How to Diversify your Income Streams: Tips on Slash Career and Passive Income
The covid-19 pandemic fundamentally transformed the way we work across industries, with many employees have been forced to take unpaid leave or even have been laid off. At the same time, remote or hybrid forms of working are replacing our traditional offices. This new norm in the world of work creates challenges and opportunities for employees and self-employed workers to secure financial health.
To protect our livelihood and consolidate our finances, we should not rely on the salary of a full-time job as the single source of income. Instead, we should take active steps in diversifying income streams and getting ready to cope with the challenges brought by the changing workplaces and business environments.
Develop your Slash Career to Ensure Financial Security
In recent years, Slash emerges as a new model of works that provide millennials with multiple jobs and workplace identities. While some people think it is difficult for slashers to ensure a stable source of income, but from the perspective of risk management, diversifying your income streams prevents you from falling into a financial crisis even if a single employer, unfortunately, fires you.
To kickstart a Slash career, you may not have to quit your full-time job right away. You can start using your talents such as photography, programming, UX design, SEO, writing, public relations to develop a side hustle or grab freelance working opportunities.
The most straightforward way to find a freelance job is, of course, to be introduced by a friend or work partner. Another way is to make good use of the freelancing platforms, for example, guru.com and upwork.com. These platforms help you match potential clients and provide a certain degree of contract protection, but you will have to encounter plenty of competitions and get charged with fees or commissions.
4 Tips to Develop Multiple Income Streams through Freelancing
When starting to work as a slasher or a freelancer, you must pay attention to the following details:
1. Guarantee You Will Get Paid
Freelancers and slashers should prepare contracts by themselves, specifying the scope of work, project timeline, payment terms and anything related to your work. The more detailed the agreement, the better you can protect yourself. Unless you are working for a trustable client with a long working relationship, you should always get the contract signed and stamped and receive the upfront payment before you start working.
2.Build a Personal Branding
Freelancers/slashers should build websites acted as your online portfolio. Some freelancing and career social platforms allow users to create a personal profile that looks pretty professional. Still, you must pay attention to the fact that what you submitted on a third-party platform is not truly owned by you. You can neither use your domain nor guarantee the platform will last forever. Instead, having a personal website with valuable content establishes your branding and attract customers in the long run.
As your freelancing business grows, you may consider opening a limited company that gives you more credibility and convenience in hiring people or renting a working place when exploring new opportunities. Having a company bank account also makes it easier for you to manage personal and company finance and possibly give you some taxation benefits.
3. Avoid Conflicts of Interest
If you are working on your side hustle without quitting your full-time job, be careful whether you drive yourself into conflicts of interest by working for multiple clients and employees.
Some companies set rules in full-time employment contracts that restrict employees from engaging in freelance work for their competitors. You may be risking some ethical issues or violating the non-disclosure agreement clauses if you use internal information or take advantage of your full-time to gain freelance opportunities. Remember to make a declaration of interest properly whenever needed.
4.Maintain Work-Life Balance
Ask yourself before you start your freelancing career or side hustle: “How much spare time can I spend on these extra works? Do I have a work-life balance? If not, does it worth giving up my cherished free time? ”
Hong Kong people reportedly work an average of 11 hours a week, higher than anywhere in the world. Make sure your side hustle is benefitting but not ruining the quality of life.
Explore Sources of Passive Incomes
For those who are too busy to be a slasher/freelancer, earning passive income could be the lifeboat to safeguard your finance in the age of instability. Speaking of investment, newbies may think of buying stocks, but in fact, there are plenty of more straightforward choices for lazy investors.
Some popular choices in stable investment are time deposits, bonds, money market funds and blue-chip dividend stocks. Some people may think that earning less than 5% annual return from investment sounds unattractive. Still, as long as you go on investing for 5, 10 or even 20 years, interest-bearing investment products could benefit from the power of compound interest and grow into a valuable asset.
Whether you are an employee, a freelancer or a slasher, it is better to have developed your passive income stream as early as possible. Once you are financially secured, you can devote time and effort to what you are passionate about and live your desired life.
