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I can’t quite recall where I first heard the phrase “multiple streams of income” or where I first learned about the concept. I often associate such thoughts with M.J. DeMarco’s The Millonaire Fastlane, which I unabashedly recommend. It’s been quite a few years now since similar phrases such as “hustle culture” and “finance bro” entered the cultural lexicon, and judging from general internet sentiment they’re kind of ridiculed now, thought of as stale, self-absorbed greedy fantasy. Maybe they always were. So why, in 2026, am I talking about creating multiple streams of income?
Because I still want money. There, I said it. I want it for security, to plan for the future, and for the opportunities it creates. Today, especially in this current god-awful economy I want it more than ever. Prices are soaring, it’s harder than ever to buy a house or a car, and it sometimes feels near impossible to get ahead in life.
The reasons why this is fall outside the scope of this article and website. But back in 2020 I started thinking about if it would be possible to create multiple income streams for myself and what that might look like. A lot of online videos and articles make it seem like building multiple streams of income is as easy as just listing them out on paper. But it takes work, and it takes time.
And I by no means have it all figured out. But in this article I’m going to discuss my plans for creating multiple streams of income, what’s been working, what hasn’t, and what I plan to pursue in the future. My hope is that this will provide some real-world insight (warts and all – see affiliate marketing) into possible planning for your own financial future and maybe give a little inspiration to those out there hoping to do this for themselves.
Basic Income Guidelines
Before I start listing out my income streams I’ll give a little up front information on what constitutes an income streams in my opinion. I hate it when people online list out retirement investments or any investments that only exist on paper. Investing, and certainly saving for retirement in an IRA, is something I strongly believe in, but to me, a stream of INCOME means that you have money flowing either into a checking/savings account or directly into your hand in the form of cash. I recently saw my brokerage account go up by $2K and now a couple weeks later it’s now down by $2K. No income flowed into my coffers and it only existed on paper for a short time. Now if you do take profits regularly then maybe this doesn’t apply to you, but for me, I’m pretty much only putting money into investments, not getting anything out.
Along these same lines, I’m not including a HYSA, or high-yield savings account. I do have one, and it does produce some additional funds through that higher interest rate, but that money just stays in there and I’m choosing to not make it available for anything. Your situation might differ. Here I’m only including ventures that produce liquid income that goes into one of my checking/savings accounts.
A Word About Passive Income
Except for this first income stream I’m going to mention, passive income doesn’t really exist for me. I can see where it’s possible, like with SaaS or selling a digital product, but so far these things aren’t something I’ve really worked towards.
Sometimes income feels passive, like when I sell a $500 book that I listed 6 months ago and forgot about. But most of these streams take a lot of work to start and also to maintain. I’m fortunate in retirement to have a flexible schedule so I can pursue these different opportunities. That’s very much by design. I hate 9-5’s and would rather be extremely busy juggling pursuits that mean something to me.
Military Retirement Pay & Compensation (1-2 Income Streams)
I retired from the military in 2022 and like most retired veterans I now recieve retired military pay plus Veterans Affairs compensation. These portions of income arrive like clockwork every month and require no work on my part. They are just about the most dependable streams of income you could ask for. The retirement pay I recieve is only a portion of what I was paid when I was active duty.
In 2020, I was already looking towards retirement and knew that this would be my first solid income stream to build upon. This is also the only income stream that I now consider truly passive, in that all the work to establish it was done up front during my 20 year career. I don’t feel comfortable giving actual numbers here, but I’ll just say that this is a sizable chunk and since my wife also works now, we pretty much try to keep our expenses covered with this combined income alone.
My goal in 2020 was to be able to stay afloat with these income sources and then build others to try and get ahead in life. I consider my military income 1 source, but you could call them 2 if you break it down to mil pay + compensation. My wife’s pay would be a 3rd income stream although that’s not my doing, so I’m not counting it. Obviously, it provides a huge safety net and helps make what I do on my own possible.
Bookselling (1-2 Income Streams)
I kind of stumbled upon selling books online through accident after retirement. If you’re curious about this I’ve written more about it here and here. Again, you could consider bookselling as a whole 1 source of income, but I’m going to call it 2 since until recently I only sold on eBay. I’ve been expanding this year to sell on Whatnot as well and it requires a little different approach and definitely extra work that I wouldn’t be doing if I was still only eBay-exclusive.
eBay ($2,700 per month)
I started selling books on eBay in 2024. What started as an experimental curiosity quickly developed into a small-time side hustle, which later turned into a near full-time effort to scale up and optimize my “business” as much as possible. Most days, so far as income is concerned, eBay commands most of my attention. It feels good to have a job where I feel that how hard/smart I work more directly correlates with the amount of sales/income I recieve. Sales vary quite significantly from month to month. In the chart shown for this year you can see that for a full month, total sales have been as low as $2,700ish and as high as $7,000+. After fees and expenses, I keep about two-thirds of the total sales shown here, which averages out to around $2,700 a month.
Whatnot ($106 per month)
This year I started experimenting with selling books on Whatnot. Whatnot is an interesting platform and I am really enjoying learning about it and selling on there. I sell different items on here that maybe wouldn’t do as well on eBay or just wouldn’t be worth the effort to list. Most Whatnot sales occur from sellers conducting live shows where they run short auctions in real time. However, you can also list “Buy It Now” inventory and essentially have your own store on the platform as well. I’ve gotten some decent sales this way and have only just started to put more time and energy into it. So, even though I haven’t made that much on here YTD, I am really excited about the possibilities of selling on this platform, through both the show/auctions format and BIN shop.
To increase my sales and income, I plan to conduct shows once a month and increase the inventory of my shop to at least a few hundred items. My shows and sales on Whatnot this year have been extremely sporadic, but if I consider the total take home amount I’ve made and take the average of it over the first 6 months of this year it comes out to $105.69 per month.
Blogging (1 income stream, $9 per month)
Now we come to the website! I started upgradedragon.com in 2018 I believe it was, but didn’t start really producing content in earnest until 2020. Actually, come to think of it, 2020 was an extremely productive year for me which is crazy to think about since that year was so crazy in general for all of us, and I was working more than ever. But I digress…. It wasn’t too long after I started writing for the website that I got approved for Google Adsense, and I immediately started raking in the pennies, lol. To date this is the only way I make money from the website and to be honest, it isn’t anything significant. Google requires that you reach a threshold of $100 in order to recieve a payout. I only reach this threshold maybe once a year or so. While it’s not anything I can depend on, it is nice when an unexpected payment of $100ish appears in my business checking account.
I did have a plan to scale up content and increase views, thereby increasing the ad revenue circa 2023….and it was working! If I hadn’t unexpectedly fallen into bookselling I probably would’ve tried to keep up with this, although it was really time intensive and there is always the chance you can spend hours on an article only to hear crickets back from the great void of the internet. So yeah…only time will tell as to whether or not I keep going with this. Right now it’s not very lucrative but there are other things important besides money, right? Plus I hate to throw away all the work I put into it. If I take the average of my once a year Adsense payout, it comes out to just shy of $9 per month.
Current Streams of Income
That’s it! Impressive, huh? (no, not really) Well that’s all so far as actual streams of income that make me actual money. So, depending on how you count it, I currently have between 3 and 5 streams of income, some of which pay me well and some of which are hardly worth mentioning. I have fun thinking about this stuff though and am proud of the progress I’ve made. I remain optimistic about the future and am still actively working on improving these streams and pursuing new ones.
Income Streams I’d Like to Develop
Music (income potential: $200-500 per month)
My degrees are in music and that’s largely what I did for the Air Force. Both prior to, and during my career, I worked off and on in local music scenes. I have a high degree of confidence that I can start doing this again, depending on the time and energy I’m willing to put towards it. Since 2018, when I went to be an MTI at USAF basic training, I haven’t played a single gig. I’d gotten pretty out of shape on my instrument(s) (saxophone primarily). So, I’ve been working as consistently as I can to try and get my skills back up to par. If I could get a handful of gigs every month I could make a few hundred dollars extra.
For some really wishful thinking, I’m also interested in pursuing working on piano as well. The only hang up is I’m not really a piano player yet, lol. A year ago I started taking lessons with my kids’ teacher and I’ve definitely made progress, just not to a professional level. However, I do feel that I have a good idea of what level I’d need to be at and what skills I’d need to have under my belt in order to get some gigs on piano. This is a long term project, but I’d love to one day be able to get a solo piano gig at a restaurant a couple times a month.
Affiliate Marketing (income potential: I’d be happy with any $)
This is such a funny one. I almost put this under current streams of income as I’ve been pursuing affiliate marketing in some form or another since about 2020. Whenever I see YouTubers talking about their multiple streams of income this is always one that is present, usually with impressive numbers to match. Alas, I have yet to make one single commission from affiliate sales. I’m not totally sure why this is, but mostly I think it’s because I don’t have a big enough audience. Still, I’ve gotten plenty of clicks, hundreds and hundreds over the years and you’d think that at least 1 would’ve panned out. Lol. Anyway, I can’t help but laugh at this. Even though it’s probably a fool’s errand I’m going to keep pursuing this (I just joined eBay’s Ambassador program). Let me know if you have any tips, lol.
Stock Trading (income potential: dicey/unknown – $$$)
As opposed to the mini-rant I went on in the beginning of this article, here I’m referring to taking profits from stock investments, i.e. selling when shares are high and buying in when shares are low. I recently tried this out with some Rocket Lab stock. I sold off a few shares and recently bought back in after they had dropped back down again. But what did I do with the money I made from the sell off?? I just kept in my brokerage account, lol.
Wheeling and dealing shares of single stocks is something I’m interested in, but I don’t know if I have the mindset and/or stomach for it. I enjoy learning about various sectors of the market, individual companies, how world events shape the economy, etc., but an individual only has so much time and attention. Staying on top of things requires a lot of attention, plus there’s the whole capital gains tax component that I’m not sure I want to mess with. In addition to this, the market has mostly been up over the past few years, making it seem like it’s super easy to make gains, but things will change when there’s a prolonged downturn.
A Work in Progress
I hope you enjoyed this look at an average joe trying to get his income streams together. As with most things, I’ve had some successes and some failures too. My main areas I’m working towareds improving now are Whatnot and music. I’m also trying to keep this website afloat while not having much time to dedicate to it.
Right now I have 3ish-4ish streams of income, but I’d love to improve that to 5 or so streams that are significant and dependable. Do you have multiple streams of income? Any certain ones you’d like to share and/or discuss? Drop them down in the comments below or send me an email at upgradedragon@gmail.com Thanks and see you next time!
