Here’s How I Earn Passive Revenue to Supplement My Freelance Writing

NEWSLETTER 12

New on the Blog:

Here are some posts you might have missed on the Freelance Writing Pros blog:

Can Writers Really Earn Passive Revenue?

When you hear terms like “passive income” your mind might go to things like multi-level marketing or other schemes. Or maybe you remember someone touting blogging as the answer to your passive revenue dreams. (It’s not.)

While there are some shady things promoted out there, the truth is writers can earn passive revenue.

If you’re looking for new income streams to supplement your freelance writing income during slow times, or if you’re simply looking to diversify a bit, my latest post shares one way you can do this.

This post goes into a topic I very rarely talk about other than in passing — what I call “quiet sites.” And yes, the revenue they bring in really is passive. Little to no maintenance. No content updates. Little to no marketing post-launch.

Want to learn more about what these “quiet sites” are and how they work?

Read: How Freelance Writers Can Earn Passive Income from Quiet Sites

Email Course & Featured Snippet Updates

First, a quick update on the coming email course. Unfortunately, we’ve still not been able to figure out why all lessons aren’t being delivered.

It’s been in the hands of a 3rd party since before the holidays, but they’ve not been able to sort it out either. So here’s the plan:

Next week, I’m going to try rebuilding the campaign from scratch to see if the issue is some obscure setting we aren’t finding.

If that doesn’t work, I’m simply going to put the content into a .pdf and distribute it to subscribers that way in a newsletter until we work this out.

Updates to Google’s Featured Snippets & Organic Rankings

In other news, if you focus your SEO on gaining featured snippets in Google’s results, there’s a big change as of yesterday you should know about.

If your website currently shows up on page one in the organic search results, but you also have a featured snippet for that page, you’ll lose your normal organic result. They’re not going to continue showing two links to the same site on that page.

You might figure this won’t matter, as the featured snippets show up first anyway, right?

Well, it might.

Depending on the search query, featured snippets don’t always receive higher CTRs (click-through rates) than the organic listings.

So you’ll want to monitor your results closely and see how the changes affect your traffic. Just something else to keep an eye on so you can adjust your strategy and schema if necessary.

Jenn

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Avatar image for Jennifer Mattern

Jenn Mattern is a professional blogger, freelance business writer, consultant, and indie author. She runs numerous publications, including Freelance Writing Pro's sister site All Freelance Writing, NakedPR, and Kiss My Biz.

Jenn has 25 years' experience as a professional writer and editor, more than 20 years' experience in marketing and PR (including SEO and social media consulting), 19 years' professional blogging and digital publishing / web development experience, and 18 years' experience as an indie author / publisher.

Jenn also writes fiction under multiple pen names and is an Active member of the Horror Writers Association.