5 Income Streams vs. 1

SpellZ

SpellZ

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Let's say you have a choice of making $10,000/month (or any amount of money), and you have a choice of either making $2000/stream, for a total of 5 streams. Or you can have only 1 stream, and make $10,000.

Which one would you pick and why?

I was debating about it the entire day today...
I mean... on one hand, having one stream at $10,000 is great. You can concentrate all your power to it, and work at it hard, make sure it doesn't fail, and give it 100%. You will eat, breath and live it. On the other hand, if it goes bad, it can screw you up royally.

With 5 income streams, the good thing is that if one goes bad... you still have the other 4 to support you... But what are the chances of keeping that solid $10,000 all the time? When you are running 5 businesses, dealing with 5 things at once, cant give 100% to all the businesses, spending more time then the one-stream-income, etc.

So which one would you guys pick?

5 streams with $2000/stream
or 1 stream at $10,000

(But don't have the mindset of, "Well if I'm making $10,000 at any stream, then I don't care..." think of it from a professional point of view of how long it'll take you to get to X amount of $, and to keep that $. You can even give your own example. Imagine your making $100/day from 5 streams... Would you rather make $100 from one stream? and vise versa)
 
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This is called leverage and hedging your risk. 5 streams over one every time. You are not dealing with 5 businesses, you are dealing with one and running 5 different streams of revenue to it.

Ex. I have WP sites for Adsense
I have membership sites for reoccurring and offers

For Adsense is automatic
For the member site I outsourced a manager

For both I don't manage anything accept for the stats and watching the money coming in.


Depending on what your specialty is it may be a hassle for you, but don't violate putting all your eggs in one basket. Do, however, focus on bringing in that 10k 5 different ways. You may need to focus on building one business first but remember that things change and one may fall.

I went from making 26k (in sales) one month to making -1k 3 months later...first learning experience in IM. I am sure there are many other stories much worse out there.
 
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1:1, 5 income streams is better.

unless the single income stream generates enough profit to justify the risk.

Which would you do? Take two 8 hour jobs to make 100K a year or just take the single 8 hour job which makes 100K?
 
5 every time.

ClThis was spot on so I won't bother adding anything to that :)
 
How scalable is each method? Can each of those 2k streams turn into 10k streams if you work at them, or are they locked in at max? Can you take the 10k to 25k?

How easily can you duplicate your methods with a new setup? Can the one 10k stream turn into 5 10k streams in a year's time if you work, or did you just get really really lucky?

Are they secure and stable? I might take one 10k completely whitehat long-term stream over 5 2k blackhat methods that could be sandboxed and gone in a month. I also might not depending on above variables. etc. etc. etc.
 
ya.. question's too vague and too false-dilemma-y

personally i'd go with 2-3 streams making 3333-5000 each,
for just the right balance of stability with workload.

or maybe even have 1 stream that i'm putting most of my focus in with like 3-4 on the back burner, ready to be scaled up if the main one should fail at any point.
 
90%+ of my income comes from one site, making $100-$600/day. In January Google decided to take the site for a little dance, took 24 days to come back and my income was close to nothing during that time. I decided there that I need to build a couple more sites. Go with 5 streams.
 
navimeister said:
90%+ of my income comes from one site, making $100-$600/day. In January Google decided to take the site for a little dance, took 24 days to come back and my income was close to nothing during that time. I decided there that I need to build a couple more sites. Go with 5 streams.
Click to expand...

This is an excellent discussion and exercise. But Navi says it best. If you put all your eggs in one basket, you better have a really good basket.
 
personally 2 or 3 is enough to diversify wothout overstretching.
 
5 streams has to be better than 1 even if your earning less, the saying is "don't put all your eggs in 1 basket".
 
This is what I found out, whatever u do make sure u can cross brand them, or in other words make sure 1 stream of income complements the next one, don't have a bunch of things going on that can't be related to each other at some point in business. Same reason Dunkin Donuts sale coffee 2 different products but can be cross branded with each other.
 
5 of course, 10 would be even better. Just make sure you give yourself enough time to focus on all your streams.
 
Go for the five. I've been reliant on one stream (SE traffic) several times and got nailed and left with nothing, zero income. Five lets you sleep at night.
 
I think in most cases it depends on what you are talking about and the risk involved.

Like most people are saying best case scenario is diversity, and I don't know if its been mentioned but not just with the actual streams but what they deal with.

Just like you shouldn't just have 1 stream you shouldn't have 5 streams with the same focus.

Diversify across the board. This way when one slows down, one can pick up, etc.
 
Nice thread thanks guys...

I love it when people disclose their earnings etc LOL

I myself put my eggs into 3 methods but 10+ niches, that way it's like I got 20+ baskets :)
But it takes work, there just isn't enought time to focus on 20 niches, but I try my best
 
Would you prefer to use 5 fingers of your hand or you would use only one finger.

5 wins 1000 times / 1000 times. As simple as that.
 
Why not start with a 10k method and make it stable first, then you can always add additional 2k methods at your own pace. If you fail at 10k method you can switch to 2k methods more aggressively. It will be a lot harder to start a 10k method once you already have 5 x 2k going since I assume 10k method requires more time to start and get going.
 
Definitely 5 over 1 anytime, i think the saying about 'dont put all your eggs in one basket' is true.
 
Better to have 1% of 100 things than 100% of 1 thing in my view. Being reliant on one thing is dangerous as everything ebs and flows from time to time.

However, if you see potential in something, you push it and push it - you don't stop at predefined levels such as 2K per month just so you can start another one. You just use the income to better manage your time, be it outsourcing etc, so you can spread your time more productively across different projects and keep building.
 
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