I am a big believer in having multiple streams of income on autopilot.

By this I mean, I have at least a half dozen sites up and running right now that require very little work to maintain. In return, they pull in $4,500 to $6,500 a month in sales.

Everything is automatic. From the sales transaction to delivery of the product. This works out beautifully for me.

Work that I did last year for example, continues to pay me with very minimal maintenance on my part.

By little, I mean literally a few minutes here and there answering customer service issues.

Whether these sites pull in $500 a month or $2,000+ a month, they all add up to a nice income on autopilot. (Note, these income streams are totally separate from this membership site which is much more involved and not an autopilot type of situation).

I am also safeguarded from any major disruption in one of the income streams that may occur.

If a huge competitor comes in and stops one income stream to a trickle, I still have several more come in from different sources. It isn't too hard to see how desirable this is.

Want to know the really good news?

You can do the same thing on your own. Regardless of what business you currently have. You can either add one of these income streams to an existing site or create something totally separate from what you are currently doing.

Want Some Proof And Some Guidance?

This series of articles is going to take you through the evolution, birth and growth of my next automated stream of income. This isn't theory but real world application of the steps involved and what it takes. I plan on showing you everything that went into it, the costs and time involved and most importantly the results!

Getting Started - The First Steps

One of my first objectives was to set out and determine what it was that I was looking to accomplish with the new site. After some time thinking it over I decided on the following:

My Goals For The New Income Generating Site

• Minimal upkeep time once it is in place
• Healthy income potential. Let's say a short term goal of $200 - $300+ a week (on autopilot remember!)
• Short start up time and effort
• Minimal costs to get going. I will shoot for under $100 in startup costs

This should really be some useful information as it demonstrates many of the concepts that go into making a successful and profitable site. Let's get started...

Before I tell you the actual website address, let's see how the concept for the site came about first. (That way I know I have your attention!)

The particular evolution of the site I am talking about came about in a few different ways.

• I was interested in adding another stream of profit to my income, and;
• I needed a little mental diversion from the big project I was working on at the time, and;
• I wanted to demonstrate to my subscribers from scratch how I did this so everyone could learn from it.

1. Create an informational based product on my own to sell
2. Find an undermarketed product and either buy the rights to sell it or make a joint venture deal with the author to sell it for them
3. Find a product with an affiliate program that I could promote and get a percentage of each sale generated

The only problem?

I didn't have a particular product in mind that I wanted to create. I also wasn't interested in buying resell rights for a product to sell.

I have done each of these options in the past.

I can tell you upfront that out of these options, having your own product is the way to go for the big profits. The only problem I had with that is that my time was limited as I was furiously working on another big project at the time.

I wasn't opposed to selling someone else's products via an affiliate program so that the possibility I was leaning towards. But which product to choose?

I decided I didn't want to choose any one program. It was too limiting in my mind. I wanted the ability to benefit from numerous ones.

One reason for this is that I really respect the brilliant move of one well known internet marketer: Allan Gardyne.

Allan Gardyne of http://associateprograms.com is in the enviable position of promoting affiliate programs to affiliates.

It is such a beautiful concept. They turn to him to find out which affiliate programs are the ones to join. They in turn buy his recommendations when he makes them to his list. He does very, very well for himself. In the range of tens of thousands of dollars a month. I kept racking my brain for a similar yet different model I could use.

It finally came together for me when I read a question in one of the forums that I visited. I'll go into that in the next article.

Coming up in the next article in this series:

• What direction I decided to take with my future site
• Some of the considerations I made to keep things as simple as possible
• Choosing my site name, design and hosting company. All done for under $40
• How quickly I was able to get it up and running