversify my income streams so that I can choose what I want to do when I want to do it, and who I want to do it with.

That was many years ago…

Fast forward to COVID-19 and the economic aftermath, and millions of people lost their jobs, including people I know personally.

But because I have been diversifying my income early and actually seeing growth in earnings, I am not in the panicking mode.

And I want you to have that peace of mind too.

Now, creating multiple income streams isn’t that hard- or expensive- and today, I will give you some ideas that worked for me that you could also try.

1. Affiliate Marketing

Let’s quickly talk about what affiliate marketing is.

Basically, it is about partnering with a seller and helping them promote their products. If people buy through you (I think you affiliate link), then you earn commissions.

The traditional route is to join an affiliate platform like Amazon Associate or eBay Partner Network and find products you think you can sell.

You then market the products on a platform of your choice, say your blog and social media, along with your affiliate links.

Most people, therefore, think that affiliate marketing is only for content creators.

NO-NO-NO!

Of course, it’d be much easier if you already have an active audience online, but don’t be discouraged if you don’t.

There are many ways you can do it without an audience.

How to do affiliate marketing without an audience

You can join groups or forums online, say Facebook, Pinterest, or Craigslist, and post your affiliate links there.

I have found myself buying from those Pinterest pins on several occasions.

From Fiverr.com

Another great idea is to make an offer on freelancing platforms like Fiverr, and when people order, you deliver your order with your affiliate link.

Of course, you want to be honest with these people that you are an affiliate.

This is actually legally required if you are in the States and there are specific requirements when it comes to disclosing your affiliate relationship.

I want you to open your mind about affiliate marketing opportunities too, because a lot of times, we didn’t even know we could be an affiliate for these types of things.

What I want you to do is list out what you could sell under each of these categories:

• Physical products
• Digital products — like Instagram templates, eBooks, online courses etc. Note: Because there can be so many different types of products under this category, further list out what particular products you could under each subcategory.
• Services
• Software
• Events

I would also suggest you build your audience while you are promoting your affiliate offers.

2. Sell Digital Products

This second idea kind of echoes the first one — creating your own digital products instead of promoting others’.

Again, we are talking about passive income.

What are the most profitable digital products in 2022 in my opinion?

I would say templates for social media like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and websites.

Basically, I would suggest you create products for entrepreneurs or small business owners because there is a genuine need there and these people usually prefer to do things themselves.

And where can you sell your amazing digital products?

I would so recommend Creative Market (disclaimer: this is my affiliate link) because I shop there all the time.

I love how Creative Market enables independent designers and creators around the world to spend more time doing what they do.

As a customer, I also love that every week they give you one free asset to download.

That may be a font, a social media or logo template, or a pattern.

I love how generous they are!

So do check that out because I am sure you will be inspired by what you can buy and sell there!

Ok going back to creating that digital product of yours…

The good thing with today’s world is that you don’t actually have to create a product (or anything) yourself.

Once you have your concept, you can always outsource that heavy lifting to a freelancer.

Using our earlier example, you can hire a freelancer to create those Instagram templates for you and then you can start them on Creative Market.

Do make sure the freelancer grants you the license to resell those assets.

In fact, I would suggest you find a licensing agreement template online and ask the freelancer to sign it.

Better be safe than sorry.

Now when it comes to selling your assets, I love how Creative Market has designed a series of licenses for designers.

This can save you so much time while ensuring that your assets will be well-protected.

Again, you can check out Creative Market here.

3. Build a Diversified Portfolio

When talking about adding income streams, we can’t forget the most basic of them all, investing.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the idea of doing nothing, and investment is always my thing when it comes to doing nothing and earning that money.

Now, investing looks different to everyone, depending on how much you have in savings, your risk tolerance, readily available assets, your beliefs about investing, and so on.

The goal, however, is always the same — making your money work for you.

Some of you may know that I am an advocate of index funds like ETFs (preferably with dividend pay-out and a low management fee), and therefore I’d not recommend you to invest in individual stocks, because that would mean putting all your eggs in one basket without risk diversification and you would need to time the market (which no one could) in order to earn a profit.

I know we are in a bearish market now and you are definitely not motivated to invest. I hear you and I am the same.

But I don’t let my emotions rule me, and you shouldn’t too.

That’s why I want to introduce you to a sure-win “get-rich-slow” strategy (big drum roll please) — DCA (Dollar-cost averaging)

DCA is a strategy where you invest a fixed amount of money at regular intervals, usually quarterly or monthly.

On this, I would strongly recommend you to find a broker that has this function, so that your money will be automatically deducted from your account every month and invested in that index fund of your choosing.

DCA allows you to diversify your risk by investing in the same share when its price is low so that you can reduce your average cost per share over time.

Of course, that means DCA is a long-term investment strategy — and I hope you will recognize that this should be the strategy for all your wealth creation plans.

I also want to share with you a quote by Morgan Housel, the author of The Psychology of Money,

“If you want to do better as an investor, the single most powerful thing you can do is increase your time horizon. Time is the most powerful force in investing. It makes little things grow big and big mistakes fade away. It can’t neutralize luck and risk, but it pushes results closer towards what people deserve.”

4. Crypto Staking

I want to continue on this topic of investing, and this may sound uncomfortable to some of you.

(Music please)

Staking your cryptos!

What is staking?

Simply put, staking is locking up your crypto assets for a time to earn interest (as money) or rewards (usually more coins/tokens).

If you want to learn more about staking, read my post on the topic.

Now, I want to skip all the technicalities and tell you how I do it.

First, I buy stable coins like USDT and USDC because they are the safest cryptos.

I usually buy them over-the-count to save the transaction fee but you can also buy them on your chosen crypto exchange.

My favorite crypto exchange for staking is (again, music please) — NEXO! (disclaimer again: this is my affiliate link)

Because so far, this is the exchange that gives me the highest staking rate.

I am talking about a 10% APR (annual percentage rate) in interest per year when you stake your stable coins like USDT.

Honestly, I am still quite amazed by this rate even though I have been using NEXO for a while.

I do have a disclaimer that NEXO’s staking offers are not open to our American friends. (cry)

I do not know why but there are many other platforms out there that give good staking rates.

For Example, Gemini, KuCoin, Kraken, Coinbase, and Binance. US.

Again, you can check out Nexo here.