Three years ago, I was grinding out 1,200-word blog posts at $75 a pop. Some weeks I landed four pitches. Other weeks I landed zero. My income looked like a heart monitor — flatlines punctuated by random spikes. I kept telling myself this was just what freelancing looked like. It took me way too long to realize the problem wasn't the writing. It was the business model. Hourly billing and per-article rates have a ceiling. You trade minutes for dollars, and there are only so many minutes in a day. Sponsorship deals feel like a step up, but they're lumpy — one $800 newsletter placement every six weeks doesn't replace a steady paycheck. Display ads are even worse. Unless you're pulling monster traffic, the RPMs are laughable. The first time recurring revenue actually clicked for me was when I started promoting a tool that paid me every single month a referred user stayed subscribed. Not once. Not on the first purchase. Every month.…