How to Sell Your Poems Online
Quick answer: How to sell your poems online: paying magazines, contest prizes, self published collections, prints, and commissions. Realistic routes and honest numbers.
You can sell poems online through five main routes: paying literary magazines, poetry contests with cash prizes, self published collections and ebooks, printable or physical poem products such as prints and cards, and custom commissions for occasions like weddings and funerals. Individual poems typically earn small sums; income builds by combining several routes over time.
Honesty first: almost nobody gets rich selling poems, and anyone promising otherwise is selling you something. But a working poet can absolutely earn real money from the craft, and the earlier you treat it as a portfolio of small income streams rather than one jackpot, the faster it grows.
Paying magazines and journals
Some literary magazines pay per poem or per page, with rates ranging from token amounts to a few hundred dollars at the top end; the well known example poets cite is Poetry magazine's per line rate. Listings sites and databases let you filter markets by payment. The trade is time: paying venues receive heavy volume, so acceptance can take months and many attempts.
Treat magazine income as slow but reputation building. A paid acceptance is both money and a credit that raises the value of everything else you sell.
Contests: prize money plus proof
Cash prize contests are the most direct way a single poem earns money. Free entry contests exist and are worth prioritising when you are starting out; paid entry contests can still be rational if the prize, publication, and feedback justify the fee. Writory's monthly contest sits in this territory: entries run from the 1st to the 25th, winners get cash and certificates, and every entrant receives a scored breakdown, so even a non winning month returns something useful.
Do the arithmetic before entering anything: fee, prize pool, and what you get if you do not win. Feedback, publication of shortlists, or free entry rewards all change the equation.
Selling collections and poem products
Self publishing platforms let you sell a poetry ebook or paperback with no gatekeeper, keeping a healthy royalty per copy. The catch is that sales follow audience, not upload. A collection sells when readers already know your work from magazines, contests, social media, or readings; publishing first and marketing later rarely works in that order.
Beyond books, poems sell as objects: typographic prints, greeting cards, and downloadable broadsides through print on demand and craft marketplaces. Short, giftable poems about love, grief, friendship, and milestones do best here, because buyers are purchasing an emotion for someone else.
Protecting your work while selling it
Two cautions. First, rights: once a poem is published anywhere public, including your own shop listing or social feed, many magazines and contests treat it as published, so decide which poems are for sale as products and which are for submission. Second, scams: legitimate buyers pay you. Any anthology or platform that charges poets a fee to be included in a book they then must buy is running a vanity scheme, not a market.
What poets can take from this
- Split your poems into two pools: submission pieces and product pieces, and keep them separate.
- Prioritise free entry contests and paying magazines while your name is new.
- Price commissions by the occasion, not the line count; buyers pay for meaning.
- Never pay to be anthologised; money should flow towards the poet.
- Build one small audience channel, a newsletter or a single social platform, before launching a book.
- Track every sale and acceptance in a spreadsheet so you can see which route actually earns.
Try it yourself
Write a 10 line poem someone would buy as a framed print for a person they love: concrete images, no names, and an ending generous enough to hang on a wall.
Questions
How much money can you make selling poems?
Per poem, usually between a token payment and a few hundred dollars from top magazines or contest prizes. Sustainable income comes from stacking routes: publications, prizes, products, and commissions together.
Can I sell poems I have posted on social media?
You can sell them as products or in your own collection, since you keep copyright. But many magazines and contests count public posts as prior publication, making those poems ineligible there.
Is it worth paying entry fees for poetry contests?
Sometimes. Weigh the fee against the prize, the publication value, and whether you get anything if you do not win, such as feedback or a score. Skip contests where the numbers do not add up.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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