A Writer's Dozen: 13 Strategies You Can Implement and Get Paid To Write

How to Transform One Idea Into Multiple Digital Products

1. Everything begins with a Medium account.

If you’re not already writing on Medium, you should start immediately. If you’re serious about getting paid regularly, don’t waste time with the minimal $5/month membership; you’ll earn nickels and dimes. you might want to wait.

Join as a Friend of Medium for $15/month. That’s more than you spend on Spotify and Netflix, and they don’t pay you back, do they?

“When Friends of Medium spend time reading member-only stories, they’ll generate four times more earnings for those writers compared to regular members. This revenue share is calculated in the same way as our standard Medium membership: it’s based on a combination of read and listen time, claps, highlights, replies, and follows. The difference is that it’s multiplied by a factor of four.” — Medium Blog

Medium’s recent financial issues have been generating a few complaints from many writers with much more experience on the platform than me. I’d refer you to

Yana G.Y.

for more detail.

2. Hit them with an Atomic Blast

Pack a free link-based atomic newsletter with value, themed around your content wheelhouse.

Rapidly becoming known as atomic or micro-newsletters, these daily email newsletters are brief and usually themed.

For example, my M-F email micro-letter on Tiny Tribes contains three links related to helping writers with tiny tribes find ways to generate more revenue. Three links. You can read the entire newsletter in less than a minute.

Because I participate in Sparkloop, a newsletter growth service, I can earn money by referring others to newsletters who will pay me a small referral fee, similar to an affiliate program.

You can do this, too.

3. Combine numbers one and two into a content flywheel to grow your list.

Evan Kelly’s genius is evident in this Medium story about how his daily micro-newsletter makes money. When you link your Medium story’s Friend Link in your Atomic Newsletter, a reader clicks on it, and Medium’s earning mechanism is triggered for you.

Read. Learn, Emulate.

4. Repurpose Your Medium Story into a Substack Article

I’m not saying to do a plagiaristic cut and paste (even though you wrote it, it might feel that way), but repurpose it for Substack. Maybe change the title and add or delete some main points.

This article is a repurposed Medium story. You can compare it to the original here.

Repurposing is how highly successful writers take one idea and create several form factors that can be marketed and sold in several markets to slightly different target audiences.

5. Market Ghostwriting Services for Medium or Substack articles.

I’ve done this, but not on Medium or Substack. I used to offer blog post ghostwriting services to clients who weren’t ever going to be writers and didn’t want to learn. They preferred paying me to write for them.

It was a win-win situation.

There are plenty of folks out there who are willing to hire writers to run their blogs and even their Medium presence. Opportunities can be researched on Fiverr and Upwork.

This is a convenient way for writers with a 9-5 to start building a professional portfolio of clips. (Do they say ‘clips’ any longer? I’m showing my again again. 🤪)

6. Repurpose your list article (listicle) into a 50-page brief book to sell on Amazon and Apple’s Books

More authors are beginning to expand their work into brief 40 to 50-page eBooks for sale online. Dedicated storefronts for authors include Gumroad, Payhip, Amazon, Apple’s Books, etc.

J.R. Heimbigner markets his Medium presence as The Minimalist Author. He recently issued a publish 12 Books in 12 Months Challenge. This is within my content wheelhouse, so I am intrigued to see if I can pull it off.

Most of us would look at this challenge and say, no way, man! But when I wrote my first book, a paperback I self-published, it took me four months to write, edit, and publish a 200-page, 5x9-inch non-fiction business book.

Writing a 50-page eBook each month should be manageable. I’ll be sharing my progress here, soon.

7. Converting your brief books into audiobooks for sale on Audible and elsewhere.

These days, there is a natural progression from publishing a book or eBook to releasing an audiobook version. With smartphone apps and USB microphones widely available and relatively affordable, it’s easy to achieve a respectable DIY audiobook by downloading free audio recording software.

Audible and Findaway Voices by Spotify are possibilities for self-narrated audiobooks, but if you have the cash in your recording budget, give ACX a look. You can hire a professional narrator who will record your audiobook.

However, that may impact your profit margin.

8. Create an asynchronous 6–10 lesson mini-course that draws on your expertise to solve a painful problem your primary audience experiences.

I’m a massive fan of 6-lesson mini-courses delivered via email. However, with the expense of membership in a dedicated hosting site and the additional logins and passwords for students to keep track of, I opt for a simpler approach.

Student attrition is a big problem when selling self-paced courses. Coupling email delivery with bi-weekly Zoom calls is a killer combination that addresses this issue partly by providing a Q&A, opportunities for clarifications, and the benefits of hearing the challenges and wins of others on the same path.

9. Serialize a well-known novel in the public domain on Substack.

Dracula Daily is an example of how this is done well. I like this model, even though the Daily Dracula isn’t paywalled.

Ideas for getting paid for this model include keeping all the excerpts free while placing extras behind the paywall — extras such as audio posts, fan art, discussion groups, or a Zoom-based book club.

10. Create a Micro-Magazine — a type of premium newsletter on Substack or for print in PDF, centered around your favorite film series.

The Godfather’s Lair? Jurrasic Universe? Toy Stories? The possibilities are endless.

Zoom calls, video interviews and simulcasts, and merch that appeals to their fanbase can be placed behind a paywall.

I did this on a now-defunct Substack website for highly sensitive guys. I designed and published three issues of the micro-magazine using Adobe InDesign, a premium digital product in PDF format.

11. Write a book in public on Medium behind a paywall.

This is a variation on #5 and #8, with the difference being you’re writing your novel in full view of your readers.

Over on Substack, Luke Jennings, the author of the Villanelle novels (Killing Eve), recently concluded a serialization of Killing Eve: Resurrection and has started writing Killing Eve: Bloodline for readers, also free of charge.

Luke charges $80/year in exchange for premium posts with insight into writing killer prose and other topics related to book writing.

Each article would become a chapter in your book. After writing the book, you could offer a PDF, audiobook, etc., on Amazon, Apple’s Book, and other places.

12. Provide copywriting services that align client social media profiles for maximum exposure.

If you like working for clients, this one is for you. Most solopreneurs (me included) fumble their way through halfway-readable profiles that don’t exactly inspire confidence.

If you’re especially good at this, you can market your social media profile skills to others for a flat upfront price that works for you. You could do a few for free initially to get some testimonials and then start charging.

13. If you’re a Notion fan, create writing templates for newsletters, brief books, course lessons, article and newsletter tracking spreadsheets, etc.

I am not a Notion person. I’ve tried to be. But I don’t get it, just like I don’t get video games.

Whatever. I’m a Boomer, so sue me. 🥸

But I do respect those who are Notion fanatics and have evolved more rapidly than I have in this area of digital appreciation. My brain is too simple, I guess.

However, others are killing it with Notion, including Modest Mitkus.

Modest Mitkus earns $30,000/month selling his digital products including courses and Notion templates, so there is definitely a market for them.

Notion templates are awesome…for those who get Notion.

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