4 Ways to Make Money Writing Erotica (Besides Amazon and Smashwords)
Smut. Porn. Erotica. No matter what you like calling it, sex is selling. Many authors have used the world of sex to earn a living online, the most common way is through marketplaces like Amazon and Smashwords. Authors on these sites can sell complete novels or bundles of short stories. But writing for them can be intimidating for many reasons:
- marketing and promotion
- trouble dedicating the time and patience writing 100k> word novels
- Amazon (and sometimes Smashwords’s) guidelines
- not interested in writing to market, leaning more towards writing more unique narratives with lesser-known kinks
Here are some alternative ways that I’ve found to be successful for many erotica writers:
write commissioned stories on Fiverr and Ko-fi
Fiverr is a well-known site for freelancers, getting its claim to fame. Though it’s more common for people to request ghostwritten work (a service I’ve offered in the past), people have begun to write on commission.
Ko-fi allows NSFW creators and makes it easy for your audience to request stories and for you to lay out the rules for what you’ll offer. I have seen known erotica authors like Meghan Ward offer commissions.
You can retain the rights to the stories you write, allowing you to bundle these stories into shorts to sell on Amazon and Smashwords. This method can be easier to publish erotica and romance on these sites because their material in compiled over time (plus the fact you get paid while compiling it).
write a web serial on Radish/Inkitt
Radish is a web serial app that exclusively publishes romance and erotica. Readers can pay coins to continue reading your stories. If you can write an edge-of-your-seat story, this can be profitable for you.
To write for Radish, you submit a sample of a past story or a sample of the story you would like to publish with them.
Inkitt is a Wattpad alternative that allows many genres, but has an active romance and erotica community. The way you can monetize your stories here is through Ko-fi and Patreon, which Inkitt allows you to link in your bio.
Other sites you can write on are Royal Road and Scribblehub. Royal Road is known for fantasy LitRPG and Gamelit, but I’ve surprisingly seen a number of stories that feature sex. Royal Road allows you to link your Patreon and PayPal info.
Though you may have a better time on Scribblehub where ecchi, more anime and hentai-inspired stories are published more frequently. Scribblehub allows you to link your Patreon and Ko-fi.
It’s also important to keep in mind that many of these stories do tend to be more male-oriented.
write fanfics for An Archive of Our Own and Wattpad
An Archive of Our Own (or AO3) is a fanfiction site that has arguably replaced the likes of Fanfiction.net in terms of popularity. Writing fanfics on here, especially for a popular fandom, can get you good attention and people wanting to tune in for more.
The problem with AO3 is, that since it’s a non-profit, you cannot directly post any links for monetary gain, like Ko-fi or Patreon. Even links leading to marketplaces like Etsy could get you banned.
A way around this is having an outside page like Twitter or Tumblr. It’s not only a good way to connect with readers but to post links that will allow them to support you.
I’ve seen AO3 authors use fanfics they’ve written to attract customers outside the site for commissioned stories.
Wattpad is mostly known for original stories but fanfics can also be posted here. Wattpad does have a way through their own site where people can monetize their stories, but I think a good amount authors (like Emilia Rose, who has over 2,000 patrons) use Patreon.
write niche fetish stories for Read Only Mind and other sites
Now, this is one that I’ve only just heard about. There are a good amount of sites that publish stories featuring fetishes and kinks that if mentioned here could get me banned from Medium.
It took me a while to mind even just a few of them, as an author from the subreddit r/eroticauthors (a great place to go to get insights and financial reports from other smut writers), was quite secretive about them. She had made about $300 within a few days of offering commissioned stories on one of these sites. It appears, though, it’s no secret that people are willing to pay top dollar for stories about these fetishes.
Read Only Mind is just an example of one of the sites. Authors can use Patreon or Subscribe Star to get donations from fans. Subscribe Star is a Patreon alternative that a lot of authors and artists who dabble in more taboo work use, as Patreon has been cracking down what they allow in the erotica side of things.
This could be a good option for you if you find yourself unable to publish on Amazon due to their strict guidelines.
