Diversifying your income as an indie author is not only a good idea, but it is almost necessary to be successful in the indie publishing industry.
In a world where everything costs money, you have to pay attention to your finances. Most people get their income from a single source. One full-time job. If you were to lose that job, you would be out your entire salary. Times like these are incredibly stressful with thoughts like “Where will my next paycheck come from?” and “How long will my savings hold out before I have no money left to pay my bills?”.
If you speak to a financial advisor, you will likely get the advice to diversify your income. To have more than one source of money coming in. That way, if you lose your job, you aren’t losing everything. You would still have some income to fall back on.
Why is Diversifying Your Income a Good Idea?
As an indie author, it is just as important to diversify your income, if not even more so. You are essentially running a small business, and the most successful businesses have multiple streams of income, for this exact reason. It is definitely possible to make a full-time income from being an indie author, but there are ways you can go about it more successfully than others.
Yes, you write for a living, and you make your money from book sales, but that doesn’t mean you are limited to just selling books on a single platform.
For instance, if you were to sell all of your books exclusively on Amazon and Amazon decided, for whatever reason, to take your books off their site, you would be out your entire income.
However, if you were to sell your books in different formats on Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, and your own website and Amazon still decided to take your books off their site, you would only be out part of your income.
Ways to Diversify
There are so many ways to make a living from writing other than just writing and selling books. One great advantage of being an indie author is you develop many marketable skills that are necessary to publish a good book. Some writers have not developed these skills and are looking for someone who can help. Others have no desire to learn these skills and are looking for someone to do it for them
You can:
- Offer editing/proofreading services
- Provide cover design services
- Offer formatting services
- Create and sell online courses
- Write workbooks based on your courses or nonfiction books
- Monetize your blogs/podcasts
- Offer incentives for Patreon supporters
All of these things are related to writing and can exponentially grow your income so you can really make writing your full-time career. If one thing unexpectedly goes away or you are no longer able to do it, it may affect your income a little, but it won’t completely obliterate it. You would be able to replace it and bounce back much easier.
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This is the beauty of being an independent author. A truly independent author is independent of any one employer or any one source of income.
If you have any other ideas on diversifying your income as an indie author, let us know in the comments! We would love to hear from you.
Over To You
Hopefully, you found this helpful.
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