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As a freelance online community consultant, I spend a lot of time thinking about ways to stabilize my income to reduce the ups and downs that come with having my own business. The most obvious solution is to manage your pipeline to make sure that you have new projects to replace the ones that are completing, but it’s also a good idea to have alternative income streams to complement your main client work and fill in any gaps.

In an ideal world, you finish one project on Friday with your next project ready to start on Monday; however, we don’t live in an ideal world, and even our best planning efforts occasionally go awry. While my client base has been fairly steady, I’m always concerned that I might have gaps. I would rather have plans to fill those gaps rather than being caught off guard and unprepared, so recently, I have been experimenting with alternative income streams that will generate regular revenue without relying entirely on client work.

This isn’t a new topic on WebWorkerDaily. Georgina recently wrote a great post with some of her recession avoidance techniques: saving more, managing debt and spending, and strategies for finding new work and staying motivated, while Anne Zelenka wrote a great post with 10 new ways to make money online, and Mike and Aliza followed up with 10 more new ways to make money online. However, I wanted to write about my personal experiences with alternative income streams.

Regular blogging and writing gigs in your area of expertise are a good place to start. I started blogging here on WebWorkerDaily last December, and I have really enjoyed the experience. I can do the writing whenever I have some spare time, in between client meetings or in the evening, so it doesn’t interfere with my regular client work. In this case, I get to do something that I love and I get paid for it, so the revenue stream from blogging was an easy first step for me.

My second regular income stream comes from a self-published book. Late last year, I decided to take the online community content from my blog and turn it into an e-book: “Companies and Communities: Participating Without Being Sleazy“. While I started this project as a PDF e-book, it eventually snowballed into something bigger with Kindle and paperback versions now available. This was a great experience in a couple of ways.  Not only is the revenue from the book useful, but by taking the existing content from my blog, updating it and reorganizing it, I found several gaps in my writing where I had talked about the later steps in the community-building process without first outlining the work that needs to come before. You need to be a little careful with this approach, since you must make sure that you own the rights to the content before republishing it. If you are blogging for a company, you probably don’t have the right to republish that content.

I am also experimenting with training classes. I held my first Yahoo Pipes training class last week in Portland, Ore., with about 10 students. As a first class, it went pretty well, but I still need to work on the course content to make a few improvements before I do a second class in late June. I’m hoping to expand my training classes with face-to-face training on other topics, like online community management, and I also hope to reformat the material into an online course, too. Offering it online would allow me to make it available to a wider audience and, hopefully, increase the frequency of the class.

These efforts have come with a whole new set of challenges for me. The biggest challenge has been pricing, which seems to be part art form, part science that I have yet to master. I tend to make the rookie mistake of pricing things too high and then needing to offer discounts or lower prices later. I am starting to get a better feel for pricing these types of products and services, so hopefully this should get easier. My second challenge is marketing. While I do a pretty good job of promoting my work and getting the word out via social media, the people who need more training and my book are not the people who live and breathe social media, so I need to get better at finding traditional marketing channels to augment my marketing strategy.

What are your alternative income streams? What are your success stories, and what challenges have you experienced?

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Hold on to your clients. There will be the occasional client who will be slower in paying out invoices, or even clients who give up and stop requesting your services altogether.  Take the time to identify which of your clients might do these things.

Watch for nervous clients that might see your services more as a luxury than a need. Then, formulate a plan to ensure that they will stay with you.  Here’s what you’ll need to remind clients:

• You’re paying extra attention to their needs. Clients will appreciate knowing that you actually care about what happens to their business.  Let them know that you’re open to hearing them out.
• The ROI (return of investment) you’ll provide. Remind your clients how much profit your services will bring to their business.  They should focus on that number and rather than your rates.
• The many options available to them. Instead of offering a single quote at the end of your proposal, offer different packages and optional services so that they can choose the ones that are tailored to their needs and budget.
• Your authority. Why are you the go-to person for your client’s demographic and not anyone else?  Is it because you’re part of that demographic yourself?  Or is it because of your experience with hundreds of other similar clients?

For teleworking employees, now’s the time to be more assertive and upfront about what you contribute to the company.  How much money are you saving the company each month just by teleworking?  How has your productivity increased?  Reminding your colleagues and your supervisors of how indispensable you are as a remote worker will decrease the possibility of being laid-off or called back to work in the office full-time.

Diversify your income. While you could be one of those lucky freelancers who are getting more business than ever, it won’t hurt to try some passive income to give your earnings a boost.  Also, try to explore the different ways you can earn money online.  Find out if there are services or products you can provide that you haven’t fully explored yet.

If possible, cut down on service and app subscriptions. Take the time to evaluate all the services and applications you are currently using, trim the non-essentials.  If you find that you’re not using your landline at all, then why keep it?  Stick with your mobile phone instead.  Also, see if there are cheaper internet plans from other providers and search for reviews online.  You might get a better deal elsewhere.

In an earlier post here at WWD, Aliza Sherman asked about how much we pay for web apps.  I’m glad to say that I pay less than $10 per month for a web app, mostly because most of the apps I need are available for free.  Find out which of your paid apps provide a return of investment, make you more efficient, and don’t have free alternatives.  For the rest, see if you can find a cheaper payment plan or package.

Become more efficient with your time. This reduces computer use and lowers your energy consumption.  Or, if you have both a desktop and a laptop, opt for using the laptop most of the time, since it uses 2/3 less energy.

It also helps to make an effort to be efficient especially with your non-billable hours.  During your workweek, we spend some time filling up invoices, replying to emails, reading blogs about the industry we’re in, etc.  Usually, we don’t bill for these minor work tasks.  Because of this, it’s best to avoid distractions, such as playing Spider Solitaire, while doing these things.

Differentiate yourself. These days, many businesses are mostly focusing on the rates included in your proposal, rather than the proposal itself.  This doesn’t mean you should lower your prices.  Instead, be clear about why you’re worth it.

If you’re letting your branding plan gather dust in a file cabinet (as I have), it’s time to take that plan out and evaluate how it fits into the present.  As you do that, try to answer the following questions:

• Why should a client pick you and not a much cheaper off-shore contractor?
• Do you have any extra training or experience that most contractors don’t have?
• Do all your promotional materials, from your website to your LinkedIn profile, communicate what makes you different?

Answering these questions will allow potential clients to differentiate you from the thousands of other freelancers who want to do business with them.  Plus, they won’t be looking at you based on price alone.

Network. It’s time to overcome our solitary tendencies and make stronger business connections – and I don’t just mean following a thousand people on Twitter.  There are businesses and individuals out there that fit your target market like a glove, but you just don’t know about them.  Find them and make contact.  You don’t have to sell your services on the first email or phone call.  Get in touch first, and slowly build up from that.

Instead of being pessimistic about the financial crisis, we should take this opportunity to reevaluate our businesses and make them stronger.  If we do this right, the most important outcome is that we’ll prove to ourselves that teleworking is as flexible and resilient as promised.

What are you doing to ensure financial security as a web worker?  How has the economic downturn affected your business?

Photo Credit: Image from Rodolfo Clix from stock.xchng

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I’ve talked in the past about the secure CrossLoop client and the CrossLoop Marketplace as a means to promote your business, but some recent updates have made it an even more compelling place to advertise your services and acquire new clients.

Since we last wrote about CrossLoop they have not only added PayPal integration and a communications console to facilitate easier messaging, but today a direct chat function was also introduced. This handy features allows potential customers to connect and communicate with you in real time.

From marketing and customer acquisition, through the service process and ending with payment and review, the suite of tools and services provided by CrossLoop can be an integral part of a successful and profitable remote support business.

The marketplace listing favors those who are currently available and those who have higher numbers of completed support sessions, so getting involved early and building a history could be an advantage moving forward.

Crossloop is also getting some significant press lately so it might be a good time to set up a profile and take advantage of folks who might be hearing about and investigating it for the first time.

For the time being, CrossLoop isn’t charging any listing or transaction fees, so other than the time you inves to create an account and get your profile set up, there is no charge to test the waters and see if it might be a good solution for you.

Do you offer remote support to your clients? Would CrossLoop work for you?

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• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
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