What Actually Counts as an Income Stream (And What Doesn’t)
I think we need to start being a bit more honest about what actually counts as an income stream now.
Because somewhere along the line, we started calling everything “multiple income streams.”
A Substack with 14 subscribers.
A Gumroad product that made $11 in March.
An affiliate dashboard quietly collecting dust.
Three half-finished courses.
A LinkedIn strategy.
A “personal brand.”
A Notion template.
A membership.
A digital ecosystem.
A nervous breakdown.
At some point, it stopped feeling like freedom and started feeling like everyone was trying to turn themselves into a content production facility with a nervous system attached.
And maybe it’s just me, but I think people are exhausted.
Not tired.
Exhausted.
Exhausted by optimisation.
Exhausted by constant visibility.
Exhausted by every human activity turning into:
“you could sell this.”
Even hobbies aren’t safe anymore.
Every time I open LinkedIn now, someone is explaining how they turned breathing exercises, journalling or making candles into a seven-step monetisation ecosystem.
And honestly? I don’t even think most people fully believe half of this anymore.
I think they’re scared.
Scared of money.
Scared of instability.
Scared of relying on one income.
Scared of falling behind while the internet screams:
BUILD.
GROW.
MONETISE.
SCALE.
POST MORE.
The most consistent advice online right now seems to be:
keep performing and eventually you’ll feel safe.
But a lot of it doesn’t feel safe at all.
It feels fragile.
Because if your entire sense of security depends on:
algorithms,
attention,
subscriptions,
clients,
constant output,
or strangers continuing to click on your face forever…
have you actually escaped anything?
Or did you just build a more aesthetic version of instability?
I live in beautiful Switzerland and I recently did a hike that, in all honesty, had absolutely no business being a hike.
The mountain was basically vertical.
But some clever fuck had carved this tiny zig-zag goat path into the side of it, attached chains everywhere so you felt vaguely secure, and then — for reasons still unknown to me — built a little restaurant at the top serving Rösti.
Human beings are unbelievable.
I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
Because it feels a bit like what we’re doing with modern life.
Taking things that maybe were never meant to hold this much pressure…
and engineering increasingly elaborate systems just to keep ourselves climbing.
I also visited an area called Oberäggeri, one of the wealthiest areas near Zug, and I noticed the houses, the incredible amount of building going on – and it genuinely started annoying me.
Not because they were expensive.
Because they were enormous.
Massive boxy houses for two people. And maybe a pedigree dog or cat.
Perfect views.
Perfect kitchens.
Perfect loneliness.
Every house trying to out-view the last one.
And meanwhile online, everyone is building the digital version of the same thing.
More platforms.
More monetisation.
More optimisation.
More audience growth.
More “freedom.”
Multiple Income Streams Are Not Always Creating Security
Somewhere along the line, I realised a lot of us are technically building income streams while becoming emotionally more fragmented in the process.
People are spending half their lives trying to create security while quietly frying their nervous systems.
Managing forty tabs.
Tracking analytics.
Reading endless advice.
Trying to become “discoverable.”
Trying to look consistent and calm online while internally feeling like a browser window about to crash.
And maybe this is where the question changes slightly.
Maybe multiple income streams only really count if it reduces fragility.
If it creates breathing room.
If it compounds quietly.
If it still works when you stop performing for five minutes.
If you are trying to build quieter forms of stability without turning yourself into a full-time content machine, this is still the guide I’d start with:
An income stream that disappears the second you stop posting isn’t very wide.
Turning every hobby into content might technically produce money while psychologically shrinking your life.
Constant visibility is not necessarily freedom either.
That changes things.
Because suddenly, quieter forms of security start counting too.
A small affiliate stream that ticks over in the background counts.
A blog that slowly compounds trust counts.
A practical skill outside your employer counts.
And weirdly…
so does knowing people.
Which feels slightly awkward to admit after years of hyper-independence being sold as the dream.
But I’m starting to think a lot of modern life has accidentally made people more isolated while convincing them they’re successful.
Everyone in their own house.
Their own lane.
Their own subscriptions.
Their own carefully curated survival strategy.
Then something goes wrong and nobody knows who has useful skills, who needs help or who’s quietly struggling three doors down.
And maybe this is part of the exhaustion too.
Everyone is trying to grab each other’s attention all the time.
Every post needs a hook.
Every sentence needs tension.
Every story needs a lesson.
Every human experience gets turned into content before it’s even fully lived.
Even reading online feels tiring now.
You click on something because you genuinely want to think for a minute…
and halfway through someone is funnelling you toward a course, a mastermind, a paid community or a “limited time opportunity” to finally become the optimised human you were apparently born to be.
At some point I realised I wasn’t even reading properly anymore.
Just scanning.
Skimming.
Bracing for the pitch.
Which honestly feels like a pretty grim way for human beings to communicate.
And maybe that’s why this whole “multiple income streams” conversation has started feeling strange to me.
Because some of what we’re calling freedom just looks like a more socially acceptable form of panic.
Research.
Tweaking.
Tracking.
Refreshing.
Consuming endless advice from people who also seem exhausted.
Activity is not always movement. And strangely, we often screech to a halt the moment we need to focus on our lane and put our best foot forward. We do need activity. But the right activity. I wrote about that strange paralysis in Why You Get Stuck After Deciding to Change.
So here’s a tiny experiment.
Not a productivity challenge.
Not a “change your life in 30 days” thing.
Just information.
Learn one useful thing about somebody physically near you this week.
Not online.
Not “networking.”
An actual human being nearby.
The neighbour you awkwardly wave to.
The older couple across the road.
Whoever.
Find out one thing they know how to do well.
Maybe they can repair anything.
Maybe they know how to keep a garden alive.
Maybe they’ve just lived long enough to stay calm when things go sideways.
I don’t know exactly where all of this is heading yet.
I just have a feeling the people who are going to feel richest over the next decade won’t necessarily be the most optimised ones.
They’ll be the people with useful skills, calmer nervous systems, a bit of breathing room…
and other actual humans nearby.
No giant glowing funnel button today.
You’re going to have to sit with your own thoughts for a minute.
Slightly terrifying, I know.
