Summary

Susie Kearley discusses her earnings from various side hustles in 2022, emphasizing the success of her Medium blogging over other ventures.

Abstract

In 2022, Susie Kearley, a freelance magazine writer, diversified her income streams beyond writing due to the challenges of the magazine industry. She earned a total of £6,789.80 ( $8,266.75) from side hustles, which included stock photography sales on Alamy, book publishing, blogging on Medium, selling photos to a calendar company, and writing for Vocal Media. The majority of her side income came from Medium, amounting to £3,640.42 ($ 4,402.75). Kearley reflects on the passive income from her published books and the decision to shift focus from book writing to Medium due to better earnings and less time spent on marketing. She maintains daily targets for productivity in writing, publishing on Medium, editing, and photography to ensure a steady output and income. Kearley plans to explore Newsbreak in 2023 and continue prioritizing magazine writing and photography, emphasizing the importance of enjoying side hustles over purely financial gains.

Opinions

Kearley finds pitching to magazines demoralizing and prefers the encouragement from the success of her side hustles.
She considers writing books and the subsequent marketing to be time-consuming and not worth the return, leading her to stop writing books.
Kearley values the passive income from her published books, despite not actively marketing them.
She sets ambitious daily targets for writing, publishing on Medium, editing, and photography to maintain productivity and income.
Kearley views stock photography as a time-consuming but potentially rewarding endeavor,

How Much I Earnt From Side Hustles in 2022

Not bad little earners!

My day job is freelance writing for magazines. But it’s hard. It’s hard to get enough work in, magazines keep closing, and fees have been falling for years, so I have to do more work to get the same pay. Obviously growing the business feels virtually impossible when I’m pedalling harder every day, just to stand still.

That’s why I started branching out, first into photography, then into book publishing, then into blogging on Medium.

I’ve increasingly spent more time on these areas and less time pitching to magazines in recent years, because pitching into the void is demoralising, whereas seeing my side hustles pay off is encouraging. I increasingly find myself drawn to spend more time on side hustles.

So let’s get to it. What did I earn?

Earnings from Alamy Stock Photography in 2022: £678.98 ($826)
Earnings from book publishing in 2022: £214.80 ($258)
Earnings from Medium in 2022: £3640.42 ($4402.75) — includes an estimate for December.
Earnings from selling two photos to a calendar company: £40 ($48)
Earnings from Vocal Media: £25 ($31.50)

You can see why spending my time on Medium is more worth my while than the other side hustles. But it’s nice to have some variety.

Passive Income

Book publishing is an entirely passive income now, as I don’t write books anymore. I don’t actively market them either. The guinea pig book tends to sell better than the others, mostly at Christmas, as a gift item.

After discovering the potential of Medium, I gave up writing books. My Medium earnings are so much better than my earnings from book sales. It just wasn’t worth my time trying to sell books. After all — writing them is just the beginning. Selling them is the real challenge, and marketing can be very time-consuming and very expensive, for little return.

Targets and Productivity

How do I stay motivated and disciplined? When I started freelancing, I needed to show that I could earn a full-time salary, to justify my quitting my job. I’m still very conscious that I need to be productive and create content, or I don’t get paid. So I have targets to reach every day - pitching targets, writing targets, photography targets.

Draft a magazine article every day: I like to write an article every day for magazines, even though this is actually impossible because I don’t have commissions for every day of the week! However, it’s a good goal to aim for when I do have the work on. I try to achieve that whenever I can.

Publish on Medium every day: I try to publish something on Medium every day too. I might publish a story I’ve written in the evening or at weekends, or during downtime. Sometimes it’s a previously published article from a magazine or one of my old blogs.

Editing every day: I also edit articles every day — because the first draft always needs honing. Some articles need a lot of editing, and I take a lot of breaks between edits to give me a fresh perspective when I get back to it.

Photography targets: I set targets for photography when it accompanies my magazine articles. I need to source photos for every article before it’s submitted and sometimes that entails editing on Photoshop. It doesn’t usually involve shooting new photos, but occasionally it does.

Selling photos: The stock photography and calendar submissions just fill gaps and give me a chance when I want to do something different. Photography has been an important part of my freelance writing career, however, because providing good photography to accompany my articles makes them much more saleable.

Stock Photography

I currently have over 8000 images on Alamy. They all need editing on Photoshop before I upload them. Then they need keywording and captioning. It’s very time-consuming and probably not the best use of my time, but I like to monetise my photography if I can find the time to do it because it seems a shame not to make the most of their sales potential.

Plans for 2023

I’d like to write on Newsbreak in 2023. I’ve yet to get started, as I don’t have a US phone number but I understand there are ways to get around this, and I need to look into it again. I’ve heard that there’s potentially good money to be made on Newsbreak if you can crack the formula of what works on there.

Hubpages? Maybe. I hear everything gets plagiarised, so I’d be very selective about what I put on there.

I’ll be quitting Vocal Media as it’s not worth my time. Annoyingly, I cannot get my $31 out without paying $10 to upgrade to Vocal Plus, so I can withdraw a lower amount.

I plan to continue on Medium and make it a bigger part of my freelance income. I’ll continue to prioritise magazines, as the rate per piece is much better. It’s completely different. Some of my opinion pieces that do well on Medium wouldn’t be considered by magazines or newspapers, whereas much of what I write for magazines, struggles to find an audience on Medium.

I’ll continue to enjoy photography and monetise it when I have the time and inclination.

I think the most important thing for any side hustle is that you enjoy it. None of my side hustles pays the minimum wage, so if you’re in it for the money, you’d be better off doing something else. If you’re doing it because you enjoy it and want to make a bit of cash for doing something you enjoy, it’s perfect!

What are your plans for 2023?