Thursday, August 21, 2008

Freelance Writers Need to Create a Residual Income

Last fall I spent some time writing a few articles at eHow.com about twin pregnancy and parenting. Being the parent of twin boys made it easy to come up with the information needed to develop the articles. Besides, I hoped they would be helpful to some other shell shocked, soon-to-be mom who just found out she was having more than one baby.

I bring this up because shortly after writing these articles I began receiving monthly payments to my Pay Pal account from eHow. I stopped writing for eHow because I was asked to sign a non-compete agreement with another client who considered writing for eHow as a conflict of interest. I was so busy with other freelance writing projects at the time that I forgot all about them – let alone that they are a revenue sharing site. But considering that I had only written a few articles for them, I am surprised at how much money I now receive from them each month. Now it's not enough to run out and buy that Prada handbag I'd love to have, but it's nothing to sneeze at when I think of how much passive income I could be earning had I really put in some effort.

So now the genie is out of the lamp – I love getting residual income while I sit back and do nothing, and now I want more. Jennifer Mattern at AllFreelanceWriting.com recently fanned the flames even more with her Tuesday post titled Invest in Your Writing Career and Build a Richer Future. She discusses many reasons why writers should "invest" in their writing careers by developing a residual income from their own products. She really hits home when she explains that freelancers shouldn't plan to depend solely on our billable hours as our only source of income. Having a substantial residual income stream can really lighten the load should you suddenly be unable to work or lose a major client. As freelance writers we should leverage our knowledge and experiences and set aside time regularly to work on our own projects and products.

If you are like me you may wonder where this elusive extra time will come from. The answer is you have to decide it's important enough to make the time. It can seem impossible to squeeze another task into an already jam packed day. You can start by committing to an hour a day of working on writing that eBook, developing a niche blog/website or some other promising venture. If you can eventually balance the income received from freelance writing projects with income received from residual income, you will have more freedom and financial security. I don't know about you, but I'm all over this.

6 comments:

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Kimberly Ben said...

Awwwww man, I HATE SPAM! Now you've forced me to moderate the comments here, joydeep and sanjay. I hope you're happy now.:(

Erin Maher said...

I salivate at the prospect of residual income. I have several actor friends who live off residuals from projects as far as ten years back, and am infinitely jealous.

There are only so many hours in a day to produce work, so if your work can keep making money while you sleep, eat, and play, then the initial investment in time is totally worth it.

Thanks for the post!

Lori said...

Excellent advice! It's something I have to do ASAP once the workload eases a bit.

Kimberly Ben said...

@erin: I have an actor friend too who gets some pretty nice residual income from a couple of commercials she did about 10 years agao! And yes, I'm jealous too!:)

@lori: I have some ideas that I can't wait to start working on. The flood gates have opened over the past week and I'm eyebrow deep in projects right now and suffering from sleep deprivation, but I am going to start scheduling at least an hour each day to work on some things that could produce residual income or I'll never get around to it.

Anonymous said...

Very informative. I am going to refer this article to some of my friends who are writers without sponsors.

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