Seven Income Streams Every Author Needs for a Thriving Business

Stop leaving money on the table! Uncover the seven income streams every author needs to build a truly thriving business. Juliet Clark shares her secrets for diversifying revenue, building an engaged audience, and confidently converting clients. This episode is packed with practical advice for non-fiction authors in the coaching space, exploring how to overcome financial susceptibility to outside risks, leverage overhead, and navigate seasonal dips. Discover how to make your business more interesting and gain peace of mind through multiple income streams, with examples like service-based, product-based, event-based, third-party, and automated revenue.

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Seven Income Streams Every Author Needs for a Thriving Business

Again, I’m solo. We’re going to do a few more solo than we have been in the past, just because I want you guys to do some more learning and understanding about what’s going on around the book world. Before we get started, many of you who are on my list, you’ve probably noticed that we have a new format for the magazine. We have switched over to a weekly newsletter instead of just the magazine, like we’ve had in the past.

We’ve done that mainly because some people said, “This is so much information.” I never have time to sit down and execute it. Also, we’re sharing some more tips from some of those same people who are in the magazine who have blogs, so you can go over and see what it’s all about as well. Expect to get that weekly now, just like the podcast, you’ll get a weekly newsletter.

If you want to subscribe, go over to BreakthroughAuthorMagazine.com. We have changed how you can subscribe. That’ll be where you’ll go in the future. I want to remind you about our events. We have one. If you’re tuning in to this, you probably missed it, but it’ll be up in a podcast later on. Our training in January is with Lynn Xinhua.

I never say her name right. I hope I got it right. It’s the mindset for 2026. It’ll be on January 9th, and you can register for that at BreakthroughEvents2.com. We have a new event page now as well, so that you can get a scope of all of our monthly what’s going on in the month and register for whatever floats your boat, or all of them if you think you need all of them. Once again, that’s over at BreakthroughEvents2.com.

Diversifying Your Revenue Streams: The Million-Dollar Business Secret

I want to talk about diversifying your revenue streams. The reason I’m doing that is because many of when you’ve published a book that your money is not going to be made from that book. That book is a tool. It’s a nurture tool. It’s something you’re selling, but at $1 to $3 a book, you’re not going to become rich from the book.

I want to talk a little bit about this, and this is especially for non-fiction authors who are in the coaching realm. There are a lot of different ways that you can diversify your income streams. A wise person once told me that the only way to get to a million-dollar business is to have seven diversified income streams, which means that it might be the book, it might be coaching, it might be speaking, whatever else she put in there.

For me, it’s affiliate, it’s our courses, it’s our programs that we have, where you can get reports on your reader reports, your business reports. We have a lot of different tools in the fire to achieve the seven streams of income. I just want to talk a little bit about it and put some ideas in your mind about how you can do that, because a lot of this has to do with platform building, too.

That audience for your book is the audience for your business as well. Anytime you’re building that platform, you’re increasing your chances of increasing your revenue streams as well. I want you to sit down before we jump into this, maybe put this on hold for a minute, and just think about where your revenue is flowing from now. Are you happy with it? Is it what could improve that?

Explore where you want more money to come from next year. We’re going to be launching a new program next year. I’m recording this at the beginning of November for December, but we already have our plans for what our new products and services are going to be next year, and starting to get the marketing together. We never want to do that at the last minute.

Crafting Compelling Offers & Conquering Enrollment Conversations

How are you going to create your compelling offers to reflect how you want to work with these clients? One of our challenges that we’re facing right now with our new program development is that we didn’t get the first one out there really well, which helped businesses. We did it. We tried to do it via Power Partners. The second product launch, we’re doing it with a book as well.

People can grab the book. They can come to the program. We’ll still use our Power Partners, but just thinking about what that compelling offer looks like? How are we going to get it out there to work with the clients that we want to work with? How can I get myself prepared and confident when it comes to enrollment conversations?

Me, I don’t have any problems asking about enrollment conversations, but I know a lot of people do, especially in the spiritual realm with spiritual books and abundance and money people. I really have a hard time with being able to combat objections to being able to really present with confidence, because sometimes the confidence isn’t there.

Just knowing how to do that in a really great way and practicing. One of the ways I learned to overcome objections was when I was in real estate. I had a partner every week, and we spent half an hour in dialogue every week, overcoming objections until it got comfortable. Sometimes it’s not comfortable. You’re thinking on the fly when you have to do it.

Just really getting comfortable with those conversations should be a part of your goal, too. If you’re going to diversify those revenue streams, you’re going to have to be a better salesperson as well. People just don’t intuit that they want it. The other thing is that people read your energy. If I’m not confident about something, you can probably tell I’m not confident about it, and you’re going to have hesitation in purchasing it as well.

The “Why” Behind Diversification: Risk Mitigation & Leveraging Overhead

Let’s get to the why of you needing all of these revenue streams. It makes you susceptible, less susceptible to outside risk. I’m going to tell you, we went through a period in 2022, 2023, where we weren’t selling as many publishing packages because people didn’t have the disposable income to come in and spend $10,000 or $12,000. It’s just because their businesses weren’t generating the revenue that they had been in 2020 and 2021.

The result of that is that we focused more on author platform building, which was at a lower price point. We focused more on bringing in book marketing and development. We had a plan to diversify, to make up for that income that wasn’t coming from those publishing packages. It also allows you to leverage your base overhead. If you have more diversification, you’re able to diversify your offerings. You’re able to diversify your staff.

We had different VAs for different products because those VAs are expected to understand inside and out. If I just had one VA that was supposed to cover all of those items we have, they probably wouldn’t be very effective. That really cut down on our costs, too, because we didn’t have people who were unhappy. We had experts whom our clients had confidence in building everything. There were just a lot of benefits to diversifying our staff into areas of expertise on there. That really helped with our business overhead as well. It helps you override seasonal dips.

For us, our really busy season is June, July, August, and creeps into September. The reason for that is that everybody wants their book on the market for the holidays. We sell a lot of platform building, a lot of book marketing. This year, we sold a ton of books marketing for October, November, and December, ramping up for Christmas.

Also, the publishing packages, we get a lot in because they come to us in July and they’re like, “I need to be out and on the market by November,” which, depending on the shape your book is in, can be really challenging sometimes. It helps us override. We have the cashflow to get through that period is always super easy. It’s super busy. We get up into that lull that March, April, May. By the way, August is usually a lull as well. This year it was not, but most years it can be.

We’re really focusing on platform building, getting that book written. What are we going to do? By diversifying those streams, you can really put your focus on what should be done, which time of year, and focus on selling those products and getting them better. It keeps your business interesting. I don’t know about you, but I do not like anything repetitive.

That was one thing I did love about real estate is a different day, different problems, new houses, new listings, new people, new everything. It was always exciting. Sometimes in not good ways, but it was always exciting. By changing this all up within your business and having different focal points at different times of the year, it also allows you to not get into a rut with what you’re doing. It really gives you peace of mind because we used to, before we really engaged in this more diversifying and scaling, we had times of the year where our cash flow got pretty scary. Now we don’t have any time of year where our cashflow is scary.

It’s all flowing and we’re better able to sometimes, as the year get our lines of credit paid down, get the things that keep our business going, our business credit cards paid down. It really gives us peace of mind that we will always have the money to do the projects we want to do, as well as build new projects. We have our marketing innovation panel. Everything that I’m going to talk about on that panel is something new that we’ve developed in the last year.

Developing AI programs and different things like that takes capital. You need to have the resources to be able to do that. Also, it can be the birth of a division or a new part of your company. That’s what happened to us this year is we really branched out into book marketing. We brought along a lot of book marketing partners. Surprisingly enough, in that new division of the company, we actually work with other publishers promoting their books now, too. It really did open up something new and exciting for us as a part of the company.

Exploring Revenue Stream Types: Service, Product, Event, & More

Let’s talk about the different types of revenue streams you can have. Service-based streams, selling your time for money. Everybody out there always says that’s very limiting. For me, that’s the part of the business I really love. I schedule four hours a day, Monday through Friday, and sometimes I’ll take time after. Sixteen hours of my week are devoted to clients and servicing clients, speaking one-on-one, bringing in new business, doing that.

You would call it selling time for money, but that’s where I really interact with our clientele. I don’t consider it a chore at all. I know other people do. That’s up to you whether you want to do that or not. Product-based revenue. It’s always limited by distribution, by inventory, by program management, but you’re out of the process.

When we sell something like the Superbrand Audience Accelerator, which is a product, we pretty much have it automated now. We’re at the point of putting the payment gateway on it. We’ve only been selling it to partners in the past and then putting the information in by hand. We’re getting to the point now that it’s out of beta, where everything’s going to be automated. I just have to check over the finished product.

A lot of times, I’ll check over the input as well because the more fully you fill it out, the better you’re going to get, the better marketing plan you’re going to get. That’s something you can think of too. What is a product that doesn’t require you to be a part of? That might be a that somebody, an evergreen course that someone can just go by and download the stuff to. Those are great as well.

Keep in mind, there is no cash machine. As a lot of people will tell you, with courses, I have occasionally bought a low-cost course, but rarely do I sell a low-cost course without talking to someone about it first. Normally, that’s where I’ve tried to sell them into a bigger program, product, or service, and they don’t have the money for it right now. They can take a baby step into an evergreen program.

Event-based revenue. A lot of people do this. I’m not really big on this. I’ve done a couple of them in the past, but for me, they haven’t brought out what I’m looking for. I don’t, but a lot of that is changing because when I used to do event-based, you had to rent a hotel, and there were hotel room minimums and food minimums, and you could really get burned on it.

Now you can do it all online. It’s not out of the question to do an event online now. It’s sporadic, and there’s a lot of marketing involved with it, a lot of power partnership involved with it. If that’s something you love, then do it. It makes me crazy because the perfectionist in me gets upset about, “This is not going perfectly.”

Third-party revenue, referral fees, and affiliate commissions. We do this really well. We have a lot of power partners that we pay. We get payments from a lot of power partners that come to us. That’s where that extra division of the company came in, where we had those marketing products we sell. We pay all of our publishing partners commission on those. That’s been a tremendous revenue stream because we do that.

Strategic Planning: Time, Capital, and Growth Stages

Automated revenue, automated virtual sales, licensed content. This is something you can do as well. We don’t do a ton of that. We have our evergreen courses, but I don’t do a lot of, “This is my program, and go sell it.” If you’re someone who has some good meditation programs, if you have spiritual programs, there’s a lot of that that you could do as well, where they’re just automated. Here’s how you decide what you’re going to do.

The first thing is time commitment. What time do you have to invest? Now I’m very intentional about those sixteen hours a week. I start work early in the morning. I get a lot of my work done early in the morning, and then I have those clients, and then typically I will finish up work for the day and go off and do whatever I want to do. During the winter in Utah, it’s exercise time. During the summer in Utah, exercise time is in the morning.

During winter in Utah, usually Mondays are twelve-hour days because I’m getting caught up and I’m getting myself positioned for the week. Decide what your time looks like. If you’re not sure of your time, do some time blocking for a couple of weeks. Write down every single thing you do and see where you’re wasting time and what you can get off your desk. Capital requirements. Do you have money to invest?

I mentioned a couple of projects. We tapped our credit lines. We tapped our business credit cards. I know a lot of people don’t have that. They’re running on personal credit cards. My recommendation with capital is to invest in a good program where you can learn how to get business capital for your business. I invested in Merrill Chandler’s. He is an amazing coach. It took me about 6 to 9 months to get it done, but that’s when I started getting my first lines of credit.

I look at my lines of credit, and it’s almost scary. I’m like, “If I ever spent that money, I’d be in real trouble.” If I ever have the occasion for a big project, the money’s sitting there ready to be able to tap. The other thing that really does for you is it gets everything off of your personal credit cards. That was my goal with Merrill’s group was if I got into a big project, all of a sudden, my credit score would go down.

I went to buy a car, and I didn’t have the credit score that I wanted because I had all this personal debt related to my business. It is a game changer in that respect, and going out and getting not only building capital, having bank lines of credit. I’ve got 6 or 7 lines of credit I can tap for at any particular time, and it’s $700,000. Have that available to you in case you do want to embark on a big project. That requires risk, too. That’s risk-taking on your part.

The phase of growth you’re in. I talked about this on the last episode, so many people come to me and they have a brand new business and they’re like, “ I’m going to hire a coach to scale.” I have to step back and go, “You don’t even have a business entity. You don’t have coaching programs. You’ve got to have a good, consistent, stable program before you start scaling.” That is my thought.

That’s every time that we have embarked on scaling, and this is the second scaling coach I’ve hired throughout my fifteen years in business. We’ve had to get everything in order and had steady revenue, and decided, “This is the time for us to grab.” Non-monetary benefit. Think about whether there are other reasons for you to do this?

For us, our diversified revenue streams have created new power partners that create new streams of revenue through them, but also, “Now I know when their events are going on, I know how to help them.” It’s been a relationship builder as well. The joy factor. How much do you love what you’re doing? If you’re someone who thinks, “I don’t want to work, I just want that cash machine,” this may not be for you. If you’re someone who really loves what you do, you will find ways to bring joy into the process.

Author-Specific Revenue Streams: Speaking, Coaching, & Affiliate Sales

Let’s get into some examples for authors of revenue streams that you can build and how they work for you. The first thing is speaking. Many people out there want to be paid speakers, and that’s great. You get paid for being on stage. Speaking is always a great way to sell books and build audiences as well. Building that audience role you into bigger revenue streams. What do I mean by that? Going out and speaking to a local women’s group if you have a women’s book, and getting them to take your lead magnet. Get on my email list, look at our updates.

That can move you into when your book is out, having a book signing at events, and selling those books on the stage. I love selling books from the stage because I get to ditch the 55% that the distributors charge me. Instead of giving away half of my income to somebody else, when I swipe that card for someone, I get to keep that 55% now. It’s a really great way to do it. Live events.

Either having live events where you sell your coaching program or being a speaker at someone else’s live events. I’ve done that as well, where I’ve been a speaker and I’ve sold programs at their event. Of course, it’s a win-win because I’m bringing in new clients, and I’m meeting new people. The host of the event has just made some affiliate cash from the sales that I did at her event. It is win-win. Coaching. I’m going to put coaching and consulting together. What I do is a little bit of coaching, but it’s a lot of consulting.

You can do either coaching, you would have packages with deliverables, probably a group program, or something where you’re not working one-on-one. We have one-on-one as well. Our one-on-one tends to be more consulting, though. Looking at that and being able to roll that into an income stream. That might be, don’t limit yourself to just a group program. Maybe your group program is a middle tier. You have evergreen programs that people can tap into at a lower price point.

Those middle group coaching programs, and then our one-on-one. We even have DIY programs up at the very top where we’ll do it for you, which is probably our most expensive program. Products and programs. We’ve talked about the Superbrand Audience Accelerator. That’s an actual product. Our listicles that we sell, actual products. Author PromoCast, actual products. We have our coaching, our programs that we have people in as well.

Because we’ve expanded to the products element of this, we don’t have as many programs as we used to. I cannot even remember. It’s been over a year since I’ve done a group program. When I do do them, I don’t spread them out into 3, 6, 12-month programs. We do one-month intensives now. We’re in and out and on to the next thing. Also, affiliate sales. We hit the affiliate sales pretty heavily. However, we don’t do affiliate sales for the sake of facility, affiliate sales.

They are all products that my team and I use that we recommend that our clients use. We don’t sell things in affiliate that are not tried and proven. Professional services. I just talked about that DIY. That’s a professional service when we create your lead magnet. I just did that with three funnels in the last couple of weeks. We have a client who wants three different pillars for what he does. We created three different lead magnets and three different funnels for that.

He just went through and looked, and it gave us some suggestions that he wanted changes, and we went ahead and did the whole thing. We have a lot of DIY going on that we do as well. I really want you guys to encourage you guys to think about how you can do this. What are the things that you can do under these categories? Sit down and jot it down. I’m going to give you an example with coaching. Do you sell one-time sessions?

Do you sell group coaching packages? Do you sell deep dive immersions or what we might call a VIP day? Do you sell all of those within? Even when you diversify the stream, there can be further diversification into how finite you are going to diversify what you do. I’ll give you another example. Those live events I talked about. Do you have showcase events? We have showcase events every month. Ours is not a revenue stream directly. They’re free events, but we get clients from them all the time.

Do you offer half-day workshops? I typically do not offer a lot of those, but every once in a while, we will. Workshops with partners. I do a lot of workshops with partners. Weekend retreats. Those are really fantastic. By the way, those weekend retreats, what’s amazing about the way the world has changed is you no longer have to go get a hotel. You no longer have to have those food minimums, all those things we used to have for events. We had one a while back out in Park City. We literally rented an Airbnb, a very nice one, and we brought meals in, and we hiked.

We did a little bit of yoga in the morning, and it was really fun. We were able to offer it at a much lower price point and be able to sell products at the end. Multi-speaker events. Anyplace that you can get on. There is a program that I used for an event I spoke at this summer called EventRaptor. I think you can go over there and check out what’s coming up and apply to be a speaker at those events. Think about something like that. You guys, we’re getting lots of ideas for 2026. Don’t forget to sign up for our January BreakthroughEvents2.com. That is the number two that is in that, not the word for two. See you next week.

Important Links

• Breakthrough Author Magazine
• Superbrand Audience Accelerator
• EventRaptor
• Breakthrough Events 2
• Author PromoCast

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