Of all the ways to earn money passively, self-publishing just might be one of the most exciting. Although, there is a ton of different, equally exciting ways to earn passively– that’s the beauty of an online business.
But, if you’re a writer or you’ve always wanted to publish something, this is a fantastic way to earn and fulfill one of your dreams at the same time.
It’s important to get into the right mindset about this, of course. You aren’t going to become rich and earn a fantastic passive income if you only publish one book. You probably aren’t even going to earn a great income with even 5 books or 10 books. I’ve heard some who’ve been wildly successful with self-publishing say their success didn’t really take off until they’d published upwards of 30-40 books.
These books typically aren’t as long as you might be thinking, though. Some have become very successful releasing books of around 10,000-30,000 words or so.
I’m not saying this is the easiest path to online riches. But, if you target the right niches and work hard to hit the audience in the right way with high quality content, you could earn a great passive income.
Once your books are up and selling well, you can release a new book every once in a while to keep the momentum going. You can build a list with your books. Really, once your books have started to become successful, you can snowball that success and it can become easier and easier to earn a solid income.
Who Can Self-Publish?
Let’s talk about who can self-publish because this is something some people get wrong. You don’t have to be a world-class writer or novelist to be successful with this.
You don’t have to be someone who has wanted to write all your life, although that can help with mindset and motivation.
You don’t have to be someone who will toil day and night for years to finish a book. In fact, that can be really detrimental to your success.
You can self publish if you’re a great writer, or you can self publish if you’re just an okay writer but still have something to share with the world… it doesn’t matter. You can do this. Gone are the days when traditional publishers were the only ones who could decide who could get published.
With self publishing then, it isn’t who you know at all, it’s who you write for, and how much you write.
Today, as long as you have something important to share with the world and there are people out there who will buy and read your book, you can and should self-publish. Don’t worry about the gatekeepers. Don’t worry about those who tell you that your writing has to be perfect before you publish it.
I am in no way telling you to just publish junk. What I am telling you is that you shouldn’t worry about perfection. Worry about what people will pay for and what you can share with those people.
Remember, this is a business model for you, if you want it to be. You can self-publish if you love writing – you can self publish if you love earning a great income.
When you self-publish, you have to think of yourself as a publishing company as much as you do a writer. Publishing companies publish in order to earn money – that’s what you’re doing. Build up your mindset and you become very successful if you dedicate yourself to this.
What Can You Earn With Self-Publishing?
You are doing this, at least partially, in order to earn a great income. It makes sense that you would be wondering what the earning potential is here. There’s no exact figure that I can throw out to you.
I can tell you that your success and earnings should snowball with every book you put out. That’s even more likely if you target a great, hot niche and publish very frequently. That’s the name of the game on Amazon. They want frequent, high quality content (just as a search engine would for high rankings, if you’re familiar with search engine marketing at all).
There are plenty of people out there in various stages that are earning a full-time income from self-publishing. Some of them are doing so quietly while others are more vocal about it.
There are even people out there who have become millionaires through self-publishing.
What can you earn? Honestly, that’s completely up to you. Some niches are much more lucrative than other niches. For example, certain romance fiction niches have a much higher earning potential than certain mindset and business categories.
So, to figure out what you can and should earn with your self-publishing, you have to figure out what your niche or genre is going to be. Then, you have to do what you can to learn more about those who have been successful within that niche or genre to follow in their footsteps.
I’ll be honest and tell you that some of my publishing in certain business and mindset categories has not turned out as lucrative as I’d hoped it would. With some more effort in writing and publishing unique works and a lot more money spent, I’m sure I could do better in those categories. But, for my time right now, I’m focusing on other passive income streams—that’s not to say I’ll never return at a future date.
Still, I am getting royalties from Amazon every month for books that I wrote long ago and haven’t touched since.
Let’s talk about you again with passive royalties from self-publishing. You want to earn and you are capable of earning. You are willing to study those who are successful and choose a niche or genre that’s already doing well on Amazon Kindle. Put that together and you could earn some great royalties from self-publishing.
By the way – I don’t mean to make this all about the Amazon Kindle. There are definitely other opportunities and other publishing platforms out there that make it possible for you to earn. But, Amazon is the most well known and has the most profit potential for you to earn passively right now, so of course I’m highlighting that one.
Is there a chance that you could earn a full-time income from self-publishing? Yes – absolutely. Focus on what your goal is and figure out if it’s possible to achieve within the niche or genre you’re interested in. That’s really what it comes down to. Follow the trail of success on Amazon Kindle based on what other self-published authors have achieved.
In Part 2 of this series, I’ll talk about profitable niches for self-publishing and how to get started.