4 Ways Authors Can Increase Revenue (And Build Better Relationships with Their Audience)

Authors are some of our world’s greatest thinkers and creatives. However, many authors struggle to turn their genius into sustainable, long-term income and build relationships with their audience after the book. Leveraging their pre-existing ideas, authors can create multiple streams of income that help diversity and increase income, and create more touch points for connecting with their readers. Here are 4 ways authors can increase their revenue while building a stronger relationship with their audience:

Start a Newsletter

As an author, your readers, no matter how many or how few, have signaled that they enjoy your writing. A simple way to stay connected with your audience and build a relationship with them is to start a newsletter. A newsletter helps keep you top-of-mind and feeds your audience new ideas or perspectives that you are working on with them. That way, when you have a new book, service, or product that you are offering, your audience will be more familiar with and excited to take that next step and invest more of their time and money with you.

In addition, newsletters have monetization streams. Platforms such as Substack and Beehive allow users to easily create, schedule, send, share, and monetize newsletters to their audiences. These platforms allow users to send free content to certain users while also sending additional premium content to paid subscribers.

Build an Online Community

Creating an online community is another way to build a sustainable income and connection with your audience. In fact, online communities are projected to grow 291% from 2023 to 2030, meaning there is a sizeable opportunity to join. These private online spaces with your readers are also another channel for you to connect with them and have your readers get to know you on a more personal level. There is also an opportunity to monetize these communities by charging a monthly or annual subscription to be a part of the community.

For the community to be enticing for your readers to want to join, consider the value that this community will add. Maybe your community is supporting fellow writers so that you can offer writing support, tips, feedback, and live monthly writing workshops. Maybe your community consists of super fantasy fans, so you can provide sneak peeks into new worlds you are developing, community input on the plot, or share and engage with your readers’ fan fiction. Or, maybe your community is built of entrepreneurs trying to systemize parts of their business, so you can offer the value of bringing a group of entrepreneurs together to mastermind weekly assignments that follow the principles from your teachings or book and provide monthly office hours or webinars.

Some more popular online communities include social media, Discord, and Slack. With these different channels, we have seen authors utilize their Delphi clones, a trained digital version. Your clone allows your audience to get interactions, answers, and support from you without you needing to use your own time or energy. On social media, authors have linked their Delphi clone in their bio, allowing their audience to engage with their clone by asking it specific questions. On Discord and Slack, authors have used their Delphi clone to moderate the community and its guidelines, prompt weekly questions, facilitate Q&A sessions and answer individual questions from the community, an added value that you can charge more for in your community or directly monetize your clone via Delphi.

Launch a Coaching or Mentorship Program

If you are a non-fiction author, odds are your audience picked up your book because they are trying to solve a problem. Coaching or mentorship can facilitate a deeper and more meaningful relationship with your readers that offers consistent income and better supports your readers in understanding and implementing the contents of your book.  Here are some ways that authors have structured coaching or mentorship programs:

• 1-1 Coaching: This gives a reader the highest level of your attention. You can also charge more for this personalized program or 1-1 time. However, scaling this model is more complicated since it is reliant on your time.
• Group Coaching: This gives your readers a high level of your attention and the support of others in a similar position. You can charge a high amount for group coaching programs. While you are incorporating a one-to-many model here, you still have the constraint of your time when scaling.
• Clone: Your readers turned to you for your specific knowledge and experiences. This gives your reader direct access to these. You can monetize access to your clone or specific topics for your reader to use while going through your book, helping them understand the materials better and implement them into their lives. This is the easiest model to scale since it will not require your time and leverages pre-existing information you’ve already created to inform your audience.

Write Another Book

Since your audience has already signaled that they enjoy your book or find value in the teachings of your book, a safe bet would be to write another book. Ideas for your next book could be to expand on the concepts or update your first book. You could also look at a different topic that interests your readers or solves their problem. For example, if you wrote a book about productivity, your reader may need help implementing systems into their work. 

A new tool that authors have been using is analytics to offer insights to their audiences. Traditional analytics can give authors a better idea of their audience: how old they are, where they are located, and what general topics interest them. With your Delphi Clone analytics, you can take it many steps further and earn insights into frequently asked questions your audience is asking, offering a better understanding of what interests them. Together, these analytics can help you write a book more uniquely tailored to your audience and already invested in your work and perspective.

Authors Can Both Diversity Their Income While Building Better Relationships with Their Audience

As an author, you can leverage your ideas and the audience around you to create a sustainable and long-term income while building a stronger relationship with your audience. At Delphi, we are here to support you on your creator journey. Feel free to drop by our weekly office hours on Fridays at 1 PM PT or ask our Co-Founder Dara’s clone questions.