Diversify Income Streams Within Your Online Business (And a look into ones at The Wanderlover)!

This week I’m pulling back the curtain on the 7 income streams that make up the six figure business that is The Wanderlover! Listen in as we go through all the ways you can make money in your online businesses.

Prefer to read? Here’s the blog version…

Hello my loves. So I am recording this episode still in New York. By the time it is released, I will probably already be back in Indonesia, but since I am in New York, I just want to give you guys a little background as to what my life is like when I’m back with my family.

How family shapes us

For those of you who don’t know, I was born in Beijing in China, and my parents immigrated to America when I was around two years old. And fun fact, I have a younger brother who is seven years younger than me. His name is Gary, and he was the first American citizen in my family, even though he’s seven years younger, because he was born in New York on American soil and my parents and I, we didn’t become citizens until I was like in my teenage years, I also didn’t have an American passport until I was a teenager, which is just crazy to think about because so many countries and so many places I’ve traveled to and lived in would have probably been a lot harder if I was still a Chinese citizen and I had a Chinese passport.

China doesn’t allow dual citizenship, so I had to give up my Chinese citizenship when I became an American citizen. And China didn’t allow more than one child back then. So had my parents not immigrated, my brother wouldn’t have been born because they had the one child policy. So that is to say I am just so, so grateful for the life that my parents have created for me. And honestly, I really see how different my life would’ve been if they chose to stay in China. And given that background, my upbringing was very traditionally Chinese. So growing up, getting an education, going to a good university was like the number one priority in life.

And my parents really made sure that I got the best education, that I focused on my education, and I did extracurriculars like I played piano and viola to make sure I had the highest chances of getting into a good university afterwards. The expectation is landing a really successful reputable job. So I worked at a bank in New York City and the mindset is to work for the same industry or the same employer, rely on that salary until you retire, which is what both of my parents did when they immigrated to America and they’ve stayed with more or less the same company and now they are on track to retire.

And so that’s what they wanted. For me, needless to say, I did not follow their expectations and I quit my job and started my own entrepreneurship journey, which has proven to be the best thing for my personality, for my life, for my desire, for freedom. And my conversations with them have always been around achieving the next milestone in life. It’s funny because I think as Asian Americans, our parents have a tendency to worry, like I feel like my parents are just constantly worried about something about whether I have enough food to eat or whether I am making enough money or whether, you know, rags and I are gonna get married every time I’m home.

And specifically this time it’s been around when are you and Ragz gonna get married? When are you gonna have kids? And I actually had to say to my mom like, look, mom, I’m so afraid that like when I do have kids, you’re gonna start worrying about my kids, right? It’s just gonna be this never ending life of worrying about the next thing. Which brings me to the point of this episode because what I’ve realized, I am making significantly more money in my own business right now than I ever have working for someone else. And what other people might think is best for you is limited by their experiences in life.

The Mindset Behind Building Multiple Income Streams

So given that I’ve built multiple streams of income in my online business, seven to be exact, and all seven of them, I’m going to share with you at the end of this episode, I’ve also learned that if it doesn’t happen for you right now, doesn’t mean it’s never going to happen. And it also doesn’t mean it has to happen right now. For example, I know Rags and I are going to get married. I knew that I was gonna get a job after college. I knew I was going to get into college, but all of that pressure and all of that worry that my parents have placed on me and are placing on me, I look back and I’m like, that is so much wasted energy and wasted effort worrying about something that’s inevitably going to happen.

It’s a habit. And so for you, if you are constantly worrying in your business about the next milestone, about how you’re going to reach this income goal or how you’re going to sign this many clients, stop worrying and know that it is already on its way to you. I’m going to go through the ways you can diversify your income streams within your online business this year. Even if you don’t accomplish it in January, no one is saying that you can’t do it in May or in October or in January of next year. There is no use in worrying. Just absorb this information and know that you’re going to have at least seven income streams if you just move forward day by day.

Baby steps every single day. Also, by the way, I love my parents to death. This little rant was just kind of something I noticed in them, but also what I noticed in some of my clients, this anxiety and fear, and I’ve gotten to the point where in my own business and in my own life, I am not worried about reaching the next milestone at all, especially in life. If you think about it, like I, I was talking to my friends the other day, we’re gonna get married, we’re going to have kids, and then over time there’s just gonna be less and less milestones for you to reach. So why are we so worked up and trying to rush the process instead of just enjoying our time without kids, right?

Because they’re inevitably gonna happen. So same thing like that, like if you know your business is going to reach a hundred K and then a million dollars and then multimillions, why rush the process? Let’s enjoy every milestone. Let’s enjoy every step. 

This episode is specifically for those of you who have an online coaching or creative business. (If you’re looking to start one, I have a free masterclass designed to help you create your dream online business) I’m assuming you have your own brand. I am not going to include investment income or real estate income into these income streams. Those are separate from your online business. Feel free with all the excess cash that you make. I want you to diversify your portfolio entirely. So not only within your online business, but I also want you to invest in real estate, in stocks in crypto and do your research on that end.

One On One Services

So first and foremost, I’m going to assume that all of you have some kind of of one-on-one service that you offer online where you can work directly with your clients. This can look like the form of monthly private coaching. So having a package deal three months, six month, one year, where you are coaching a client directly, one-on-one. Other ways you can work on a one-on-one capacity is through power sessions. So 60 or 90 minute power sessions where you help your clients through one transformation. Another way you can offer one-on-one services is through a V I P day where you block out a day to work specifically with one person.

If you don’t have a one-on-one service in your business, this is where you want to start first. You can charge the highest for one-on-one services and you can work directly with someone to achieve their desired results. So the chances of you creating a positive impact and your program working for someone is a lot higher when you are working directly with them and they are learning from the expert. 

Group Programs

If you already have your one-on-ones created, launched, and filled up, the next step you want to focus on is introducing a group program. This can look like the form of a mastermind or an online retreat or a round table because you already have experience launching one-on-ones.

Launching a group program isn’t much different with the exception that maybe it starts at a specific point in time. So you have to look at your calendar and see which timeframe would work for you and how many people you want in your group program. You can also have them somewhat evergreen as in a rolling enrollment where there is no specific start date and people can come and go as they please. There are a lot of ways to introduce a group container into your online service suite. So if you already have a one-on-one, think about the group next. 

Digital Courses & Products

After that, we want to start introducing digital products and digital courses. If I were you, I would start with a digital course first. You can usually charge higher than a digital product, such as an ebook or templates or databases. And usually with a course, it’s basically just what you teach in those one-on-one and group containers and you are packaging it into a course so you can distribute it on a wider scale and teach more people at once. This is where it starts getting passive because you’re creating it upfront, you’re doing the work upfront, and then all you have to do following the creation is market and sell it.

Like I said before, after digital courses, we wanna introduce digital products. These are usually what’s found in an online shop. My clients have created so many creative and unique digital products that you can really like think outside the box and package anything into something that you can sell, such as planners and journals and principles, stickers, checklists and travel guides, whatever your niches. Think about what you can offer that is of service to the people you work with. A lot of times this can look like time trackers or ways they can improve their daily habits, right? It can also be a series of videos or a meal plan, whatever it is, have fun with it.

Maybe like take out a note or a piece of paper and just jot down 10 ideas every single day of what you can create and offer online for a checkout system. I use Thrive Cart. You can also look into Send Owl to distribute your digital products. And what’s great about these two platforms is they limit the number of downloads people can have access to. So it’s not like they can just download perpetually and then maybe start distributing it. They have one week to look at your content. So once you get started with that, definitely look into a checkout card to make your life a lot easier as a business owner. 

Memberships

Okay, after the digital products, we want to think about memberships. Memberships introduce monthly recurring revenue to your business at a low ticket. So I am in a few memberships and they range from $7 to $97 a month. They provide tons of value. So if this is something you want to look into, just make sure you have the capacity and the team to be able to serve a lot of people at once. This usually requires an investment into your systems and your support. So if that is something you want to take on in 2023, let me know and I can help you with that. 

Ad Revenue

Other ways we can diversify your income streams this year is introducing ad revenue, revenue or sponsorship revenue. So if you wanted to start a podcast or monetize your podcast, that is something you wanna look into. Same thing goes for YouTube or blogging. Any platform that you consistently create content on that gets more and more visitors or viewers or readers, you have the ability to monetize that traffic. Going hand in hand with that are affiliate marketing opportunities as well as collaborations and brand partnerships. So going back to those platforms, if you have consistent traffic, if you have people visiting via organic search or via ad traffic, you can start monetizing with affiliate links.

Affiliate Marketing & Brand Partnerships

So I recommend Amazon affiliates or any software that you may use. Web hosting, right? I use Blue Host and Blue Host has an affiliate program. So if you use anything that you can recommend, add those links to your platforms. If you have consistent traffic, you can also reach out for brand partnerships and collaboration opportunities. So if anyone wants to advertise their brand or their business on your TikTok or Instagram or podcast or YouTube or website, you have a rate card to send them and you are able to collect money for introducing their business to your audience.

So exciting, right? And again, going back to my kind of mini lesson in the beginning, just because you are not doing all of this now and you might not have enough traffic to start monetizing yet, doesn’t mean that it’s never going to happen. Just accept that it is going to happen and you just need to give it time. 

Physical Products & Events

Let’s say you already have everything I’ve mentioned before created and you’re like, Danielle, I still want to introduce another income stream to my business this year. What do I do? This is where I’m going to recommend diving in to physical products or in-person events.

These two I don’t usually recommend because they are location dependent and they require you to keep hold of inventory at some kind of location. Usually you have to deal with shipping and travel as well. But if you already have everything in the online space, created physical products are such a great way to inject new revenue into your business, especially if you wanna take on the challenge of working with something physical. It’s really exciting. We do this all the time with Onda because as a jewelry line, that is what the nature of it is. We work with our physical products every single day, and I personally love it. I love like holding my product in front of me and you can really get a sense of what works and what doesn’t.

So for example, if you are in the fitness niche, maybe you can start creating your own workout equipment or maybe you wanna start a line of athleisure or you want to start introducing Blender bottles. Obviously you want it to be related to the industry you are in. I know some of my spiritual clients who work with the whole realm of spirituality, some of them have even created their own Oracle decks. Like how cool is that? The possibilities are honestly endless, and if this is something that you gravitate towards, go for it. Main disclaimer is you don’t want this to be your main source of income and you want to have enough money coming in from your other sources where you can fund the startup costs of producing something physical because usually you need to really invest into testing into samples and into bulk ordering before you’re actually seeing the sales.

And lastly, we have in-person retreats or in-person events like conferences, seminars, tour groups. All of these are possible for you to offer. If that is something you want to do in 2023, my recommendation is to work with an event planner. If you are not familiar with the logistics of how to put something like that together so that you can focus on nurturing your community and selling to your community, bringing the group together instead of working on the minuscule like moving pieces in the back that are so draining when you look into the extent of what you have to organize.

Income Streams at The Wanderlover

Okay, I know some of you are thinking, okay, Danielle, what are the Wander Lover income streams? How does the Wander Lover make money and what are you looking to introduce in this coming year? So last year we had a total of seven different income streams. The first was one-on-one coaching, so private coaching in the form of monthly coaching power sessions and VIP days. I group all three of these under one-on-ones and private coaching because I truly believe that working directly with me, you see the biggest shift in your mindset and in your life and business.

So I categorize this all into one because you get my undivided attention. The second income stream is Momentum Mastermind, my group business coaching program that runs twice a year. The next time we are offering this is in spring of 2023. So if you want to be considered for our next cohort, sign up for waitlist in the episode description, and you’ll be the first to know when we launch in our opening enrollments for the spring. Third Income stream is the Wanderlover Business Academy, which is our online business course where you learn to start and scale your online business in eight weeks.

So if you have an idea and you need help executing and you follow modules really well and you’re good at executing simply, if you’re told what to do, look into the academy. The link is also in the episode description. Next income stream are digital products. This looks like eBooks, databases and templates. So we have the Travel Influencer Handbook, we have Instagram for business, we have platforms that pay, and we have a bunch of other templates on our online shop. All of these I group as digital products because you create it once upfront and we just work on marketing it on the back end.

Perpetually fifth Income Stream, you guys might have heard a few weeks ago just started from podcasting. So we have started monetizing this podcast through advertising. Some of you may have heard an ad when you first clicked on this episode, and so for every ad that plays, I believe it contributes to the ad revenue. Honestly, it’s not much. I think for the month of December, I got my first two figure payout from podcasting. I was so excited it was like $10 and 12 cents, but I know it’s only going to increase from here. And I’m just really excited to continue creating episodes for you guys every week and maybe start even selling ad space on my podcasts themselves.

Sixth Income Stream is through affiliate marketing, so mainly from Amazon, from Passion Planner, from Blue Host, and software that I use, like Active Campaign. Basically everything I use in my business I have an affiliate link for, and I just kind of insert them to different blog posts on my website. I sometimes have them in the podcast episode description, right? Once you sign up, you just want to insert the links in the most relevant spaces. And over time, as you grow your audience, as you direct traffic to your other platforms, your affiliate revenue is going to grow.

Last but not least, the seventh income stream we have at the Wanderlover Collaborations and Brand Partnerships. This is solely through the Wander Lover brand because Rags and I, we both also have Wanderlover by Fern CoLab, where we are positioned as a media production agency. So aside from that, just under the Wander Lover, I work with brands through creating content and promoting them on my stories or on my feed, mainly through creating videos and reels that they use for their own pages. That’s kind of how I’ve seen the industry shift from paying me to just post on my page to more of the need of unique user generated content for the brands themselves.

In this new year. For The Wanderlover, what I am focusing the most on introducing is YouTube. So hopefully I’ll start bringing in YouTube revenue. However, I understand it’s a really long process and maybe I won’t see my first payout in, you know, one or two years, which is the case for podcasting. For those of you who listen to this episode and you have so many ideas running around in your head, you’re like, yes, this is what I wanna do for this year. Let’s focus on launching a new income stream and perfecting the marketing and sales behind it. My warning to you, do not get shiny object syndrome. Don’t go through the year creating so many different offers without learning how to market and sell and fill them up.

First, we want to create one, fill them up, and then work on the next bit. You can make so much money with just private coaching or just group programs or just digital products or just memberships. We want to focus on one before going into the other. So keep in mind one year, one goal. If you just had to focus on one thing, what would it be? 

I hope this episode was helpful. If you need any help deciding what service to bring into your business next, feel free to DM me on Instagram and I’d be happy to help out. Have an amazing week and I’ll see you guys when I’m back in Batukaras Indonesia, goodbye my loves.

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