For a number of reasons, writing a book is a fantastic and unforgettable experience. One of the most rewarding aspects of becoming an entrepreneur is being able to share your ideas or skills with the rest of the world. After all, art is created to be shared with others.
However, one of the most significant advantages of publishing a book is that it can provide passive income. In other words, you put in the effort to write the book and then reap the benefits of it once it is published.
Unfortunately, that revenue is not often sufficient to support a writing career as a full-time occupation. In this case, passive income can be of great assistance.
As a reminder, passive income is not a simple source of revenue. The alternative is to put in the effort up front in order to get easy revenue down the line.
Consider the following five distinct options if you’re looking for additional ways to use your writing skills to generate passive money.
Related: How to Make Money With a Small Online Following on Social Media
1. Earning money from your blog
For fiction writers, it’s important to take the process of creating the rest of your content as seriously as you do the process of writing your novels. If you want to be a full-time author, you should consider this to be a necessary aspect of the work.
Let’s speak about starting a blog while we’re in that state of mind. Blogging can be one of the most useful weapons a writer can have in his or her arsenal. When done properly, blogging can not only enable you to develop your internet profile, but it can also be a source of income.
And if so, what does it look like?
For starters, posts should be consistent in nature. Don’t bite off more than you can chew at any given time. Instead, create a posting schedule for your blog and stick to it. Anything will do – the key is to find something you can stick with without becoming overwhelmed.
The other thing to think about when starting a blog is what kind of posts you want to publish about it.
Writing thought leadership pieces that are interspersed with periodic updates is something I’d encourage. “Thought leadership” is a fancy term for creating information that will benefit others by leveraging your knowledge and experience. Want to see an example of thought leadership in action? You’re looking at one right now. Naturally, updates will be about your works-in-progress, book release announcements, and anything else that is relevant to your career as an author.
Don’t forget that the more you publish and share with others for free, the more likely it is that they will reciprocate – and the more traffic Google SEO will direct to your website.
A combination of these two factors will increase your readership over time, allowing you to finally turn your blog into a money-making endeavor if you do it right.
2. Join affiliate programs
If you participate in affiliate marketing schemes, you can monetize your material and get passive revenue. As you may be aware, affiliate programs entail forming a partnership with a firm in exchange for a percentage of the earnings generated by the clients you refer.
If you have a popular blog with a large number of visitors, this should not be too difficult to accomplish.
Consider the following scenario to better understand the procedure:
You have a blog that has 5,000 subscribers. It is Company X who hosts your blog, and you decide to participate in Company X’s affiliate program, which pays you $100 for every referral. You write on the benefits of having a fantastic blog in your next post, and you include an affiliate link that encourages readers to sign up with Company X as a result. If merely one percent of your readers (or 50 people) respond to your post, you will earn $5,000 from that single post! Furthermore, anyone else who comes across the message in the future may be able to gain further passive money.
Isn’t that impressive?
Of course, that scenario is predicated on you having a popular blog with a large following, which is entirely doable with enough effort.
Now that you’ve seen the model, you should look into different affiliate programs to see which ones would be the most profitable for you.
Related: 20 Best Website Monetization Platforms for Publishers to Make Money Online
3. Starting a podcast is a good idea
The creation of podcasts is another dynamic technique to provide content for your author platform while earning additional income.
In many ways, it’s comparable to running a blog: create a show where you share useful stuff with other budding writers. As a novelist, you have a built-in knowledge that many people will go to for guidance, so if you’re comfortable behind the microphone, launching your own program might be a smart step for your personal brand and career.
It is possible to make anything from how-to videos to interviews with other people who are achieving success in the field for your episodes. Not only that, but remember to include a blog post with each episode to urge your viewers to subscribe to your podcast.
When it comes to earning money, the difference between a blog and a podcast is that it is easier to monetize a podcast through the use of advertisements. Once you’ve amassed a sufficient number of listeners, you may begin looking for sponsors or affiliate partnerships.
As a result, every new episode you publish becomes an opportunity to generate passive revenue for many years to come (especially if you stick to evergreen content).
4. Using your newsletter
It is essential that you have a subscription list if you are a writer who is serious about expanding your brand. Simply said, this is an ever-growing list of persons who have provided you with their contact information, most likely through the use of a website plugin. Following that, you can utilize a variety of software tools to send out newsletters – at the very least, strive to do it on a monthly basis.
Newsletters take a little time to set up, but once they’re up and running, they take care of themselves.
A lead-generation piece is frequently the most effective method to get things started. Consider the following scenario: you write a short ebook titled 5 Ways to Write an Awesome Thriller and then have your program email the ebook to everyone who joins up with their contact information on your website. For those who don’t have the time to go through the process, a form that says “subscribe for all the relevant updates” may be sufficient.
Once you’ve established your list, it will only continue to increase in size over time, and each new subscriber represents an opportunity to produce further cash.
There are three ways in which you can generate money with a newsletter:
- Internally sell ad spaces according on the number of views (as in, offering your readers a chance to advertise their own product in your newsletter)
- Look for sponsors depending on their points of view.
- Make use of an affiliate opportunity to motivate others to take action.
There isn’t a best way; rather, there is a best way for you. Once you’ve found your niche, you’ll be able to earn money from every newsletter you send out.
Related: How to Make Money With Your Personal Brand?
5. Creating an online course
This is the most “passive” of the passive income ideas on this list, and it is also the most time-consuming.
An online course provides passive revenue by allowing you to share the things you’re passionate about with others who are interested in learning about them.
Every year, more and more skill-sharing platforms spring up, and while each one has its own set of features, they all operate in a similar manner: you develop a class, sell it, and then receive a percentage of the sales price for each individual who enrolls in it.
Creating the course might be a lot of work, especially if you want to put in the effort to do a fantastic job, but it is well worth it in the end.
Are you unsure about what to teach? Consider the things you are familiar with. The following are some suggestions to get you started:
- Developing the most compelling protagonist for your story
- What it takes to write a mystery novel
- The most effective ways to sell your book after it has been published
Find a topic that is particular enough to garner traction, yet wide enough that you may include numerous “classes” within the topical umbrella without sacrificing effectiveness.
Then, once you’ve put together the class, promote it on your blog, in your newsletter, on your podcast, on social media, and anyplace else you have a large number of followers.
A successful online course might generate a recurring stream of cash indefinitely.