Making Money Online Tip: Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket

This tip not only applies to making money online, but offline as well. The tip is that you should diversify. It’s a wise thing to do. You’ve probably heard the old saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. I realized just how important this tip is quite recently. I got a big dose of reality. This is what happened. About two weeks ago, I turned on my computer and signed in to my Google AdSense account like I usually do. Suddenly, anxiety hit me like a ton of bricks. Instead of the screen displaying my estimated AdSense earnings for the day, I got an error message stating,

"We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it."

Oh no! I have heard some of the horror stories other people have told about their Google AdSense account being shut down without any prior notice for reasons unknown to them. I immediately started thinking the worst. Was my account about to be shut down? What did I do? Oh no! I wondered what in the world was going on.

I went to the Google AdSense forum and saw that other people were posting that they were getting the same error. I breathed a sigh of relief. I also checked HubPages forums and found that many people over there were getting the error also. That was another good sign. Surely all of our accounts were not being closed. I don’t know how many times I tried logging in that day, but finally after several hours, I was able to log-in as usual. Finally, I was able to see my estimated earnings. What a relief it was to log-in successfully again and see my Google AdSense earnings! Phew, thank God!

I’m already involved in several different ways of making money online, but the Google AdSense error incident made me realize just how imperative it is to practice that old adage of not putting all your eggs in one basket. Eggs can represent your assets, money, time, talent, effort, etc. For those who don’t understand the meaning of the old saying, think of the eggs as being your earnings (Money), and the basket as being your one and only revenue stream (AdSense). Basically, the adage means that if you put all your eggs in one basket and something happens to that one basket, then you’re done. You’re toast. Whereas if you put some of your eggs in basket A, and some eggs in basket B located in a different place, and so forth, if something ever happens to destroy basket A and it's eggs, you’d still have the eggs you put in basket B and the others to carry you through.

Diversification is the way to go. Don’t put all of your hard online work into Google AdSense alone. It should not be your only means of income. If something happens to your Google AdSense account and it gets shut down (God forbid) then you’d be done, toast. It’s just plain smart to have several streams of income just in case one of them goes "Ka-Plooey", especially online. Internet companies come and go. I know, it’s highly unlikely that Google will go out of business, but it’s not 100% impossible either. So, do the smart thing and diversify. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Some different things you can do to diversify and make money online.

• Use a variety of advertising income sources. (Google AdSense, Kontera, Chitka, etc.)
• Sell products online. (eBay, Amazon.com, Yahoo Stores, Ecrater, etc.)
• Write articles on revenue sharing websites. (HubPages, Snipsly, Squidoo, etc.)
• Create and maintain free blogs and websites. (Blogger, Weebly, DevHub, etc.)
• Create and maintain blogs and websites on your own domains. (Wordpress, GoDaddy, Host Gator, etc.)
• Be an affiliate marketer for affiliate programs. (Clickbank, Linkshare, Commission Junction, etc.)
• Be a freelance writer. Write for websites. (Elance, Pay Per Post, Triond, TextBrokers, etc.)
• Find part time, work at home jobs such as a virtual assistant, customer service rep., etc. (Arise, Alpine Access, Convergy’s, Live Ops, West At Home, etc.)

There are lots of other things you can do to create different streams of income. The ones above are some that comes to mind right away. Just find something to match your style and personality and do it. You need something to fall back on if the unlikely actually does happen someday. Diversify today if you haven't already. Lastly, I have to repeat that old saying one last time, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket".