12 Income Streams Every Writer Should Consider

Multiple income streams for full-time writing income

Writing is both a blessing and curse. The work is cerebral and tough. The pay isn’t always that great. Most writers understand (or assume) they won’t get rich typing. But we can make a great living.

Most writers spend all their time earning money from a single source. Whether it’s writing articles or books, blog posts or ads — the average writer has a single income stream from her work.

This is a dangerous.

Not only is this dangerous to your finances, but single-income sources can also lead to burn-out and total dependence upon the host source. We can do better.

The more income streams an author has, the great the income insurance. And, the greater the opportunity for incremental growth. Writing has so many universal applications, there are many different income streams you can build from your writing projects.

The average millionaire has seven sources of income.

As writers, we’ve got such a flexible skill, it behooves us to protect our financial security by adding as many income streams as possible. If we lose one stream we’re not destitute. If we’ve got seven, we could lose more than one and be fine.

Twelve different income streams for writers:

1. Books

A book can be an evergreen source of income. Books also give authors credibility and help you grow a tribe of loyal readers. The more books you write, the more passive income you’ll earn each month (provided you market the books well). You only have to write a book once and it pays you forever.

2. Paid articles

Although they don’t pay well, there are many article mills out there, willing to pay writers for web content on any subject. Most of these sites pay $4–15 per short article. If you can type fast and you’ve got a well-rounded background, paid articles are an easy way to make some extra cash. I did this for years. But this is not a good way to make a full-time income.

3. Copywriting

Copywriting is salesmanship in print. This work will require self-educating, but good copywriters can make six or seven figures a year. Every ad you see, every radio spot, and every direct mail piece — all have a copywriter behind them, enticing us to buy new products and services. You can write full sales letters, small ad copy, web copy, and many others. This is a work-for-hire job, where you’ll get paid per completed copywriting project.

4. Social media management

Many companies are willing to pay independent writers to take care of their social media postings. You may have write full Facebook and Instagram posts. You could charge for a single post, or charge by the bundle.

5. Courses

Courses will generate you a lot more money per sale than a book. Books have a cap per sale. You won’t sell many copies of a $497 book. But this isn’t hard to do with a valuable course. Here, you’ll take your book and divide it into different lessons, deep-diving into your ideas for customers who want more information than they can get from your book.

6. Revenue share

Medium is an example of this model. We write the stories we want and we get paid based on readers’ responses. A portion of the reader’s monthly fee is shared with the author of the articles the reader likes. This is a psudo-passive income source, although if you don’t stay active on a regular basis, the passive traffic slows-down quickly. For most writers, revenue sharing sites are a source of side-income, not the primary source. But there are expectations.

7. Email

When you own your email list, you can sell your books, affiliate products, and courses, automatically — with no interaction required with the customer. Email is a lot of writing for the original set-up, but once you’ve got the automated system in place, the email does all the heavy-lifting for you — selling your books while you sleep.

8. Audio Books

Audio is the only way to consume content while doing something else. We can drive or cook while listening to a book. My father even has Bluetooth hearing aids, where he can broadcast a book to his ears, without anyone in the room knowing. The listening reader is a different category than the book reader. You can take one piece of content — your book — and turn it into multiple streams of income.

9. Podcasting

If your writing is conducive to a listening audience, you can also make money from podcasting. Whether you accept paid advertising money, or you promote your own work, podcasting is still growing rapidly, while more people try to do more than one thing at once.

10. Legal document filing

There are many public, governmental websites that require paperwork to be filed for opening a business, court cases, landlord issues, real estate, medical records, and others. You can build an entire service around new business owners, or realtors. Create document packages and templates you can fill-out quickly.

11. Investing

Invest a large portion of your writing income in dividend-generating mutual funds. You can easily earn 5–8% annual return on your money without a large risk to your principle (provided you don’t need the money immediately). If you build this investment nest-egg as your writing income grows, you can live off the dividends alone. And it’s a lot more lucrative than keeping the money in your checking account.

12. Patron models

Patreon and other sites allow readers to sponsor the work of their favorite writers. Through their sponsorship you can earn a predictable, growing monthly income that will help you stay independent and available to keep creating your best work. Through these patron models, writers can spend more time creating their long-term writing projects and less time writing to pay the gas bill.

As writers we’ve got many different income stream options for us. And you don’t have to write new content for each stream. You can re-package one piece of content and use it across multiple income streams (and you should). Not only can we make a great living as writers, but we can also use our writing efficiently.

We’re waiting for you.

I built a free email masterclass for you (my link, away from Medium). I hand-crafted the whole thing, by hand… with my hands. It took me a couple months to build the first version (many revisions since). I call this masterclass the Tribe 1K.

Now is a great time to start (or grow) your email list.

I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 (or your next 1,000) readers without spending a hot nickel on ads. Past students include New York Times bestselling authors (yep, the ones you see in the bookstore), high-caliber university professors, attorneys, doctors, scientists, artists… and regular folks too — just like you and me.

Your email list will help you build a legacy creative business.

If you want to grow your creative business you need email before you lose that valuable reader’s attention. Start your list before you need one. Once you need a list it’s almost too late.

Tap the link (offsite link).

Guarantee your seat before I start to charge an enrollment fee.

We’re waiting for you.

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed email marketing expert for writers and creators, August helps indies make more work that sells and sell more work they make. The core of August’s process is your email list (offsite link). When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August hangs-out with his beautiful wife and handsome son, carries a pocket knife, and shaves his head with a safety razor.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +445,678 people.

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