Here’s an idea for the graphically-inclined out there. If you’re not a Photoshop whiz, fear not: the rest of us can get in on the action too.

A tshirt can say anything. It can be political, it can be funny, or it can tell total strangers which summer camp you volunteered at last year. Here’s an idea though that’s not very new, but still worth a second look. Doctor up a couple original designs with your favorite graphics program and put them online. With a good design and the right keyword choices, even an unpromoted shirt can make money.

In December 2005 I had discovered CafePress and gave it a spin. I was really into poker at the time, so I spent some time putting together a fairly simple design that I would wear myself. That’s a pretty important benchmark I think, to ensure quality. If you wouldn’t wear your shirt out in front of your friends without telling them you made it, don’t expect anyone else to do the same.I uploaded my design and customized my “store” a little bit with descriptions and graphics. I set my prices, and through no conscious decision, didn’t return for the better part of a year. I simply forgot about it entirely. It wasn’t until I received an email from CafePress telling me that I had hit their $25 payout minimum, and they didn’t know where to send the money. Needless to say, that got my attention.I logged in and found I had sold, on average, one to two shirts per month for the entire year. That’s not much, but that’s ZERO promotion. All I did was make a good, clean design and tag it with as many relevent (no, I did not spamdex CafePress) keywords as it would allow. The shirt showed up every time someone was looking for anything related to poker. There are people out there making their living from CafePress, and I can see how.

What if I had made dozens of designs on par with that one and spent more than an afternoon figuring out what made CafePress tick? I am certain that with good promotion and placement, any good design could generate some income. Constant promotion is active income though, so keep that in mind. An ongoing commitment would be required to milk any useful level of money out of this system, but a trickle CAN be generated passively.

The inspiration for this post stemmed purely from the almost-daily emails I’ve been receiving from CafePress notifying me of new sales for the last two weeks. Christmas shopping, no doubt.

Even a moderately-inept investor could tell you that diversification is important. They won’t tell you, however, that it’s just as important to diversify where you GET your money, as it is to diversify where you PUT your money.

The concept of diversification is simple. By spreading your money around, the chances that any one event could totally take you out of the game are reduced. You can learn more about the diversification as a risk-reduction strategy with Investopedia’s article on Diversification. The old standby, Wikipedia, also has a much friendlier article on diversification.

We’re told not to “put all our eggs in one basket,” but that’s what we do everyday. Where does your money come from? If you’re like most people, you get up and work for someone else everyday. In exchange for your time and your energy, you have a stream of money gushing (or trickling) toward you in the form of a paycheck. If someone turns off the flow, you could be SOL and unable to make your rent payments. It’s rarely your hand on the spigot, either.

Let’s apply the concept of diversification to income now. Let’s say that in addition to your job, you find a few other ways to make some extra money. Maybe you’re turning in scrap metal, maybe you’re running a website about Furbys. Maybe you’re spending your weekends on eBay. Your income is spread around a bit more. One person can’t come along and kick you off the gravy train. If you lose your job, you might lose 50% of your monthly income. That still hurts, but it hurts a lot less than losing 100% of your monthly income.

The same idea applies to the any source of income though. If you run out of stuff to sell on eBay, the lights won’t go out–you just might eat out a little less. If interest in Furbys drops (I can’t imagine how that could happen) you’re not left out in the cold either.

The bottom line is that if you make all your money from a day job, someone else controls your livelihood. You’re betting everything that you won’t lose that job, essentially. What could be riskier than that? Take charge and build your own safety net. Who knows, side money can become big money.

I can’t say it’s finished, but we’re well on our way now. Big thanks to Jared for his help with cross-browser compatibility. Jared was blogging before there were blogs, back when everything was IE4 HTML and comments were in the guestbook. This is definitely the first site I’ve done that looks better in Firefox than it does in Internet Explorer.

I haven’t really blogged (or had much of a web presence at all, for that matter) for quite a while, but a lot has changed. We’ll probably see some cosmetic and functional changes around here as I work on things. Your patience is, of course, appreciated as I work to get things rolling.

I’ve become a big fan of the “get it out there and tweak it” mentality as of late. In the past I’ve developed ideas for the web on a long dev cycle, with dozens of reworks and trying to be all things on launch day. In some cases, launch day never comes, because I’ve grown too tired and discouraged spending such an enormous amount of time on something with such little return. I’ve realized recently (yeah, I know, welcome to the party, right?) though that the internet has really become a place where it’s a lot more rewarding and indeed a lot simpler to just launch something barebones. It’s a place where you can try an idea cheaply; proof of concept doesn’t cost much around here.

In June, I bought my first place. I had family living with me for some time, but I’m now on my own. I’ve always managed my money carefully, and personal finance has always been an interest of mine. It’s become apparent though just how important those skills are in the last several months. You can only do so much with so much though. I’m happy with work, but buying a house a little before I initially planned to did take away a bit of my buffer zone. The percentage of what I make that is already spoken for, while managable, is higher than I’d like of course. I’ve also become a firm believer in income diversification. If you can’t decrease your expenses below a certain floor level, you just need to make more money.

Enter Brad Kelly Enterprises. I started BKE in July as an umbrella of sorts for all my side projects. You’ll hear me talk about BKE quite a bit I’m sure. I’ve had some success so far, and will likely detail that in the future. Suffice it to say though, that I enjoy what I’m doing and would like to do it all the time. As a quasi-serious goal, I’d like to be making enough through BKE by the end of 2008 that working my office job becomes optional.

Would I really quit a great job to do this all the time? I’ll cross the bridge when I come to it. I think a goal like that’s necessary though. Without it, generating additional income streams becomes just another project I can put on the shelf. I need a deadline to get my butt in gear! Regardless of what happens, this blog will document my progress between now and then.