How to Have Alternative Incomes

If you want to be wealthy, you can’t just depend on your job. Your primary job only gives a fixed income every month for the hours you put into. Sometimes your primary job income barely covers your living cost, which results in you not to have spare cash to be saved or invested. This becomes a problem if you want to achieve financial freedom and early retirement. You can live frugally; however, it’s still going to be challenging to get out of the rat race if you only rely on your job since it is the only source of your income. Moreover, if you get unlucky and get fired by your boss, you will not get any more income. This then can be a problem for you. You will not be able to pay for your living expenses such as your bills, taxes, or even the debt you inquire. You might have to downgrade your living lifestyle by selling things or property you own, such as car, house, or things that may have some resale value. Many of you and I don’t want to be in that situation. It’s terrifying and horrific when you have to end up in that situation. Since we do not want to be in that situation, I did many types of research for me to have alternative incomes coming in. I have learned that wealthy people don’t rely on just one income; they have multiple sources of income. Having multiple sources of income enables you to have different sources of income, filling your pocket. Alternative income can come in the form of rental money from properties, interest and dividends, part-time jobs, side hustles, and businesses. To have alternative income enable you to pay your living expenses or extra money to invest. 

As part of my journey to early retirement and financial freedom, I learned that I couldn’t just depend on my main job. I worked for my dad, who owns a manufacturing company; however, I have been getting the same monthly income since I started working for him in the year of 2013. Also, the salary I received is in Rupiah (Indonesian Currency), and it is considered low compared to people who work in America. Even by having me to live a frugal life is not enough if I want to retire early and live comfortably. Furthermore, I won’t have income coming in if I decided to quit the main job. This is the reason why having alternative income streams is crucial in order for me to have early retirement and financial freedom. With alternative income coming in my pocket, I would be able to pay my bills, to be reinvested again and again until I have enough assets that can sustain my living lifestyle. So what are ways for us to have multiple streams of incomes?

Invest in Dividend Growth Paying Stocks or Funds.

Well, this is one of the methods that enable me to have alternative income. If you read my blog, you should probably know that I am a dividend growth and value investor that invest in great quality companies that pay dividends. I have been investing in dividend-paying stocks in both countries of the United States and Indonesia since I started to work in my dad’s company in Indonesia. I live below my mean in order to have extra cash to be invested. I have done pretty well in investing my money in the dividend stock. I can multiply my income using the dividends coming in from my portfolio to be reinvested over and over again. Having a portfolio of dividend-paying stocks enable me to have passive income coming in, and that financial security can help me when I need the money the most. For now, I don’t use the dividends that I receive each month since I’m using it to be reinvested so that I can compound my stock portfolio. Having the dividend reinvested into your portfolio can have an immense result. 

For those who want to start investing in dividend growth stock, I have written many articles on this blog that covers that topic. You can learn about dividend growth investing and understand the stock I analyze and pick for my own investment portfolio. However, if you don’t want to go through the hassle of learning how to invest, you can always let a professional such as mutual fund managers to manage your wealth. I suggest finding a fund that has a low-cost fee because you don’t want your profit to be eaten by the fees. Index Fund, such as SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (Ticker: SPY), replicates the performance of the S&P500. Just by investing in that index fund, you can perform better than most funds managed by fund managers. Some studies showed that most fund managers couldn’t even beat the S&P500 index. Hence they charge a high annual commission fee that sucks your money away even when they can beat the overall market.

Real Estate Investing.

Real Estate Investing can help you receive passive income for renting your property out. This can be an alternative income for you if you have a property. However, many readers here probably don’t even have a property to start with. You guys probably want to figure out how to purchase your first rental property since it requires a large capital to invest. I totally understand this problem, since I myself haven’t purchased my own rental property and don’t have that kind of money to start with. I am blessed and fortunate since my parents let me handle the property they own, which located near a favorite school. I arrange to have it rented and took care of some expenses. Moreover, my parents are kind enough to let me keep the profit from the rental. Because of that reason, I was able to receive passive income that I used to invest in my dividend growth portfolio. 

Real Estate investing usually tends to be for people who already have money saved up since it requires a large amount of money to have it. There are ways you can acquire a property using debt, but expect to have the property purchased rented all the time, sometimes additional cash from your income in order to pay off the interest on the mortgage. I don’t like the strategy of using a loan to purchase rental property since I believe in buying an investment property with partly loan and cash combine. So you won’t have a big burden of interest expense. But that, of course, requires me to have another source of alternative income, to begin with.  

Monetize Your Blog.

You can make some extra cash by blogging. If your blog provides value for readers and has many great content and articles, you are able to monetize it with Google Adsense. Aside from my primary job working for my dad, I have a finance blog that many of you are reading right now. However, I haven’t made a dime from it yet. Google Adsense is very strict with bloggers who want to use their service. I need to have many articles and excellent content in my blog that attract many viewers and traffics in order for me to get accepted by Google Adsense. The blog can later be a source of my alternative income. But it’s not that simple since being a successful blogger requires a lot of hours of hard work and dedication for it to be profitable. I’m not discouraged with the difficulty since I believe if I work hard and put the hours on it, I think that the blog can be successful.

I believe that you can make money from blogging since I have seen many successful bloggers on the Internet. Many of them make the blog as a side business while still working; however, many bloggers who became successful eventually monetize the blog as their primary business. What I mean by that is that their side business actually becomes their primary source of income since they are able to make more money from blogging than their previous job. There are many ways you can make money from blogging since if the blog becomes viral and successful; you are able to do many things to profit from your blogs, such as selling your own products, courses, endorsement, and many more. Hopefully that in the future, my finance blog can be successful and profitable. However, even if I don’t make it in the blogging world, I still enjoy writing content since the niche is what I’m passionate about. I’m happy to write contents that help others improve their financial life through investing and other financial tips my blog provides. In addition, I believe that sharing my experience and thoughts helps others and myself to become a better investor and at the same time, educate myself to be a better businessman. Aside from trying to make a profit from this blog, I believe that this blog enables me to meet people who have the same financial goal and dream as me. It’s not always about making a profit, but being able to have a community of people who share the same passion makes me happy. 

Start YouTube Channel.

Being a YouTuber is similar to becoming a blogger that can provide alternative income. Creating a YouTube Channel is not difficult; however, becoming a YouTuber requires you to have skills in making and editing videos. As a You Tuber, you’ll need to create valuable video content for viewers to watch. To monetize your YouTube Channel with Google Adsense, you are required to have 4,000 watch hours in the previous 12 months and 1000 subscribers. There are many successful YouTuber who make a living through posting video content. Their income from Google Adsense can go up to a hundred thousand to millions of dollars, depending on the number of subscribers they have on their YouTube Channel. Hard work, dedication, and patience are, of course, required to be a successful YouTuber.

My recommendation to become a successful YouTuber is to have your niche of the audience that will watch the videos you created and posted on YouTube. For example, a niche of the audience if I was going to create a YouTube Channel will content related to Finance, Wealth Management, Stock Investing, Dividend Growth Investing, and Saving Tips. You’ll need to decide what type of content you will be offering to your audience. I suggest content that you have high interest on. That way, you will make interesting video content because you enjoy making them and not feeling as if it’s a task. Last but not least, you’ll need to be consistent. You can’t half ass your way through it. If you really want to become a successful Youtuber, you really need to put the hours and dedication into it. Just like in anything you want to succeed in, it could be getting fit and losing weight, but without commitment, you won’t succeed.

I personally haven’t created YouTube Content since I’m not that experience in creating video and video editing. However, I have a YouTube Channel Dividend Growth Bunny, but no video contents have been published. I’m planning to have a hundred articles posted on my blog before entering the YouTube business. I think that there is more traffic for a YouTube channel since people prefer watching videos to reading articles of a blog. It’s much easier to watch a video compared to reading an article. I personally don’t want to get distracted in making a video at the current moment, but to focus my time producing quality content for my blog before I make quality content for my future YouTube Channel. Besides, I still need to learn new skills on how to create YouTube videos and edit them.

Freelancing Your Skills Online.
I believe freelancing online can provide alternative income that you are looking for. There are many ways you can utilize the Internet to make money for the skills you have. Websites such as UpWork, Guru, Freelancer, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and other similar websites for tasks and projects can be exceeded through your computer at home. The great thing about using these sites is that you are able to work from anywhere in the world. People such as me who are living in a third world country can utilize these websites to make more income than the minimum wage in the country they stay in. Since I have access to the Internet and a computer that I can use, I’m able to earn extra cash using these websites. In addition, the reason I like working on current projects using these websites is that I am able to work whenever I feel like it. Unlike working in companies that usually require you to work at a certain time like nine to five, this website gives you a better option of when you want to work. Moreover, I can always delegate some of my unimportant work to others if I want to since the pay is not as expensive as in the United States.  

Be a Content Contributor for Seeking Alpha.

If you have knowledge of stock investment and stock analysis and able to write articles in English, I would recommend contributing your stock investment-related content with Seeking Alpha. You can earn money based on traffic, content topics, and high quality for exclusive articles. Every article exclusively published on Seeking Alpha receives a base payout of $40 plus an additional $0.01 for every page view (must come from desktop). So no matter what you get published, you will receive $40, and if it’s widely viewed, you’ll receive $10 per every 1,000 page views. The higher the page views, the more money you will make. Moreover, if your article is selected as a PRO Top Idea (They publish one Top Idea per day), you are guaranteed to be paid a minimum payment of $1,000. There is no timetable for payments, so you’ll continue to receive payments from high visited articles for months. The average article on Seeking Alpha makes about $65. This means the average article receives approximately 2500 page views.

I personally have already applied to become a content contributor for Seeking Alpha; you can click on this link to see my profile on Seeking Alpha and be sure to follow my account. Due to lack of time, I haven’t contributed many articles in Seeking Alpha yet. However, I have seen people who use this website for their careers. They post many valuable articles to their readers and have many followers following their account page in Seeking Alpha. One of my favorite Seeking Alpha contributors is Sure Dividend. I read many of his articles since the contents he provides are related to my dividend stock strategy. In the future, I am planning to write content articles related to dividend growth investing and analysis on Seeking Alpha. I hope from this, I can establish an alternative income aside from my main job working for my dad. In addition, I’m attracted by this method of making money since I enjoy analyzing dividend-paying stocks and giving tips to readers of attractively priced stocks.   

Start Online Store.

If you like selling things or have products of your own that you wish to sell, then starting an online store could be an alternative income for you. There are many e-commerce platforms you can use for your online business, such as Shopify, Wix, BigCommerce, and SiteBuilder. Making an online store with these e-commerce platforms is not that difficult, and there are many beautiful templates you can choose for your online store. I think having an online store is a great side business for anyone who is seeking to make some alternative income. However, the problem is not about building the online store, but to actually know what products you want to sell and how you market them efficiently. 

I personally have built an online store using Shopify platform that aims to sell accessories such as smartphone cases, canvas paintings, clothing, and other accessories that are in the investment and business niche. My online store is called Cash Flow Hobby. You can click on the link to check it out. I have built the online store from scratch, which includes the logo, banner, and all the information that is on the website. At the current moment, the store is still new, and it’s not generating any revenue. Luckily, the online stores I own have zero monthly fees except for the annual cost for the domain name, which is about $10 a year. I was fortunate to have the free monthly version of the Shopify e-commerce platform since it was grandfathered during their early launching in the year 2006. Because I have no expense for running the online store, I still have it running for my portfolio purposes so that I can show to people. I already figured out what I want to sell for my online shop. I have a plan for what products I want to sell in the store. However, I’m not focusing on that part of the business for my alternative income yet. I will slowly work on it when I have available time.

I might not have a successful online store yet; however, that doesn’t mean you are not able to be successful in running your own. If you have products such as your own clothing brand line that you carry inventories in your storage, then starting an online store might be suitable for you. Your own online store can make your products more appealing to potential consumers. I have seen many people selling their products such as clothes on Instagram, and not have their own personal online storefront for their products. A dedicated online storefront for your merchandise can make your marketing strategy more professional. 

Imagine buying your favorite clothing line products without having an online store of their own. This will make the business look unprofessional and difficult to have their products purchased. I personally have been purchasing my clothes from Banana Republic, a clothing line brand that is own by The Gap, Inc. Their online store website looks professional and simple to operate. Well, of course, since their brand is known by many, their website can sell many of their products on their online website. If you have a passion for having your own products to sell for alternative income, then making an online store is right for you.

The Most Important Thing.

There are many ways you can do to have additional alternative income coming into your pocket. The ones that I mentioned in the articles are just some ways you can do it; however, there are more out there. You don’t have to follow the ways of making an alternative income that I provide. However, you should be creative and figure it out by yourself. It can also be starting your own side hustle or business that can give you some extra cash on the side. I just want you, readers, to understand the importance of having multiple alternative incomes. These incomes can provide a person to pay their bills and reach their financial goal in life faster. Having to rely on your primary job for your income should not be the only way. I learned that most self-made millionaires don’t rely on just one source of income but have multiple sources of income coming into their pockets. This totally makes sense since if your main job income was cut due to layoff or for whatever reason, you wouldn’t have any more money to pay your bills. Having multiple alternative incomes is crucial to wealth building since if one source of income is negatively affected, the other stream of alternative income can help aid you without downgrading your lifestyle. It’s important to think financially ahead, such as building a stock portfolio that pays dividends, buying real estate investments that pay rent, or simply start your own side business, such as becoming a Blogger, YouTuber, or even starting our own online store. If you don’t start building a way to have alternative income, it can cost you dearly when you lose your job, which can result in you losing everything. Having to sell your car, house, or other valuables because of having no income coming in can be overwhelming. So I recommend many of you readers to start thinking of ways of having legitimate alternative income before it’s too late.