There are two major ways to bring in additional streams of revenue: either expand your current business or start over with a different business. If you sell a product or service and have only been using your site to sell it, consider expanding to other venues, fairs, wholesale, direct mailers, crafts sites, etc. Alternatively, you can begin a whole new site with a whole new unrelated product, beginning again from scratch, and making it viable.

Having these multiple streams of income is important. Since they can be inexpensive to set up, there is a huge opportunity for success. And as you either migrate to a new idea or expand your current one, be sure to let your current and previous customers know (via your newsletter you’ve hopefully been maintaining) to give your new adventure a jump start.

Having this diversity will help you if there is a slowdown in the overall economy or if one channel of income slows for some reason. Some types of sales go up and down depending on the season (lots of online shopping in the winter; more conventions where you can set up booths in the summer). Having multiple mediums for presenting your product or service allows for one stream to make up for another.

Perhaps the most important reason to have multiple streams of income is to create freedom and flexibility. If you’re dependant on one or two streams and they begin to struggle, you’ll be right back where you started. No revenue source is 100 percent passive, but by maintaining several sources at once, you won’t suffer as much if one doesn’t do as well.

Work hard and you’ll be able to reap all the rewards of multiple revenue streams.

You may be on Twitter and Facebook, have PPC ads coming out your ears, have a popular YouTube channel, and come up on the first page of various search engines. But to bring in more traffic, more customers, and more revenue, you may want to consider starting a podcast.

A podcast is an audio file you record in advance and allow people to download. It can be long or short, and talk about whatever you want to talk about. By regularly updating your podcast with new episodes, you’re able to consistently provide your listeners with the latest on your business, the industry, or just your life.

Here are some tips to consider for your podcast:

• Make It A Revenue Source While there’s nothing wrong with just chatting up your listeners each week, there’s no reason not to make your podcast a source of revenue. Talk to other businesses to see if any would be interested in sponsoring an episode.
• Make It A Resource For Your Listeners Your podcast is a chance for you to talk to your customers about your product, what it can do, and how it can help their lives. A podcast isn’t a sales pitch; it should be more casual than that. But you want to be providing your listeners with valuable information.
• Make It Consistent Both in frequency (once a week is usually good) and in length (anywhere between 15 minutes and an hour).
• Make It Easy iTunes is probably the most popular way to submit your podcast, making it instantly available to your listeners whenever you update.
• Make It Unique Occasionally, have a promotional offer or give out a coupon code on your podcast and nowhere else. This will give others the incentive to tell others about your podcast and help it grow.

Podcasts can be a great way to expand your business and bring in more revenue. With a minimal up-front investment and almost no ongoing costs (other than your time), there’s no reason you shouldn’t start your podcast today.