Wouldn’t it be nice to keep making money from your writing projects long after you have completed them? It’s possible as a freelance writer and it’s called residual income. Simply put, residual income is when you do the work once and keep getting paid for it over and over again. If you’re willing to put some effort in to completing things like articles, e-books, and blog posts, it is possible to keep a steady stream of revenue flowing, even during months when you do little or no writing work. Let’s take a look at some types of residual income for writers.
Advertising Revenue
Instead of constantly working for others and allowing them to reap the benefits of your talent, why not set up your own Web site? You can set up a large Web site dedicated to one topic or several smaller sites (also called microsites) dedicated to different topics that you are interested in writing about. Once you have the site filled with content that you have written, you can get revenue by setting up advertising on each page. You can use a program like Google Adsense, which displays ads on each of your pages and pays you each time someone clicks on one of those ads. You can also sell advertising to other companies on a monthly or per-ad basis. Even though you have completed the content for the site, you can keep earning money as long as you display ads on each page.
Books and E-books
Another way to earn residual income as a writer is to write a book or e-book. Once you have done the work of writing the book, you will continue to earn income as long as the book is on the market. You will need to decide whether a traditional book or e-book is right for you. The credibility of being published by a traditional publishing house is an attractive prospect, but royalties may be minimal and you may need to spend an extensive amount of time marketing your book in order to make enough sales to keep getting paid. An e-book is much easier to produce and distribute since you can use the power of the Internet to make the e-book available to thousands of people. If you write and distribute your own e-book, you will also be able to keep a greater percentage of the profits.
Affiliate Programs
If you do not have the time or the interest in writing an e-book, you can sell other people’s products and make commissions for each product sold. Research several affiliate programs to find products you feel comfortable promoting. It would be best to stay away from any products that have many bad reviews or that are unethical in any way, since your reputation could be damaged if you recommended that type of product. Once you have selected a product to promote, you can market it by writing a blog post with your affiliate link or sending an e-mail to your list with the product information and your affiliate link. While this does take some effort, the commissions can add up to a substantial amount of money for very little work.
Revenue Share Content
Some Web sites allow writers to submit content and receive revenue share payments on that content. This means that you will receive revenue based on ad clicks or the number of page views each of your articles receives. You need to decide if this type of arrangement is right for you. Some sites that offer revenue share/residual income opportunities do not offer up front payments for your work. This means that there is a chance you could only make a dollar or two on an article that doesn’t get many page views. However, you could make $3 per month every month for 5 years on a high-traffic article. This means that you would make a total of $180 over the life of the article, which far exceeds what you would make if you submitted the article to a content site for an up front payment of $10 or $15. Some sites to review if you are interested in this type of opportunity include Associated Content and eHow.
Set aside some time this week to look into residual income opportunities that can help you make more money. With a little effort now, you can continue to reap financial rewards for years into the future.
Filed under: Residual Income Tagged: | freelance writing, passive income, Residual Income
