Following is a true story.
Once upon a time, I was talking to my droog Doberman Dan when he told me about how his merchant account was suddenly shut down out of the blue.
No indication.
No warning.
And, no reason whatsoever.
(His track record was “hounds tooth” clean.)
Someone in ye olde bureaucracy decided he was high risk.
And that was it.
They shut his azz down!
Then, they shut his back up merchant account down, too!
Luckily, he has a back up of his back up and was okay.
But this sort of thing can happen to anyone.
So since then I’ve been kinda paranoid about it.
After all, you can’t control the merchant account peoples’ decisions. But, you CAN control your income streams so that all your income doesn’t come from one source. “One” being the most dangerous number in business as Dan Kennedy (who knows a thing or two about this stuff) likes to say.
So, how can you diversify your income streams?
Easy…
Have several irons in the fire.
And, have them all generating income (big or small) from difference sources.
Like, for example:
- PayPal
- Your own merchant account
- Kindle
- Client work
- Clickbank
- JV’s (they collect money and pay you)
- Investment income
Etc, etc etc.
See how that works?
So if one income stream goes down, you don’t feel it.
You have the others still going strong.
This is one reason I dig on email.
You can create multiple income streams selling various kinds of products with email, but have them all coming from different sources. One can be an auto-responder sequence selling via ClickBank. Another product with PayPal. Another with your merchant account. Another from Kindle, etc. And if you can have one or two that are NOT tied to your social security number, even better (i.e. JV’s, clients, etc).
Anyway, email lets you create these streams fast.
You just gotta do the work.
No slacking allowed.
For ongoing email marketing guidance, go to:
Ben Settle
