✍️ Desk of Amy Suto: 3 Passive Income Sources for Writers

How to power your travels with your writing.

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📖 3-Minute Story: 3 Passive Income Sources for Writers

When I was in college, I spent many late nights working the front desk at the post-production lab. I’d bring my laptop, studying and writing in between helping sleepless film students get to the lab to finish their projects. I often played therapist, listening to their woes in that dark basement as Premiere Pro crashed on them again, their whole project evaporating into corrupted pixels.

For many of my early jobs, my earnings were tied to my hours worked. From teaching yoga at Gold’s Gym to being an assistant in the film industry, when I wasn’t working, I wasn’t earning money. This is fine: it’s how a lot of people operate.

But I wanted to cultivate more freedom in my life, and to do so I needed more leverage.

As a full-time writer and digital nomad, here’s how passive income works for me:

• I was climbing the Inari Shrine in Kyoto when I received $200 in passive income from an affiliate link purchase.

• I was getting breakfast with a friend when a Substack payment of $84 hit my account.

• When I was learning how to wield a katana with a samurai master, Amazon Kindle processed $150 worth of book sales from my book Six-Figure Freelance Writer.

Passive income is the sought-after concept of “making money while you sleep.” When you clock out, there are still mechanisms that are helping you pay for the life you lead — even if it’s only a few dollars, that’s still “matcha money” as I like to call it.

Passive income might not change your life overnight, but if you cultivate it over time, it could eventually pay for most of your expenses — if not your entire lifestyle. For writers and creatives, this equates to more time available for your writing work if you build everything right.

Here are 3 ways writers can take advantage of passive income while growing their body of work: