Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Having multiple income streams, especially passive income, is a hot topic in entrepreneurship. We do so much as business owners that having multiple ways to get paid would be nice, don’t ya think? Today, we are digging into our income streams and how to diversify income streams for your business this year.
Why Diversifying Income Matters
If you only have one service, you know the pressure it brings every month. You have to get X number of clients to generate X in revenue. Having multiple sources of income reduces the reliance on one stream to make money during slow seasons.
It also creates stability when making new investments because you know at least one stream is bringing you money. You can boost your bank account a little bit to feel confident making investments to grow your business. Plus, it increases your confidence. As you are more stable in your revenue, you start to take more risks.
Learning how to diversify income streams increases your scalability, especially as a service provider. You begin to attract new audiences as you create new offers. And income diversification is fun! It keeps your creative fire lit. You can think of and create new ways to make money and help your audience reach their goals, too.
Breaking Down Our Income Streams
Now, onto the good stuff! This is a breakdown of how Duo makes money.
1:1 Services
Our 1:1 branding, SEO, and miscellaneous marketing projects still bring in more than 75% of our total revenue. This is our bread and butter and we aren’t changing our services anytime soon.
SEO On Tap Course
SEO on Tap was originally a group coaching program, but we decided to make it an online course instead so people could take it at their own pace. It’s been a fun project for us to work on! It allows us to reach a new audience of people who want to learn SEO on their own versus hiring us to do it for them. We launch SEO on Tap a few times a year, which has been successful for us!
SEO Membership
Once students go through SEO on Tap, we allow them into our SEO membership for a monthly or annual cost. Here, we provide additional support and monthly calls and include them in our directory.
Paid Webinars
During launch periods for SEO on Tap, we host free webinars. We also occasionally host paid webinars. These are much more in-depth and give people workbooks and resources to help them implement what they learned. We started doing this during our slow seasons of business for a little income boost!
Digital Products
We’ve dabbled in digital products before. Right now, we have our AI workbook for sale, and we’d love to create more! We also had a merch shop for a bit, and while it’s closed right now, we might open it up again.
Affiliate Partnerships
Affiliate partnerships are a great passive income source. We have them all listed on our resources page and occasionally get a commission from our referrals. This isn’t something we expect to earn income from or promote in any way apart from linking them in blogs and on the resources page. It’s just a nice little bonus when something comes in!
Speaking
In 2023 and 2024, we invested a lot of time in speaking at conferences, retreats, and summits. Sometimes we did it for free for the visibility, and sometimes we were paid in some capacity. At a recent one, we technically did it for free, but the host paid for our flights. Other times, we get paid for our one-hour presentations. It kind of depends on the opportunity!
How can YOU Create New Income Streams?
Wondering how to diversify income for your business? Start small. You don’t need to overhaul your business to add an income stream. Start with something that complements your existing work. For example, if you already offer one-on-one services, create a group coaching option or a low-cost digital product.
It also helps to use what you know. Online courses are sexy, but they are a heck of a lot of work. Really make sure this feels right for you before jumping into it! Paid webinars are a really fun and easy way to start dipping your toes in online education. Maybe start there and see if you even like educating! We use WebinarJam and EverWebinar for our paid webinars.
Think about how you can scale your income diversification. Passive and semi-passive income options, like digital products or memberships, don’t put too much more work on your plate every week, but you can earn some good income from them.
Start with what you love and something that will fire you up inside. You want to be excited about your new offerings! Otherwise, you’ll be miserable trying to launch and market them.
When you are thinking about how to diversify income, focus on your audience before adding new revenue streams.
This Didn’t Happen For Us Overnight
For the first few years of business, we did 1:1 services ONLY. We mastered our systems and processes around our main service offerings, then added more when we felt comfortable. We added our e-commerce shop one year. The digital products we sell are usually already created for something else, like a conference. Group coaching was inspired by consistent client issues that kept coming up. We didn’t start Duo to create all these revenue streams. We saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.
What We Are Focusing on for 2025
We want to simplify things. We have busy lives (as we’re sure you do, too!). Because of that, we are discontinuing group coaching and focusing solely on SEO on Tap.
We’ll be adding more affiliates to our network because we love sharing the tools we love. We want to do more of this and work with our partners to get you better deals on them, too!
We’ll be focusing a lot more on education. We know SEO and branding can feel confusing or hard, but we want to make it easy for you!
We mentioned in episode #147 that we are building a boutique agency model. One-on-one services will continue to be our biggest bucket and we need the foundation to allow for that. We’re building out a team to support our growth and they have been amazing so far!
Final Notes on How to Diversify Income
Remember this when you start to think about income diversification. You don’t need to launch everything at once—start small, test the waters, and grow gradually. Not every income stream will be wildly successful (we’ve had some epic fails!), but even an extra few hundred dollars a month can make a big difference.
Now, go write down your 2025 goals for diversifying your income!
If you liked today’s episode on The Duo On Air Marketing Podcast, don’t forget to leave us a review & subscribe!
More From The Duo
Sign Up for Tuesday Tips and Sips Newsletter
Abbey Oslin and Courtney Petersen are Minnesota-based marketing experts, educators, and co-founders of boutique marketing agency Duo Collective, which specializes in SEO, social media strategy, and branding for small business owners and creative entrepreneurs. To learn more about Duo Collective, or to inquire about working with our team, head over to www.duocollective.com.
To inquire about being a guest on Duo On Air, please fill out this application form.
+ show Comments
- Hide Comments
add a comment