5 Forms of Passive Income for Freelance Writers
July 5, 2009 by Deb Ng
Filed under Freelance Writing Business
Freelance writers have other options besides writing for clients. Thanks to the internet, writing for ourselves has become easier and more profitable. Ten or twenty years ago, we wouldn’t have had the same success trying to earn a passive income as a freelance writer as we do today. Check out these options for working smarter, not harder:
Ebooks -My ebook didn’t sell a million copies out of the gate, but it does sell a few copies a month. It’s already paid for the time spent writing it and more. With another ebook on the way, my earning potential will only get higher. Ebooks will continue to earn as long as I keep advertising. I know a few writers who earn between $1000 & $3000 monthly on ebook sales alone.
Blogs -Though they take time to build traffic and revenue, blogs are an excellent source of passive income. I could probably stop writing for FWJ and still earn at least $20 a day from it. I won’t do that, but it’s good to know all the years of work we put into building this community is finally paying off in a big way. As I see it, the biggest mistake many new bloggers make is to not give their blogs enough time to earn. They get frustrated with low traffic and low income. FWJ didn’t really start earning or earning mega traffic for about two years. Now, four years later, it’s evolved beyond my wildest dreams.
Websites – Like blogs, websites are also a terrific form of passive income, if done correctly. For example, a website featuring your image, resume and links to your writing portfolio won’t likely make you thousands of dollars. A website offering informative content, or content plus products for sale could very well become a major source of income. Make sure you research first and know there’s a market for your content. If you have a website dedicated to the mating life of pill bugs, your traffic is probably going to be on the low side. A website dedicated to all kinds of bugs with content, tips and more will likely do better.
Traditional & Self Published books -Traditional books could bring in a tidy sum and further establish your expertise but unless you’re self published, it might be a difficult road. However, self-publishing can work. My next ebook will also be offered in book form for the folks who would rather not read off a screen. If you have a good following and people trust you, a self published book could bring in a tidy income each month.
Courses & Classes- If you’re an expert in your field or niche, you can teach others how to succeed as well. Online courses and seminars are another way to bring in regular income. If your community of readers respect what you do, they won’t hesitate to buy your online course. It can be a one day seminar or two weeks worth of learning. Either way, it can become a lucrative source of income if it’s something folks are interested in learning more about.
Before diving in:
Know your audience: If your community is made up of Star Wars fantatics, they won’t buy your book on saving money at the grocery story. Moreover, if you write about saving money, your community is not likely to buy an ebook priced at $50. Learn what you can about your readers. Knowing where they come from, how much money they have to spend and the types of products they’re apt to buy will give you a clue as to the types of passive income streams you should pursue.
Know what your doing: Don’t write a course or design a website if you’ve never done this sort of thing before. Take some time to research what is involved. Talk to some people who have done this sort of thing before, and read up on the best ways to go about it. Diving into it blind may produce the opposite results.
Know how to follow up: OK, so you wrote an ebook. Now what? How are you going to get people to buy it? How are you going to advertise? Have a plan in place, from start to finish, before you begin.
Freelance writing doesn’t only mean writing for websites or newspapers. There are so many different ways writers can earn. By setting up a few passive income streams, you’re ensuring the revenue will continue to come in, even if you decide to take a few days off …or retire.
What do you do for passive income?
I’m not sure I would call a blog passive. Seems to me that blogging is a lot of work, both to build up a readership and to maintain it. Stop blogging, and you will lose traffic (and dollars).
As far as other ways writers can earn passive income, I would include affiliate marketing. It’s not *all* writing, but I think it’s close enough to count.
@Cindy – I respectfully disagree. If your content is timeless, it will still bring in search traffic. My highest trafficked pages are some written years ago. I could stop blogging today and continue to earn. My traffic and revenue would probably decline a bit, but we have so much evergreen content we’ll continue to bring in revenue for years.
Deb and Cindy, this is exactly the debate I have with myself about aboutfreelancewriting.com almost every week. Like you, Deb, I post a lot and although I’m a fast writer, it still takes time and effort. And in this sense Cindy sees it the way I do, often.
OTOH, when an ebook sale comes in, and like you they sell slowly but they sell, or my google adwords shows up it feels almost like found money… not like the royalties I get from long ago projects, but close.
I don’t know how much the income from my writing blog would drop if I quit… not willing to try it yet.
Classes are my next step… not always passive either.
A
Hi Deb,
This is great advice for those looking to work smarter. I was wondering if you have written about how you started FWJ? That might help some who don’t know where to start learning the business.
KS
Great article, but I think that if you stop writing on your blog, you will lose traffic and income. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to see it pay off, as well as a well-defined niche. I have been blogging for over a year and I have earned some money. I am looking for new ways to diversify my freelance writing business and your suggestions are great. Thanks for the tips!
Question for Ann & Deb – with your ebooks do you only promote them yourselves on your own sites or do you use an affiliate program? I’m currently working on an ebook and looking at affiliate program managers (clickbank, paydotcom, etc) to use but haven’t decided which one would be best or if using multiple affiliate program managers might be in my best interest. Would appreciate your input.
Cindy, Janet, Ann – while I haven’t gotten to this point myself I do know webmasters who build blogs, fill them full of content, get good traffic, and then leave them as is and still make decent money off of them. Blogs can be set up so that they are more like websites if you want. And with the right SEO, a nice amount of link exchanges, and good content they can stay in top rank of the search engines for a long time. Like I said, I haven’t tried it yet but I know several people who have and it works for them. Their earnings are lower per blog but they keep building and move on. Just my two cents.
@Anne – Last week I spoke as part of the Hot Summer Seminar series and my ebook sales skyrocketed. It was indeed a pleasant surprise.
@Kaarina – I’ll plan the post. It’s really not an exciting story. I think the right idea at the right time? I often wonder if I started this blog now, with so many others doing the same exact thing, if I’d have the same success?
@Janet – As I said above, I think traffic and revenue will go down if we stop blogging here, but I believe this blog will continue to earn. We get huge search traffic on some very old blog posts. Consider certain information websites that also get huge traffic even if new articles aren’t added each day. Sure, this blog will earn more money with daily updates, but it won’t roll over and die if I take a vacation or even a couple of months off.
@Danielle, there is an affiliate program for my ebook and I also do a lot of self promotion. I like e-junkie.
Hi, I have a question and it might seem like a dumb question but I’m really new to this whole writing online thing. How does a blog earn money? If you have a blog about television shows, or fashion, or alternative rock music etc. do you need to sell products like dvds, fashion clothes, or music cds on your site? How does the advertising work? I started a wordpress blog to get a feel for the idea of how blogs work but I have some ideas that I’d like to make specific blogs for.
I put my ebook online 10 months ago and, while I’m not going to get rich from the income, I do sell 10 books or so a month. It’s nice to see my paypal account go up without me doing anything.
@Kim – I would recommend first building up traffic to your blog and then going for the gold. You’ll need to know something about your readers’ habits before planning monetization strategies. Some communities are clickers and some are buyers. This blog does better with PPC ads as opposed to product sales. Once you know the ads your readers are likely to respond to, research the different programs available to bloggers and choose the ones that will work best for you.
I like the idea of an Ebook best. Especially with the advent of the Kindle and the accompanying and successive iPhone app.
It’s a project I want to get done, just need to make the time for it.
On the topic of promo, so you promote your ebook via PPC? If so, how did you learn PPC.
Great tips!
Deb, when you first started your FWJ, how did you go about advertising its presence? Anyone else have a blog that’s doing well with any thoughts on this? How do you build up hits, visibility, etc? I have a blog on one of the blog services, but I just don’t know if it’s worth continuing on there or if I should move it somewhere else. Can you do well with a general purpose blog, or do you really need a niche to pull people in? Lots of questions, but I’d appreciate any input any of you can give me.
@Beth – I worked for several blog networks and none of them had as big a monthly payoff as this blog. It’s a matter of a couple of thousand dollars a month vs. a couple of hundred.
Let me explain a few things though. It takes time, months and even years for a blog or website to bring in traffic and enough revenue that you can quit your day job. Blogs rarely ever happen over night. Plus there are so many different types of revenue streams to play around with. You have to know your readers well, and take it from there.
I think a nichey blog does a lot better than a blog with no direction. People are less confused when they know what you’re blogging about. Not choosing an over saturated niche is important though. Right now everyone and his brother are writing about working at home, freelancing, freelance writing, blogging, green living, mommy stuff so if you’re writing about one of these, figure out a good angle that will set you apart from the rest, but will bring in interest.
You gave me some ideas for future blog posts here and at the Blog World Expo blog. Thanks for the inspiration.
I think another way to continue it is if you have your own website created with your resume, bio, Picture, a portfolio, etc. Exposing your skills and trade along with marketing yourself through outsourcing sites, like guru.com, Getafreelancer.com, and VOIS.com- oh and we can’t forget Twitter are great tactics to keep your income coming in.
Thanks for the tip! I love the idea of building a website and using e-books to generate passive income. It can also be improved by using blogs.