32-year-old freelance writer Amy Suto runs a side business and her annual income exceeds NT$8 million.

Amy Suto, a 32-year-old freelance writer, originally worked as a television screenwriter in Hollywood. Later, she transformed into a freelance worker and made a living by ghostwriting memoirs for clients. Unexpectedly, she started running the Substack e-newsletter in 2023, and eventually it unexpectedly developed into a high-income side business with an annual revenue of more than 263,000 US dollars (approximately NT$8.36 million).

Business Insider reported that Suto said she was often asked, "Where do you find a writing job?" So she began to share the real work experience of freelance writers. As her case load increased, she was too busy to take on all the clients, and she gradually couldn't find enough people to refer. One day while working remotely in a café in Paris, she suddenly thought that there should be a better way to connect capable writers with clients. This idea later became the starting point of "Make Writing Your Job".

In 2024, she and her husband Kyle Cords joined the "Make Writing Your Job" job opportunity board on Substack to sort out freelance writing vacancies scattered across the Internet. Unexpectedly, the demand exploded quickly.

Today, the platform has more than 58,000 subscribers. Standard membership costs US$19 per month (approximately NT$604), and founding membership costs US$550 per year (approximately NT$17,500). Free plans are also available. Revenue will exceed US$100,000 (approximately NT$3.18 million) in 2025, and has more than doubled since then. The current total annual recurring revenue exceeds US$263,000.

What’s even more special is that this side business almost didn’t rely on advertising. Suto revealed that the total advertising expenditure in the past three years was less than US$100 (approximately NT$3,180), and it was only experimental. What really drives growth is free content, search traffic, social platforms, and organic recommendations from Substack itself.

She insists on publishing content every week without interruption, while optimizing article titles and content for Google and AI search engines, and attracting new readers through Threads, LinkedIn and Substack Notes. She found that for text creators, it is often easier to find readers on text-based social platforms than on video and audio platforms.

However, Suto emphasized that this is still a side job, and her main income still comes from ghostwriting her memoirs. She believes that the biggest secret to growth is to continue to provide truly valuable free content. “Not everyone is willing to pay at the beginning, but as long as you continue to help readers, some of them will eventually become paying subscribers.”