How to Maximize Your Freelance Profits by Creating Multiple Revenue Streams

Unfortunately, it isn’t unusual to hear writers publicly bemoan their financial situation. Apparently, declaring yourself an author does not automatically grant you fame and fortune. Who knew?

(7 Healthy Habits for Writers to Find Success.)

Seeing honest, hard-working people struggle is never easy, but it isn’t really surprising. Times are tough in every industry, except maybe arms manufacturing, which seems to be booming (I'll get my coat), and publishing is no different. We would all like to retire to our ivory towers and write whatever we want, safe in the knowledge that simply attaching our name to something means it will sell by the truckload. Unfortunately, only a select few ever attain such a lofty position. The rest of us have to dig in, hustle, strive, and get by any way we can. Being a freelance writer is a wildly unstable profession, but a good way to oil the wheels of success, or at least ensure you don’t starve to death, is by spreading your bets and creating multiple revenue streams. And it's not as difficult as it sounds.

I’ve been writing fiction since I was a kid, but seeing very little financial reward, I soon began focusing on magazine features. It took me a long time to climb the ladder far enough to be able to make a living from it, and even I was writing on the whim of an editor. It’s not all red carpets and goody bags. Writing about topics you neither know nor care much about with enough authority and enthusiasm to hook the reader is a skill unto itself. But then the bottom fell out of the men’s lifestyle magazine sector, where I had aligned myself, and the work dried up. I still sold the odd feature, but nowhere near enough to sustain myself.

Clearly, I needed to branch out into other things. If you are a writer, you probably appreciate the arts, and habitually watch movies or TV and perhaps read a lot of books. Some outlets actually pay for reviews. Most don’t pay a lot, but they pay something. If you manage to sell a few reviews writing about something you are doing anyway, it can be an excellent use of your time.

I also went back to writing fiction, and released a handful of novels and novellas that had been gathering dust on my hard drive. The ones that weren't picked up by traditional publishers, I self-published via Amazon. I’m going to be perfectly honest here and tell you that they don’t make much money (shock, horror!) especially after you factor in costs like marketing and artwork. But getting rich was never the plan. Creating a brand and a stable, if modest, income was. Once a book is out there, it will stay out there for as long as you want it to generating regular passive income.

Numbers are important. If you look at the few actually making a living from selling books on Amazon, most of them have one thing in common—they release a lot of books. Let’s suppose your book sells five copies a month and generates a total of $10. You aren’t going to be dining out very often on that. But if you have a dozen books out there selling comparative amounts, that figure jumps to $120 a month, or an extra $1,440 a year.

In addition to the books, I usually manage to place a short story or two a month with websites, genre magazines, or anthologies. Some pay good money, most don’t. The average for a short story sale is around $40 to $50. When a bunch of my short stories have been published, I collect them together in a book and add it to my Amazon repertoire. That’s an easy way to be paid twice (or more, if you include reprints) for the same pieces of work. I use a variation of my name for fiction to differentiate it from my nonfiction work, and spend a lot of time and effort promoting and marketing. 

I do interviews and guest posts, maintain a blog which I update with new material regularly, and am very active across several social media platforms. I don’t do all this expecting to see an immediate spike in book sales (though that would be nice, and it does happen occasionally) but to get my name out there, as they say. It sounds cliché, but it’s true and absolutely necessary. I am always looking to increase my platform, my reach, and haul myself up in those search engine results and Amazon author rankings. Because that means more visibility, and hence more sales.

I lived in China for many years, and published a series of books about it which sell consistently with very little or no marketing. Because this is such a departure from my usual work, I use a pseudonym. When your name isn’t attached to something, you don’t feel accountable and can write with much more freedom. So, between the magazine features, the short stories, the reviews, and the two dozen or so books I’ve published under two different names, do I make a comfortable living?

No. not even close.

I soon started dipping my toes into copywriting, producing a couple of product descriptions a month or some advertising copy for Chinese businesses I know through friends and acquaintances. I’m not going to lie, it’s boring as heck, but it isn’t difficult, and it pays well. This has led to some media consultation work with some of those same companies. They have products and services they want to sell to the lucrative European and American market, but understand that media works very differently here than in Asia. I am in the perfect position to point out the differences and present solutions to various problems via Zoom calls.

I also take on the odd freelance editing job for indie writers who need their books straightened out before publishing. This is something I fell into, and work generally comes my way via word-of-mouth. I keep my prices low and make sure I provide a good service to my clients. That way, I get a lot of repeat business.

Then, there’s ghost writing. These jobs don’t come around often, and when they do, they are often a little, um, sketchy. But like copywriting, they pay well. I have a couple of semi-regular clients who hit me up every now and again with various assignments. How it works is very simple. They tell me what they want, I go off and write it, then they put their name on it and sell it as their own. As long as I get paid, I’m not precious.

Something else that may be worth investigating is working with students. Try approaching attendees of colleges or universities in your area (social media is best) and explain what you do and how you can help them. Many will jump at the chance, especially if English is not their first language. Don’t get involved in the murky business of essay mills, but proofreading, modifying, even editing papers and coursework is absolutely fine. If you do a decent job, these students may well tell their friends. Bear in mind academic work is generally seasonal, and you'll see a big uptick near the end of the academic year.

As you can see, it isn’t easy, but it’s by no means impossible to make a living by combining various aspects of the craft. It’s all about diversifying, being adaptable, and creating multiple revenue streams, instead of relying on one or two and hoping the world will change to accommodate you. Because it won’t.