Having multiple passive income streams is an excellent way to diversify income sources. But having more than one passive income stream can strain any unorganised entrepreneur.
How can I manage multiple income streams? You can manage multiple income streams by prioritizing, eliminating, batching, automating, outsourcing, collaborating and reviewing your processes. Managing multiple streams of passive income requires some skill and knowledge on the best management practices for your business.
This beginner’s guide covers some of the best management practices for multiple passive income streams. The points discussed below can apply to almost any type of passive income business or idea covered on our site.
1. Prioritize
Prioritization is an important factor when managing multiple revenue streams. According to Forbes, business owners can be more effective planners by applying effect and impact ratings when ranking their income streams. An entrepreneur can distribute resources, energy and time efficiently if they set their priorities right, possibly boosting productivity and income. For instance, you can use the Getting Things Done methodology as a way to plan and execute what needs to be done.
Analyse your revenue streams to see if there is a way to further improve high yielding streams, or boost lower yielding streams. For example, if you notice that specific YouTube videos are your main earners for that passive income stream, consider making more videos about that topic. You may make creating that one video a priority over making multiple low revenue videos.
Setting priorities is one of the first ways you can manage your passive income streams better. You can also consider batching tasks to better prioritize work, especially if you are considering automating and outsourcing.
2. Eliminate & Batch
Batching tasks is as important as documenting and eliminating those that are not important. We cover this extensively in the video below and in this article on our site about how to make your business more passive. It is key to organise your work by batching tasks and projects that need to be accomplished to ensure your revenue streams remain as passive and as lucrative as possible. If you find that there are things on your to do list that are no longer worthwhile, then eliminate them. Always make sure that your processes are useful before trying to automate, delegate or outsource them.
3. Automate
Automation is a good management choice especially when you have multiple streams of income. Forbes considers that automation tools such as AI will be very important contributors to the global economy in the future. Estimates suggest that automation practices (Including AI) will contribute more than $15 Trillion by the year 2030 (source).
For instance, you can use AI tools such as chatbots to help you automate your customer care obligations. Such AI tools can be very helpful in generating leads, promoting your products and responding to customer queries. Your clients can access automated processes at any time. This creates convenience and helps to build trust. Automation can simplify your daily duties and ease your workload. You also reduce operating costs, delegate repetitive duties to AI and other automation tools.
4. Outsource
Outsourcing is a very effective practice for small businesses and to help ensure passive income streams effectively remain passive. In 2019, the global outsourcing market was worth over $90 billion (source). You can use outsourcing firms to help cut operating costs, reduce workload and process important information such as payrolls, accounts, and more (source). This can be especially helpful when you have to manage multiple sources of passive income. For instance, print on demand consists in outsourcing services where printing companies collect and fulfill orders on behalf of businesses.
The choice to outsource may depend on the passive income sources you have, importance, priorities and if you have on-premise staff. Bloggers can outsource their work by hiring quality ghostwriters from Fiverr, Upwork, D.T Writers, and established ghostwriting agencies. Outsourcing can easily be mis-managed so ensure you are outsourcing things that actually provide value for your business or will effectively boost your passive income streams.
5. Collaborate
Teamwork and collaboration can help delegate tasks, free time and boost creativity. For instance, if you have staff or remote workers, you can request they work as a team when dealing with complex passive income projects such as web design, 3D printing, or YouTubing. This can help you accomplish tasks much faster including sharing knowledge and creativity. Teamwork helps to establish rapport and coordination between team members. Working as a team can be fun, engaging and has plenty of benefits for you and your business.
6. Review
Conducting reviews is important and can be done at any frequency. This provides deeper knowledge and analysis of operations and KPI’s. Setting time aside to review your processes can also allow more time to study market trends.
Conduct reviews to help identify and identify issues or opportunities for your passive income streams and implement them. Reviews can help you form better plans for the future. For instance, you can schedule review plans for your passive income streams daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly. For the most part, reviews are a very healthy management practice. One of its major benefits is that they can help reduce risks. A review may not always solve problems, but it can help identify them.
Check out this article to learn more about how to make your business more passive. Also check out this article if you would like to see more passive income ideas.
Related Questions
What multiple passive income streams can be managed together? Most passive income ideas can be combined to form passive income portfolios. Some of the most popular combinations include print on demand and eCommerce, blogging and affiliate marketing, niche sites and eBooks, etc.
Why is it important to manage multiple income streams? Managing multiple passive income streams is important for a number of reasons. The practice can help improve processes and save on costs. You can also establish better control measures for existing income streams and new ideas.
Are there challenges in managing multiple passive income streams? Managing multiple passive income streams does have its challenges. Each management plan has its weaknesses, simply take the time to recognise which yours may be. Combining two or more effective management strategies and adapting them to your specific business can help reduce risks.
