After spending a short time in the banking house of Currie & Co., London, he returned, in 1795, to Kelso, and became partner in his father's business as general merchant.
Gradually he got into money difficulties, and, having disposed of his goods to pay his debts, went to Edinburgh in January 1806, to become clerk in his brother's printing establishment at a salary of £200 a year.
Lockhart states that Ballantyne, in negotiating with Constable in 1817 regarding a second series of Tales of my Landlord, so wrought on his jealousy by hinting at the possibility of dividing the series with Murray, that he 'agreed on the instant to do all that John shrank from asking, and at one sweep cleared the Augean stable in Hanover Street of unsaleable rubbish to the amount of £5,270'; but from a passage in the Life of Archibald Constable it would appear that this was not effected till a later period.
As he had also made a stipulation with Constable that he was to have a third share in the profits of the Waverley Novels, he suffered no pecuniary loss by the dissolution of the old publishing firm.
At his villa on the Firth of Forth, which he had named ‘Harmony Hall’, and had 'invested with an air of dainty, voluptuous finery', he gave frequent elaborate Parisian dinners, among the guests at which was sure to be found 'whatever actor or singer of eminence visited Edinburgh'.
His imprudent pursuit of pleasure told gradually on his constitution, and after several years of shattered health he died at his brother's house in Edinburgh 16 June 1821.