How To Earn Passive Income with Writing and Self-Publishing

In the not-so-distant past traditional publishing houses ruled over the literary landscape. This often meant that most aspiring writers would never get the chance to bring their books to an audience for that final approval many writers hope intently for when finishing a piece.

Fast forwarding to the modern age and the traditional publisher is taking a back seat to the self-publishing platform. While technology can intimidate with its potential, if embraced along with drive and determination it offers benefits beyond your dreams.

Some of these include opportunities for passive (or maybe “semi” passive) income. This site Publishing.com, gives you some details on a chance to reach income goals with self-publishing. Regardless of whether you work with fiction or non-fiction or your favored niche, an audience who enjoys the story will find you.

While some topics will do better than others, it’s important to write what you’re familiar with, where you’re comfortable. Writing isn’t difficult, it can flow for anyone no matter the format if you’re writing something you enjoy. 

You’ll find a few ways to earn passive income with writing; we’ll check these out, too. Follow along.

Methods For Earning Passive Income with Writing and Self-Publishing

When you have income goals in your writing career and want to include passive income into those objectives, understand that the workload, in the beginning, will be heavy until the ideas take off. 

Self-publishing can be a successful pursuit, allowing authors the chance to get their books out to an audience where they may not have had that opportunity when traditional publishers held the rank in the literary world. 

Developing a book and walking it through marketing to the point of record sales is a process, one that has a bit of a learning curve. If you’re not somewhat versed, researching, taking tutorials, webinars, and educational workshops is a wise step to achieving your eventual income goals. 

Find a guide for making money working on self-publishing at https://mashable.com/article/self-published-authors-making-a-living.

 Self-publishing is ambitious; it can take some time to bring it all the way to a “passive” stage. While that grows into fruition, many other opportunities are available to sustain your livelihood. Let’s explore self-publishing first and then review a few different possibilities.

· Self-publishing in any niche 

Self-publishing can potentially be lucrative (semi) passive income when following all the necessary steps for developing an eBook. You can find many platforms that help guide the process to make it more straightforward. 

The niche you’re comfortable writing in will also be one an audience will enjoy reading. There’s a reader for every genre, some more than others, but you will find your target group regardless of whether you prefer a non-fiction platform or only choose fiction topics.

Everyone has skill as a writer; it’s merely a matter of keeping to a subject you’re familiar with to bring out that talent. A few simple steps in the process include”:

  1. Write the story
  2. Edit or have it professionally done
  3. Format or have it professionally don
  4. Design a cover using a professional 
  5. Upload the final product
  6. Start marketing 

If you’re not versed in developing a book, you’ll find many tutorials and online workshops and educational platforms to guide you through the process, along with professional services to help with the process offering reasonable costs.

Go here to learn the latest in self-publishing for writers. What are some other ways to incorporate writing into a passive income? Let’s learn.

· Publish PDF informational guides 

When you can supply information or offer a guide on a topic that’s helpful to a particular group and garner a price point greater than “$5.99 for an eBook,” you can choose the sale price and market it in any way you like. 

The priority is researching how to set yourself up as a service, freelancing in a particular industry, market to that audience to develop clientele and decide on costs. For some writers, the conventional eBook isn’t quite the right platform, but the informational guide is more the scope they want to follow.

As an independent, a payment/delivery service is beneficial in helping to sell the guide with a small sales percentage used for the costs. With this platform, the income can be passive since you can ensure the guide is always available for the group to obtain.

· Create a blog

Many writers create blogs. While it can take some time to establish a following and become profitable in blogging, the benefits outweigh the downsides. When the audience sees you as an expert in a specific niche, a following will naturally develop as people begin to spread the word.

While this is more of a (semi) passive income, it can be considerable if you know your topic and have plenty to say about it. The idea is to have a generic foundation from which you can then branch out in multiple directions. 

You’ll never come to a point of being bored or writing yourself into a corner, so to speak. Along those same lines, you can further advance that PDF guide into coursework using one of what are numerous platforms to do so. 

· Record books

Once you create a book, why not record the content to make an audio version? A lot of people enjoy audiobooks since many are on the go with hectic schedules. You can generate passive income with royalties, the method for getting paid for most narrators in this landscape.

In this platform there are a few skills you need to have to be successful including adequate editing, a popular niche, narration skills. Plus, if you forego the writing element and read for other writers to make the income entirely passive, you’ll need to learn proper auditioning techniques.

Fortunately, plenty of platforms make the process more straightforward and simpler so you can land gigs relatively quickly from the start. Once you establish a reputation, clients will contact you for work.

· Self-publishing song compositions

This is very niche and specific to song writing and music composition. Songwriters are specialty writers hoping to have their music published so they can receive compositional royalties. 

Typically, the publisher receives “50 percent of the royalties while the writer receives the other 50 percent,” their share. The writer’s share is always that of the artist while that of the publisher is split between the publisher and the songwriter according to the contract.

When self-publishing, as the writer, you can receive the entire share. Self-publishing music involves music promotion, networking with a recording artist, and maximizing royalties. The advantages include creative control and greater revenue. 

It might seem complex, and more work than a passive income is supposed to be, but for the driven songwriter hoping to meet income goals, mastering some of the more tedious administrative facets of the business is necessary. And you will need to put in more of a workload when trying to get started in the industry.

Self-Publishing for Passive Income

For writers aspiring to meet income goals, self-publishing eBooks for passive or semi-passive income may sound too far-fetched. However, the dream can be a reality with enough drive and determination, and the right platform. 

It’s undoubtedly the ideal way to get your work seen by the reader and bring in an income with the thing you love most. That doesn’t mean it will be simple. You will need to put in a great deal of work in the beginning and learn how to develop a quality book that the audience will want to read.

If the cover doesn’t attract their attention or it’s poorly edited, the crowd will walk away. If you don’t sell yourself, no one will come. When you do it right, you will see a lucrative business, excellent passive income.

Final Thought

As a self-published author or writer, it’s wise in the beginning to have a few ventures going on at the same time until you get that best seller that everyone is striving for. 

While you can work hard and earn a decent passive income selling copies for royalties, you’ll want to keep your options vast as you create your brand, become recognized in the literary world. A good idea is to broaden your horizons by selling worldwide instead of restricting yourself to a local market.

This can increase your royalties significantly and give you a greater shot at that best-seller status. There’s something to be said for chasing your dreams in every corner of the world.

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