Stepping it up in the "Writing Game"

1001 answers to this question, but, what does "high paying" mean?
Without some sort of a baseline, it is hard to offer any useful advice.

What sort of content did he write? How much was he paid? What were the markets or niches he wrote for? You'll probably find the gold you seek from the mine you are already in.

Also, "passive ways", what does that mean to you?

I'll give you one answer based on my best guess of what you think you may be looking for, fair enough?

Decent writers would be wise to write and control their own content along with selling their skills to others. One way to do this is to create "Specialty Reports", information and content that people want and will pay you for it.

If you choose a niche of people already buying reports, you simply plug into that market. You then create a simple one page mini site to sell your report, I call these Automatic Product Vending sites, and they could (possibly) produce passive income for you.

I've had several sites like this, the longest selling product has 18 years of continuous sales. And with sales into the thousands of units, it has been one source of passive income.

The great thing about controlling your own content is, you can write it once and sell it forever, or do updates, upgrades or bundle them together.

As for finding the higher paying clients, WRITE to them, and ask.

The way to do this, is get to know what they do, and offer them something new with you as the provider.

GordonJ

If you and your partner are really good at both writing and marketing, I think you should focus on creating your own products.

As Gordon said, having control of your writing output lets you create all kinds of products on various platforms and you can charge what you want in order to get your ROI where you want it.

This may not be the quickest solution, but long term it will serve you best, IMO - especially if you know how to market effectively.

As long as you're working for someone else, you're trading your own time for their money and you will always be looking for clients. When a client is gone, no more of their money for you.

Focus on writing a product, your own product, once . . . and benefiting from the sales of that product for years and years. Plus, focus on writing products in a series or that are related to one another. If you are good, your writing of new but related material can be sold to current customers that are already happy with what you've sold them.

Good luck to you,

Steve

If you do good work. And your client is returning for more work even if your price is 'high', then there is definite scope for you to expand your client list.
If you have decent budget, you can use Google adwords to find more high paying clients. If you target well, you will be successful.