We’ve already looked at why freelance job boards aren’t the best places to find gigs and how you can make it easier for clients to find you through your writer platform. But what can you do in between client projects, as you wait for responses to your pitches or while you’re still growing your platform?

You can build additional non-client income streams (and some of these are actually a part of your writer platform, meaning they can attract clients in addition to direct income). Let’s look at some revenue stream options for writers and then I’ll point you to some further information we’ve covered in the past about two of the most popular options.

Additional Revenue Streams for Freelance Writers

Here are ten potential new revenue streams you can develop as a writer:

1. Books
2. E-books
3. Blogs
4. Niche content / resource websites (free)
5. Paid membership sites
6. E-courses
7. Email newsletters
8. Industry reports (based on original research like surveys)
9. Website flipping (create small well-optimized sites and sell them to webmasters)
10. PLR articles or e-books (content sold at very low prices for re-use or resale, but the same content can be sold to multiple people)

Not all of these income streams will be right for you. For example, if you tend to charge $50 or more per blog post (or want to), selling cheap PLR content can tarnish the image you want to create even if it might be more profitable at times. On the other hand, not all writers want to devote the time that goes into writing, editing and selling a book to bring in additional income.

Now let’s look at two of the most common additional income streams for writers: blogs and e-books. I’m not going to say a lot about them directly in this post as they’ve been discussed extensively in the past. Instead I’m going to link you to further reading, so you can pick and choose the information you really want or need to know.

Blogging

Here are some articles from our archives about getting started as a blogger and using blogs as an additional income stream:

• Make Money Blogging — An Additional Income Stream for Freelance Writers
• Blog Launch Checklist
• Coming Up With Blog Post Ideas
• 101 Niches to Write About
• Score Points for Better Blogging
• Are You a Slave to Your Blog Sponsors?
• How We Increased Blog Traffic by 80% in Less Than a Year (and How You Can Too!)

E-books

Writing and selling e-books can be another way for freelance writers to earn income between gigs. Better yet, these e-books can sell for a long time after the initial launch. If you’re thinking about writing e-books, here are some resources you might be interested in. (Note: Some of these posts are located on my indie publishing blog rather than All Freelance Writing.)

• How to Write an E-book in Just 14 Days (a free e-book)
• How Writing E-books Can Save You From a Low Pay Rut
• Planning and Outlining an E-book
• E-books and Reports — An Additional Income Stream for Freelance Writers
• Using Testimonials to Sell an E-book
• 5 Factors to Consider in Pricing Your E-book
• Zoe Winters on E-book Pricing: Does Low-Balling Attract the Wrong Kind of Reader?
• Why Most of My E-books Won’t be Sold on Amazon
• How to Market an E-book

No freelance writer must create additional income streams. You can spend that extra time on more pitches. This is just one way to diversify your writing business, and products or services that bring in regular income can alleviate some concerns when freelance work dries up.

Choose income streams based on your own target market. PLR articles have no place in some niches. Print books might not make sense for fast-moving industries where books would quickly be outdated. Not all markets will happily pay for access to a new membership site.

Identify your market and figure out how to solve problems for them — in the end, that’s how you make better money, whether through freelance contracts or your own projects.

If you’ve enjoyed this series, come back next week when I’ll share tips and advice with five freelancers about their situations and goals for moving past Demand Media. You might find some of those suggestions useful in improving your own freelance writing career.

In the meantime, if you’d like to read more, you can check out the following articles from our archives:

This is one of my favorite books on nonfiction authorship and was a big motivational factor as I drafted The Query-Free Freelancer. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

If you’ve read the book already, register on the site right from our blog sidebar or the registration link on the forum page (it’s free!). As a registered user, you can take part in the book club discussion.

I’ve kicked things off with 10 questions related to the book. You can respond to all or just some of them, and you can respond to that post by asking questions of your own. Just remember, don’t comment here on the blog. Keep book club discussions on the book club forum.

Thanks! Oh, and if you don’t have a copy yet, buy one today!

Would you like to suggest books for our future book club picks? While we already have some scheduled for the next several weeks, you can leave your own picks in our suggestion threads for future review and inclusion.

Evelyn Lafont

All hail and well-met fellow freelancers (that has to be the dorkiest opening line ever written on any guest post, ever)! I’m here to talk to you today about transitioning from a nonfiction freelance writing career to an awesome career as a fiction novelist, filled with days of dreaming about fire breathing dragons, sparkly vampires, dead sexy demons and historical sinful shenanigans.

Huh? What’s that? What do I know about transitioning from freelancing to fiction?

Uh, okay, so I’ve not been successful at it yet—but hey, give me time. I’m only on my first novella here, folks.

Alright, so instead of acting like an expert about something I’ve yet to do myself, let me talk about something I do know how to do—how to fit fiction writing, marketing and branding into a freelance schedule.

3-Steps To Fictionizing Your Day

As a freelancer, not only are you uniquely suited to the life of a fiction writer, but you also have the ideal schedule flexibility to be one. Consider all those people who work regular jobs; from 8AM until 5PM they are stuck in their cube, with a boss looking over their shoulder. If they want to write, they must fit it in covertly between bouts of actual work, or sneak around at lunch to get a couple of thousand words in. They can also fit writing in during the morning hours while getting ready for work and in the evenings while cooking dinner, doing laundry and sweeping…or whateverthehell responsible adults do at night.

Vampire Relationship Guide: Meeting & Mating

As a freelancer, you have this beat. All you have to do is devote yourself to the act of writing. I’m not big on restrictive schedules, so I’m not going to tell you that you have to work from 5AM to 12PM on freelancing then you can write fiction from 12PM until 2PM. I mean, if that kind of thing works for you then great, have at it. Me? I’m a bit more haphazard about how and when I do things.

1. Set deadlines on certain days only. I like to set deadlines on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays only. That leaves me four days a week to work on outlining client pieces and brainstorming without stress. I can also use any of those four days to write fiction, since I’m not all stressed out with due dates.
2. Write when you want to…and when you don’t. While I don’t force myself to write fiction on the days that I have deadlines, I do force myself to write on the days that I don’t. It’s way too easy to create the dream of being a fiction writer, and assure ourselves that we are ‘working it out in our head’ before we actually put finger to keyboard. Make yourself write fiction or you are not a fiction writer—you are a dreamer.
3. Market every single day. Whether you’re taking the same route I am and self-publishing your fiction or you are going with a traditional publisher, you need to market yourself in order to gain readers. I’m a big believer in separating your fiction persona from your freelance persona. You may disagree, and you are certainly welcome to, but I don’t think the twain should meet. I think you should have separate blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts for freelancing and fiction marketing. After all, you have two completely different target markets for your novel and for your freelance work. Why try to hit both of them up with the same account?

I truly believe that if you really want something, and have the courage to try to achieve it, you will find a way to make it happen. Hopefully, some of these tips will help, but at the end of the day you really just need to pony up to your keyboard—and write.

About Evelyn Lafont

Evelyn Lafont is an indie author and freelance writer. Her debut novella, The Vampire Relationship Guide, Volume 1: Meeting and Mating will be available on Amazon and Smashwords March 31st. You can read the first chapterhere and see the book description on Goodreads.

“I simply have a penchant for INTELLIGENT conversation.” – Megatron, Beast Wars

Ego issues aside, rambling to myself has actually helped me come up with a lot of great ideas. Often my mind wanders to certain topics, which naturally leads me to trying out joke lines, to laughing to myself once I stumble on a nearly-perfect gag to use. Of course, as mentioned in the title, this only seems to work when I’m in the bathroom. Hey, what else am I gonna do in there when I’m finishing up?

Still, that got me thinking. Many writers advocate writing a terrible first draft to get everything on paper and avoid censoring yourself. Same’s true for joke writing. I’m thinking that this tendency of mine to make up material in the bathroom is my own way to bypass self-censorship and really get my creative juices flowing. And if it works for me, why not anyone else?

So here’s what I want you to try. It might by silly, but do it at least one time. Go to a place where you can be alone and do something to keep your hands busy. While you’re doing that, let your mind and mouth wander, speaking aloud what you’re currently thinking about. And as you do this, try to let your natural thoughts and reactions to things bubble through. You’ll find that, even as the risk of looking like a mad person, the lack of a barrier can summon some authentic and truly original material.

Of course, this might not work for everyone. If you’re like me and you tend to bop through life and make jokes, this will feel more natural to you. Even so, I think it’s worth a shot. Who knows? Jokes on the can just might turn out to be a valuable tool in your comedy arsenal.

Do you have any questions about humor writing that you want me to answer? What would you like to see me cover in future columns? Leave me a comment telling me what you’d like to see!

A lot of new content will go up this week. Some will be brand spanking new. Other posts are being moved from this blog to a permanent home on the new indie publishing blog (generally posts that came from AllBookMarketing.com or AllBookWriting.com previously but were housed here after the big site merge a while back). Posts in the latter group are marked so you know what’s new and what isn’t (although some of the moved content is being updated to reflect changes in indie publishing that have occurred since its original publication date — also noted on case-by-case basis).

Is All Indie Publishing for You?

All indie publishing is a site about professional independent publishing. That does not mean it will cover everything under the more general “self publishing” label. For example, we won’t spend a lot of time on POD publishing (and I’ll talk about why that is on the blog itself later this week). We also won’t spend much time talking about so-called independent publishing houses. Being small and not tied to a major publisher doesn’t make you “indie.” This site is for true independent authors — ones who don’t seek publishers, of any size or affiliation.

If you’re interested in any of the following, All Indie Publishing might be able to help you out:

• Writing your book or e-book, from the outline process through the final draft
• Self-editing
• Working with professional editors and proofreaders to put out a professional product
• Dealing with the business of being an indie author (no, it’s not all about the writing)
• Book marketing, PR, and publicity
• Using beta readers
• E-book pricing issues
• Working with professionals on the design and production of your book
• Interviews with indie authors and other professionals who can help you bring your book to market

There will be a big content push through next week before I settle into a more regular Monday / Wednesday posting schedule on the site. So make sure you check it out soon so you don’t miss anything! And be sure to follow me on Twitter @indiepublisher to connect and talk about indie publishing issues.

The Comedy Writing Workbook, by Gene Perret
I absolutely adore this book, and if you can get only one book on comedy writing, I’d make it this one. It covers a variety of techniques with detailed examples and exercises for you to try. If you can’t find it, though, you can make do with The New Comedy Writing Step by Step, another book by Perret that condenses this information. Either one is worth reading if you’re serious about improving your jokes.

Step By Step to Standup Comedy, by Greg Dean
This book is primarily geared to developing stand-up comedy routines and improving your performance, but it also offers the “joke prospector” system to help create great jokes. I’ve adopted some of the tips in this book into my own writing, so even article writers can get some mileage out of this one. Definitely a worthy purchase.

And Here’s The Kicker, by Mike Sacks
Sacks has gathered interviews with 21 fine folks in the comedy writing business, from column to film, in this neat little volume. There’s the obligatory advice on how to break certain markets and how to get your material in the right hands, but the strength of this book is reading where all these people came from and how they got to where they are now. And some of these cats come from poor or unpleasant backgrounds. It just goes to show you (and me) how you can get anywhere you want as long as you keep faith and stay tenacious. Without that, no dream is possible, especially one as tricky as comedy writing.

There are a few other books on comedy writing out there, but these are some of the best as far as I’m concerned. Of course, you can be sure I’ll feed you helpful comedy writing advice as well! Learn from everything you can, I say. And keep on laughing.

Do you have any questions about humor writing that you want me to answer? What would you like to see me cover in future columns? Leave me a comment telling me what you’d like to see!

Remember that jokes start with a setup and end with a punchline. The trick to using other jokes is to change the setup or the punchline to create a fundamentally similar line. This way you can preserve part of the original joke while putting your own spin on it.

Let’s demonstrate with one of the jokes I wrote for Twitter:

Life is full of disappointment and pain. Most of it comes from my performance of The Mikado.

Now, let’s try switching out the setup. Remember, it should still logically flow to the punchline in some way. Feel free to modify the punchline’s wording as well in order to accommodate your new setup.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people fall ill from contagious airborne substances. This is why my performance of the Mikado was labelled a “biohazard”.

And now, let’s try switching out the punchline.

Life is full of disappointment and pain. But that’s not a very marketable name, so instead they called it “Spider Man: Turn Off The Dark”.

You can do this to both setup and punchline, creating your own new wording while keeping the essence of the joke idea intact. As long as the idea’s funny, it should work.

Of course, I still recommend you make your own original humor when you can, and if you feel bad about stealing from other writers, you can always rephrase jokes you’ve written yourself. But like they say, nothing is original…might as well take advantage of it a LITTLE bit, wouldn’t you say?

Until next time, keep on laughing.

Do you have any questions about humor writing that you want me to answer? What would you like to see me cover in future columns? Leave me a comment telling me what you’d like to see!

How do you catch these? Simple. Just read it out loud and use your head. I’ve mentioned before that written and spoken humor flows differently, and what constitutes “unneccessary words” in either of these mediums is different. Spoken humor needs to get to the point while written humor can lollygag a bit. Still, if you can cut out any extra words, the better.

Read humor aloud. See what words you can trim. Remember, you need to convey all the information the audience needs to understand a joke in the smallest amount of space possible. Besides trimming words, can you replace bigger words with smaller ones? Can you pare down phrases to their bare essentials? You’re not dumbing it down, per se – think of it as removing the joke’s barrier to entry, so the most amount of people can enjoy it. That can be a fun challenge in its own right.

Like all writing, make sure you hammer it out first before revising. It can be tempting to capture the flow of the words as you go, especially for something as short as a joke. Resist the urge, get everything else done first, then go back and clean it up. You’ll be glad you did.

Until next time, keep on laughing.

Do you have any questions about humor writing that you want me to answer? What would you like to see me cover in future columns? Leave me a comment telling me what you’d like to see!

Need some ideas on how you can get started? Here are five examples of ways you can use your freelance writing skills and knowledge in your specialty area to sell information products and make more money.

E-books

E-books are a popular option these days for writers wanting to sell products thanks in part to e-reading devices. But they’ve been a big deal in entrepreneurial circles for a long time. They’re a proven income stream, and they can bring in recurring income as long as the topic area is still valid (meaning evergreen topics are a good choice for e-books). Write an e-book of your own and you can sell it. Target members of your existing target market if you want to capitalize on your current platform and network to boost sales.

Books

You can also go a more traditional route and write print books. You can seek traditional publishers or you might opt for the indie publishing route. Again, focus either on your own target market or on their target market (for example, if you write for magazines that cater to parents, you could write a book directly to the parent audience).

DIY Kits

As much as you like having people pay you to write for them, you could make a good amount of money by teaching the true DIY-ers of the group to do things for themselves. There are several ways to do this, including webinars or e-courses. But if you want a simpler recurring revenue stream, why not create information kits? For example, if you write sales letters frequently and you want to tap those who might not be willing to pay your service rates you could put together a kit with tutorials and templates. You create it once and sell it over and over again. You don’t have to give away all your secrets. But you get recurring income and get to reach buyers who otherwise wouldn’t have given you a dime.

Subscription Websites

Maybe you’d like to spend more time writing the content that you want to write instead of what clients want. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could essentially sell that content over and over instead of to just one client (or a handful in the case of reprints)? You can do something similar with a subscription website or a subscription-only section of your blog. Just create premium content once and sell access to it repeatedly to each subscriber to your site. You won’t get away with charging for basics everyone else offers for free though. So find ways to make a subscription worthwhile.

Reports

Maybe you’re used to writing white papers and reports for clients. Why not do your own original research and release the report for a fee? If you specialize in an in-demand subject area where people are interested in new research, this could be a great information product for you. For example, you might run a major survey each year and publish the results (note that a simple online poll isn’t going to cut it if you want to charge for the resulting report).

How would you turn your writing services into products to expand your income potential beyond your typical billable hours? Leave your experiences or ideas in the comments below.

Of course, you have to be careful of whom you mock. Using a joke like that against a celebrity or a politician is fine, since they’re acceptable public targets. But busting out the “takeout lane love” routine at a friend’s party could land you in a world of hot water. How far should you go?

Let’s look at each target and see how to handle them:

1. Public figures: Celebrities, politicians, companies, big websites…comedians mock these all the time, since everyone knows who they are. And since the media tends to report on every blooper they make, you’ll find a ton of potential topics to joke about. My only obvious warning here is that you can’t make stuff up. Do your homework first, and make sure what you’re talking about is true and recognizable by your audience. Other than that, you’re home free – how exactly you mock these figures depends on your style.

2. Big events: Approach these like public figures – don’t make stuff up and make sure the audience knows what you’re talking about. And, of course, if it’s too soon, DON’T make a joke about it. Don’t even try the most polite joke you can think of. Professional comedians have the experience to walk around huge tragedies, so if you don’t, just don’t bother. Trust me.

3. Friends and family: You can definitely get away with poking fun at the people you know, but you have to set boundaries. Don’t mock any problems they may be struggling with. Stick with the things they already make fun of themselves about. Exaggerate traits they already have or boast about. Poke fun at the stuff that ultimately doesn’t matter, and everyone will come out of it with friendships intact.

4. Yourself: Yep, making fun of your own faults is also possible. Comedians do it all the time – it’s a great way to build a connection with the audience. The best way to do this, I find, is to discuss a topic that most people are familiar with and occasionally remark about how it affects you. The trick is to come off looking like the fool, and there’s no limit to how you can do this. Just make sure it’s funny.

Do you have any questions about humor writing that you want me to answer? What would you like to see me cover in future columns? Leave me a comment telling me what you’d like to see!