How To Get Started Crafting Additional Income Streams Online

If you’re keen on crafting additional income streams online as either a side hustle or in hopes of becoming self-employed, make sure that you prioritize FREEDOM over how you’re going to make the MONEY.💥

During the 9 years I worked as a freelance social media manager and marketing consultant, I saw many people in the online business world make the mistake of going after the money first.

Only to find that money was NOT what they truly wanted.

Even when they made a LOT of it!

I saw countless business owners making first-class-international-plane-ticket-level money who were MISERABLE.

I’ve watched some of them burn it ALL down and bundle up everything they ever made, only to sell it for less than $100. Or, they would just disappear for months to recover from too many months of overworking. 🔥🔥🔥

Over and over, they would come back with stories of having built the wrong type of business. They had built for fast money or fast growth, and not for what they actually wanted from the start…

FREEDOM!

So when I mentor aspiring, creative, and unconventional online business owners on how to start crafting additional income streams, the first step we focus on is how to create more freedom.

Not money. ❌

When you design the additional income streams around what will give you more freedom, you’ll automatically increase your capacity to earn a helluva lot more over the long term.🚀

Freedom is what anyone who wants more money actually desires. So starting a new side-hustle or online business is not about the money.

Entrepreneurship is about creating and enjoying more freedom.

A more SELF-RELIANT AF ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLE.✨

So today I’m going to share an example of how choosing money over freedom can massively waste your time.

Then I’m going to share how I can help you avoid getting into this trap so that you don’t end up having to burn it all down and start over in a few months or a few years from now.

I’m going to show you why when you design it right, you will get both freedom AND you will make more money.🪄💸

So let’s get started on your first big step toward creating additional income streams for your self-reliant AF BIG-ASS DREAM.

Continue reading, OR if you want to pop me into your earbuds while you take your dog for a walk, click below for the podcast version 🪄 🎧💫

Want to hear me say all this with hand gestures and dramatic pauses? Watch the YouTube version here.🪄 📺💫

Here’s Why The Internet is Littered With Digital Cemetaries of Dead Dreams ☠️

Ok, storytelling time! ✨

You know all of the dead websites, stores, and Instagram profiles online? A lot of them are because of creative people like Veronica.

Veronica works full-time as a nurse, has a husband, three kids, and a lot of parenting commitments during the week.

She’s fn busy, but she dreams of starting a side hustle selling her handmade crochet cat beds online. She has ZERO intention of ever quitting her full-time job. For her, creating additional income streams will allow her to afford to take her family to Disneyland. Or go camping more often in the summer.

Veronica thinks to herself, ”Ok, I’m going to spend my nights and every weekend for the next 6 months making the toys and building a Shopify shop and maybe an Etsy shop as well. Yay me!”

Her friends and family have all cheered her along because they think her cat beds are super cute. They have little crochet ears at the back and crochet tails – just SUPER CUTE. They have even bought custom-made ones that match their cats, and it’s been fine. There is nothing wrong with her product. Cats fn LOVE them too.

So Veronica spends a LOT of time creating a dozen different bed designs, photographing them all, listing them, and setting up social media platforms.

Finally, she opens her gorgeous Shopify and Etsy shops and starts blasting social media.

A few sales trickle in.

But while Veronica started this business to make some extra money, what she didn’t consider was how much TIME it takes to market an online business.

And she knows nothing about marketing. 🤷‍♀️

She eventually realizes that she does not have the spare time to be posting to social media, making videos, making content, and writing emails. No spare time for anything on top of the time it already takes to create, photograph, and list the products just to get them in the stores. Not to mention the additional time required to process the orders, package them, and take them to the post office!

Then a friend suggests she start selling at local markets, so she gives that a try.

But after doing a few, she hates that they suck up her entire weekend, even though she does sell a hell of a lot more than in her beautiful online shops. So she quits doing local markets as well. Anyone who has done markets knows how exhausting they can be, right? Fun at first, then all the same and just a lot of work, sometimes in the rain. And sometimes, super windy days that blow marquees straight off into the trees!

So eventually, Veronica just stops doing anything new online or offline. She just QUITS. ❌

All those months she put into building her online presence start feeling like it was just a massive waste of time.

And it was.

Because after 6 months, her online sales for business are merely covering the costs of the software fees.🤷‍♀️

She can’t get the sales happening without making a time commitment to constant marketing and spending a lot of time online. Time she does not have.

She built no email list, so she isn’t getting any repeat customers as well.

Veronica feels like a failure.

Every time she sees Minny Mouse now, she’s reminded of how she has let her kids down.

This is what happens when you lead with a business idea instead of your desired lifestyle.💥

Focusing On Your Amazing Money-Making Idea FIRST Is Like Jumping on a Horse BACKWARDS.

Sure, you’re going in the right direction and taking action…

But you’re unable to enjoy the view or see the direction you are going. Not without it causing a LOT of discomfort and pain in your neck!

So let’s be clear where Veronica went off the rails here. More time with her family, having fun was her BIG DREAM.

NOT a cat bed-selling online empire.

She just got on the money-making horse ass-backwards.

The route she chose was impossible for her, so she dropped it to try another way, doing markets.

But markets sucked up even more of her time. They gave her even less freedom to spend time with her family than she had wanted in the first place!

In business, we call this Chasing the Shiny Object Syndrome.

And it’s hugely infectious to people who want additional income streams but aren’t familiar with what each type of stream requires.

Yet, this is exactly what 99% of people do.

They start with their business idea, then they decide how much time they need to dedicate to getting it going.

But all too often, they have no clue just how much time things actually require.

When we don’t prioritize the main reason we want to make additional income streams, it’s all too easy to get caught up doing things we either can’t continue doing or that we straight-up fn hate.

So let’s talk about how you can avoid making this mistake when you get started creating additional income streams…

How To Avoid Wasting Your Time Chasing Shiny Objects 🚩

Many noob business owners aren’t aware of just how many THOUSANDS of different business and marketing models exist.

A business model is what and how you sell.

A marketing model is how you attract and convert customers.

It’s important to know the difference and to choose both in alignment to your lifestyle goals.

This is why I encourage you to start by considering what kind of lifestyle you want FIRST. Then explore the options to suit your desired lifestyle.

Hiring a business coach or marketing mentor can save you from wasting time trying to figure it out on your own.

They can show you the most direct way to maximize your sales and profit as soon as possible. All while also giving you a plan for your long-term lifestyle goals.

Here’s what I would have helped Veronica consider if we had worked together:

I would have asked her first:

How many hours of free time do you want to have each week?

How many weekends do you want to go camping each summer?

One trip a year to Disneyland or two?

How many hours a week would you want to spend online versus at your craft desk?

Other than paying for family holidays, what’s your BIG DREAM for this business?

Do you LIKE posting to social media, making videos, or emailing? Which one do you like BEST?

Then I’d have helped her fit a business idea into that.

So let’s go through the two steps of choosing a business model and a marketing model.

First, choose ONE Money-Making Framework That Suits YOU🪄💸

If Veronica had invested in a mentor from the start, she could have avoided diving headfirst into a business model that was not ideal for her current lifestyle.

I’ll explain how she made things a lot harder for herself by choosing this model first.

Veronica chose a product-based manufacturing e-commerce business.

These types of businesses often require a huge time investment before they are profitable.

They also require pretty savvy online marketing skills, because you need a lot of daily traffic coming into your shops to keep consistent sales coming in.

Service-based businesses, on the other hand, normally see a profit within the first three months. Had Veronica hired me, I would have recommended that she lean fully into making the cat beds as a customized service first. That way, she could market based on word of mouth and maybe a few locally distributed mailbox flyers.

She’d make immediate profit without the enormous up-front investment of her limited time. Then she could build her online presence up slowly over time. I’d advise her to reinvest 30% of her total profit into outsourcing her marketing each month. That would include hiring contract help, like a Facebook Ads manager and a social media manager.

Some alternative options Veronica could have gone with that may have suited her lifestyle more could have been:

• Drop-shipping and overseas manufacturing instead of having to make and ship the beds herself. Many artsy, creative people aren’t as interested in the selling side of their products as they are in the making side of them. Especially when the items are hand-made. If this is you, print-on-demand and drop shipping are PERFECT for people like you!
• She could have just sold the idea to a pet-supply company for royalties. Nice monthly paycheck, no hassle!
• Or, she could have paid for a sponsored spot in a well-known pet-based newsletter. A local one for the markets or an international one to get clicks into her online shops. No need to do social media or content then.
• If she loves Instagram or TikTok and has a knack for editing videos, she could create videos on how she makes the beds and monetize the video content. Forget about selling the actual product or having to post it. Just sell content.
• She could also record how she makes the beds and create Skillshare courses, or one of the many platforms that do all of the marketing for you. Again, just selling content, not products.
• Another option is to sell the patterns for the beds as a digital product.

Like a dressmaker tailoring a dress, I would have gone through various options to work out which ones might be the best match for her time, lifestyle, desires, and interests.

If she wanted to know more about any one type of business model, we’d take a deeper dive into that to see which one would work best for her.

I’ll tell you a bit more about the ways we could work together a bit later. But for now, let’s look at what comes AFTER choosing the right business model.

Second, choose ONE Marketing Model That Suits YOU 🪄🌪️

After you choose a good business model for your additional income streams, you’ll then need to consider the right marketing model.

The right marketing model will increase both your freedom and income over the long term.

You can choose any type of creative business model first.

You can sell witchy candles in an Etsy, eBay, or Shopify shop.

Or provide international tarot-card or psychic reading services.

Maybe you’ve created a series of digital courses and tutorials on how to craft gothic headdresses with horns.

Even an affiliate newsletter about your love of horse riding. 🐎

Whatever you choose, it’s in how you choose to market your business to attract a steady flow of new customers that you will either build yourself a money-making hamster wheel or a freedom-nurturing flywheel.

Create a Marketing Flywheel – NOT a Hamster Wheel

A flywheel is a marketing model where momentum builds over time through a strategic system of reinforcing actions.

Instead of a traditional sales funnel, where people “fall off” at the end, a flywheel keeps spinning. Every customer fuels growth, and everything you do adds to the energy of the system.

Most new business owners make the common mistake of building one-track, dead-end marketing models that keep them STUCK. They may start making good money, but they struggle to pivot. They created a marketing hamster wheel for themselves, so they lose freedom and end up hating marketing forever.

And it’s not their fault. Unless you study marketing or hire a mentor who is a massive marketing geek like me, it’s a common mistake noobs make.

But sometimes, when new online business owners start to panic, they will hire someone who may be able to help them by giving them some insights and ideas. But not a strategic marketing flywheel.

For example, I noticed several years ago that there are a lot of business and marketing coaches out there who IGNORE the critical question of what marketing model they are focused on helping people learn.

They are vague about exactly what model they teach. So when you sign up to get their help, you find yourself learning a strategy that just doesn’t feel right to you.

A one-size-fits-all approach…

..like a heavy focus on cold emails and lead tracking when you are an introvert and you hate the idea of hunting and tracking leads all day, every day…🙄 

…or reliance on Facebook Ads or Google Ads when you like to bootstrap and you already kickass with organic growth…

It’s often hard to know WHAT you’ll like to learn until you learn a bit more about it. So by the time you’ve invested in a business or marketing coach, it’s already too late!

The problem is that the more you learn about marketing, the more you’ll see that there are as many online marketing models out there as there are books in a library. 

So the critical thing here is to match where you are at in your business with what type of marketing will suit your skills and interests.

What you do repeatedly each week to market your online business needs to align with what you enjoy doing and what you are skilled at doing.

And it should build on itself – from the start. That’s how you can build a marketing flywheel that’ll take you further.

AND THAT YOU CAN ENJOY!

I would climb to the top of Mt. Everest to scream to the world that marketing can – and should be – FUN!

DESPITE all the hundred-year-old frozen turds and dead bodies up there! I’d climb it anyway if the whole world could hear me scream!😮

But in the meantime, I can be your digital sherpa on a pixel mountain, convincing you that marketing can be fn FUN.

It can be fun if you design it from the start to suit YOU first. And then it becomes a flywheel to help you grow from there. No starting over, wasting time. No lost months of effort.

Seamless and strategic. ⚔️

If You Design Your Additional Income Streams around FREEDOM First, You Will Gain More Freedom AND Earn More Money! 🪄💸

If you design the marketing around creating more FREEDOM, you can create a profitable business that you’ll love.

So this is why I like to use the word, ”craft” when I say, ”craft a self-reliant AF lifestyle.” Because it’s custom-tailored to maximize your self-reliance in terms of time freedom, location freedom, and financial freedom. All the freedoms!

And it’s why 99% of the cookie-cutter marketing models you’ll come across online will not suit you.💥

Every ad that you get to see about marketing, every helpful freebie, every Challenge – it’s all an indoctrination into one TYPE of marketing model.

Usually, the one that worked best for the person selling it.

How to Make $10k Through Amazon Self-Published Books!

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Your challenge as an aspiring entrepreneur is to NOT get caught up in somebody else’s flashy framework BEFORE you establish what business and marketing models are going to suit YOU.🔥

Curiosity is natural, and who doesn’t want to know ALL the ways you can make additional income streams online?

It’s fascinating stuff!

But I encourage you to first work out what business and marketing models are going to align with your current interests and strengths, get it working, and THEN explore the shiny stuff later. 🪄🐣

And the best way to get clarity on what business and marketing model is going to be a good match for you?

Hire a professional who knows what’s out there.

They can be your lifestyle + money matchmaker!

Hire a Pro To Help You Get Started Crafting Additional Online Income Streams FAST – Here’s How.✨

I’ve spent thousands of dollars on coaches, courses, and gurus over the years. And I do not regret a single dollar.

Some were better than others, of course. And so I’ve since learned to be more discerning before I invest.

But I don’t believe that investing in a business or marketing coach is ever a bad decision.

Even when their programs aren’t a great fit for you, which you sometimes find out AFTER you’ve paid for them. There’s still always something you can take away. Sometimes it’s just an idea, a lesson, a software tool, or a workflow. And sometimes it’s a new strong business connection or community.

One thing is certain in business:

It’s ALWAYS a good idea to keep investing in yourself and expanding your knowledge base.

There are two different reasons to hire a business coach or marketing mentor.

What’s the difference between a ‘coach’ and a ‘mentor’?

Not a lot, it’s just whatever the person chooses to call themselves, really. I’ve always preferred ‘mentor’ because ‘coach’ reminds me of high-school football! But some might say ”coach” is more general and ”mentor” is for a more specific skill.

The first reason to hire a coach or mentor is if you are a new business owner.

If you are new, you need to spend as much time and money as possible learning about business and marketing in your first few years. Do not stop!

In this case, I recommend hiring a ”’high-touch” business coach or mentor.

This is someone who may have a program or course, but it comes second to one-on-one time with them. By one-on-one time I mean either weekly video calls or Voxxer support.

Think of hiring a mentor as a literal time machine, because it is. You will save yourself thousands of hours as you quantum leap off their years of experience.

Be careful of programs that offer one hour or no one-on-one coaching time and only group coaching instead. ❌

In my experience, you are better off reading a book or buying a course if you are mostly going to have to DIY their information anyway. That’s not coaching. Especially if their group coaching is little more than socializing time. You can make friends on your own time.

The second reason to hire someone is if you are STUCK.

For instance, you’ve been in business for a while, but there’s something specific not working. You aren’t making the sales or growing the audience that you want.

If you’re STUCK, hire a marketing coach or mentor.

Go for a VERY specific program – and make sure it fits YOUR preferred marketing model!

For example, you are killing it on social media. Lots of people are following you and signing up for your free opt-ins. You’re making sales in several places, but nobody is buying anything from your ads. That’s a specific program. A sticky spot in an otherwise functional, growing business.

Here’s a TikTok video I made to share my thoughts on generalist business education programs VS specialty marketing programs.👇

 Is That Expensive Coaching Program Going To Help me Or Be a Waste of $$$?

A good marketing mentor will be able to diagnose if the issue is your mental game, your systems, or offer conversion, amount of traffic, or finances.

Problems are always within one of those five areas.

A marketing mentor will know which one you’re business is getting stuck in, and give you some recommendations on how to get you out. 🪄💫

Want to get CLARITY on what business and marketing model might suit YOU best?

Helping new and existing owners craft additional income streams that suit their lifestyles is what I do.

So if you need help gaining clarity before you dive into a business headfirst, here’s how I could help you.

I have 4 mentoring programs for different marketing phases.

My 4-week SWAN Academy is for noobs and organic growth. The 8-week SWAN Executive is for automated growth. And my 12-week SWAN Agency is for delegated growth and for those who want to become service providers like social media managers.

I was a freelance social media manager for 9 years so I can help you become one if you’d like one-on-one help.

For ongoing support and growth, I have my year-long one-on-one mentoring, The SWAN Vault.

The Vault includes access to every DIY SWAN course, template bundle, and workshop I’ve ever created, or am actively creating during the duration of month-to-month membership.

Each SWAN mentoring program is designed to be both standalone or level-ups of each other.

So, for example, you can start with The Academy, then continue into Executive, Agency, then keep it going month to month in the Vault.

All 4 are a part of my SWAN Transformation Marketing Strategy. This is HEXOTICA’s foundational marketing system developed for maximum time-saving R.O.I., workflow gamification, and cult brand messaging. 🪄🦢.

I designed them ALL to make daily marketing FUN and enjoyable. Imagine that! 😉

You can find out more by visiting HEXOTICA.ONLINE, signing up for the FREE SWAN Transformation Marketing Strategy Guidebook. Or, you can book a Clarity Kickstarter Session with me.

The call is FREE if you are an Inner Sanctum newsletter subscriber. Or, just DM me and let’s chat!

Short of creating a Tinder for marketing models for you, booking a call with me will help match you to which SWAN program will best suit your interests and skill level.

I’d love to hear how I can help make your BIG DREAM a reality this year.🪄💫

Ready to Take Your First Step?

Download the S.W.A.N. Transformation Marketing Strategy Guidebook to get started today. You’ll find out more about my SWAN mentoring programs + get the link to book a free call with me.

This FREE 30-page PDF printable resource guide includes every single step you’ll need to take to start, grow, and run an online business – in order!

Signing up here! 👇