9 Ways To Supplement Your Freelance Business And Produce Income While You Sleep

Ah, the life of a freelancer! It’s nothing but sunshine, butterflies, and abundant cashflow. (Insert sound of needle scratching record). Yeah, being a freelancer has MANY pros but one of the cons is that when we’re not actively working on a freelance project, we’re not making any money.

Now depending on your experience and the type of freelancing you do, that might not be a huge con. In fact, there are many freelancers that make abundant income due to a great demand for the expertise they have in their niche or industry and when their not working, they are perfectly fine financially.

However, the reality is that most freelancers work project to project and when they don’t have a project or they want some well-deserved time off, they don’t get paid. This is not a problem if you plan well or if you’re an expert in your field and get paid expert fees.

Regardless of whether you’re an expert in your field or you’re just starting out on your freelance journey, there are ways to supplement your freelance income and actually make money in your sleep. I also want to make it perfectly clear that in order to make passive income in your sleep, you have to do some work upfront first before you reap the rewards. These are not get-rich-quick schemes. These are bonified ways to increase that you can increase your income but they require some effort to get rolling.

Here are 9 ways to supplement your freelance business and produce income while you sleep:

Write A Book

I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who didn’t, at some point in their life, didn’t want to write a book. If you’re one of those people, then this is a good opportunity to get your book out there and create a little supplemental income in your business.

Now you can write a book about anything and have it generate some extra income for you but if you want to increase your freelance business, it’s best to write one that ties into your area of expertise.

For example, one of the many hats I wear is one of a social media manager. I’ve helped many people, organizations, businesses, and non-profits with their social media campaigns, posts, and blogs over the last decade or more. Therefore, it seemed logical to me to write about that expertise when I wrote my first book, Making Your Business A Social Media Superstar: The Step-By-Step Guide To Creating, Maintaining, And Promoting Your Online Presence. I also co-wrote a book, The Massage Disadvantage, contributing chapters on dealing with health insurance and handling accounting, drawing from my past experience as a patient accounting rep at a large hospital.

I self-published those books using Amazon’s platform and when the book came out in 2015, both books produced some regular passive income for me the first year or two. They still send me a few bucks here and there (As a matter of fact, I received a royalty payment just this morning when I woke up on one of them) but, honestly, I haven’t promoted either of them in a while. I am currently planning on releasing a few more books this year around the subjects of social media and freelancing among others.

And yes, you have to take the time to organize, write, and publish your book but once all that is done, all you need to do is promote it on social media and various other platforms on a regular basis to start and keep the passive income flowing in. It won’t be much at first but if you continue to write books and promote them, you could see some regular extra income flowing in while you sleep.

Create A Blog And Sell Ad Space

If you have a blog (and I strongly suggest every freelancer have at least a simple website with a blog) you can sell ad space on that blog once you’ve established yourself as an expert in your field. You also need to have a certain amount of regular website visitors who read your blog before advertisers start coming to you.

This one can take a while before it is feasible to do but if you’ve got a blog, start thinking about this as you work on it. Try to build your blog audience and make sure you’re writing quality content that helps people and that people really want to read. That’s how you start to get a great following.

Sell A POD Product

A POD product is a product that’s “Print on Demand”, which simply means you don’t pay for anything up front. You create a product, say a t-shirt, and when people order that t-shirt from you, the POD service prints the shirt, takes their share for materials costs and some profit, and you get the rest.

This might not be a fit for every freelancer but it’s my bet that most freelancers can think of a product to create and sell in order to create some surplus income while you sleep.

Again, as with all of these ideas, what you create and produce MUST be quality content that people want and need. Creating a product that no one is interested in or one that is cheap will only serve to damage your reputation in the long run. Be wise with your choices.

Create An Online Course

This is one that I’m sure you’re seeing more and more these days. However, if you have expertise in a certain field (and let’s face it, if you’re making a living as a freelancer, you have expertise in your field) creating an online course is a fantastic way to create passive income.

Online courses do take a bit of time to create and promote but once your course is online and running it has the potential to replace the salary you currently make. Now again, people aren’t going to buy an online course that doesn’t make their life better in some way. So, make sure you choose a subject matter that people want and need and then take the time to make it a quality product that delivers those things to your students.

WARNING: Shameless Promo Ahead! 🙂 I am currently creating an online course that teaches people how to become a social media manager. It’s something I’ve done for years and enjoy and, quite frankly, I’m quite good at it. However, it’s also a great freelance opportunity for anyone who is looking for a niche to go into. Social media is here to stay and individuals, businesses, and corporations are always going to need someone to handle their social media tasks. So, my course will cover the all the basics to get started towards a career as a social media manager. The knowledge learned in my course will prepare my students to pursue this line of work either as a freelancer or as a member of a digital agency. If you’re interested in taking my course, I am currently taking pre-enrollments and will begin in Spring 2022. You can sign up here: Social Media Superstar Academy

Build A Membership Site

Membership sites are particularly handy for anyone who’s freelance business is coaching or teaching but there are plenty of other ways to create a membership site. Generally a membership site offers different tiers of membership and each step up in price offers more content, interaction, or coaching depending on what the member is looking for.

You can either build your own membership site into your current website or there are other platforms that deal entirely in making membership sites easy for you to build.

This article from HubSpot offers a lot of insight into creating a membership site as well as the top 13 platforms for doing so. 13 Best Membership Website Builders And Platforms In 2022

Become An Influencer

I’m sure you’ve heard the word “Influencer” thrown around all over the place in recent years but my guess is most people don’t really know what that means. Influencers are basically people who ‘influence’ the success of a product, service, company, or even an industry by reviewing and promoting those things on their social media and websites.

To become an influencer, like everything else on this list, takes time and consistency and requires a large following of like-minded people. Becoming an influencer can not only create some passive income for you, it can also have you receiving a ton of products, services, and even sponsorships from companies wanting to get their name out there.

To learn more about becoming an influencer, this article from Indeed.com can get you started: How To Become An Influencer

Use Affiliate Links

If you’ve got a website and/or blog (and you SHOULD), affiliate links can definitely create some passive income while you sleep. Affiliate links are when you link to a product, service, or company on your website and depending on what the terms are, you will get a set amount of money when people click on those links.

Now sometimes the terms are that you just have to get people to click on the link to go to a website. Other terms, such as with Amazon affiliate links, the person clicking on the link has to buy something in order for you to get a commission.

Generally affiliate links bring in small commissions but if you have a large enough readership there are major corporations that will pay very well if you can get them more business or eyeballs.

There are plenty books and courses out there that can teach you more about getting started with affiliate links but this article by ahrefs.com has a very thorough breakdown of how it all works. Affiliate Marketing For Beginners

Sell Printables On Your Site

Printables can be anything from e-books, calendars, planners, or any kind of content for teachers, parents, students, musicians, etc. that will help them with something.

Usually people create these printables on their own computers and have them available for sale on their website, social media pages, etsy, and more. People will pay for them and then immediately get an email with a download link to get their product.

If you create a product that generates enough interest from your followers, it could create a sizable contribution to your passive income. Here’s a great site I found that has just about everything you need to know about creating and selling printables. How To Make Printables To Sell

Sell Your Products Or Services With A Monthly Charge

Although this one still requires you to do freelance work in order to get paid, selling your product or services with a monthly charge helps to create some dependable, steady income.

Rather than just taking a project and getting paid at the end of the project, this set up allows you to plan your freelance activities in advance. You do this by selling your product or services in advance at a monthly fee.

For example, as a social media manager, when I take on new clients I assess their social media needs and present them with a social media management proposal. In this proposal, I outline what work needs to be done in order to meet their goals and I show them my fee for the service. My fee is a monthly fee and the minimum timeline I offer is three months, meaning they have to commit to at least three months of my services in order for me to take them on. I do this for several reasons. The top reason being that social media marketing takes time and three months is the minimum amount of time to get any results. Hiring a social media manager for less than that, in my opinion, is a waste of the clients time and a waste of the social media manager’s time.

So when you sell your products or services using the monthly charge method, you have the ability to control your income a bit better because you know in advance how many clients you have and what needs to be done. I quite like this method for certain aspects of my freelance business and use it when selling my Done-for-You Services such as social media management, website creation and management, and transcription services.

So, Where Do You Go From Here?

Now what do you do with all this knowledge? Use it but you don’t have to do every one of these. Start slowly and pick the ones that appeal the most to you and that make sense with your freelance business. Some freelancers probably can use all of these. Others only one or two will make sense. Either way, I highly encourage you to pick one or two today that you think is the right fit for you and your business and start taking action on them.

The great thing about these supplemental income ideas is that one can build on the next one and the next one. I started by writing a book and now I currently use four of them and will be adding two more in the next year. Most are still in their infancy and will take some more time to produce results but a few are starting to take off.

Remember these are not get-rich-quick-schemes. The require some time, patience, and some work to get them going but once they take off, you can relax a bit and enjoy The Freelancer’s Life!

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Veronica Buhl is a freelance social media manager and author, who has been a writer, editor, proofreader, summary writer, and transcriptionist for some of the top motivational and self-improvement speakers in the world. She has also helped numerous clients develop their websites, blogs, and social media presence in order to promote their businesses, non-profits, and projects. She is the author of the book, Making Your Business A Social Media Superstar, and is co-author of the book, The Massage Disadvantage. Her official website can be found at www.veronicabuhl.com