📍By the way,
don’t miss the poll
at the end.
Sure, money is an awkward topic.
Let’s be honest for a moment. Most of us didn’t start writing because of money, but very few would complain if money followed.
Somewhere between passion and practicality, there’s a tension that rarely gets addressed openly because it feels slightly off-limits.
Writing should should exist outside of economics, as if talking about money somehow cheapens the work. It doesn’t.
Let’s Say the Quiet Part Out Loud
There’s this weird, unspoken rule that you’re not supposed to care about money as a writer. And if you’re a poet, even more so. The moment you mention or even think about money, it feels like you’ve somehow misunderstood the whole point of writing.
I get it. We write because we want to. Writing matters to us, a lot. But let’s not pretend that’s the whole story.
If I could pay my bills with writing, I would. No hesitation. And I don’t think I’m alone in that. There is not a single sane writer who would choose a 9–5 over full-time writing.
Most of us are tied to other work because we have to be. Saying that out loud doesn’t ruin your art.
Life costs money.
I write because I love it, but I also need money. Both can be true at the same time.
The Reality Behind the Romance
Substack makes this whole thing look way simpler than it actually is. At first glance, it feels like the perfect setup. I write, people subscribe, and somehow it all starts paying for itself. That idea is hard not to like.
But honestly, I don’t even need the exact numbers to know that only a tiny fraction of writers here actually make enough to live on this. And even for them, subscriptions alone rarely carry much weight.
The model sounds great on paper, but it leans heavily on people being willing to pay consistently for writing alone.
People don’t pay for writing as easily as we like to believe.
Especially now, people are careful with their money. I get that. I do the same. So the idea that I can just write and get paid for it starts to feel just a bit… absurd.
Substack is not broken, it works exactly like it’s supposed to. It just isn’t what most of us quietly hoped for.
The Math That Doesn’t Add Up
If you look at the rough numbers, and they’re not subtle. One book sale gets me maybe five to eight bucks. Same with a Substack subscription. Sounds fine, right?
If I want anything close to a livable income, I’m not selling a few copies here and there. I need hundreds. More realistically, thousands. Every month. Not once.
Every. Month.
The illusion cracks. If you’re writing writing poetry or anything even slightly niche like I am, that’s a steep hill.
Writing feels like the main thing, but money-wise, it rarely is. Even people doing “well” are usually not living off the writing itself. The math just doesn’t hold.
So yeah, writing might be the product, but the money almost always comes from something built around it.
Money just doesn’t care about your passion.
So What Now?
If writing alone rarely pays, then the question isn’t whether that’s fair.
So, what am I (we) supposed to do with this?
I’m already here. I’m already writing. I’ve got people reading, reacting, sticking around. That’s not nothing. That’s attention. That’s trust. That’s something I’ve built over time and hopefully keep on building.
But how do I turn this into something that actually carries financial weight.
It gets very real, very fast.
It’s way easier for me to land one paying client a month for something like graphic design, branding, or a website than it is to make the same money through books or subscriptions.
One client can equal what, 300 book sales? 300 subscribers? One client can easily beat 300 readers when it comes to paying the bills. Same money, completely different game.
I’m not saying I should stop writing or turn everything into a transaction. Though honestly, I would, if I could.
Maybe my point is that we’re blind to the fact that writing on its own is rarely the whole business.
It may be the core, the beating heart. Everything else money-related gets built around it.
The ones who make this work are stacking things on top of their writing. Services, teaching, products, whatever fits.
The annoying part is,
we have to think beyond the page.
The interesting part is that once we do,
there are way more options than I first thought.
Monetizing Loop
This is the question I keep coming back to.
If writing alone doesn’t carry the weight, then what can I put around it? Not to replace it, but adding to it. Do I start teaching what I know? Package my skills? Build something that actually translates into money?
And if I go down that road, what happens to my writing? Does that make me a sellout? I’m not trying to turn everything into a product, but I catch myself thinking about this quite a bit.
I’m already here, already putting time into this, and people are clearly connecting with me, my writing and most importantly with each others.
I don’t need a perfect model. I need something that helps me breathe.
At this point the question
isn’t if we should monetize.
That part feels obvious.
How do we monetize
without messing up
the reason we started
writing in the first place?
My Answer?
Ha! If I had an answer, would I be asking it here?
I don’t think there’s some ready-made, perfect model waiting for me. It’s probably way messier than that, but I’m willing to work through it.
I’m not pretending I have this figured out. I truly don’t. But I do have a couple of interesting ideas on how to monetize poetry and writing in general.
Right now I’m thinking I’ll just try things, see what works, adjust, repeat. Share it openly here, what works and what doesn’t. That feels more honest than pretending I’ve got it figured out.
So consider yourself warned. I might be talking about money and monetization a bit more going forward.
Is this something you’d be interested in reading in the future?
Just for fun, take the poll and see how we are.
If you’re in the same spot, trying to balance writing and making a living, I’m genuinely curious how you’re thinking about it.
WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.
Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.
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🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓
The "just try things, see what works" approach is probably best.
I agree that for almost everyone, there has to be more than the writing.
The thing I see, though, is that the marketplace is also already flooded with those other things, writing classes and workshops and other creativity-based ventures.
I have a draft of a book on creative living, and I was planning to teach workshops. But then Rick Rubin released his book on creativity. And everywhere I looked there were people offering creativity or writing workshops.
I think the trick, then, is to keep trying things until you stumble on something a little different that catches people's attention. And that you enjoy enough to keep doing.
I think as far as DFO goes, merch is the only viable path. I'm hoping the site redesign helps. 🤞