Profitable Passive Income Ideas And Tips For All Writers And Authors

Passive Income From Your Writing

What is passive income for writers?

All of us are writing every day. For business or pleasure, we are all now sitting at a keyboard for hours and hours.

You might not be writing a book, but words are continually streaming from your fingers. So why not make some money from your writing?

Generating passive income from writing has a lot of advantages. 

Ideas for passive income for writers

The best part about generating different types of passive income from writing is that you don’t need to make a big investment.

You might need to buy some online tools.

But these small costs won’t break your credit card or bank account.

The second is that there are so many ways of earning passive income from writing.

The obvious way is to sell books and ebooks. 

But blogging, content marketing, affiliate marketing, and advertising are all income-generating and potentially very lucrative.

They can all deliver reliable cash flow that can be much more than an income from writing a book.

On top of that, it is time-flexible, so you can do it whenever you have time to make extra money.

Are you thinking about making money from your writing?

Well, here are a few ideas you might want to consider.

 

Start a blog or improve your existing blog

A monetized blog is, by a long way, the most popular way to earn passive income for writers.

Many writers make money from blogging.

For some, it sometimes turns into a full-time job.

Each blog post they write and publish will last for years and become an ongoing income source.

A blog is an adaptable and versatile means of earning money.

All you need to do is use your imagination.

Here are some proven passive income ideas for writers and ways you can do it.

 

Accept paid articles

For quick short-term earnings, a blogger might accept a one-time fee for advertorial or sponsored content placement.

A lot of content marketers are looking to blogs now because social media penetration is declining.

Generally, the content marketer supplies all the article text and images.

For a blogger, it is only a matter of taking a couple of minutes to publish the article to make money.

The amount of money you can charge will depend on the ranking of your blog.

But you could expect to earn between $25 to $100 for each article placement.

 

Add advertising

There are many ways to add advertising to a blog.

The most popular is Google Adsense. But there are lots of others that offer banner or link advertising.

The basis of these programs is that the blogger gets paid when a visitor clicks on an ad on their site.

This is genuinely passive income at its very best.

It’s not a lot of work. All you need to do is add some code to your site and wait for the money to roll in.

I have been using Adsense for years now. While it’s not my highest passive income source, it is my most reliable, consistent, and easiest income.

My only work in the last two years was moving some of my Adsense codes for better placement. It took a whole two minutes.

The only regular task is to check for any invalid clicks about once a month.

 

Affiliate marketing

You can earn money by writing articles on your blog that promote a product or service with affiliate links.

Unlike advertising, you don’t get paid for a click. You only get paid if someone makes a purchase.

There are many variations, but typically, if someone clicks on your link, a cookie is added to their browser.

The cookie controls how long you can earn money from your link.

For instance, if you use Amazon Associates for affiliate marketing and someone clicks on one of your links to an Amazon product, you will usually earn money if the buyer makes a purchase within 24-48 hours.

Other affiliate programs offer much longer cookies. Some are even up to six months.

I keep most of my affiliate marketing to products or services that I use because I think it is a more honest way to promote a product.

 

Sell a service

You can use your blog, social media, or even online advertising to sell your service.

All you need to do is use your expertise or develop a service.

But you might want to set up an editing or proofreading service or a beta reading service.

Perhaps you could think about creating an online course.

For example, if you are bilingual, you could offer online courses via Skype to learn a language.

If you have experience in self-publishing, you could create an online consulting service by email or, again, by Skype.

 

Self-publish a book or ebook

Selling books on Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo is the most common way for writers to make an income.

It is tough work writing and promoting a book.

So it is hard to define the income from book sales as passive.

But if you have a blog with a focused topic and offers genuine advice, have you considered creating an ebook from your blog posts?

It doesn’t take long, and once it is published and available for sale, you can promote it and sell it on your blog, as well as hope for income from sales on ebook retailers.

 

Summary

There are many ways to earn money from writing.

Some ways are active income and involve a lot of hard work. But there are many more passive means to get paid.

The best passive income streams will be those you can set up once and then forget about them.

But they will make you money, even when you are sleeping.

The big advantage is that you won’t have to invest thousands of dollars to do so.

Even if you go for a self-hosted WordPress blog and a couple of premium writing tools, you won’t have to outlay more than perhaps a couple of hundred dollars.

We all live busy lives, and a writer needs all the time they can get to write.

But you also want to put food on the table, so consider your options to earn a little more money the easy way.

 

Related reading: How Often Should You Write Blog Posts On Your New Site?

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