How to create multiple streams of income and build a sustainable creator business

As a creator, building a sustainable business means more than just doing what you love—it’s about creating stability and freedom to keep pursuing your passion.

The key?

Diversifying your income streams.

By tapping into multiple revenue sources, you can protect yourself from unpredictable changes while growing your earning potential.

Why diversifying income streams is critical

Additional income streams mean more money, but also more planning. Is it really worth the effort? Definitely.

Here’s what you can gain when you diversify your income:

• Financial security: You never know when an algorithm will change or an industry update could make your income stream dry up. Having multiple sources of income protects you, so you’ll still earn some money if there’s a problem with one income stream.
• Increased earning potential: More products and services mean more potential sales, even if your audience stays the same size. For example, if a subscriber buys your online course and joins your coaching cohort, you make more of an impact (and income) without growing your email list.
• Business scalability: Adding several income streams, especially ones like digital products that don’t need constant manual input, can grow your business without working more hours each week.
• Creator burnout prevention: The fear that everything will crash if you take a break is among the top causes of creator burnout. Adding income streams makes your business less prone to feast and famine cycles, which means it isn’t as risky to take a break when you need it.
• Creative variety: Creating content on the same subject for months or years gets old, even if you love your business. Experimenting with different streams of income keeps work interesting and may inspire new ideas.
• Access to new audiences: People in your audience have different needs, preferences, and budgets. Creating a variety of income streams lets you help more people.

How many income streams does a professional creator need?

Our 2024 State of the Creator Economy Report found that professional creators are the most likely to have at least six income streams. More than half of full-time creators have at least three different streams of income.

If you aren’t there yet, don’t sweat it—we’ll cover how to build and manage multiple income streams in a bit.

Examples of top creators with multiple income streams

Diversifying your income sounds good in theory, but what does it look like in reality?

Every creator business is different, but we’ve rounded up three Kit creators to show you what really goes into their businesses.

Ryan Baustert has 9 diverse sources of income

Your multiple income streams can be truly diverse. Take Ryan Baustert as an example; he plays guitar with his band Throw the Fight, teaches other musicians how to promote their work, and consults businesses on website design.

Ryan has three streams of income across his three ventures, making his income truly diverse with nine separate streams.

Gillian Perkins has 7 income streams

Gillian Perkins teaches people how to build online businesses and makes $480,000 a year while working just 20 hours a week. Her annual revenue is split into four categories, but she has multiple digital courses for sale.

Nisha Vora has 4 diverse streams of income

Nisha Vora quadrupled her email subs to 100,000, launched a New York Times bestselling cookbook, and scaled her creator business to four income streams. In addition to her book sales, Nisha has a meal plan subscription, display ads on her blog, and YouTube ad revenue.

How to build multiple income streams

Whether you already have an idea for how to expand your creator business or you’re just browsing, it’s helpful to get a refresher on the different ways you can earn money online. Let’s review twelve types of income streams and how to add them to your creator business with Kit.

1. Sell digital products

Digital products are one of the most diverse categories of income streams for creators. You can create:

• Ebooks
• Templates
• Worksheets
• Checklists
• Fonts
• Apps
• Plugins

One of our favorite digital product strategies is the plug-and-play formula. With this method, you take a process or framework and turn it into something your audience can easily apply in their life.

Digital product example from Kit creator Abbey Ashley

For example, Abbey Ashley runs a 7-figure creator business with multiple digital products to help people build their virtual assistant business, like a collection of contracts and templates that can be put to use immediately.

How to sell a digital product in Kit

Kit Commerce helps you earn a living online as a creator with customizable product pages and pricing.

Setting up a paid product is easy:

Sign into your Kit account (or join us if you haven’t already!). Then, navigate to Earn > Products.

Click New product on the right side of the screen.

Enter your product name and choose between selling the product once or via a subscription. Click Next.

Select the pricing method: a one-time, fixed price, pay what you want, or a payment plan. Then, enter the price and choose the currency. Click Next.

Choose the product category: digital download, newsletter, or something else (i.e., coaching, professional services, etc.) and upload any relevant files. Then, click Next.

Confirm or adjust your domain or landing page where you want to sell the product. Then, click Create Product.

On the following page, you can edit the title, product description, and adjust colors and fonts to match your branding.

When you’re ready, hit Publish to start selling your digital product.

If you need help with email design to get the word out about your new digital product, check out the Kit Marketplace for beautiful templates made just for creators. Madison Wetherill’s product launch template is perfect for promoting your new ebook, cookbook, template, or download.

2. Design and launch courses

Consider a course if you want to give your audience more in-depth information than can fit in a digital product.

There are online course ideas to explore across every niche—from coding boot camps sent through email to on-demand yoga videos or a cooking class with multiple modules.

Course example from Kit creator Justin Welsh

Justin Welsh earns 70% of his income from online courses, one of his four income streams. He used subscriber segmentation and automation to earn $1.5 million in 6 days on a course launch.

How to promote a course with Kit

Kit integrates with popular membership courses like Mighty Networks and Teachable, making it easy to sync customer data between platforms and embed course content into emails.

For example, you can embed your Mighty Network content directly into your emails, which makes it easy for you to promote your courses and events. Kit users who sync their membership platform can also segment and target those audiences with email automation.

Let’s say you want to send a customized thank you email to new course subscribers. Using Kit Automation Rules, you can ensure each time someone buys your Teachable content, they immediately receive the message.

We even have a free email automation template to welcome those new customers.

3. Introduce a membership or subscription

Memberships and subscriptions offer recurring revenue, which is great for establishing a baseline income that doesn’t depend on constant product launches.

Opt for a recurring revenue income stream if you want to provide ongoing content or support for students. Recurring subscription ideas include:

• Monthly business coaching
• A fitness subscription for group accountability
• A paid membership for a fandom
• A paid newsletter for access to exclusive recipes

Membership subscription example from Kit creator Odessa’s Akwaaba Akademy

The Akwaaba Akademy hosts book clubs for children ages 4-6. Each month, they deliver the book selection with state-standard questions to help kids get the most out of each book. Host Odessa is a kindergarten teacher who also offers tutoring services for kids.

How to set up a membership or subscription in Kit

Setting up a membership or subscription in Kit helps you automatically collect payments, so you don’t have to manually keep track of members and billing. Here’s how to do it.

First, sign into your Kit account or create an account to get started. Then, navigate to Earn > Products.

Click New product on the right side of the screen.

Enter your product name and choose ‘Subscription’ for your product type. Click Next.

Enter the price and select the frequency: monthly, quarterly, or yearly. You can add multiple pricing plans, such as a monthly and annual price. Confirm your currency and click Next.

Select how you’ll fulfill the membership, like a members-only newsletter or a recurring service like a coaching call that you’ll arrange with clients. Click Next.

Confirm or adjust your domain or landing page where you want to sell the product. Then, click Create Product.

On the following page, you can edit the title and product description of your sales page, plus adjust the colors and fonts to match your branding. When you’re ready, hit Publish to start selling your digital product.

Finally, you can use our free subscription launch automation to promote your new product to your email list.

4. Use affiliate marketing

If there are products and services you use and know your audience will love, then turning those recommendations into affiliate links can earn you extra cash. When someone buys a product they found through your recommended link, you get a portion of the sale.

Affiliate marketing example from Kit creator Tori Mistick

Tori Mistick, founder of Wear Wag Repeat, has a dedicated page for her favorite dog products. Her audience learns about items from a trusted source, and Tori earns 10% of her revenue from the affiliate links. It’s a win-win.

How to promote affiliate products with Kit

While bloggers typically list their affiliate products on their website, you can also promote them to your email list. Use this free commerce sale email template to link to your favorite products.

Tip: The key to affiliate marketing is relevancy, so consider sending promos to your audience based on your tags and segments. For example, if you want to promote your favorite tent that just went on sale, send the message to people who’ve bought your camping ebook.

5. Expand into consulting and coaching

Coaching packages are perfect for creators who want to deliver a clear outcome, such as hitting a business goal or overcoming a specific challenge.

Coaching plan example from Kit creator Corey Wilks

For example, Corey Wilks’ 1:1 coaching program helps entrepreneurs build fulfilling lives and businesses. The monthly retainer coaching is just one of three income streams for Corey.

How to set up a coaching package in Kit

Coaches and consultants with premium offerings sometimes let clients pay for the program in installments, which is easy to customize in Kit.

To do this, you’ll need to create a Kit account or sign in. Then, navigate to Earn > Products.

Click New product on the right side of the screen.

Enter your product name and choose between selling the product once or via a subscription. Click Next.

Select the pricing method: a one-time, fixed price, pay what you want, or a payment plan. For this example, we chose a high-ticket offer split into a monthly payment plan. Then, enter the price and choose the currency. Click Next.

Choose ‘Something Else’ under the fulfillment category for your coaching services. Then, click Next.

Confirm or adjust your domain or landing page where you want to sell the product. Then, click Create Product.

On the following page, you can edit the title and product description of your sales page, plus adjust the colors and fonts to match your branding. When you’re ready, hit Publish to start selling your digital product.

After you publish your product page, the total cost and payment installment are listed.

6. Host an event, retreat, or workshop

Adding a paid event, retreat, or workshop as an income stream lets you explore a single topic or lesson in depth. Your paid events can be one-off, like a quarterly planning webinar, or available on-demand, like a recording of a previous event.

Not only can workshops add a new income stream to your business, but they’re also a handy way to test out interest in a topic without committing to building an entire video course or months-long coaching cohort.

Workshop example from Kit creator Jay Clouse

Jay Clouse uses a landing page to promote on-demand workshops and add subscribers who want to hear about future events.

How to promote a workshop with Kit

Our free webinar email automation makes promoting a workshop or event to your email list easy with a connected landing page, product, and email sequence. Use this automation to remind subscribers about an upcoming live workshop or event.

7. Introduce a digital tip jar

Digital tip jars are a low-pressure income stream that’s easy to set up. Since you don’t need to set a price or create new content, virtual tip jars are a quick way to give audiences a way to support their favorite musicians, writers, podcasters, and YouTubers.

Digital tip jar example from Kit creator The Perfect French with Dylane

Dylane Moreau teaches French through free and paid content, and a virtual tip jar lets the audience support her work.

How to set up a virtual tip jar in Kit

Virtual tip jars are easy to set up and low pressure for your audience to contribute to. Win win.

The first step to setting up a virtual tip jar in Kit is to sign in or join. Then, navigate to Earn > Tips.

Click Add new Tip on the right side of the screen.

Give your virtual tip jar a name and select your currency. Click Next.

Choose the domain and page URL for your digital tip jar. Click Set up Tips.

Customize your digital tip jar product page by uploading or choosing a photo, perfecting the color palette, and adding some text. Click Publish.

8. Sell physical products or merch

There’s something special about holding a physical product you created. Artists can sell t-shirts, photographers can sell prints, and bloggers can create subscription boxes with their favorite items.

Physical merch example from Kit creator Lavendaire

You can even complement your physical products with your digital income streams, like the Lavendaire daily planner. Aileen Xu created a digital product, The Artist of Life Workbook, as a PDF to complement her YouTube content.

People loved it so much that they wanted a physical copy, too.

Physical products comprise 64% of Aileen’s revenue, alongside YouTube ads, brand deals, course sales, and affiliate and podcast income.

How to promote your merch with Kit

Josh Hemsley’s book announcement email template showcases a product and how to buy it. Customize the free template to send a beautiful email to your subscribers about your new physical products or merch.

9. Explore brand sponsorships

Brand sponsorships pair creators with companies that are relevant to their audience, like when a home design YouTuber mentions their favorite furniture store in exchange for a fee.

Brand sponsorships can happen in videos or text, which means a wide variety of creators can use this income stream. Podcasters and YouTubers can take a break in a video to share a sponsor, while bloggers or influencers can mention brands in their posts.

Brand sponsorship example from Kit creator, Soft Skills Engineering

The Soft Skills Engineering podcast has a list of the brands sponsoring it and information on how to become a sponsor.

How to set up a brand sponsorship in Kit

Kit Commerce has integrated payment processing with low transaction fees, which makes it easy to collect sponsorship payments from brands.

Simply create a new product listing for your sponsorship, customize the one-time or recurring price, and send a link to the live page to the brand.

10. Display newsletter ads

If you already send great emails to an engaged list, consider email newsletter advertising. Similar to a brand sponsorship on a podcast, newsletter ads promote brands within your email.

There are display ads, which stand out as an ad in the email, or native ads that blend brand mentions into the content. You can place ads at the very top of an email, in the middle, or as a footer, though prices usually vary by placement.

Potential newsletter ad earnings with Kit

Here’s a quick example of how much creators could make from newsletter ads, depending on their email list size and ad rate.

How to set up newsletter ads in Kit

Before you can add ads to your newsletters, you’ll need to create a Kit account. Already have one? You’re ready to get started!

From your Kit dashboard, navigate to Earn > Ads.

Click Continue setup in the middle of the page.

Update your domain settings by clicking Settings, if necessary.

Connect your Stripe account if it isn’t already linked.

Select your preferred brands by checking or unchecking categories and advertisers.

Read and agree to the terms and conditions by clicking Kit Ads Terms & Conditions. Then, click Enable Ads.

11. Use Paid Recommendations

There are so many great creator newsletters out there, and you can get paid to share them. The Kit Creator Network has 3,000 creators who promote each other to their audiences through free and paid recommendations.

Here’s how Paid Recommendations work. You choose newsletters you’d like to recommend and feature them in your sign-up flows and emails. If anyone signs up from your recommendation, you get paid $1-$5 (or more).

How to set up paid recommendations in Kit

Want to set up an easy revenue stream for your newsletter? Here’s how Kit Paid Recommendations works:

1. Opt into the Creator Network to set up your Creator Profile and customize which forms the recommendation modal should appear on.
2. Connect your SparkLoop account and get pre-approved in 24 hours to get paid for recommending 100+ newsletters and brands your audience might be interested in.
3. Choose newsletters to promote to your audience. You can filter by creator type or topic to find newsletters with similar audiences. When subscribers join your list, they’ll see the newsletters you recommend and can choose to subscribe to them.
4. When your audience subscribes to a Paid Recommendation in your modal, you’ll get paid! You’ll always be able to see the status of your referrals in the dashboard, and know exactly how much commission is coming your way.

12. Expand your service offering

Adding new income streams can mean branching out into a new format, but expanding on what you already do is also lucrative.

For example, a web designer who creates fully customized websites could build cheaper, templated website options with less customization for people who aren’t ready for bespoke website service yet.

Services example from Kit creator, Lauren Kay

Lauren Kay is an author and writing guide who grew her email list from 500 to 25,000 subscribers in less than a year. As if that growth wasn’t impressive enough, she’s also built five income streams.

While her revenue is split into two categories—agency work and online courses—her agency offers four distinct services. Lauren also recently launched a new website to help freelancers grow their business.

How to promote your services with Kit

Email snippets are reusable pieces of content you can easily place in your emails, like mentioning your services at the footer of every email you send. Here’s how to set them up:

Sign into your Kit account (or join us if you haven’t already!). Then, navigate to Send > Snippets.

Click New Snippet on the right side of the screen and choose Block of Inline snippets, depending on how and where you want to use them.

Enter a name for your snippet and then customize it with text, photos, videos, products, polls, and more. Click Save.

Add snippets to your Kit emails by clicking + in the email editor and choosing Snippet.

Tips to build and manage multiple streams of income

Adding more income streams grows your revenue and diversifies your business. The trick to making each income stream a success, though, is choosing the right mix for your audience.

• Find the right new revenue stream: You need a revenue stream that your audience wants to buy and that you want to create. Ask your audience what content they want to see, poll them on your new income stream ideas, and look at what other creators offer. Also look at your current income streams and think about what iterations sound interesting to you, like turning your favorite webinar into an ebook.
• Mix active with passive income sources: The main benefit of adding income streams is that variety leads to consistency and scale. A mix of active revenue streams like services and coaching plus passive income sources like courses and ebooks lets you cover a wide customer base. Plus, mixing project types could prevent burnout or overworking yourself.
• Sell multiple digital products at different price ranges: Your income stream variety can come from similar products or services at different price points. For example, you might distill some of your one-on-one coaching strategies into short templates for people who can’t invest in premium services right now.
• Mix recurring and one-time revenue streams: Another way to give your audience options is to sell one-time and recurring products and services, like having a monthly membership and a quarterly paid workshop.
• Make offerings for different audiences: You can segment your audience based on more than just budget to create income streams. Use email tags to identify subscribers based on attributes like beginner vs. advanced to create content that’s relevant to them, and then automate your promotion.

Create multiple streams of income with Kit

Just because you want multiple income streams, doesn’t mean you should have to juggle multiple tools.

Kit is the email-first operating system for creators building a valuable business, and it has what you need to add new sources of revenue. Here’s how:

• Use Kit Commerce to collect one-time, recurring, and pay-what-you-want payments to sell your digital products, courses, memberships, consulting, coaching, events, workshops, brand sponsorships, and services.
• Promote your products and services with email marketing templates, automation, and segmentation that integrates with more than 130 tools including course platforms, websites, e-commerce, webinar tools, and affiliate management.
• Get paid to refer subscribers to other creator newsletters with Paid Recommendations
• Create landing pages and forms to promote your newsletter and sell your products and services
• Match with premium advertisers in the Sponsor Network to place ads in your emails

Ready to grow your creator business? Start your free trial now.