Tie It Up With a Bow

Posted on February 10, 2019 by mestengobooks

tie a bow1

Combine Your Multiple Income Streams (MIS)

I’ve blogged about creating multiple income streams (MIS) as a way for writers to increase exposure and income. We are naturally curious and creative and the world around us is our canvas, from which we create sensational stories, paintings, photos, and more. Art is no longer an exclusive community available only to those with connections in the art world. Thanks to social media, digital art software and internet commerce sites, more of us can participate and contribute our creations, whatever they may be.

Utilizing the concept of MIS in conjunction with my other creative endeavors, I’m in the process of putting the pieces together “under one roof.” Writer/photographer Lee Foster, in her article, “Could You Make (And Even Sell) Your Own Pictures?” (February 7, 2019), posits that since we use photos in our blogs, on our SM sites, and perhaps even in our books, we can create some of those photos ourselves. There are multiple sites online where we can access copyright-free photos (Pixabay, Pexels, etc.); they offer many options to create new photos or works of art via digital enhancement. She then suggests that we sell those photos as a way of earning extra income. This could apply to your paintings (and/or digital prints of them) as well.

Pictures are visual stimuli used extensively in marketing campaigns, on websites and in magazines, to name a few. Selling your pictures can be profitable but in this highly competitive market you need to research where you can optimize your sales. The size of the photo and pixels are also important; make sure you know what size requirements are for each sales venue. Will you digitally enhance the photos? There are plenty of websites for that, too (I like LunaPics for basic digital effects).

Which SM Works Best for Your Projects?

In the same vein as knowing your target market, knowing which SM to use and which forms of art (e.g., acrylic painting, digital photography, poetry, etc.) to share, it’s important to decide how to create your multiple income streams, no matter how large or small, with each of your creative talents. Once they are up and running independently, you can tie them all together in one place – such as a landing page or on your existing website – that will allow customers and fans to access all of your works from one location.

Have you set up multiple income streams? What advice do you have for the rest of us? Please share your expertise in setting up and operating multiple income streams and how you manage them. Let’s all work together to make online and physical marketplaces a reachable goal for all artists.

#multipleincomestreams #bloggingformoney #blogging #writing #photography

The Write to Roam

Posted on October 8, 2016 by mestengobooks

I want to learn more about how to live life on the road and write while I’m on it. I want to upgrade my car to an RV. That way wherever I roam, I’m already home. No more spending hard-earned money on a storage unit to keep my life in and no more wasting money on rent. Or trying to prove I’m a good person so some management company will rent an over-priced apartment to me; or a roommate who doesn’t fear I’ll sneak into her room late one night and stab her 150 times just for the helluva it.

(A quick aside: I firmly believe credit checks are a new form of discrimination against people who have fallen on hard times – once known as the middle class – and are scrambling to work their way up from the pit of poverty they’ve fallen into thanks to greedy politicians and corporations determined to serve their own purposes over our needs.)

I want to roam North America and meet people from all walks of life, which I’ve already done on four brazen cross-country trips as I moved to some new location, having become bored with the last one, because it became stale and uninteresting. I enjoyed meeting people for those brief moments, while they allowed me a glimpse into their storied lives.

One of my favorite memories came on my first cross-country trip: Charlie and his two friends (shame on me, I didn’t note all their names and have since forgotten) were riding their Harleys to the Sturgis bike rally in August of 2005. We met while staying at a small motel in Kanorado, a spit of a town on the border of Kansas and Colorado, hence the name. If memory serves me, we met while checking in at the front desk. We chatted while checking in and exchanged reasons for needing rooms.

They were pleasant fellows and invited me to have breakfast with them the following morning after checkout, at a nearby diner. We had great conversation and I remember laughing most of the time. They hailed from Alabama and had slight southern drawls. Charlie (the fellow on the furthest right in the photo on the left) was just a big teddy bear and he’s the one who made me laugh the most. This is what I remember about these guys and always will. Funny how people who barely touch your life can become some of the most memorable.

And now I get to write about them, weaving them into my life’s story.

Bikers from Alabama going to Sturgis

I’ve been doing some research into starting a podcast as another MPC and it seems awfully techie to me at this point, which has a tendency to deflate my enthusiasm. There are excellent tips on the Smart Passive Income site by Pat Flynn and on some other sites I found. Hope to build it up to a point where I can actually provide for myself from it and give myself the gift of life on the road. Wouldn’t it be grand to podcast from every corner of North America!

A nomadic lifestyle, once the cornerstone of life on this continent (thanks to the many Indigenous peoples who have lived here for eons), has once again become popular. Somewhere in between being strangled by a 30-year mortgage (where the house owns you, not the other way around, as most people proclaim) and working in a square-peg-round-hole, soul-sucking J-O-B, many folks have felt the need to escape a life of conformity and embrace adventure into the unknown. Like Charles Kuralt and his always interesting On the Road series and travel books, I wish to embrace the freedom, challenge, and all the details of a life on the road – so I, too, can have the write to roam.

“The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.”

{Charles Kuralt}

“It was so much fun to have the freedom to wander America, with no assignments. For 25 or 30 years I never had an assignment. These were all stories I wanted to do myself.”

Writing as One Profit Center

Posted on September 5, 2016 by mestengobooks

will write for money

Multiple Profit Centers (MPCs) Increase Your Overall Potential

I was in the mood to read a book today so I snagged a book I’ve been working my way through from the bookshelf. I’ve mentioned this book before – Making a Living Without a Job by Barbara J. Winters (update: sadly, she passed away in Oct 2022 after a long illness). I’m in a bit of a pickle at the moment (I won’t bore you with the details but suffice it to say that my life will be turned upside down as of end of this month, which could turn good or bad).

I’ve been racking my brain on how to create more of what Barbara calls Multiple Profit Centers or MPCs. It’s her theory that by creating MPCs, you increase your potential for prosperity and a more balanced life. Each profit center/idea/ job/entrepreneurial adventure has its own rhythm; over time, you create a steady stream of income because while one or two MPCs may experience a lull in business, one or two other of your MPCs will be on the upswing and generate income.

She even mentions getting paid to write articles. Personally, I’ve not had much luck in this area (the getting paid part). In a previous blog, I wrote about getting exposure for your work via trade journals. In my experience, this type of exposure doesn’t pay (if it does, please let me know how – and now!). But I would enjoy writing articles for other publications; problem is, I’m not sure how to go about doing that (query advice anyone?). If any of you have had some success in this area, please share your experience and expertise so that we who have not yet tasted that kind of success can take a step closer.

A Quotable Quote

Something else in her book got me thinking – and it made perfect sense. This is from her chapter on creating MPCs and is a quote from author and former London Business School professor Charles Handy (she quotes him in her newsletters), who advocates developing MPCs:

“Think of it this way, ” he advises. “You will have a portfolio of work like an architect has, or like your stock portfolio, no prudent investor puts all his savings into one stock, and no sensible business goes after only one customer. Yet that’s what you’ve been doing with your work and talent all these years….Now is your chance to go ‘portfolio’: to diversify your interests and do some things for money, some because they interest you, some out of love or kindness, and some for the sheer hell of it. And, moreover, it’s your chance to flex your portfolio to leave you time for all those other things – for travel, for discovery, for golf, for dining.”

Wow.

Patience and Perseverance

That brought me back to one of my early blogs, Be Careful What You Wish For. I realized I have already created MPCs, except that they don’t (yet) pay the rent. I guess I need to come up with a few more MPCs to cover the downswing of the current ones. It’s just that I feel lost amid the millions of voices already out there clambering for everyone’s business. All I can come up with at the moment is that I (and you, too) need to find a way to STAND OUT by doing something DIFFERENT with my (and your) skill set. Only then can my writing become a Multiple Profit Center that truly pays and supports my no-more-nine-to-five lifestyle.

What’s your MPC?

#blogging #barbarawinter #writer #author #mpcs #multipleprofitcenters #freelancer