7 Legitimate Side Hustles for Writers to Make More
Bella Rose Pope
A forever-learning, create-your-own-life touting, cheese enthusiast.
$ $ While on your way to full-time authorhood, you’ll need other ways to make money. You can't really start writing, then quit your day job the next week and still pay your bills.
It can be a slow process to $ outline your book$ , write ($ and finish!$ ) it, publish it successfully, market it for $ continuous sales$ , and continue to write books in the meantime. But sometimes your day job sucks and you want to test out a side hustle to bring you closer to quitting and being self-employed.
And for writers? You can use your creativity and desire to work from home (on a computer) to your advantage.
Keep in mind that while these are side hustles, they do take some time to get off the ground. We’re not here for get-rich-quick schemes. We’re here for do-what-you-like-and-get-paid gigs.
These are the 7 best side hustles for writers.
1. Content Writing
If you’re already writing, why not take that skill set and get paid to do it in other ways? Content writing isn’t the same as fiction, and it can encompass a variety of different types of writing.
As a content writer, you can write:
- Blog posts
- Research articles
- Emails
- Social media captions
- Web pages
- Technical manuals
If it’s not copywriting (sales writing), then it’s considered content writing. If you want to get into writing blog posts for different companies (like I’m doing here), consider researching and learning as much as you can about SEO. Search engine optimization is necessary for 95% of blog writing positions. This YouTube channel is a great resource for learning the ins and outs of SEO:
2. Merch Store
If you want to keep your side hustle specific to your writing platform, then a merch store can be a way to both bring in more money and give your super fans more of what they want. Tons of writers from world-famous Brandon Sanderson to self-employed authors like $ Hannah Lee Kidder create merchandise$ and sell it on their platforms.
Keep in mind that you want these to be in line with your story, world, and overall book topics, but also to make them something that can also stand alone for those who might not recognize what the design is.
Take these examples from Hannah Lee Kidder. She has merch that relates to her platform as a whole, but also designs that speak to her short story collections and writers in general.
To create a shop like this, you’ll have to look into drop shipping providers. They’re companies you can use to upload your designs onto a variety of items (like mugs and t-shirts and even masks) and they do the packing and shipping for you.
3. Twitch Streaming
Depending on your other interests, you might find it fun to make a Twitch account and start streaming for your platform there. Twitch is most often used for streaming video games to an audience, but you can host other things as well.
Trivia nights, writing rooms, Q&As, or even life-chats can be a way to grow your audience and bring in a little extra income. It might not be much at first, but if it’s fun and you want to keep building your platform, it’s definitely worth it.
To get started as a streamer, you really only need an account, a computer, and a webcam. It’ll also be helpful to download $ OBS, a software$ that allows you to have multiple windows visible in a stream (like your webcam and screen sharing at once).
4. Editing or Proofreading
Let us first begin by saying that just because you’re a writer does not mean you can be a book editor. $ Book editing$ requires experience and certifications to do it well. But if you love stories or the process of improving someone’s work, think about it!
Editors can make between $.001 to $.05 per word (which can add up to a lot when you can charge $1,600+ for an 80,000 word manuscript at $.02 per word).
You’ll be able to charge different amounts for the type of editing you provide. So if you want to specialize in proofreading, you’ll charge a bit less at $.002 or less. Many proofreaders will typically charge per 1000 words to make it easier to calculate.
That said, if you become a developmental editor, you can charge more because that’s a much more comprehensive edit. A high quality developmental editor can charge $.05 per word, which would mean you’d make $4,000 for editing an 80,000 word novel.
Now, you will have to deduct for taxes, but one book per month is more than enough to cover the expenses of a single person in most places.
5. Ghost Writing
If you’re not sure what this is, it’s when a writer takes a white sheet, cuts out eye holes, and runs around making "oooo" moaning sounds. Kidding.
Ghosts don’t even make those sounds. They’re much more interested in shoving collectables off shelves to scare the crap out of you for their own entertainment.
A ghost writer is actually someone who writes a predetermined assignment under the name of the person hiring them. It’s referred to as "ghost" because nobody will know you wrote any of it, and there are often contracts involved to prevent you from telling others.
Ghostwriters can work on things like blog posts, short stories, scripts, novels, nonfiction books, and really any form of writing. The average pay depends on who you’re writing for, but you can average a solid part-time income.
Only note: it’s time-consuming and writing so much as a ghost writer can steal some of your writing energy for your own work. You also won't receive ongoing royalties for this work. It's one pay drop per project.
But Devil’s Advocate says that this side hustle may also allow you to practice your skills of just writing without needing to focus on the topic ideation or plotting.
6. Digital Products
Most writers I know have at least 14 notebooks they hardly ever use but are obsessed with for nothing other than the cool, pretty cover. Interestingly enough, these aren’t all that difficult to create and sell on Etsy or Amazon. You may as well use your notebook passion and creativity to whip up a few digital designs (even on Canva for free), upload to a drop shipping site, and list on Etsy.
Of course, you’ll have to learn how to use a $ drop shipping site that connects to Etsy$ , and then learn some search optimization so your notebooks show up when people are searching, but it’s less complicated than it sounds.
Here are a few steps to get started on this side hustle:
1. Create an Etsy account
2. Find a drop-shipping site that integrates with Etsy
3. Create a custom notebook design (with Canva, PhotoShop, or an illustration software)
4. Upload that design to your dropshipping website
5. Follow the instructions on the dropshipping website to upload to your Etsy store
6. Write the title and description for the Etsy listing
7. Publish the listing and promote it on places like Pinterest or Facebook.
Notebooks like these sell best when they're niche-specific. Focusing on a market that doesn’t have many notebooks of that theme will also help yours show up in an Etsy search. Bonus points if it’s connected to your other writing somehow so it can double as platform merch! (Like vampire/bat/moon/wolf notebooks if you're writing paranormal romance.)
This isn’t just for notebooks, either. You can create all types of digital products like greeting cards, bookmarks, posters, mugs, and really anything that a dropshipping website can create based on your design.
7. Content Creation
Assuming you enjoy making content online, you could give this side hustle a whirl. Content creating means exactly what it sounds like: creating content. Only in this case, you’re publishing it online for free.
The income comes into play when you build an audience that attracts two things:
1. Enough views to make ad revenue
2. Sponsors that will pay you to post
The latter of these options is where the real money comes in. Unless you have hundreds of thousands of views per month on something like YouTube videos, the ad revenue won’t be very much. The average YouTube channel makes about $.018 ($ Influencer Marketing Hub$ ) per view after YouTube takes their cut. Which means you’ll make about $180 if you average 10,000 ad views per month.
But keep in mind that it’s not always this exact and plenty of people use ad blockers and YouTube has been known to be annoying in cool, creative ways.
The better of these options is to get paid sponsorships. This is when a company pays you directly to mention their product or service in one of your video. You can make anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousands per video or social media post, depending on your audience size and engagement.
Again, this can take time to grow. Unless you already have an audience you can start leveraging right now, you may need to try many different ways to get a video to go viral on TikTok or Instagram reels before you can rely on this consistently.
It’s helpful to have a side hustle if you’re a writer. Until you’re making a full-time income from your books, you’ll have to make money elsewhere and we always prefer people work for themselves instead of any exploitative corporate machine. :)
Here’s to quitting your job!