How I’m Attempting to Become a Full-Time Writer and Creative Entrepreneur in One Year

5 ways I’m going to make money as a creative

My Creative Career Experiment

For the next twelve months, I’m doing a career experiment. I’m going to see if I can become a full-time writer and creative entrepreneur by next July. I’ll be documenting my progress here on Substack and sharing what I learn for those who also want to make money from their writing/creativity.

Let me start off by saying that I have no clue if this will work. But I think that’s kind of the point. Starting a business is full of uncertainty, which is terrifying, but also exciting.

I wanted to do this experiment because being an entrepreneur really appeals to me. I like the freedom and flexibility it offers. I get to choose when I work, what I work on, and how I do it.

Of course, there are many difficulties that come with running your own business, such as having to hold yourself accountable and self motivate. And honestly, I might realize throughout this next year that I don’t like being my own boss and would prefer the structure and stability of a 9-5. But I want to at least try it out to see if I like it, so that I can know for sure.

There are several different ways I’m going to (attempt to) make money. I think it’s important to diversify as an entrepreneur so that all of your eggs aren’t in one basket. This is part of the reason that I want to be a creative entrepreneur rather than a full-time author. I would love if writing books was part of my revenue stream (eventually), but I don’t want to have to solely rely on it. Because then it would turn into an obligation rather than a passion.

But I still want my career to be centered around writing and books, just in different ways. So here’s my game plan.

And be sure you’re subscribed so you can follow along with my creative career experiment!

How I’m Going to Make Money as a Creative Entrepreneur

1) Freelance Marketing in Publishing

As some of you may know, I have a part-time job as a freelance marketer for a small romance publisher. And I love it. So I want to expand my services to help even more authors by working directly with them to promote their books.

This will include creating social media content for them as well as gaining more buzz/awareness for their books by collaborating with book influencers. I’m already doing these things in my current job, so I know that I enjoy it and am capable of doing it.

I’m also lucky that I have a Substack audience made up of authors, so I won’t have to start from scratch when looking for clients. I just need to set everything up and figure out my exact offerings before launching it, which I’ll hopefully do in the next few months.

I’ll only be taking on a small number of clients initially, so if you’re interested in getting help with marketing/promoting your book, comment “waitlist” below to be the first notified when I open up slots!

2) Brand Partnerships

My next revenue stream is brand partnerships. This one is a bit more unique than freelancing in that you need to have an established platform/audience to do it. But what you might not realize is that you don’t need as big of a platform as you might think. Some creators start doing partnerships as early as 1k-2k followers/subscribers.

All you really need is a niche/engaged audience that’s interested in buying things you recommend. (Although I will note that you typically make more money the bigger your audience is.)

I wasn’t really considering this as a revenue stream until I got to 10k subscribers, but I had an amazing writing brand reach out to me, and now I’m partnering with them to share about one of their writing classes. I’m so so excited about this collaboration. It’s coming up very soon, so keep your eyes peeled. 👀

Something I want to add is that I won’t just be working with any brand. I’m only going to partner with companies that are aligned with me and my content. I care about maintaining my audience’s trust, and therefore I will only be recommending things that I believe would be of value to them. That’s why I’m so excited about this upcoming collaboration. I really admire what they’re doing, and my content is perfectly aligned with what I’ll be sharing about.

3) Paid Substack Subscriptions

Alright. This is the big one. Paid subscriptions on Substack has been all the buzz recently because it offers a seemingly attainable way for writers to make money on a recurring basis. Similar to Patreon, it has consumers (rather than brands/ads) pay a creator for their content. And Substack has proven to be fairly successful at converting people from free to paid subscribers.

I think there’s a real opportunity here, which is why I’m going to attempt to make it one of my revenue streams. However, I will say that it’s not as simple as just turning on paid and watching the money roll in. You need a strategy.

I tried turning on my paid subscriptions before, about a year ago, and it absolutely flopped. At the time, I had 4.4K subscribers. I figured I could get 100 or so paid subscriptions. Guess how many I got? 3. One of them being my sister. And another who hadn’t meant to purchase it. It was rough.

But looking back, I’m glad it happened, because it made me less scared of failure. I failed, and so what? It wasn’t the end of the world. Now I just have to pivot and approach things in a different way, which is an important skill to have as an entrepreneur.

The issue that I had when attempting paid subscriptions before was that I wasn’t providing enough value. For people to be willing to pay you for something, you need to provide them with *specific* and tangible value. I was just creating more content about my writing journey. But there’s already enough content out there for people to consume. They don’t want more content, they want something that will help them.

Another one of my mistakes was that my paid posts were in video and podcast format. Substack readers are on Substack because they love reading. They would prefer to read an article instead of watching a video or listening to you talk. So make your paid content be written posts.

My new strategy for when I turn on paid subscriptions again, which I’m hoping to do sometime this summer, is to have two paid articles a month that are how-to’s. They will be teaching my readers something, whether it’s about writing, the publishing industry, marketing their books, or building a creative business. That way, they’re getting specific value from each article and will be more willing to pay for it.

4) Digital Products

Another area that I want to explore over this next year is creating digital products. These are essentially online courses about a certain topic that, you guessed it, provide value to the consumer. It’s not a consistent revenue stream the way paid subscriptions would be, but there is the potential to make a lot of money from it.

I already have an idea for what I’m going to do for them. They’re going to be centered around creative mindset. I’ll help people overcome various creative blocks, like perfectionism, so they can achieve their creative dreams.

It’s going to take me awhile to make these products, as I want to put a lot of time and effort into them to make sure people are getting what they pay for. So I won’t make money from them any time soon, but I would love to release some within the next year.

The other nice thing with digital products is that you can continue to make money off of them as you grow. As more people find you and follow you and become familiar with your work, they’ll want to purchase your digital products. So you might not make much from them at first, but as you grow, so will your revenue from digital products.

5) My Book

Realistically, I won’t be making any money from my novel in the next year, as I still need to finish editing it and (hopefully) get a literary agent. But I wanted to include it because I do eventually want it be one of my revenue streams. My fiction writing is what the rest of my creative business is built upon, so it’s an important part of my entrepreneurship journey.

Let the Experiment Begin!

And that’s it! Those are the five ways that I hope to make money from my creativity/writing in the next year. I think it’s very important to diversify when working for yourself so that you don’t have to rely on any one income stream, and I’m excited to try these different things out to see what I like best and what’s most successful.

I have absolutely no clue where this career experiment will go, but I’m excited to find out and share it with all of you. Hopefully, what I learn will help others who want to build their own creative careers. Let the experiment begin!

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What does your dream creative career look like? Let me know in the comments! (: