Do you have multiple streams of income? The reason for this question is that I keep bumping into people who haven't got theirs. In fact these people haven't got "it" - the concept of multiple streams of income, I mean and they are still waiting for a visit from the Internet Money Fairy.

Why do people have such a hard time coming to terms with the idea that they won't automatically have bundles of cash handed to them the minute after they sign up to one Internet money earning program? I think they believe there's an Internet Money Fairy who will make tons of cash appear in their PayPal accounts just because they wish for it.

It's a pretty straightforward concept that to get paid, you need to do some work and to get paid more, you need to work more, but when you try to explain that to people in terms of working online, they treat you with suspicion. The phrase "Multiple Streams Of Income" appears all over the Internet but people seem to skip over the phrase without pausing to think about what it can mean to them. If they thought about it, they would realise it can mean the difference between a comfortable amount of extra income and earning next to nothing.

Take the average complaint: a person says he signed up to a work at home opportunity but it turned out to be a scam. If you analyse the complaint, it will most likely turn out that the work at home program is perfectly legitimate and the person is actually just complaining that he did not earn as much as he was hoping for. If we take as an example one of the easiest and most reliable forms of earning extra income on the Internet, the paid online survey industry, it is easy to see where people go wrong.

The details of a typical complaint are that the person signed up, took a survey and got paid $25. Seems like it did just what it said on the tin, so why complain? The person is not objecting to getting paid $25 for answering a few simple questions in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. The real problem is that he only got invited to take one survey throughout the whole week so the $25 fee was his total income. Wanting to earn rather more than $25 a week is perfectly understandable, it's not exactly enough to build up an early retirement fund. However, the problem is not with the program: the problem is that this person failed to appreciate that no single survey company has an endless supply of surveys fitting his demographic profile. The answer is simple: if he joins more survey companies, he will be eligible for more surveys and can earn more.

Although the solution is simple, many people don't understand it or don't put it into action when they are trying to make money on the Internet. This is quite strange because people working offline don't rely on a Money Fairy, they create multiple streams of income for themselves without hesitating. People who need extra income, take on extra work. This is not a new phenomenon; as long as there have been people working, there have been people doing extra work to make more money.

What sort of people are earning multiple streams of income offline? All sorts. For example there's the school kid who does a newspaper delivery round every morning, stacks shelves in the supermarket on Friday evening and helps clean up when the vegetable market closes on Saturday. He has three streams of regular income and has probably never heard of the advice to create "multiple streams", he just knows he can't earn as much cash as he wants doing only one part time job. Another example is the stay at home mother who runs a toddler club one morning a week, sells children's books and does a couple of evening shifts as a waitress in a local restaurant. She's probably too busy to think about fancy terms like "multiple streams", she's just earning extra cash to supplement the family budget and needs work that fits in with the family schedule. Then there is the lady who teaches baby sign language, organises lingerie parties and sells cosmetics from a catalogue. Just another person with more than one income source.

These are just a few of the countless examples of people earning multiple streams of income from completely different sources offline. Working two or more jobs is not at all unusual so why do people miss this point when they start trying to earn money on the Internet? Too many people just expect it to be too easy. They will do better if they stop relying on the Internet Money Fairy and realise part time work online is not so different from part time work offline. "Multiple streams of income" is not just a bit of Internet jargon, it is in fact, the basis of success for many people who are already making the money they need online.

Copyright 2006 Elaine Currie