First time writers have a lot to learn about making a living as a freelance writer online, and one of the lessons that many learn much later than they should is that there is more than one way to make a living writing online. If you’ve ever had a job, you understand the normal concept of employment. Work an hour, get paid for an hour. If you’re salary, work a month, get a month’s pay. While this model does exist (and is most prevalent) for freelance writers trying to make a living, there is also another payment model that writers must be made aware of.

Maybe as an example you ghost write a book for $1,000. But once that book is wrote, you get your money and that’s it. You never get royalties, you can’t re-use the writing or anything like that but the work that you’ve done you were paid for once and you will never receive another payment for that time spent.

Then there is another form of payment that is often referred to as passive or residual income. Passive income isn’t a recent idea, but the changes in technology and the Internet have made passive, or residual, income more common than ever. The best example of passive income before the Internet age would be royalties from a published novel.

Passive, or residual, income happens when articles you wrote stay online and continue to make you money (sometimes a little, sometimes a lot) days, weeks, months, or even years after you finished writing them. This is normally done online with a deal where the author gets Internet ads displayed on the page and gets a cut of the payments made every time someone clicks on those ads, but there are also “pay per view” set ups where the author gets “x” amount of money based on page views (like $2 per 1,000 or something similar). When a writer sets up articles this way, they tend to make far less money up front, but then as a lot of articles make money over a long period of time the passive income can really add up – all for work that has long since been finished.

Maybe the most common way for pages to do this online is using Google AdSense. They’re the most famous, but there are many other advertisers who offer a cut, as well as affiliate marketing, and “pay per view” websites. Beyond these examples, there are also websites who take care of the money making aspects and allow writers to simply write and then give them a cut of whatever amount is made. This allows the writer to write and keep getting paid.

Online freelance writers have the ability to earn both types of writing income: passive and normal one time payments. In fact, one of the best strategies for new freelance writers is to go after both. Look at passive income as a long term strategy that might eventually get you the freedom you’ve always wanted, while one time payments help you to learn the craft and pay the bills until your residual income becomes a major monthly pay check.

Over time, the combination of residual income and regular freelancing gigs can help freelance writers to make an excellent living, and one that may allow for more time off during burn out, or even the Holy Grail of online writing income: a full time residual income so you never “have to” work full time again. The key is to be persistent. Most writers get fed up after a couple hard years and quit. The more a writer sells, the better his or her portfolio is and the easier it will become to get work. Passive income tends to be really slow growth, but it’s worth it because of where it can take you.

When writing online, don’t limit yourself to only one type of income. Freelance writers need all the income they can get, so work to get all the passive and active income that you can earn!