In Part 1 of this series, we went over why you don’t want to quit your day job to become a professional blogger, atleast not right away. Also we discuss trying to get the most out of your blog’s revenue.

For most people, it will never be about how much money they make. You hear people say things such as “if only I got that pay raise everything would be alright,” or “if I won the lotto I would be set for life.” Its not the amount of money you have, its how many sources of income do you have? Everyone has seen or heard the stories where people win millions of dollars, and then a year or two down the road they’re broke, or worse, in debt.

So, in our exercise, we have brought our blog’s income generation to its peak, what now? First, even before you cover all current operational expenses to keep the blog up and running at its current state, there is something very basic, something no-one never thinks of. Simply, pay yourself first. We have been conditioned to pay our bills and try to live on what’s left; after all that, we try to save. Take 10% off the top of your blog income and set it aside. That money is YOUR money, no one elses. Take 20% out to pay down debt, the other 70% covers the blog’s expenses and possible expansion to help the blog make MORE income. Go back to your brainstorming sessions and see where you can expand. This method of cash management comes from an excellent book, “The Richest Man in Babylon.” Not only is it an interesting read, but it really gets you to thinking about how you spend your money and where does it go. I own both the paperback edition and the audiobook. For those interested, here are links to Amazon.com where you can purchase the paperback book and the audiobook.

I know what you’re asking. We’re making money, but where do we become rich? That 10% is what we’ll use to make you rich, but I warn you now, it’s tough. You’ll have to read, study, experiment, and really work. Its time you enter the world of investing. I’m not talking about mutual funds; no, I’m talking about creating more businesses, buying real estate (to hold and rent out for passive income, no flipping), and getting into serious value investing.

Most bloggers go the route of creating another online business, and that’s great. It plays to your strengths of having already done it before with your blog. You know the in’s and out’s of online marketing and that’s half the battle. Treat the 2nd online business as the blog in terms of cash management. After the 2nd business starts to turn a profit, you now have two sources of income instead of one.

Most offline businesses expand into real estate first instead of paper assets. Normally, the first major investment a business makes is to buy property to run the business. A great way to do this as an online business owner is two ways: 1) contact a local commercial realtor and 2) start looking yourself. You want a multi-unit complex where you can rent office or shop space out to have the property paying for itself. You just happen to have a small office space for your online business. At this point, if you haven’t already, you’ll want to not only get with a CPA, but also an attorney to set-up a business entity for asset protection. From here, you can either stop at one property, or continue investment into real estate for the purpose to hold and collect income from the properties.

Most businesses, online or otherwise, stop after the investment into real estate. There is one area of investment left, and that’s paper assets. There are so many types of paper assets that you can’t possibly go over all of them at once. Examples include not only stocks and bonds, but tax lien certificates, notes, currency trading, and on and on. Investment into paper assets is another source of income.

I’m not talking about buying and trading, that’s just another form of gambling. I’ll use the differences between a rancher and a dairy. A rancher raises the cattle, slaughters it, and hopes to get a good price for the meat; the income from that slaughtered cow is a one time event. A dairy farmer continues to milk his cows day after day; that’s what I want you to do, milk those assets daily.

When it comes to investing, I’m talking about researching a quality investment, waiting until the time is right, and buying on the cheap. The worst reason to buy an investment is because the price is going up; do you go to the grocery and wait on buying milk because the price is low and you want it to get higher before you buy?

Creating several sources of income is your path to becoming rich. Not only do you have cashing comeing in from several directions, but should something happen and one source dries up, its not the end of the world; you have other sources, and the skills to create more sources.

In the end, using your blog to become rich starts with paying yourself first and using all income to its fullest extent.

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