My First 30 Days as a Smut Writer: how I fund full-time travel
I’ve been working really hard to find a sustainable way to make money working from my laptop, and one of my favorite projects so far has been self-publishing smut stories on Amazon.
This is something I talked about doing for years, but I just never sat down to write. Let alone, learn how to design covers, how to publish on KDP, and how to research marketability in the first place. There are super helpful communities on Reddit and Facebook if this is something you’re interested in getting into as well. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but it has been really fun for me!
Writing little smut stories weekly ($4-10k) and getting a few dollars in sales each week has been so inspiring for my creativity and just motivating in general. I enjoy it so much, I wrote three stories this week alone. I’ve started reading books and listening to audio lectures and podcasts about the craft of writing. I’ve stared drafting ideas for longer works. I’ve started posting on this blog again. I even sat up in the middle of the night and made an Instagram Reel that I’d intended to post months ago, but just never got around to.
Passive money is the greatest feeling in the world. Of course I spend a lot of time working on each story during the week, but once I hit publish, it’s out in the universe earning me money even if I never lift another finger.
| First 30 Days | Work | Orders | Page Reads | Estimated Total |
| 10/14/24 | Story 1 | 9 | 2657 | $27.15 |
| 10/20/24 | Story 2 | 9 | 1772 | $23.20 |
| 10/27/24 | Story 3 | 4 | 1316 | $13.53 |
| 11/3/24 | Story 4 | 7 | 963 | $16.17 |
| 11/8/24 | Story 5 | 0 | 118 | $0.51 |
| 11/12/24 | Bundle | 1 | 0 | $3.23 |
| 10/14 – 11/13 | 30 | 6826 | $83.79 |
The more I work, and write, and publish, the more those numbers go up. Can I keep this up? Can I do even better next month?
I publish exclusively on Amazon and the Page Reads refer to the amount of KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages) read through Kindle Unlimited. The totals are estimated because the royalties fluctuate each month so Amazon doesn’t give you an exact number until about midway through the following month.
To go from barely doing any writing besides my journaling for years now, to publishing and getting paid for 5 short stories in as little as 30 days is nothing short of a miracle to me.
It may be smut, but it’s smut people are willing to pay for. In an age where free porn is available to almost anyone in just seconds, that’s impressive to me.
I feel more in touch with myself creatively than I have since I was a teenager. Seeing success in this small arena is pushing me to try harder in others. The process of writing these short stories is making me a better writer every single day. When I do finally write the novels I really want to write, I’ll have paid my dues, done my practice, and earned some money to fund my travels while doing it.
I am very proud of what I’ve done here. I’ve stumbled into some minor success and I’m determined to keep writing, keep experimenting, and see what I can do to keep growing.
Out of all the jobs I’ve ever worked, this is absolutely my favorite. If I could support a life of full-time travel on smut writing alone, I would be a very happy woman.
