Business of Writing: How to Monetise Writing

by Monique Campbell

How to monetise writing

As mentioned in my blog post, 8 Reasons not to Engage in the Business of Writing, there are many writers who are purists. Hobbyists. Writing for personal satisfaction. A means of growth. To thrive instead of survive in a web of thoughts and feelings without the construct of a page. To these writers, monetisation may not matter. Neither to the writer with a day job. Or maybe even the academics and scholars focused on their contribution to knowledge.

So what’s the point in writing?

Or to go a step further, what’s the point in publishing?

You may write because you want to, and have a myriad of reasons driving that desire. However, publishing…this is something different. There’s an intention there. A window carved out of a brick wall welcoming outsiders to peer in.

Exposure.

Naked exposure to the inside of your mind, however dark or light it may be, is done at the price of purpose. Well at least for me that was the case. What’s the purpose of writing that particular piece? Answer: to add value, in some way or another, to the reader. The reader completes what you, as the writer, started. And the purpose, I read somewhere, can be put into one of three categories: 1) write to inform 2) write to persuade 3) write to entertain.

And where there’s an audience realising a purpose, there’s value. And where there is value, there’s opportunity to monetise that value.

Here are five key ways you can monetise your writing:

Way no. 1 – Book Sales: For published authors, book sales are a primary source of revenue, but this depends heavily on marketing efforts, especially in self-publishing. Revenue can come from print, digital, and audiobook formats. The type of revenue you can earn is through royalties from your published works. Royalties are a percentage of each sale, subject to the contractual agreement. In traditional publishing, these royalties are shared with agents and publishers. In self-publishing, these royalties are mostly yours and the book publishing and distribution platform, i.e. Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), less printing costs. The Society of Authors can provide more insight on this.

Way no. 2 – Paid Keynote Speaker: Whether you want to do this on a full-time basis or incorporate speaking opportunities as part of your brand offering talking on the topic of writing, the subject matter of your writing, or your personal story, this could be a valuable avenue to explore.

Way no. 3 – Courses and Workshops: Offers a way for you to expand your income streams by teaching others how to write, or as with speaker gigs, teaching others about the subject matters in which you write. This might involve creating online courses, hosting workshops, or offering one-on-one coaching. Online courses that are prebuilt and accessible all year round offer much more scalability. A bespoke course tailored to a live audience may be a lucrative opportunity with significant payoffs for that event. Whereas one-on-one coaching offers more intimacy, it has its limitation in revenue generation due to its limitation in time, and the direct exchange of your time for revenue.

Way no. 4 – Subscriptions: Platforms like Patreon or Substack allow you to build a subscriber base that pays for exclusive content, whether it’s serialised fiction, essays, or commentary.

Way no. 5 – Advertising Revenue: Creating a website and content for video sharing platforms like Youtube, Vimeo, TikTok, and Instagram, or podcasts hosting platforms like PodBean, Spotify Podcast, and Apple Podcast, you can monetise your content through advertising revenue. Brands, advertisers, buy media space to get their brands in front of their target audience. Your content could be that media space. The value of that media space is subject to the value of your audience. The value of your audience is subject to the value they derive from your content.

Money and monetisation may be crude words for many. I’m very comfortable with money and the pursuit of it in my business life. My sales career. However, writing is different. Or certainly creative writing is different. I accessed a different part of my brain, an intuitive part, to create a story with characters who do what they do. There was no consideration of monetisation in that process. But that’s done. And now we’re here.

I hope this helps.

Source:
The Society of Authors: https://societyofauthors.org/where-we-stand/special-sales/how-do-authors-get-paid/