Michelle Jackson had been working for a college student union in Colorado for a decade when she discovered she was burned out. The program she worked for had grown exponentially: by 2014 she was responsible for 600 students per session.
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“I had panic attacks. I was anxious. I was tired. I was lonely. It was bad,” she says. She gave the university four months’ notice. Two days after her official exit, she boarded a plane to Hawaii.
And she began to rethink how she was going to generate income. “I had seen people make money online and that really fascinated me,” she says. She had already started blogging about money, making around $ 15 here and there as a freelance writer. So she decided to broaden her efforts and combine a range of internet-based activities that would give her both flexibility and professional autonomy.
Jackson, a “proud” Gen Xer back in Colorado, now has nine different sources of income, making between $ 5,000 and $ 7,000 a month. “I like to keep things varied because it makes me intellectually curious,” she says. Also, “I don’t like all of my eggs in one basket.”
It was how Jackson was able to create and manage so many sources of income.
She earns ‘a constant amount’ with affiliate marketing
Under her personal finance brand, Michelle is Money Hungry, Jackson hosts a podcast and blog posts on topics like the FIRE movement, setting financial goals, and shopping in black businesses.
Both the podcast and blog make money through affiliate marketing. Jackson will include a specific company’s link on her blog or name on her podcast, and if that motivates people to click the link or sign up for the company’s services, she will be paid to do it.
“I don’t make a lot” from affiliate marketing, she says, “but I make a steady amount” of $ 50 to $ 1,000 a month.
She freelance writes “to build my brand”
In addition to her blog, Jackson writes freelance articles on personal finance on sites such as Experian and Business Insider. While she likes “the revenue stream” from freelancing, she says she likes the traffic to her blog and podcast even more: “It’s very conscious about building my brand.”
Your monthly income from freelance writing will vary. “It’s about $ 5,000 a month,” she says. “That’s enough.” Suggesting, writing, and editing articles to the specifications of different publications takes a lot of time and communication, and “I don’t want to deal with too many people,” she says.
She has written 12 e-books
In July 2018, Jackson immersed himself in the world of writing and selling e-books. Her first book was The Epic Guide to Moving to Colorado, and she has written 11 more since then, both fiction and non-fiction.
From July 2018 through February 2020, Jackson made nearly $ 13,000 in book sales revenue. Although it’s technically a passive income, there is still work involved, she says, like marketing the books and releasing more to build a repertoire.
Last year, 2020, proved difficult to build on her e-book endeavors. “I didn’t have the capacity, or the creativity, or the energy to do it,” she says, but she’s diving back into writing this year. As she actively marketed her books, she made $ 100 to $ 2,000 a month from book sales.
She sells a course “Make Money With E-Books”
After gaining a wealth of knowledge on the subject, Jackson sells a course called “Make Money With E-Books” on Thinkific, which enables teachers to create entire websites for their class.
E-Book Making Money has 11 chapters of content on finding the right niche for an e-book, uploading it to a website like Amazon, marketing it, and so on. Jackson sells the course for $ 347.
While the money she earns from the course is technically also a passive income, running the course requires offering office hours to the students. But it doesn’t take much time: “I usually do one consultation hour a month,” she says.
‘My income went down at first’ but it was worth keeping the course
Jackson also makes money doing entrepreneurship coaching, creating sponsored content, working on creative partnerships with brands, and speaking.
Now that she has built diversified sources of income, she feels more financially resilient than ever, she says. She doesn’t have to worry about a layoff or a significant drop in income, even if she had a rough time during the pandemic.
Jackson warns that anyone hoping to diversify their income streams may not make money right away. “When I started diversifying my income, my income initially went down,” she says. But because the loss of one or even two sources of income at the same time no longer makes a big dent, “2020 was not an issue at all”.
The item “Side Hustler’s 9 Income Streams Bring in $ 5,000 to $ 7,000 a Month: ‘I Don’t Like My Eggs in a Basket'” Originally) released on Grow + acorns.
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