It’s a tough economy out there, but you’re tougher. Solve it all through passive income, they say! Easy enough. Watch a few grind set YouTube videos and you’ll be printing money in no time at all. Hell yeah brother!

Just kidding.

The only way to make money is through dedicated work. Sometimes your sales have a long “tail” if you create a product that can continue to sell over time, but you are still doing the work! Calling it “passive income” is disingenuous, especially if you do commit to updates of old content to improve it. Considering that much of your content in game design will need to be playtested, it is highly recommended to provide updates to your subscription products from time to time as you receive more feedback. The good news is that updated content, depending on the weight of the work done, is considered to be “new”. It keeps your subscribers happy that you’re working in exchange for their hard earned dollars.

There are a few different vehicles for making money as a pro GM turned content creator:

• Finished products through self publishing websites. (e.g. DMs Guild, Drive Thru RPG, Patreon.)
• Subscriptions with regular content releases. (e.g. Patreon, KoFi.)
• Freelance design or art. (e.g. Late game for a pro GM.)
• Content Creation with information, news, opinions, and original content. (e.g. Newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel, TikTok, etc.)
• Consulting for other GMs.

Finished Products

Pros: Easy to start, low barrier to entry, great way to get into freelancing & content creation, you control the schedule.

Cons: Time intensive, steep learning curve, and it’s hard to master.

Income: $1 - 60 per purchase

The first step for many designers is to cut their teeth on the mean streets of DMs Guild or Drive Thru RPG. This provides you with an easy way to self-publish and get a cut of the sales! Please note that the cuts are tremendous (50% and 30-35% respectively), so you’re not going to get rich doing this. What this does is grow your fanbase, however, that you can funnel to supporting you directly via crowdfunding campaign or a subscription service. These items are also evergreen and might net you extra bucks during holiday sales.

How do you get started? Storytelling Collective. They have courses that walk you through every part of the self-publishing prices for a small course fee and memberships for instructor-led mentorship. If you are a pro GM then you have enough soft know-how on design to warrant you putting words to the word processor and stamping your name on it.

Just understand that your first few products won’t be very high quality, in general, especially if you are working alone. Over time this will improve, so keep at it. Pace yourself, just do one thing at a time. Small projects over time build up to a great anthology.

‍

Subscriptions

Pros: Easier than self-publishing, easy to set up, community linked through Discord.

Cons: Time intensive, no breaks unless you work ahead.

Income: $1 - 10/per subscriber

There are a number of platforms to consider for hosting this, but details on the pros and cons of each is beyond the scope of this article. Generally - you’ll want to consider your user agreement, the cut the platform takes (if any), whether or not they advertise for you, and other quality of life factors such as UI.

This is where you gather your less-than-stellar material to provide for free. When you’ve shaped it up into something spectacular, then you move it to “finished product” and sell it. You might be generous and provide the full product for free to your subscribers, too! Either way, it’s all revenue.

Freelancing

Pros: No management required of you, 

Cons: Time intensive, no breaks unless you work ahead.

Income: $0.05 - .30/word

Writing is historically undervalued because everyone thinks they can do it well. When people are wowed by the fact that my first published adventure was nominated for an ENNIE they don’t know that I had been writing for 20 years, worked with a narrative designer, playtesters, editor, and a mechanics specialist to help me shape it into the final product to be received as well as it was. I spent roughly $6,000 to create that adventure with all the labor involved - which was a great deal, because that’s roughly what it cost to make. Breaking even is great news when you’re new to publishing!

Many new self-published folks lose money in their first self-published works if you pay out of pocket for layout, art, or editing. Freelancing, once you have a portfolio, has none of those costs associated and your work turns out all the better because of the team effort. It’s also my immense joy to work with others in a collaborative creative environment. I learn from every person I work with, or try to.

If you are an artist, you don’t need me to explain how this works - but you can start by offering to produce character art for your players for a small upsell. Sounds like a great deal for the player, doesn’t it? You can then move onto small projects with others who want to collaborate and pair your magical freehand with the great design work of others. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Create a portfolio using cardd once you finish some work. It’s a simple and free folio website! This is a requirement once you are offering to do freelance work in order to present yourself as a professional. Getting one or two of your self-published items out there is important to validate that you do good work. You might need to include a sample of your work (pre-editor pass) to many before you’ve built a reputation or if that is their hiring process.

Also: PUT YOUR EMAIL IN YOUR PORTFOLIO AND SOCIALS.

Overall, there is a saying amongst many freelancers that it is a full-time part-time job, meaning that you work a lot of hours for only part-time pay. Invest in only as much as you believe you’re getting out of it. If you’re not in love with doing it - then you’re in the wrong business, frankly.

Content Creation

Pros: Low workload when you start, potential for exposure leading to sales grows over time, easy to abandon if it’s not for you.

Cons: Requires more dedication and time the further you get into it, some work will be a total flop in reception despite effort, platforms sometimes immolate, and it’s bothersome to be a well-known content creator if you are marginalized.

Income: affiliate marketing, automated ads (after a year or two), paid ads (eventually).

Newsletters are the way you stay connected to people long after they’ve departed from your game, but this also includes other forms of content creation. You can also use content to signal that you have an opening for more players or starting a new campaign or system. The bite percentage is low, but over time you have enough of a following for that not to matter. The best advice I can give you is to only create something only when you think you have something valuable to share. The second best advice I can give you is to set a schedule that you can sustainably send off - burnout is real.

There are a few different kinds of content creation chutes that I’ll try to briefly explain with their pros and cons.

Lists of stuff: Self-explanatory. Providing a list of things you like every couple weeks keeps people thinking about you. Once in a while you can write a review or a blog post. If people like your taste, then they’ll like this newsletter or series from you. This is the easiest type to maintain and might give you decent return on affiliate links once you crack a couple thousand subscribers.

Opinion: This is your unique take on something. The most famous type would be reviews, be they podcast, YouTube, or newsletter.

Content: This content is a hybrid of subscription and freelance, where you are providing a tangible product for people to use regularly. Sometimes monster stat blocks you’ve designed, campaign content in general or specific to 5e official modules, or just an interview podcast like I host. Media like this attracts a lot more sales than the other categories.

Consulting

Pros: You don’t need to be a content creator to do this, pay can be very high relative to the work. 

Cons: Requires hefty expertise, customer service is difficult, you need to be personable and tactful.

Income: $25-150/hr

Generally once you have an expertise in something, people will want to pay you to speak to you about it. Initially you might think that you need to charge low, but if you have a platform with enough free content, people will pay for personalized help. I only take professional clients who have a great understanding of my free work and therefore I can deliver at higher hourly rates to give them specialized assistance.

Good luck buddy.

‍

Friday Strout is a pro GM, game designer and podcast host whose work can be found on her website along with a podcast and blog here: https://dollarsanddragons.com