Many writers want to make money from their writing, but aren’t sure of where to begin.

I get it. For myself, it’s only been in the past year where I’ve really started to learn and experiment with the different ways a writer can start to earn money – and continue to grow their income.

As a little girl, I had this picture in my head of being a full-time author who drank tea and just wrote books all day – maybe you’ve had a similar dream? If that’s you too, that’s great… many writers do.

Nowadays most writers need to think about how to diversify their income with their writing, when they first start out. Of course, as you keep writing and getting more books out there, at some point you’ll get to the place where most of your income is from the books you’ve written.

But, if you’re still at the beginning stages in your writing career – much like I am – then I hope this post inspires you to try some of these ways that you can make money from your writing.

3 Ways You Can Start to Make Money with Your Writing

I started out blogging at the start of 2012. Since then I’ve blogged consistently once or twice a week and while writing my first novel.

Problem was, I didn’t have any idea of what it took to be a full-time writer.

Most writers I talk to, aren’t sure of the possibilities open to them. Nowadays in order to make money with your writing, you need to diversify.

In other words, most full-time writers not only write novels, but they are also writing nonfiction – self-help or informational – ebooks. In many cases, they are also blogging, and creating other digital products and/or offering helpful services(like coaching, etc.) too.

Normally, it takes a little bit of time(6 months to a year-ish), to begin making money from your writing, if you diversify.

It’s not something that happens overnight. And you don’t make a ton of money from writing only one book(not usually anyway).

But there are ways you can make money from your writing – if you’re willing to experiment and try some new ideas.

And the best thing, is you can write books and create products that you’re passionate about!

Here’s 3 ways you can make money with Your Writing…

1. Write and Self-Publish a book. It doesn’t matter if it’s fiction or nonfiction, just get a book out into the world. If you are passionate about a specific type of genre – that you read all the time for entertainment – consider writing your own story in that genre. More than likely, you’d be pretty good at it because when you’ve read many books in a certain genre, your subconscious soaks in the story tropes and what makes that story good.

Also, consider writing a nonfiction book. Self-Help and ‘how-to’ ebooks sell very well on Amazon and other digital retailers. Also, normally you can price a nonfiction book slightly higher than a fiction book, because readers see it as a reusable reference book that they’ll keep coming back to. In 2014, self-help was a $10 billion dollar industry… and a large part of that was books.

More than ever people want to learn, grow and understand how to do things by themselves to move forward in their lives. So when you write a book about something you’ve gone through and learned about, it’s an amazing way to kick-start your writing life…. and make money doing it.

2. Write a Blog and write new posts consistently. When you blog on a specific topic, readers keep coming back when you give them interesting and reliable content in a specific subject area. Some tips here are…

• Ask yourself what topics you’re passionate about. If you love to crochet, create a blog about it. Targeting a blog to your own interests will help you stay inspired to write blogposts consistently each week…. and soon you’ll find readers will keep coming back to read what you have to say.
• If you have an area you have a ton of knowledge or skill on, blog about that. It’s a great place to develop a great basis for a blog that will be useful and give value to your readers.
• Keep a regular schedule for your blogposts. I schedule blogposts/podcasts for every Thursday. Readers tell me on a regular basis how much they appreciate the consistency. The great thing about blogging, is that you can write your posts weeks ahead and schedule them. That way you can go away for a weekend and still be able to keep your blog active even when you’re otherwise occupied.
• Offer a free book, or some kind of incentive for people to sign-up to your email list. It’s super important to attract readers who are interested in your topic, to your email list. I’ve noticed that by offering something of value like the free ebook and The Storyteller’s Roadmap mini-course, that I’ve had many more people who want to be on the email because of the value they are getting. So think of something that will be of value to your readers and offer it for free in return for their email address. I learned from Nick Stephenson how to build an email list and to automate my author marketing that ended up growing my email list from 200 to a little over 2000 in 9 months. Get your copy of Nick’s Free eBook to learn how to you can grow your audience to 10,000 readers fast.

3. Create an online product or course. I’ve found creating my writing course, Write and Publish Your First Book, to be an amazing way to really connect with readers who come to my website. It’s a course that is the expanded – much more detailed – version of the free book I offer people above. So, first-time or struggling writers are thrilled to have a way learn how to write, edit, format, self-publish and market their book.

You can do create a product or course too. You don’t have to start with something massive. You could create a smaller online course on a topic you’re passionate about, and help a ton of people! If you’re unsure of how to do that, here’s a complete 7 step plan to help you come up with a profitable course idea that makes you money while you sleep.

So I hope these ideas help get you started making money with your writing. The more I learn about how to blog, write and self-publish books and how I can create a course – the more exciting it is to realize the amazing opportunities we have in this digital age to help a tone of people 🙂

Keep writing, creating and having fun expanding and growing your ideas. The possibilities are so exciting!