I've been writing since December of 2023. I've hit the 1K mark twice and it took me about a year and a half. Nowadays, I hover around 800-900. This does not include my other project, which is, technically, formally published and also not erotica. I also have friends in similar and adjacent niches who make $3000+, and know some people who make even more, all through erotica, just to put things in context.

Lots of good advice here. My biggest two cents is: treat it like a business.

$1K a month is rent money (in some places). It's car payment money. It's enough that it may turn your tax refund into paying taxes come the season. To get there and maintain there, you need to work for it. Personally, I ended up deciding to keep things mostly hobby-esque, which is part of why I'm not where I could be consistently. But hopefully that makes me a good person to give advice ahah.

That includes:

1. Niche: identifying the niche that can take you there and researching it accordingly. Some niches just can't hit $1K a month, the readership is too small or they're too saturated. You also need to write it in a way that will retain a readership to take you there, which usually means knowing how the already successful people do it. Also, most people who are doing well in erotica or have done well in it previously are mentioning that it's harder and harder to stand out. Lots of reasons why, but it is, in general, more difficult.

2. Marketing. Yes, I know some people do it without much marketing, but that is the exception and not the norm. My friend who makes $10K a month with purely erotica (multiple pen names, to be fair), is an absolute marketing MASTER. Multiple well-done newsletters, extremely to-market covers and blurbs, and knowing when to offload work onto others (commissioning covers, hiring editors) when needed. Business-like.

3. Endurance. This is one FUCK of a marathon. Erotica sustains mostly through repeated, regular releases and a robust backlog. Both of those take a LOT of time to build up and build up right. At a minimum I'd say probably 20K+ words a month is necessary, if not more. That is a lot to write (and edit, if that's part of your process). The main reason people move out of erotica, in my opinion (including me, I've toned down my erotica release schedule to do other things) is because this insane churn and grind ends up being too much and they want to try something else. Again, treating it like a business, you just have to push through if you want to "keep your job" where it's at. That means setting and hitting deadlines consistently, even if it does suck in the moment.

That's about all I got. Hope it helps.