4 Ways I’ve Quietly Made $1,000+ in 5 Hours
These take lots of upfront work, but they’re low effort to execute
If I had to start my entire creator journey over again, I’d start with one important tool: the mailing list.
My mailing list is small. It has just 6k subscribers. But I love my newsletter. It’s a great creative outlet, it’s a fantastic way to hear from my readers, and it’s one of the ways I earn the most money with the least amount of work.
And boy, this summer, I needed a breather. This summer, I was busy. I traveled to Leeds, Paris, London, Reading, Madrid, Seville, Jerez, and Oxford. I went to two overseas weddings and started planning ours. I got COVID.
But of course, the peril of being a freelancer is that when you stop working, the money stops flowing. So I wanted to test out a few different methods to earn $1,000+ dollars “easily.”
I’m putting “easily” in quotation marks there because none of them were “easy.” These methods need:
- consistent content creation, like months or years of it
- digital assets — ebooks, PDFs, templates, courses
- deep connections with real people
- trust with an audience
None of that is easy to get! I worked incredibly hard over the past four years to develop those. But now that I have them, it means I’ve made at least $1,000+ in four different and relatively low-effort ways.
Here’s how.
1. Host a webinar
Last year, I started a ghost blog account — totally anonymous. I wanted to see how hard it was to get started again. It was pretty tough, but not impossible. I wrote once every week and was able to earn $1,000+ in a few months.
That’s not the method I’m talking about, though. When I did that, I found that publications were actually the critical factor for my success. So I designed and ran a free webinar about how I grew the ghost account.
After the webinar, I sold my course that helps people use publications as a tool to grow. I created and sold the course back in 2021, but I updated it up and made around $1,600 from that webinar.
The upfront work:
- Six months of writing on a ghost profile (2021–2022)
- Three years of building my newsletter (2019–2022)
- Four years of writing experience (2018–2022)
- Ten hours creating and designing the course (2021)
The execution:
- Two hours designing the webinar
- Two hours writing the marketing emails
- One hour running the webinar
The result:
2. Sell affiliate products
I am blessed with a lot of talented friends who have made some pretty spectacular products.
I have never made a full-blown “how to make money writing” course, and I’ve never particularly wanted to. One of my good friends Sinem created her superlative writing course. She regularly updates it and runs live sessions. When people ask me for a recommendation, I point them to hers.
A few weeks ago, she asked me if I wanted to help participate in the launch of a new course. I was thrilled because I knew my audience would love whatever she had built. I sent two emails to my email list in September and earned around $1000 in affiliate commissions.
The upfront work:
- Two years developing my relationship with Sinem (2020–2022)
- Three years of building my newsletter (2019–2022)
The execution:
- One hour writing the marketing emails
The result:
3. Use a slow email funnel
That same course has actually earned around $10k just through my own slow email funnel. When someone signs up for my mailing list, they go through three sets of emails.
First, you get a free five-day email course walking you through the basics of starting and monetizing a blog.
Second, you get my sales pitch — why I think publications matter so much, and how you can leverage their power. That’s when I sell my course.
Regardless of whether you buy or not, you then get my third sequence: a three-email service series, where I answer the three most frequently asked questions I get: how to get followers, an email template I use to get accepted to publications, and whether or not you should reply to comments.
After that, you get my usual weekly broadcasts.
That email course has made me around $10k over the years I’ve had it on autopilot.
The upfront work:
- Ten hours creating the course
- Three hours drafting the sales and service sequences
- Three hours drafting the email sequence for the starter kit
- Two hours designing the downloadable PDF starter kit
- Three years of publishing articles to gain readers that subscribe to my newsletter (2019–2022)
The execution:
- 1 minute adding the CTA to the bottom of my articles
The result:
4. Bundle your assets
Every six months or so, I add another product or service to my set. Today, I sell consultations, editing services, my course, and a PDF article template.
It (finally) occurred to me two weeks ago that it might be smart to bundle those products. They work really well in conjunction! So I made a sales picture in Canva, drafted the email copy, and send a few emails to my list two weeks ago. I made around $1,200 from that mini-launch.
The upfront work:
- Three years of building my newsletter (2019–2022)
- Ten hours creating the course
- Three hours designing the PDF template
The execution:
- One hour per consultation
- Thirty minutes per edit
- Two hours drafting the sales emails
- Thirty minutes creating the Canva picture
The result:
A quick reflection on “passive” income
I’ve written before about how most “passive” side hustle income ideas aren’t passive at all. I hope that by providing time estimates for all these “easy” passive side hustle ideas, I give you a better glimpse behind that passive curtain.
I love my job. I love making these products. I love sharing them with my audience. But it’s not easy. It takes time, effort, and consistency to build up your assets — digital, relationships, trust with your audience, newsletter — to the point where you can make these low-effort income gains.
I’d love to hear your thoughts: do these insights surprise you or help you? Do they make them feel more or less achievable? Looking forward to seeing what you think of these low-effort income options!
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