Spiders in Cyberspace or How to Grow Your Own Multi-Income Stream Business Systems

Don't worry if you hate spiders, the mention of spiders in this article is a reference to growing a business with lots of different income streams radiating from the core business, like a department store with various specialist units; or an online marketing business with numerous different sub-categories, such as email marketing, eBay, Amazon, affiliate marketing, flipping websites, website hosting, Café Press, domain name investment.

Pictorially a multi-income stream business model can be likened to a spider, with the body forming the central business, such as eBay, and each leg depicting a separate income stream within the overall business model.

So you might have someone selling teddy bears on eBay, with a shop called 'Bear Basics', and individual shop categories for antique bears, handmade bears, limited edition bears, personalised bears, birthday bears, miniature bears, giant bears, designer bears. That's one eBay account and eight very different shop categories, appealing to many very different kinds of customer.

'Bear Basics' might also consider splitting bears into additional categories, such as 'Priced £1,000 or more', £500 to £999, £200 to £499, and so on through eight different pricing levels. And maybe the company will promote its bears on eBay through traditional auction listings for 1, 3, 5, 7, 10 days; Buy It Now, Best Offer, Dutch Auction.

The owner might offer free gifts to lift his bears above other people selling similar products on eBay, or he may blog about bears and attract outside eBay traffic to his listings, he may use Google AdWords or article marketing to highlight his eBay shop, maybe he'll grow an eBay mailing list or write guides and reports about bears featuring product mentions and ordering details. Perhaps he could send special offers to past eBay customers and enquirers, and almost certainly he'll include a compliments slip inside each outgoing order telling buyers where they can access more bears from a website with 'Bear Basics' affiliate links embedded so Bear Basics' boss makes money on every sale.

Once up and running 'Bear Basics' might decide to expand their venture beyond just eBay, on Amazon, for example, or at local collectors' fairs, flea markets, specialist teddy bear sales, by joint venture with gift catalogue publishers, from classified ads in collectors' magazines, through their own affiliate program, also from their own website.

Once he's run out of ideas for promoting his bears, Bear Basics' boss might expand into selling ragdolls and reborn dolls, Native American dolls and Russian Babushka dolls, dolls depicting famous people, trolls, interactive dolls and baby dolls.

Okay, I'm going to stop now. You've either got the message or I'm boring you to death and all I wanted was to show how just a few minutes and a pen and paper can turn an ordinary business into something quite extraordinary and exceedingly profitable too. And notice how I incorporated eight new ideas each time, like legs on a spider, though it could have been many more.

On eBay there's no end to the number of 'departments' the astute seller can add to his business and no limit to the range of products to sell or additional ways to market those products which do not always involve eBay.

Which brings me to this: take a pen or pencil and a sheet of blank paper, draw a circle in the centre. Describe your core business inside the circle, such as eBay, online selling, your own website. Draw eight lines or more around the circle, rather like beams radiating from the sun. Draw circles at the very end of those lines, so your picture looks like a spider with clogs on. Give every one of those clogs a name to describe different products or moneymaking lines you might add to your core business. You can draw another eight or more lines from each of the spider's clogs if you like, and at the end of each add another circle featuring some other way of growing your profits from various new income streams. Include ideas for selling affiliate products, marketing from your own website, using business cards that reflect regular sales in your eBay shop, and so on.

Once you're done maximising your eBay business, get yourself more spiders, use them for new eBay accounts or new ideas for making money outside of eBay, and so on.

The reality is, no one should ever run out of ideas for making money, money is always available if you look in the right places, even during a recession!

Oh yes, and don't get too carried away drawing spiders, draw just one or two, then get on with making money from them.

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