13 Unconventional Ways A Medical Professional Can Make More Money

Learn little-known ways to monetize medical knowledge

Medical professionals may want to monetize their skills for various reasons. These include:

1. Wanting to expand their private practice and gain more clients

2. Wanting to transition out of day-to-day work

3. Seeking a move into medical administration

4. Needing new income streams

5. Looking to wean off referrals

However, as a medical professional, your reason for making money should ideally:

• Fit in with your lifestyle, not the other way around

• Not be in direct conflict with your clinical practice

• Require minimal outsourcing to keep costs down

• Be digitally run and manageable from anywhere

• Not take up too much of your time

• Align with your goals and values

• Rely largely on automation

13 ways to make more money as a medical professional

The key to success in monetizing medical expertise comes from combining your knowledge with another skill.

When you splice medicine with a different domain, you create entirely new categories of revenue.

For example:

• Medicine + Marketing = Medical marketing

• Medicine + Sales = Medical equipment sales

• Medicine + Law = Medico-legal consulting

• Medicine + Content = Medical publishing

• Medicine + Tech = Healthcare apps

• Medicine + Data = Healthcare research

• Medicine + Games = Health-based games and apps

• Medicine + Teaching = Healthcare education

The opportunities are endless, but there are 13 concrete examples we’ll walk through:

1. Launch a medical marketing agency

2. Coach other medical professionals

3. Publish members-only content

4. Become a medical influencer

5. Do medical assessments

6. Treat foreign patients

7. Become a speaker

8. Create courses

9. Consult for TV

10. Sell research

11. Build an app

12. Write a book

13. Teach classes

#1 Launch a medical marketing agency

Nobody understands medicine like a doctor, and therein lies your advantage from a marketing perspective.

New healthcare startups and pharmaceutical companies may retain your services to help them introduce new products into untapped markets.

By joining forces with marketing experts (or getting a marketing degree yourself), you can create a full-fledged healthcare marketing venture and start taking on clients.

#2 Coach other medical professionals

With your wealth of experience, you can help bring out the best in other medical professionals through coaching and mentorship.

This means you can help other practitioners:

1. Build systems for better productivity

2. Market themselves better

3. Build their practices

4. Manage their time

5. Beat depression

6. Avoid burnout

#3 Publish members-only content

As a medical practitioner, you’re deeply knowledgeable about a specific area of medicine — and lots of people are willing to pay for that expertise.

By publishing paywalled content, you can slowly build an audience and a second income stream that is infinitely scalable.

For example, publishing a diabetes newsletter allows you to share regular content with readers who either live with diabetes or care for people with the condition.

These readers can pay a monthly fee to access your insights via various platforms like Substack or Revue.

For a deeper dive into this approach, check out my three-part series on how to launch and monetize a newsletter.)

You can publish insightful videos every month, too, via sites like Patreon. Simply set your monthly membership tiers and start creating and promoting your content.

#4 Become a medical influencer

You become an influencer by being known for a specific type of content. 

As a medical professional, share threads, videos, posts, and graphics about your specialty on social media.

As you engage your audience and expand your network, you’ll eventually catch the eye of brands looking to reach those audiences.

Use my tips on influencer pricing to arrange profitable partnerships and leverage your audience.

#5 Do medical assessments (for lawyers and insurance companies)

As a physician, you can offer independent medical assessments for insurance companies and court cases.

Appearing as an expert witness on personal injury cases or worker’s compensation cases bolsters your income while helping justice get served.

#6 Treat foreign patients

Medical tourism is alive and well. You can boost your billings by expanding the scope of your practice beyond your borders.

You’ll need to build up a reputation as a specialist in a certain niche. You can do this through in-person networks or online content.

A website and social media can help you establish your services and build credibility with international patients.

#7 Become a speaker

As a medical practitioner, you possess a wealth of knowledge and credibility on your side.

You can offer keynotes and panel moderation to corporate companies, government agencies, and public events.

Work your contacts within corporate circles to learn of upcoming events where you can speak about your specialty.

And put yourself out there online and build an audience on various topics.

#8 Create courses

Video courses are excellent ways to impart general information about a specific health problem and show people how to prevent or treat it.

Sites like Kajabi, Udemy, and Teachable allow you to upload videos and create full-fledged courses you can charge for.

And while the information in your videos won’t be considered medical advice, it can act as a powerful audience-building tool that drives traffic to your live appointment page.

#9 Consult for TV

There’s money in consulting for film sets, TV shows, news channels, and publishing houses.

Whenever they make a medical series or film, they need an expert on the team to advice on how each scene should look and what’s plausible or not.

You can be that expert.

While such opportunities are more prevalent in filming hubs like Hollywood, you can consult remotely from anywhere in the world with the right online branding.

#10 Sell research

Healthcare data can help governments and private companies build better solutions for the public.

If you’ve got research chops and can run anonymized studies on prevalence rates for certain conditions, you can package and sell the results as research reports.

Of course, you’d need to ensure you don’t fall afoul of any healthcare privacy laws in your country.

#11 Build an app

Work with a developer or web agency to build an app that improves health outcomes in your niche.

You can provide the direction and funding while they code the platform itself.

For example, if you specialize in diabetes, could you create a blood sugar tracking device and corresponding app?

If you’re a pediatrician, could you develop a baby monitor app?

Your first clients will be your patients, and they can give you valuable feedback to improve your app.

Your expertise will also drive the development and marketing of the app.

You can monetize the app through in-app purchases, ads, and subscriptions.

#12 Write a book

A book confers credibility and authority on a topic and can bring in a modest sum in royalties each year.

You can write the book alone or co-write it with a medical colleague or journalist.

You can also hire a ghostwriter to write the book for you.

The book can augment your speaking career, provide social media content for years, and transform your industry’s practices.

#13 Teach classes

As a doctor, you can teach patients after hours in learning clubs, or teach part-time at colleges and universities.

This exposes you to new audiences, current research, and a network of healthcare-focused colleagues in academia.

From a credibility perspective, teaching burnishes your credentials and lends more weight to your books and research reports.

Content positioning for medical professionals

Once you’ve decided how you’ll monetize your healthcare knowledge, it’s time to establish yourself online through content. This is what we term content positioning.

In essence, you’ll organize your content along the following lines:

1. Niche

2. Audience

3. Education

4. Engagement

5. Personal story

6. Unique selling proposition

7. Sales and bookings information

Niche

What do you want to be known for? This can be organized along:

• Specialty: Such as cardiology, podiatry, pediatrics, women’s health, etc.

• Process: How you heal and what tools you use

• Location: Where in the world you heal clients

Audience

Who are you speaking to? This can be:

• Academic researchers

• Medical practitioners

• Government workers

• Students, and

• Patients

Education

What guides can you share around specific health problems? Depending on your niche, you could write about:

• Reducing stigma around taboo topics such as STDs, cancer, and body weight

• Guides to sexual health, mental health, or baby health, for instance

• Drugs to avoid taking or mixing for certain health problems

• Where to find doctors who offer a certain service, and

• Health data and trends and what they mean

Engagement

Which other medical professionals can you connect with?

For example, an orthopedic surgeon might need to connect with other orthopedic surgeons but also fitness instructors, kinesiologists, and rheumatologists.

Personal story

What problems did you face two, five, or ten years ago in your career?

Build rapport with others in the same position by speaking about who you were and the problems you faced.

Unique selling proposition

What makes you different from other medical practitioners? This can be:

• Client engagement — How you work with clients

• Data — The types of datasets you use for your research

• Pricing — How you charge for your work (e.g. cash or insurance)

Sales and booking information

How can people get in touch with you? You can do this by availing your:

• Website

• Calendly links

• Email address

• Phone number

Monetize your medical expertise

As a medical practitioner, you’re in a prime position to capitalize on your expertise to create new income streams.

Follow the above tips to monetize your medical knowledge and solve pressing problems for people around the world.