My 15 Streams of Income At Age 38

At age 38, I have, for the last 3 years, maintained an average gross income of over $300,000 a year. The key to these multiple income streams is doing whatever I can to establish a new income stream year after year. I have been earning a six-figure income since 2016, and I’ve been self-employed for a decade after leaving an office job, making a little over $30,000 a year. I invest roughly 40% or more in my business and pay taxes, but I still have a six-figure income after taxes. I say nothing to brag but for transparency and context when discussing making money. What you make is not really relevant without understanding what you retain and the marginal cost within your business.

I also didn’t build all my streams of income all at once. The skills I used to do all of this are things I’ve been working at since I was a teenager. While it puts me in a fantastic position compared to most people or the average person, someone starting young can put in a fraction of the time and get better results because they have access to more information and are not limited by the technology of their time.

How Roberto Blake Makes His Money

How much money you make and how you make it is often the most searched question for by any public figure, author, or social media influencer. Essentially I make my income as a Content Creator no matter how you look at it. Here are the main ways I currently make the most money (rough estimates:

• $10,000+ a Year is Now from Book Sales as a New Author
• $30,000+ a Year of My Income is from YouTube Revenue on the Platform
• $100,000+ a Year is from Sponsored Content Across Platforms
• $90,000+ a Year is from Coaching and Workshops
• $90,000+ a Year is from Affiliate Links Across Platforms

I make roughly 15 different income streams and receive 1099 tax forms from nearly 30 companies. These income streams were built throughout my adult life, but most of them were developed over the past 10 years or the more recent 5 years for many of them.

As of the writing of this post, I don’t sell a course for hundreds of dollars, but I will be developing courses like this shortly. I don’t see having a course or not having a course as a point toward someone being more or less credible. I do think that narrative appeals to a certain group of people. Still, plenty of people are legitimate course sellers, and value is determined individually. Courses ultimately are just content; if you receive the content described, then I don’t see a problem with it, though I do take issue with some course sellers’ distasteful marketing style.

MY 15 STREAMS OF INCOME AT AGE 38

1. YouTube Ad Revenue / Facebook & Instagram Reels Revenue
2. Donations from YouTube and Twitch
3. Membership Site: Awesome Creator Academy
4. Sponsored Content/ Brand Deals
5. SAAS Affiliate Programs
6. Amazon Influencer Program
7. Amazon KDP Book Royalties and Ingram Spark Book Royalties
8. Coaching Calls: Awesome Creator Academy
9. Public Speaking
10. In-person and Virtual Workshops
11. Digital Download Products
12. Print-on-Demand Products
13. Consulting Services and Advisory Board Stipends
14. Licensed Content Royalties (LinkedIn/Skillshare)
15. Selling Used Camera Gear

THE SKILLS REQUIRED TO EARN THIS KIND OF MONEY

To earn this kind of money, several skills are essential. Many people underestimate the technical and creative ability that content creation in multiple formats requires. I have a background in photography and graphic design. I studied graphic design and advertising in community college but took an entire degree worth of electives around art, photography, marketing, and technology.

During my teenage years, I worked in retail and often in commission sales jobs in the mall. I learned communication, sales, and marketing from the school of hard knocks, one customer at a time, and how to negotiate rates as a freelancer.

Communication skills and salesmanship are vital to achieving this level of success, but you also need technical ability and hard skills to scale your income.

Throughout my entire life, I have built creative and technical skills, primarily focused on the visual arts. In my early 20s, I entered my professional career in design, advertising, and marketing. Through this professional work, I learned about the concept. I gained the capacity to scale my skills by learning higher levels of online distribution, client acquisition, and the fundamentals of traditional marketing, as well as becoming an early adopter of online marketing and social media.

My 30s taught me the true lessons in entrepreneurship one can only gain through experience. It was also here where execution matters, and you don’t have to prioritize learning more. The information and skills I obtained in my 20s were more than enough to earn a six-figure income. It was a matter of applying them over time and moving away from wage-based and hourly earnings to results-based earning and value-based pricing models.

Additionally, having a community, an audience, a customer base, and clients are separate things, even though they can easily overlap today. By developing and managing all of these different relationships, I was able to deliver several levels of value and monetize them.

People who pursue a traditional income do not have versatility and variability, and the assumption is that their consistency offers more stability. I would argue that this is rarely the case. Entrepreneurship’s success and failure rate is often cited, but not the reasons for it.

I tend to relate it to the analogy of the success rate of people who have fitness goals vs. the success rate of people who obtain their fitness goals and ideal body. When it comes to becoming a high earner or entrepreneur, people are very quick to assert that you are better off not trying since you will most likely fail. This is not applied when it comes to becoming fitter, despite the fact most people are not in great shape, or even to studying, despite the fact very few are honors students.

I hope to significantly increase the success rate for those entering the creator economy and creative entrepreneurship through transparency, encouraging critical thinking, revealing and explaining best practices, and helping others develop skills.