Realistic Passive Income for Creatives
If you're an artist, designer, writer, blogger, content creator or creative of some type looking for side hustle ideas to make passive income, this is for you! In this video I talk all about realistic passive income for creatives, so you can start leveraging your creative skills to make money from home.
→ TIME STAMPS:
00:00 — What is passive income?
00:59 — Is passive income really "passive"?
05:26 — Passive income from physical products
11:58 — Passive income from digital products
14:39 — Passive income from monetizing education
16:55 — Passive income from monetizing your content
Note: This was written as a transcript for the video. Please excuse any grammatical errors.
Hey imaginary friend! Let’s talk about “Passive Income”.
What is it, why is it, is it realistic, how to actually do it, ideas, all that good stuff. I think this is gonna be a bit of a long one, so grab a drink, get comfy, and let’s talk.
Today I wanna talk to you about passive income specifically for creative people. So this is not gonna be about dropshipping on Amazon or buying bitcoin or like idk what else all those online business guys talk about — This is not that.
But if you’re an artist, designer, writer, curator, blogger or creative of some sort, and you’re interested in the idea of building passive revenue, then you’re in the right place.
So what exactly is “passive income”?
Basically, it’s this concept of having a source or multiple sources of revenue that require minimal effort or maintenance to actually bring in money. So basically, it’s the opposite of working a 9-5 job or working 1-1 with clients.
And before I really get into it, the first thing I want to say is that I don’t love the name, because I find it a little misleading. I think there’s a lot of online marketers who really lean into the “passive” part and kinda promise you the ability to make thousands of dollars while you sleep or while you’re chilling on a beach — and I’m not trying to say that that’s not possible or realistic. It is very realistic. It’s a reality for many many people. But where I take issue with leaning so heavily into the “passive” part, in terms of marketing the concept, is that it really plays on people’s pain.
People are tired. They’re overworked. Underpaid. They have no free time. They haven’t taken a vacation in years and they don’t have the freedom to control their own schedule — And I know that pain personally, because that was my reality for most of my adult life. So of course when these online “gurus” start to talk about making six figures working 4 hours a week, of course that sounds like a dream.
And I think this concept of passive income, “financial freedom” and “make money in your sleep” that kinda thing has gained a lot of popularity specifically in the last few years because of the global panini and how the nature of work has shifted so much. We all know by now that Ms. Corona resulted in a lot of people being unemployed, overworked, and feeling kinda trapped in their situation. And I think one of the most profound things that happened is that a lot of people started to realize that what they thought was so secure and safe, was actually not. Jobs that people thought were stable and reliable completely disappeared, millions of people were laid off. Even people that were already self-employed or freelancing struggled with their industry shifting, budgets shrinking, and clients just not being able to pay their invoices. And for the “lucky” ones who managed to keep their jobs, there were suddenly all these new layers of stress, new expectations, smaller teams and more demands, constantly shifting priorities and just learning how to navigate this “new world. All while knowing that they could suddenly be laid off or have their hours reduced at any moment.
That is so stressful!
So naturally, people are looking for financial independence, some kinda backup plan, a safety net. And passive income seems like this perfect solution.
But here’s the thing:
While making thousands of dollars literally while you sleep or swim on the beach is entirely possible — it’s also incredibly difficult.
It requires a lot of of work upfront, it requires time, skills and knowledge that you might not already have, and really importantly, it requires a lot of mindset shifts — which people sometimes underestimate. A lot of people don’t even talk about the mindset work, but in my opinion, that’s the most important part.
So with all that being said, I just want to be clear that when I share these passive income ideas, I’m not saying that the process will be fast or easy. Any business venture is always gonna require an investment — whether that’s an investment of time or money or effort, usually it’s a combination of all three. Like most things in life, you get back what you put in.
But if you’re willing to put in the work, be patient, and persistent — it can really be worth it. I can say from my own personal experience, it does feel really nice to wake up, check my emails, and see a bunch of sales notifications. There’s just something so special about the money that I just randomly get from things I created months ago. And I love that it reinforces the idea that making money is not tied to your time and energy. It’s tied to the value that you create.
And as someone who’s self-employed — there’s a sense of security that comes from knowing I have flexibility if client work slows down.
So whether you’re a creative business owner, a freelance, or a 9-5er, creating passive income streams can allow you to supplement your income and start working towards bigger goals.
So ok, finally we’re at the point where we can actually start talking about some ideas! After only like 10 minutes of introduction. Unless you just skipped ahead to this point. In which case — hey you missed some good content! But ok, let’s talk about some actual passive income ideas specifically for creative people!
I’m gonna divide this into three categories — Products, education, and content.
Making Passive Income with Physical Products
So let’s start with products first, because I think this is some of the more obvious stuff. Pretty much everyone is familiar with the concept of selling products, right?
And creative people like artists, designers, photographers, and writers actually have an extra advantage when it comes to selling products because we can sell things that are 100% unique, you couldn’t get it anywhere else. Like for people who are not creative at all, when it comes to selling products, they can only sell other people’s things — which creates a lot of limitations and difficulties. If your products aren’t unique or exclusive, then that impacts your value proposition. Basically — why would I buy from YOU specifically when I can get the exact same item somewhere else? So that type of product business — where you’re just re-selling stuff from like Aliexpress — it can be very challenging. But creatives are in a really good position because we can offer uniqueness and exclusivity.
So there’s two different types of products you can sell as a creative — either physical products or digital.
Let’s start with physical products. This could be selling art prints, t-shirts, mugs, notebooks, stickers, phone cases, enamel pins. I mean you know what physical products are, I don’t have to list everything, right?
But a lot of times when people talk about “passive income” they don’t really talk about physical products at all. And I get that, the idea of packing orders and shipping stuff can be really daunting, and time consuming and doesn’t really fit the image of what “passive” income should look like. BUT I do want to mention it because it is still a lot more passive compared to doing 1-1 client work or commissions. You know, if you’re an illustrator for example, you might spend 8 hours on an illustration, but then once it’s finished, you can sell it over and over again and now, you only have to spend a couple minutes packing it up and shipping it off.
But I know that some people are still just really overwhelmed by the idea of investing in inventory and storing everything and figuring out international shipping. It’s a lot. So I wanted to talk about a couple other ways you can sell physical products without having to handle your own inventory.
So one of the ways that you can do this is with Print on Demand dropshipping marketplace sites like Society6 or Redbubble. I’m sure there are other ones, but those are the two most popular. So basically, the way these sites work is that you simply upload your art and choose what types of products you want to offer — and that’s pretty much it. The website handles the rest like printing and shipping and all of that — and you get paid a percentage of each sale.
Now this is a pretty cool model that can work for a lot of businesses, but I do wanna acknowledge some of the flaws.
The first major issue is that because these sites handle so much of the work, and they have such slim margins, they take a huge percentage — Society6 only pays artists 10% of the retail price for each sale. That is really low. Redbubble is a little bit better because the margin can vary, but you’re still looking at somewhere between 10-20% of each sale. And to make matters worse, these marketplace sites tend to have pretty low prices in the first place.
But I don’t want it to come across like I’m totally against these sites, I actually think they’re fine, and it’s kind of exciting to be able to see your work on so many different types of products. I think they can work pretty well if you’re the type of person that is just looking for something super simple and easy and passive, and you don’t already have an audience.
But if you’re a creator with your own audience already, I don’t know why you would market your work yourself on social media, and then link customers to a society6 shop, where you only get 10% of the earnings. I actually see a lot of artists do this and I find it confusing. Because part of what you’re paying Society6 for is their built in audience and their marketing efforts.
But if you yourself are already attracting your own customers, to me it makes a lot more sense to send them to your own branded shop where they’ll only see your products, and you can earn a much larger percentage of the sale, and you can have more control over the quality of the product and the customer experience.
And so that’s why I like the white label Print on Demand options like Printful, Printify and Gelato, and of course, I’m sure there’s more.
So this model is very similar, it’s still print on demand and drop shipping, so you don’t have to handle any of the inventory or fulfillment yourself — but what’s cool is that these are integrations that you can add to your own website — whether that’s on Shopify or Squarespace or whatever.
So these options are great if you really care about your branding and your profit margins. For example, this can work really well if you’re selling merch for your brand. BUT it is a lot more work. You have to do a lot more set-up and maintenance of your website and you’re 100% responsible for generating your own traffic. So this might not be the best option if you don’t plan to do any marketing or build an audience online.
Making Passive Income with Digital Products
So this is where things start to get a little less obvious. I personally had never really thought about digital products until like a year ago. But it can be a really great way to monetize your work.
So if you’re a visual artist, photographer, graphic designer, musician you could sell your digital files in so many different ways. You can sell printable art — so these are just digital files that the buyer then has to figure out how to print themselves. And that’s really cool for you because you just get to make art, and you don’t have to handle any of the rest of the logistics. You can also sell digital journals, social media templates, custom icons, asset packs, mockups, stock photos, sound effects, royalty-free music, fonts I could go on forever. Honestly, any type of creative work that you do, I guarantee there is a way to package and sell a digital product from it, and it doesn’t have to be hard or complicated. Some of my most popular digital products are things that I just made for fun. Like my favourite thing is this mood board creator, that you can customize however you want. It has realistic textures and background and shadows, and I just love it! It’s so fun and easy to use. And I feel like when I use it to create mood boards for my clients, it just makes it more elevated and professional. Here’s a link to the Mood Board Creator if you wanna check it out.
But! Back to the point. Selling digital products is not all perfect and easy. One of the big issues with digital goods is that there’s often a much lower perceived value. This is partly because you’re transferring some of the work to the buyer, and partly just because there’s this common misconception that intangible work should inherently be cheaper, or just free. And because so many people think that way, there’s always a risk of art theft and plagiarism. But — that’s a whole other topic for another day.
Making Passive Income with Education
So thinking about digital products connects really nicely into the next category which is Education. So this is where we can talk about selling your knowledge as a product. Think e-books, online courses, Skillshare, tutorials, things like that.
There are SO many different ways you can sell education, so I’m not gonna get super into the actual process in this video, because I think I’ll probably make an entirely separate video about that at some point.
But I do wanna say, this is an option that can be very lucrative, because education can have a much higher perceived value than other digital products. But it’s something that a lot of people have mental barriers around. You know, a lot of the time, we tend to see a certain type of person and certain industries selling online courses and e-books. And that might not be your vibe. Or, you just might not have ever thought of yourself as a teacher.
But I don’t want you to limit yourself when you imagine the possibilities for how you could sell your knowledge. There are so many people in this world all looking for different things. So there is almost definitely someone out there that wants to learn about a skill or knowledge that you can teach. And it doesn’t always have to be super straightforward or obvious. Like I’ll give you an example — I recently took a course from a photographer, but it wasn’t your typical “how to use a camera” type course. It was specifically about how to confidently take self portraits. It wasn’t just focused on technical skills, but it was also about the psychology of building self-confidence. And that’s the part that made it more valuable to me. So that’s just something to think about if you’re interested in selling education products, it doesn’t have to be limited to technical skills. Sometimes the intangible stuff like confidence, communication, self-love, things that might come very naturally to you, might actually be incredibly valuable for someone else.
Making Passive Income by Monetizing Your Content
And that brings us to the last category for creating passive income which is by monetizing your content. This one is pretty straightforward. You create content about whatever you like, and you build an audience. So Youtube is probably the biggest platform for this. Because once you reach a certain number of subscribers and watch hours, Youtube will pay content creators a portion of the ad revenue from each video. And personally, monetizing my Youtube channel is one of my goals for this year — so hit that subscribe button if you wanna help me reach my goal ;)
But aside from Youtube, you can also monetize your content on platforms like Twitch, Tik Tok, and Patreon and some podcasting hosts. But even if you don’t use those platforms, you can still monetize your content by doing brand deals and affiliate marketing, or hosting ads on your website.
I feel like most people are pretty familiar with those models, so I won’t go into it too much, but it does need to be said that monetizing your content really depends on your audience and your brand as a creator. So that’s just something to keep in mind, it can tend to be a lot more fickle and variable compared to some of the other passive income ideas we talked about earlier.
Alright, so that is it! I hope this gave you some new ideas and insights.
And as always, if you’re someone creating a brand and a business of your own, check out some of the links in the description because I’ll always have some cool free resources to help you build a magnetic brand.
Ok, Bye!
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