How to Make Money From Poetry: 4 Questions You Should Answer
Just like many businesses that involves writing, making money from poetry is not easy. However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try, especially if you love poetry.For example, allpoetry.com, which is one of the top poetry websites, makes about USD 10 million a year despite being only staffed by 10 employees.
Before you get excited, allpoetry.com is a not-for-profit company which is why you should study first their business model before you try to emulate them. At first glance, they serve ads and memberships which are a few ways of making money.
But just like anything else in life, there are ways of making good money from poetry. You just need to find out how.
Summary of “How to Make Money From Poetry in 4 Ways”:
1. Is Making Money from Poetry Hard?2. How About a Self Published Book of Poems?
3. Do You Know Who are Your Customers?
3.1 People who like poetry
3.2 People who want poetry for special events
3.3 Someone looking for unique displays
3.4 Someone looking for unique gifts…
4. Do You Know The Ways to Make Money With Your Poems?
4.1 Self Publish Digitally
4.2 Become a Freelancer
4.3 Sell Merchandise with Your Poems in Them
4.4 Recite Your Poetry Before a Live Audience
4.5 Join a Poetry Writing Contest
Final Words
The Details:
1. Is Making Money from Poetry Hard?
Poetry is regarded as one of the highest forms of writing, it is even regarded as an art. However, as compared to writing books, articles, blogs and so on, it can be very difficult to make money from it.
This is because your poetry consumers are more of a niche in the writing industry. As compared to other writing products, poetry attracts a much smaller market.
The kind of consumers attracted to poetry are not those who like a lot of content. They go for quality of words and not quantity.
These are the type of consumers who want their words to have a lot of meaningful but concise content.
You would have to give a lot of thought in the words you produce, no matter how little. If you are hoping for a product that is easy money with not a lot of hard work involved, poetry writing and selling may not be for you.
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2. How About a Self Published Book of Poems?
In the area of self publishing, it would be a good idea to have your poems self published. To be blunt, this might be the only way to get your poems published. There is hardly a publishing company who accept poetry submissions, if any.
But even self publishing has its own share of problems. As anyone can self publish digital content these days, you would be competing against a sea of other self publishers who are publishing all kinds of digital content and not just poetry.
You might have a better chance at self publishing by printing your own poetry books. However, printing books is not cheap. Only those who have a reasonable amount of money can afford to self publish printed poetry books.
Luckily, there are print on demand option in book printing. You can print small batches of your poetry books to test if there is indeed a market for your poetry books. If there is no demand, at least you would have lost a little bit of money only.
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3. Do You Know Who are Your Customers?
Just like all well planned businesses, you must know your customers first even before starting your business.
Do you know what sort of customers read poetry? Do you know why these customers read poetry? How much are they willing to pay for poetry? These are just some of the questions you need to answer to know who your customers are.
There is a definite demand for poetry as proven by allpoetry.com and several other poetry websites. You too can make money from poetry if you know how to turn this demand to money.
Here are some types of customers who have a need for poetry and might even be willing to pay you for it:
3.1 People who like poetry
3.2 People who want poetry for special events like birthdays, dates, weddings, anniversaries, and other special events.
3.3 Someone looking for unique displays in their home, school, office, documents, artworks, and so on.
3.4 Someone looking for unique gifts, giveaways, promos for their family, friends, coworkers, community, acquaintances, and so on.
For example, customers looking for poems on Valentine’s Day or other special events are seasonal and might be far in between. However, customers looking for poetry during birthdays and weddings could be a year long evergreen source of income.
You can even grace postcards, books, posters, clothes, accessories, home displays, and so on with your poems and sell them to people who are not particular with the words of your poem, but in their aesthetic appeal.
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4. Do You Know The Ways to Make Money With Your Poems?
4.1 Self Publish Digitally:
Create a digital product like an ebook, blog, website, audiobook, images, and so on with your poems embedded on them.
You can earn when your customer directly purchases your digital product, via ads, commissions, and sponsorship deals.
4.2 Become a Freelancer:
You can become a freelancer and create poems for other people in exchange for a fee. You can use freelancing sites such as Fiverr, UpWork, and so on to advertise your poetry writing services and also to find clients.
You might also want to advertise your work on the leading poetry websites. You might get lucky and find full-time, part-time and contract poetry writing jobs.
4.3 Sell Merchandise with Your Poems in Them:
This monetization method requires you to spend a fair bit of money putting your poems on merchandise. You can put your poems in a book, poster, bag, mug, vases, and so on.
The beauty of this monetization method is that your customers would really see something tangible with the money they pay you and not just some words.
For example, your poems embedded in a mug would be useful to a customer who both want to read something and want a container to hold their water, coffee, milk, and so on.
4.4 Recite Your Poetry Before a Live Audience:
You can also earn money by reciting your poems before a live audience. In short, you are an entertainer who happens to recite poems to entertain people.
Of course, this monetization method is not for everyone. If you don’t like being in front of an audience or is a shy person by nature, this monetization method may not be for you.
4.5 Join a Poetry Writing Contest:
There are contests held for poetry writing and even recitation. This could be a good way to earn prominence as a poetry writer.
Winning a poetry writing contest although the prize might not be much, builds your credentials as a poetry writer. This is because you poems have been officially judged as being the best of the best.
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Final Words
Writing poetry might be difficult and making money from it might seem difficult. But, as the leading poetry websites have shown, you just need to find your customers.
You can self publish your poems, become a freelancer writing poems, attach your poems on merchandise and then sell them, recite poems for entertainment, join a poetry writing contest, and so on.
You can sell poems for special events like birthdays, dates, weddings, anniversaries, and so on. You can sell to poetry lovers, those who want to commission poetry, people who are looking for unique displays and gifts, and so on.
But don’t just write and sell poems just for the money, do it because you have a genuine interest in poetry. Having an interest in poetry would probably enable you to endure the lean periods of your poetry writing business.
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Making Money on Ebooks: 9 Real Facts You Should Know
Having created a couple of ebooks with no budget at all and which are mainly composed of a few novels and novellas, I can definitely say that ebook writing is definitely something that anyone should consider as a source of passive income side hustle.
While I’m not making a full time living with my ebooks, I have been receiving income on a regular basis for ebooks that I’ve written several months ago.
But if you are contemplating on whether to write ebooks for money, here are a few facts you should consider:
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