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7:22 am
February 6, 2012
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Jennifer Mattern
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As freelance writers, we earn our money by contracting our services out to clients. But sometimes that isn't enough — either because we need to earn between gigs or because other income streams are built into our business plans from the start.
My favorite two writing-related income streams outside of client work are blogging and e-book publishing.
I'm currently selling 2 e-books and working on others. And I have around 2 dozen active websites and blogs (and several new ones being built, including one on e-book publishing and one on writing tips for bloggers).
How about you? Do you earn money as a writer outside of your freelance assignments? What are your favorite income streams? Do you upsell to other services?
Share your ideas for additional income streams here.
Jenn
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8:37 am
February 6, 2012
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Elafont
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I have certain editors that I can tap into for additional work should I need something extra, but consistent income streams outside of that are in my fiction. I have had some income in doing book trailers, but those are expensive so it's not something I could rely on unless I spent more time actually trying to turn it into a business.
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2:45 pm
February 6, 2012
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Jennifer Mattern
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I forgot all about your book trailers. Is that something you and the hubby have considered making more of a full-time business, or do you just prefer the occasional side project trailer? With the boom in indie publishing, how do you think a full-time switch to that line of work would compare to your career as a writer (even if the interest isn't there on your end)?
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5:51 pm
February 6, 2012
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Elafont
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We tried a couple of different rates, but in order to make it remotely worth the time you sink in, they have to be relatively expensive and since a lot of indies don't know how to capitalize on trailers or have had bad luck in the past (usually with a boring, basic video using a template) it's not something I want to focus on. It would take too much marketing effort–it's much easier to write for a living.
That said, we do enjoy doing the trailers and it's nice to give indies a product that really is original and high quality but doesn't cost an arm and a leg, so we will continue to take on the one or two a year that authors who know me ask for, and of course we continue to do trailers for some of my work as well ;-)
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6:12 pm
February 6, 2012
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Jennifer Mattern
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lol Be careful there. We don't need new folks thinking this job's too easy. 
Very good point about a lot of indies not having adequate budgets for that kind of thing.
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4:03 pm
March 9, 2012
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Luana Spinetti
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At the moment, article assignments from online/print pubs are still a small percentage of my freelance work. :)
My other income stream comes from:
- text translation (I've just been commissioned a 80 page book translation for 1 cent/word this week, English-to-Italian)
- sponsored blog posts (I make about $200-$300 a month just from these!)
- art commissions (I'll have to raise my rates here as soon as I get faster at drawing, I'd had too little time for that over the last months)
- website design and copy (last commission I received was on 2009, so it's been a while)
- paid links/ads (around $50-$90 a month)
I can't complain, especially since I'm still a college student. :)
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4:25 pm
March 9, 2012
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Jennifer Mattern
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It sounds like you have a pretty big mix of services there. Do you find it a challenge it promote that many services, or are your target markets for each fairly similar (so you can sell multiple services as add-ons to the same clients)?
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4:35 pm
March 9, 2012
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Luana Spinetti
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Jennifer Mattern said:
It sounds like you have a pretty big mix of services there. Do you find it a challenge it promote that many services, or are your target markets for each fairly similar (so you can sell multiple services as add-ons to the same clients)?
Usually I promote them all together on Social Media, so that a client that may use more than a single service knows he can request a quote. However, I've been advised (by a fellow freelance writer) to setup a different freelance website for each service I provide, so I have a subdomain of luanaspinetti.com just for article/blog post/web copy/text translation, which go under the "writer" label, and two different subdomains that focus on art and web design respectively.
I'm still thinking of the proper structure to give to my different portfolios, in order to keep them specialized but interconnected at the same time. I've scheduled some time to dedicate to that, this week. It requires some planning. ;)
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4:42 pm
March 9, 2012
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Jennifer Mattern
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Really? That's unusual advice. I'm not sure I'd say it's good advice either.
A separate page for each service makes sense. A separate site is probably going a bit too far. One site per market you're trying to target makes more sense (to me). For example, if you're selling all of those services to website owners, marketing firms, online publications, or some other group, you can sell them together. It lets you sell services a la carte or bundled. Splitting them would make more sense if you're targeting very different markets. For example, if you do Web design for large corporate clients but write for blog owners, then it makes sense to split things. They're very different markets.
Managing a bunch of subdomains sounds like unnecessary work to me. I've offered multiple services on one site for years, and as long as the target market is the same, it's never been an issue (blogging, feature articles, and copywriting for example). And in the past that writing work was a part of a PR firm, meaning there were consulting and social media services involved as well. No need for several portfolios.
Just my $.02. :)
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