Earning More Money

‌Relying on one paycheck as a writer is risky. Discover how to build multiple streams of income—from freelancing to passive revenue—so you can write on your own terms.

Most writers don’t fail because they’re bad at writing—they fail because they can’t afford to keep going. Relying on a single paycheck in this industry is a risky bet, but building multiple streams of income creates financial stability that lasts.

Freelance gigs come and go, book royalties fluctuate, and even the best client relationships can dry up. But with different sources of income—some active, some passive—you can smooth out the ups and downs of self-employed life and keep the words (and cash flow) going.

The good news? You don’t have to do everything at once. Let’s break down how to build multiple streams of income in a way that works for you.

Step 1: Understand the 7 types of income

When people talk about multiple streams of income, they usually mean more than just juggling side hustles or waiting for book royalties to roll in. True financial stability comes from diversification—earning money from a mix of active and passive sources.

Here’s a breakdown of the seven main income streams writers can tap into:

1. Earned income: The most familiar source: money from freelance writing, book sales, or a full-time writing job. This is active income—you work, you get paid. Simple, but it’s also the least scalable.

2. Business income: Running your own business—coaching, content marketing services, or running a niche blog that generates revenue. This allows you to set your own rates and build long-term assets.

3. Interest income: Not all your money has to come from writing! Putting money into high-yield savings accounts, ETFs, or bonds can earn you extra cash without lifting a finger.

4. Dividend income: Investing in stocks, mutual funds, or REITs that pay dividends means getting small payouts regularly. It won’t replace your full-time job, but it’s an easy way to grow wealth over time.

5. Rental income: This could mean traditional real estate investments, but for writers, it might also be renting out equipment, office space, or even subletting an Airbnb on the side.

6. Capital gains: Profit from selling investments like stocks, real estate, or other appreciating assets at a higher price than you originally paid. While not directly tied to writing, investing wisely can provide an additional income stream that supports your creative career.

7. Royalty/passive income: Earnings that continue over time from work you’ve already created. Book royalties, self-published eBooks, affiliate marketing, and digital courses can all bring in extra income—often long after the work is done.

The key to financial freedom as a writer? Diversify. Mixing active and passive income streams means more stability, fewer financial downturns, and more opportunities to build long-term wealth—without having to write 80 hours a week.

💡 Pro Tip: The goal isn’t to dive into all seven at once—it’s to identify what fits best with your skills and financial goals. Whether you want extra cash for short-term security or a long-term strategy to build wealth, diversification is key.

Step 2: Start with active income

Before building passive income, most writers start with active income—money earned directly from their writing. This is the fastest way to generate cash flow and build credibility while honing your skills. Here are some of the best active income sources for writers:

• Freelance writing: The go-to for many writers. Specializing in content writing, copywriting, B2B writing, or journalism can land you consistent, high-paying gigs.

• Ghostwriting: If you don’t mind writing under someone else’s name, ghostwriting books, business content, blog posts, or even social media can be incredibly lucrative.

• Corporate writing: White papers, case studies, grant writing—startups, business owners, and organizations pay well for specialized, research-heavy content.

• Self-publishing: Whether it’s nonfiction, memoir, or fiction, self-publishing books through Amazon Kindle or other platforms can be a long-term revenue stream.

• Content marketing and SEO writing: Companies need high-quality blog posts, landing pages, and web content to attract customers, making this one of the most in-demand writing jobs.

• Coaching and consulting: If you have expertise in a specific niche, offering writing coaching or consulting services can be a great way to make money while helping others.

• Selling writing-adjacent services: If you have SEO, web design, or email marketing skills, offer them to writers, small businesses, or entrepreneurs who need them. These are high-value services that pair well with a writing business.

The key to making active income sustainable is charging competitive rates, finding steady clients, and delivering high-quality work consistently. Once you’ve established yourself, you can gradually free up time to explore passive income ideas—but first, you need a strong financial foundation.

Step 3: Build semi-passive income streams

How do you make extra money from writing without constantly trading hours for dollars? The answer lies in semi-passive income streams—opportunities that require upfront effort but can continue earning over time. These aren’t truly passive (at least not at first), but they help create long-term stability in your writing career.

• Self-publishing: Publishing on Amazon KDP, selling direct from your website, or using serialized platforms like Ream allows you to build a steady stream of book royalties. For beginners, it might not bring in a lot of money right away, but the more books you publish, the more your earnings can grow.

• Affiliate marketing: If you recommend books, writing tools, or software you genuinely love, affiliate programs can bring in extra income every time someone buys through your link.

• Selling digital products: If you create writing templates, query letter guides, or freelance pitch decks, they can be sold repeatedly with little extra effort on platforms like Etsy, eBay, or your own website.

• Paid newsletters: Whether you charge for memberships, attract sponsors, or offer exclusive content, newsletters (Substack, Beehiiv, Ghost) can become a reliable revenue stream.

• Teaching and workshops: One-time or recurring writing workshops on Zoom allow you to monetize your expertise without the commitment of long-term coaching.

• Podcasting and video content: Writers are natural storytellers—so why not monetize a podcast or YouTube channel about writing, freelancing, or publishing? With ads, sponsorships, and Patreon, this can turn into a strong revenue stream.

The best part? Once these systems are in place, they keep working for you. Instead of constantly chasing new clients, you’ll have multiple revenue streams bringing in income—even while you’re focused on new projects.

Step 4: Create fully passive income streams

How do you make money while you sleep (or, more realistically, while procrastinating on your next writing project)? Passive income streams take time to build but can eventually generate revenue with little ongoing effort.

• Online courses: Turn your expertise into a self-paced writing course on platforms like Teachable, Podia, or Thinkific, allowing you to create an online business while helping others improve their craft.

• Membership communities: Build a paid writing group where members get access to exclusive content, coaching, or networking opportunities (like Wordling Plus!).

• Royalties from books: Writing an evergreen nonfiction book, a successful fiction series, or niche guides can bring in consistent royalties for years.

• Writing templates and toolkits: Query letter bundles, press release kits, or self-publishing guides can be created once and sold repeatedly.

• Niche blogs: Try your hand at being a blogger. A high-traffic blog focused on evergreen, search optimized content can generate ad revenue without constant updates.

Pro Tip: The smartest writers don’t just create one income stream—they leverage their audience without investing a lot of time. A book can lead to other active and passive income sources, such as a course, a paid newsletter, affiliate sales, and consulting gigs.

Step 5: Expand beyond writing—additional income sources

Writers shouldn’t just think about income in terms of their next project or client check—they should be thinking about their entire financial future. A sustainable writing career isn’t just about making money right now—it’s about building wealth, stability, and financial freedom over time.

That means looking beyond writing itself and tapping into smart investments and personal finance skills that can provide long-term security.

• Invest in real estate or REITs: Real estate is one of the oldest wealth-building strategies out there. If managing tenants sounds like a nightmare, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) let you invest in property markets without ever fixing a broken sink. Some writers also invest in rental properties for long-term passive income.

• Stock market investing: Dividend stocks pay you just for holding them—which is the closest thing to free money you’ll ever get (besides finding $20 in an old coat). If you’re not sure where to start, a brokerage account and a financial advisor can help you make sense of your options.

• Peer lending and alternative investments: Platforms that allow peer lending let you act as the bank, earning interest rates on loans you fund. It’s a unique way to generate passive income with relatively low effort.

• Retirement accounts: If your only financial plan is “sell more books,” it’s time to think bigger. For Americans, retirement savings options like IRAs and 401(k)s offer tax advantages and long-term wealth growth, ensuring you’re not still chasing freelance gigs at 80. In the UK, similar options include Self-Invested Personal Pensions (SIPPs) and workplace pensions, which help writers build financial security over time. The sooner you start, the more your money works for you.

You don’t have to do all of these—but the more diverse your income, the less financial stress you’ll have. Think of it as future-proofing your writing career—so that your bank account isn’t riding the feast-or-famine rollercoaster forever.

Step 6: Scale your income streams

So, you’ve set up multiple income streams—now what? The key to turning good income into great income is scaling what’s already working instead of constantly chasing the next big thing. Growth doesn’t mean working more hours—it means working smarter and leveraging systems to do the heavy lifting.

• Automate marketing: You don’t have to be online 24/7 to stay visible. Set up email sequences to nurture leads, schedule social media content in advance, and optimize for SEO so your work keeps attracting people while you sleep.

• Repurpose content: If you’ve written a blog post, why not turn it into a YouTube script, podcast episode, or digital product? A self-help book could evolve into an online course or paid workshop. The smartest writers milk every idea for maximum value.

• Outsource tasks: If your time is best spent writing, don’t waste hours doing admin, editing, or marketing—hire a VA, designer, or editor to handle the time-consuming tasks so you can focus on growing your income.

• Double down on what’s working: Not all income streams will perform equally. If one blog post drives most of your affiliate sales, build more like it. If a particular service sells well, raise your rates. The best scaling strategy? Do more of what already works.

The most successful writers don’t chase trends—they refine and expand what’s already making them money. Scaling is about building momentum, so you’re earning more without working more.

Your path to financial freedom as a writer

Building multiple income streams won’t happen overnight—but every step you take adds to your financial stability and creative freedom. Start with what pays the bills today, then layer in semi-passive and passive revenue that will keep working for you long after the initial effort.

If that sounds good, Wordling Plus is where you make it happen. More than a writing community, it’s a business incubator for writers, with coaching, strategy deep dives, and expert guidance to help you scale your income sustainably—without burnout.

If you’re ready to write smarter, earn better, and future-proof your career, click here to check it out.

A six-figure freelancer talks about why thinking like creative entrepreneurs can help writers build the passive income they desire.

A few questions before we begin:

1. Do you have a WordPress blog?

2. If yes, are you using a free theme and do you know who designed that theme?

3. If not and you’re using a paid theme, how much did it cost? How much were you willing to pay? Did you look at WordPress themes that were priced at $100 or more and think, “That’s much too expensive for me right now?”

Someone spent weeks creatively designing a theme, then coding it. That required technical know-how, creativity, even graphics that those of us who use free themes don’t pay for.

You’re a writer who has specialized creative skills, and you believe you deserve to be paid $100 an hour or more for those skills.

But do you believe the designers of the WordPress themes you’re using deserve $100 an hour, too?

Why the freelancing model no longer works (and what you can do about it)

Don’t feel too guilty about using cheap WordPress themes. This is the reality of the marketplace today. It’s the same for writers, for photographers, for painters, for designers, for any other creative professionals. The supply exceeds the demand and therefore, your wares aren’t as valuable anymore.

But there’s another reason you shouldn’t feel guilty. And that’s because those WordPress theme designers? They’re probably making thousands of dollars a month anyway, regardless of the fact that you pay $35 for their work?

How?

They practice the principle of scalability.

In his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert T. Kiyosaki writes that the only way for service businesses (professionals like doctors, lawyers, freelance writers, etc.) is to either increase hours of business or increase rates.

Both are fixed commodities, however. There are only so many hours you can work in a day and there’s a limit to how high you can raise your rates before you price yourself out of the market. “Too many people… are limited as to how many people or organizations they can serve,” he writes. “Hence their income is limited.”

The only way to increase your income substantially, then, is to reach more people. The difference, put simply, is between writing an article and writing a book. If you write an article and sell it to the New York Times for $1 a word, you’ll never see more money from that piece again. On the other hand, if you were to create a collection of articles and sell it in a book, you may (depending on various factors, which we’ll get to) see money from this book over and over again until you keep it in circulation.

The first is active income and there’s a limit on how much you’re going to make through that. The second is passive income. Work once, earn for years to come.

The difference between active and passive income, then, is simple: Scalability.

That WordPress designers make money, thousands of dollars a month because even though you only paid $35, a hundred other people did, too. And the designers keep on creating more themes, which means more income. But if a designer got sick and couldn’t work one day, they’d still make money from the work they did previously.

Photographers and artists sell prints to their work.

And writers? What can we sell? How can writers generate passive income?

Let’s talk about some ways.

Passive income streams for writers

We’ll discuss each of these income streams in detail in future posts, but here’s an overview.

1. Traditionally published books

I no longer count traditional publishing as passive income because after you’ve spent half a dozen years pitching agents, negotiating with publishers, and having your heart broken repeatedly only to make about a dollar per book, it’s not really passive income. More like overdue income. The responsibility that traditionally published authors shoulder is much too high and the cut far too little to make this even a profitable, let alone passive, income option for most writers.

However, if you have a pre-existing platform (perhaps a website that gets half a million page views a month, say, or a large social media following), you’ll easily land yourself a six-figure deal and your agent and publisher will shoulder a ton of the responsibility that they wouldn’t for newer authors, not to mention you’ll actually have an advertising and marketing budget.

If you’re at this level, traditional publishing can be a fantastic way of leveraging your platform and securing passive income.

If not, read on.

2. Indie published books

Indie publishing works for both print books and ebooks, and audio books are doing exceptionally as well. I recommend you explore all those options because the investment now to have a book available in print or audio format is pretty low.

There are two basic ways to self-publish your books and ebooks—through Amazon and other retailers or directly through your own website. I advise doing both. 

3. Niche and authority websites

You can build websites around topics that interest you and earn revenue through advertising and product sales. My own niche websites (I have two) bring in regular passive income on a monthly basis. In fact, this website, the one you’re reading now? It brought in $35,000 in its first year of operation and is now a successful business.

4. Blogging for pay

If you’re blogging for a publication that pays you per post, it’s a good way to make some immediate cash, but it’s not passive income.

However, there are now publications such as PsychologyToday.com and Forbes.com that will give their writers the pay per click option, which, while not a very popular model amongst writers, can prove to be more profitable.

Think of it this way: You could get paid $100 for a blog post today that takes you about an hour to write. That’s $100 an hour, and it’s hardly a bad wage.

Now take that same blog post and put it on a very popular website like PsychologyToday.com or Forbes.com that’ll pay you, say, $5 per 1,000 clicks. Let’s assume you get 2,000 clicks a month. How much money have you made in a year? In two years? In five years?

5. Other income streams

The passive income opportunities for writers today are practically endless. Apps. Information products. Courses for online universities. Kindle singles. Kickstarter campaigns.

Or come up with your own creative ways to package work you’ve already done or will do in the future.

The five-step process to passive income for writers

1. Start building your audience today

In order to take full advantage of all the opportunities that will come your way now and in the future, you need to have readers.

You need to build an audience and you need to build that audience first, before you can have any successful passive income streams. You need to bring readers to your website, your email list, and your blog, NOT a publication’s website, email list or blog.

When you begin a new Kickstarter campaign, you need to be able to email your readers and say, “Hey, is this something you’re interested in?” If you don’t have that list of people who care about what you do, your Kickstarter campaign is dead before it even starts.

I know of what I speak. My personal list was only 2,500 strong when I launched my second course. I made $10,000 in four days.

The same holds true for books, seminars, websites, and pretty much anything else.

2. Call it marketing, not freelancing

If you’re interested in passive income, you’ll have to begin thinking like a businessperson, starting now.

You definitely want to keep writing for publications, not only because it’s fun but also because when you remove the dependency on them for your daily bread, it’ll help you build influence and market your personal brand.

The questions will change, though. Instead of asking how much they pay, you now need to start asking whether they’ll link to your website in the bio, how many readers they have, and how quickly they’ll publish.

3. Change your mindset

This is the most important part, because without this, nothing else will work. Unfortunately, mindset is the one thing that most writers will struggle with because we identify as writers. We want to write, plain and simple, and not be fussed with the rest.

That’s fine. But if you’re thinking like a writer, you know what you’re not thinking like? You’re not thinking like a businessperson.

And you need to be a businessperson if you want to make passive income (or any kind of good income from your work, really).

The good news is there’s no reason you can’t be both. I like to think that when I’m writing, I’m an artist, pure and simple. But once I’ve finished writing, I put my business hat on and go out and kick ass. I negotiate like the best of them, I expect the best rates for my work, and I don’t sell myself short.

Think of yourself as a business with assets and liabilities, expense reports, and clients, not as a writer who earns a paycheck.

4. Learn to figure out what people want to read

This isn’t fun perhaps, but it’s important because if you don’t know what people want to read, you can’t write it for them.

Let’s say you’re interested in writing about the challenges of writers who also happen to be parents. Your experience counts, of course, but it’s also important to talk to some writing parents and see what kind of information they’re looking for, what style speaks to them the most, and what problems they’d like to see solved.

Market research is important, especially when it comes to information products, because your audience needs to be able to find you. And how are they going to find you if you haven’t created a path for them to do so?

5. Create products that meet a need

It could be a nonfiction book that solves the problems of writing parents or it could be a novel that inspires and entertains. The great thing about taking control of your writing and your work is that there are no failures. If something doesn’t sell, you can figure out why and go back and fix it.

When I teach creative entrepreneurship, I cover what I call the three pillars of business: 

1. Creating things
2. Selling things, and 
3. Getting more customers. 

I’ll show you how to use all three to keep your business growing continually.

Listen, there is no deadline for success.

You figure out what your audience wants to read, you figure out what you want to write, and you match the two.

It’s a simple formula for making passive income with your writing. It’s what I’ve been doing in the last few years and it’s what I’d like to help you achieve as well.

In my first year as a writing parent, I made more money working part-time than I had in previous years. This is how.

In January 2012, I became a parent. Everything I had learned about productivity, meeting deadlines, and keeping to a schedule was about to be tossed down the drain. I re-learned a lot of things during that first year sharing my office with my son, but what surprised me most was this: Having a child was perhaps the best thing that had ever happened to be my productivity.

Working part-time that year, I made as much money as I had ever made working full time. I’m re-publishing this article so that those of you who have children (or may have children in the future) may be encouraged to do the same.

I’ve been working part-time and staying up until 2am for the last six months after my son started crawling and I realized that the whole stick-him-in-a-swing-and-write-an-article thing would not work anymore. But, I made almost as much working part-time during my son’s first year as I was making working an 8-hour day during my pregnancy.

So, how did I make a full-time writing income and how can you, working part-time, increase your income to a full-time level? Here are some ideas.

1. I only took high-paying work

Or perhaps I should reword that and say I turned down a LOT of low-paying work. For some regular clients, I kept to my existing rates and with others, I asked for a raise. Each time I was approached by a new editor or client, I asked for my top rate, which for me is currently about $1 a word. 

If a client I hadn’t worked with before offered a low rate, I turned it down. I don’t need more low-paying clients, unless they offer something else, of course, say an entry into a new type of writing, or a prestigious clip that would look good in my nonfiction book proposal.

2. I took on easy work

You know me, I love me some hardcore journalism. When have I not loved to travel to remote regions and find stories that no one else has covered?

That’s right. Never.

Well, except recently, when my priorities changed.

I’ve covered stories about girls cycling to school in Bihar, women-only projects that have changed entire communities, reported on natural disasters. Some of these stories have paid between $250 and $1,000 plus expenses. Compare that to some of the writing I’ve done for women’s and general interest magazines. These include articles about green living and friendship, and have paid $1,000-$2,000, often more. Plus, not only can I write them faster and from the comfort of my home, but I can write more of them because I’m not spending days on travel. Sure, they won’t win any awards, but for the phase of life I’m in right now they’re perfect, since they allow me to bring in a regular income while spending more time with my son.

3. I pitched my ass off

Numbers, numbers, numbers. I can’t say this enough. The more you put out there, the more chance you have of:

1. Hearing back with a yes, and
2. Getting better.

The more pitches you write, the more you’ll learn. And the more pitches you send, the more statistical chance there is of you selling them. I try to send between 20-25 queries a week when I’m low on work. Here’s how I do it.

4. I used my hours wisely

In the last one year, I’ve stayed distant from social media. I just don’t have the time. While many writers have success, especially on Twitter, where connecting with editors is easier and you have a better chance of getting their attention, I find that the five hours I’ll spend networking on Twitter are better spent in coming up with fantastic ideas and writing kickass pitches.

I do build relationships with editors. I personally just find it much easier to do so through my work than with endless posts on social media. 

You don’t have to wait ten years to figure out how to make a reliable income. You can start right now, today.

There are three things I know about you:

1. You work hard, write well, and care passionately about the work you do. But you’re not earning the money you deserve or living the life of freedom you once envisioned for yourself.

2. Your marketing is ad hoc, often inspired by guilt and feelings of “I should.”

3. The cash flow in your business sucks. You’re tired of chasing clients for money, of having no idea what you’ll make the next month, and scared of letting go of awful clients for what it might do to you financially.

How do I know? I’ve been there. And I’ve done that. 

It took me over ten years to figure out that it doesn’t have to be this hard.

I wrote for some of the world’s most prestigious publications—The New York Times, TIME, CNN, ABC News, The Christian Science Monitor, Ms., GlobalPost, The Independent, Vogue, Glamour, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and many more. And yet, cash flow was always a problem in my business. There were feasts (and what awesome feasts they were!) but there were also the famines.

When I became the sole breadwinner for my family a few years ago, the famines became a lot harder to bear. They almost paralyzed us.

I had to come up with a system for keeping the cash flowing through my business fast. And I did.

That process and that system of getting recurring income is what I want to share with you now. 

You don’t have to wait ten years to figure out how to be a freelancer who makes a regular income. You can start right now. Today.

Let me show you how.

Step 1: Create your freelancing roadmap

The very first thing you must do when you start thinking about regular income and how much money you need to be bringing in each month is to calculate your numbers.

My formula for this calculation is pretty simple.

Ask yourself:

1. How much do you need to make per month just to keep the lights on? This is the very minimum you need to earn each month in order to continue freelancing. 

2. How many hours can you realistically work each month?

Answer those two questions before reading ahead.

Let’s assume you need to make $3,000 every month. We’ll also assume you have about 40 hours a week or 160 hours a month in which to do this.

Now we all know you won’t be writing for all those 40 hours. You’ll need to do some administrative work, marketing, and checking of emails, so let’s just assume you can write for half the time, which is about 20 hours a week or 80 hours a month.

With me so far?

Now, to make $3,000 a month writing 20 hours a week or 80 hours a month, you would need to be paid $37.50 an hour. That’s your base rate.

Doable, right? It’s a pretty low rate. You can easily get work for $37.50 an hour to keep yourself afloat. 

(And if you can’t, if making $37.50 is a struggle for you, you need to sign buy The Freelance Writer’s Guide to Content Marketing right this very minute and learn how to get some high-paying work through the door asap.)

While you want to make a lot more than $3,000 a month, if you could bring in that much from recurring revenue in your business, it would give you room to breathe, right? 

If you didn’t have to worry about marketing every single day just to pay the rent, you’d be able to focus on those bigger clients, correct?

So let’s do that. 

It’s difficult to get clients who will pay you $200 an hour every month with little to no marketing right away, but you can easily get the $38-an-hour gigs. 

Don’t worry about how the rate is beneath you, how experienced you are, or how much more you want to be making. You won’t have to stick to this rate for long. But if you’re at absolute rock bottom, you need to give yourself a break from the panic. This is how you do that.

So, that’s step 1.

Step 2: Replace low-paying clients with high-paying ones

Now. It’s two months later. You’ve got $3,000 a month coming in regularly and you’re confident you won’t need to move your husband and children into your parents’ basement next month. You’re steady. Stable.

It’s time to grow.

Now you go intense with the marketing.

I’ve already covered marketing several times on this website, so I won’t go into that here. If you want some tips on that, read THIS and THIS.

What you’ll do now is go big with your marketing. Massive. Doing it as if nothing else matters. However, here’s the part that’s different: You’ll only focus on high-paying clients that have the potential to become regular or anchor clients. And every time you add a new higher-paying client, you let go of a lower-paying one.

You keep doing this until you’ve replaced all your low-paying clients. Then you turn around and do it again. And again. And again. Until you’re at a point where you’re happy with the work and income and all your regular clients are people who not only pay you well but whom you also you adore working with.

So, where the heck do you find these people? Good question.

Here are my top tips.

1. Your existing clients

Okay, so if you haven’t already asked your existing clients if they have regular content needs—HELLO?—just get off this page right now and go do that.

I mean it. Seriously.

Email all your clients and ask them if you can take your every-now-and-again gig with them, whatever it is, and convert it into a monthly thing. Give them a discount if it helps. Regular work—at least in the beginning—is far more valuable than high-paying work because it keeps you afloat. Obviously, I’d rather you have both, but if you need to give a discount or cut your rates slightly so you can have money coming in each and every month with no extra marketing effort, do it.

2. One-off clients

That agency director you did one blog post for and then never heard from again? Follow up.

That editor who assigned two stories and you never again pitched anything to? Pitch her.

That website owner who asked you to do the entire content for her redesign? Ask her if she’s starting up a newsletter or has other content needs.

You get the drift here, right? If they’ve worked with you once and liked your work, they may want to work with you again. And if they’re open to working with you again, they may consider working with you on a recurring basis.

3. Contact agencies

Content agencies are a fantastic source of regular and recurring income for many freelancers. They have many different clients, all sorts of projects, and are often in need of reliable freelancers. If you can make an impression at a high-level agency, you can make very good money on a recurring basis. 

(Read more about the types of content clients and how to pitch each one here.)

4. Your professional networks

Finally, your freelance colleagues are a fantastic source of information about clients. Look through their LinkedIn profiles to see who they’re working with, participate in Facebook groups where people are actively sharing information, and of course—I hope this doesn’t need to be said—be generous with sharing information, too.

When everyone pools their resources together, it becomes very easy to see where the opportunities are and how you can take advantage of them.

Recurring income can be a massive boon in a freelance writer’s life, especially if there are creative projects you want to work on that don’t bring in the cash immediately. Having clients who repeatedly give you work and regular income helps you create time for those projects and achieve greater happiness and satisfaction with your writing.

This is how you get it.