If you want to secure yourself in business online or offline, you have to provide for yourself the opportunity of bouncing back, like a life-line, when one of your business crashes. The way to go about it is to create multiple sources of income.

In affiliate marketing, you cannot depend on one source of income, because if the business fails, you become bankrupt and helplessly traumatized. Though, some go into affiliate marketing as a source of earning residual income to support their white-collar jobs. Most successful affiliate marketers believe that building multiple streams of online income is the best option.

Before you start creating multiple sources of income, assess yourself; your resources and assets. What are your strengths and weaknesses? How good are you in creative writing? Can you communicate with people effectively? Do you have good managerial skills? Can you efficiently make sales even when the market is on a downward course? Do you have any exceptional talent, skill or capabilities that others do not have?

Answering the questions above, sincerely and without narrow-mindedness, will help you decide on the businesses you can do extremely well. Importantly, your assets can help you in creating multiple sources of income, for instance, working with a laptop is better than a desktop or going to a cyber cafe, because using a laptop is more secure for privacy, it is portable which makes it easier for you to carry and work anywhere, from your bedroom, your kitchen, to your office, you can take it to WiFi hotspots and connect to the internet for free. Also, a smart phone can be a very powerful resource, as you can use it to take pictures of the products you want to promote and place it on your website, check your email for responses from your potential clients, chat with your fellow marketers on forums and social networking sites for the latest tips and hottest products to promote and monitor your business in real-time. With an I-pad, your work becomes easier because you can use it as a laptop and as phone and turn it from becoming a liability to an income generating machine.

Calculate all the time you spend watching movies and playing video games on the internet, you can use that time to research and find more affiliate marketing programs that you can sign up with and start promoting their products and referring potential customers to them. You can make friends on many social networking sites and market the products through banners that have your referral id and make money. It is wise to improve on your marketing skills by finding training materials, attending seminars and workshops in order to be current with the latest trend in the marketing world.

Conclusively, there is nothing wrong with having multiple streams of income because promoting more than one product gives your potential customers a variety of products to select from, it protects your business and expands your scope, and you will not be affected if one of the merchants you are promoting his or her product closes his or her program.