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HomeblogLosing money like a boss.

Losing money like a boss.

Two thousand eleven was a great year for Punch Debt In The Face. I broke all sorts of traffic records, was fortunate enough to be featured in some pretty stellar articles, and was even able to turn $100 of expenses in to a $13,000 business. Not a bad return on investment eh?

This year, however, it appears as though I will be yet again, setting another record. Unfortunately, it’s not a record I necessarily want to set. I don’t know if it’s just my blog or what, but it seems advertising opportunities have pretty much dried up over the last two or three months. January and February started out strong, but since then things have taken a sharp decline. Google did some serious algorithm tweaking and instead of companies asking to advertise with me, they were requesting that I remove the ads they had already paid for (note to people who care, my PageRank actually went up during the recent change). Legitimate ad deals are few and far between now. It seems like the only opportunities I’m being pitched are crappy guest post submissions from people I’ve never heard of.

And that my friends brings us to today’s lesson: You need to diversify your income. This can all be broken down by an uber simple math formula I worked up last night…

You see how that works? The more income streams you have, the less devastating a loss of one income is. Last year, Girl Ninja and I were rocking Triple Income No Kid status, this year, looks like we will have to settle for being DINKs.

“But Ninja, I only have the ability to work one job, and I don’t have a significant other to support me through tougher times.” So the heck what! You ever heard of an Emergency fund? That straight up works like a second source of income in the event you get canned. Booya grandma, problem solved!

We hear people say all the time, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” I’ll take it a step further, “Don’t settle on having just one egg.”

How diversified is your income? If you lost your job, how long could you get by without that income? For my fellow bloggers, have your advertisement opportunities been as limited as mine recently?  

 

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23 COMMENTS

  1. I am making hardly anything from adsense 🙁

    PS you should say DINKYs – No Kids YET! 😛

  2. I always live as if the shoe is going to drop at any time. Saving, saving, saving. I also live very frugally so if forced to, I can live on a very low wage.

  3. If my fiancée and I had to go down to one income, we’d be fine, because we live on 50% of our revenue anyway. He has multiple income streams, I’m working on it, so I think we’d be fine. Still need to bulk up that emergency fund though.

  4. I don’t blog, so I can’t speak to that. But IMO what matters is not having multiple streams of income per se, but having a stream of income that you can rely on. My sole source of income is my one job, but I am reasonably confident that job will be with me until I choose to retire in perhaps 2-3 years.

    I dispute, however, your statement that an emergency fund is a source of income. Income by definition is payment received for goods or services, or money that you receive as an addition or increase. An emergency fund (except for any interest or market growth earned on it) is money that you have set aside from already earned income. It’s savings, not income. This is not at all a trivial distinction, as in retirement you have to live on your savings, that is, when you are no longer earning or receiving income.

    • “You ever heard of an Emergency fund? That straight up works like a second source of income in the event you get canned.”

      Didn’t call an emergency fund a source of income. I said that it WORKS like a source of income, in that, you can “pay yourself” to cover your expenses.

      Income + Emergency Fund – Job > Income – Job

      • I understood perfectly well what you were saying. All the same, I’d say that drawing on savings – while obviously they can be used to meet expenses – has a very different financial and psychological effect than knowing you can expect additional money coming in. This may not be as obvious when retirement is decades away, but when it is just a few years away or finally upon you, you really are faced with the awareness that what you have put away is what you have to live on for the rest of your life.

  5. I agree, it seems like there’s less legitimate advertisers out there right now. Hopefully more pop up soon.

  6. I’ve received maybe 2 dozen or so “offers” the past few months, but only one worked out and it was a renewal. Not bad since I didn’t blog from September-December at all and my page rank dropped to 2.

  7. I’ve got a couple of different “types” on income, since I am a freelance writer and designer by trade, but I am very aware every month that any or all of it could dry up in a second!

  8. Not that it helps (ha), but you’re not alone on the advertiser interest drying up. I’m back to where I was a year ago in terms of revenue.

    It’s one thing for us to see the dearth of interest – I wonder about the people who left their jobs to blog!

  9. January 2012 was the best month of Bruce Bucks dot com, and since then nothing. Advertisements are dried and cracking over here.

  10. Sorry about your ad revenue loss…but it seems like you have things in perspective.

    Also…what about income from Manteresting?? Are you still being courted by any VC’s? Did you ever get an offer from the one you mentioned earlier?

  11. I have a couple of income streams coming in. Like Larry said, my main job is pretty constant and probably won’t be going anywhere anytime soon and if it did I have enough side income that I would be able to survive until I found a new job.

  12. My husband is the only one “working” since I’m home with the three kids, but we have a few things we do on the side to generate income. A resume/cover letter writing service, fiction writing, and I’m putting something together myself. I haven’t bothered trying to monetize my blog but that’s because it is purely a hobby.

  13. Definite dry spell for advertising…. But that’s okay, because it has given me more time/energy to devote to web design and freelancing, which are my favorite things. 🙂

  14. It’s really good to diversify income just as we all diversify with our savings strategies/investment options.

  15. I also haven’t as much opportunity lately and my blog is certainly not as established as yours!

  16. We’re just getting started, but hopefully advertisers will pick up the pace in the coming months when we’re ready to implement ads. If it makes you feel any better, most advertisers I talk to are getting ready to ramp up online spending soon. They tend to avoid the first quarter after holiday season spending and then start increasing online budgets from then until December.

  17. They were down quite a bit for several weeks, but they have been coming back strong in end of April and now May. Hang in there! There are still a lot of months to go!

  18. k I’m super late replying to this but forgive me, I’m way behind on blog reading.

    YES there are NO advertising to be had. I’m super bummed because I just started selling advertising space on moneyaftergraduation.com and it was going fab and now it’s like JUST KIDDING =(

  19. I agree with you that it’s best to have a diversified source of income. Relying on only one would result to not so good outcome when that source kind of dries up. Be prepared for whatever may come in the future and try to get various income streams.

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