By Tom Rankin
Nothing lasts forever. Many of your current clients — and that recurring revenue — will likely be different in five years’ time – if you slack on building strong relationships with them. Simply maintaining the status quo could easily see you ending up with less clients on the books, and a rapidly dwindling income.
When you’re looking to develop long-term relationships (and more importantly, reliable income), it pays to introduce multiple recurring revenue streams to keep business flowing. Diversifying your cash flow means you’ll have more ways to keep the money rolling in.
In this piece, we’ll look at three strategies that can help you diversify, including reseller hosting, as well as care and maintenance packages. However, before that, let’s take a look at why you might want to implement recurring revenue streams in the first place!
Why you should implement recurring revenue streams and look to diversify
Having multiple revenue streams is a great way to keep the money flowing consistently.
Recurring revenue streams — essentially a parallel, secondary income source – can do much more than increase your bank balance. If those revenue streams are also diverse, they’ll help you promote yourself as a three-dimensional business with a variety of services.
For example, while you might offer web design as your primary service, providing search engine optimization (SEO) or graphic design skills, as well, can boost your reputation, offer access to a new client base, and ensure a more steady income.
However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty of other practical reasons to implement diverse and recurring revenue streams, namely:
Your business won’t be reliant on one source of income.
You can switch focus, depending on the success of a specific revenue stream.
While there are a number of clear reasons to diversify, it’s worth noting that the extra effort may cause some administrative hassle, and take you away from your core offerings if you’re not careful. To avoid these problems, it helps to focus on recurring revenue streams that are proven winners.
3 recurring revenue streams to bolster your income and help retain clients
While this list doesn’t encompass every recurring revenue stream available, these options are both potentially lucrative and simple to get into.
1. Comprehensive, ongoing web support packages