Conversely to active income, which for creatives means for instance producing commissioned work for a client or for an exhibition with the aim of selling it, passive income refers to earnings that demand little or no effort to earn. Well, at least once you have set up your passive income systems, which certainly requires time and patience first.
That is, building passive income streams is not passive at the beginning but once you have all the pieces in place, they will allow you to generate money while you do the things you love the most, as passive income is not tied to how many hours you work in a day.
Okay, so where do you start and what can you do to generate passive income? For artists, this often entails using previously made artworks and exploring fresh avenues to market and sell it, which is something that can be done now easier than ever thanks to the Internet. Furthermore, this can be made by any sorts of creatives regardless of the industry they come from (fine art market, illustration, photography, graphic design, jewellery, furniture, tattoo, etc.).
Print-on-Demand (POD)
Partnering with established third-party sites is a great way to sell your art or designs and reach larger audiences. The POD company normally does all the marketing, printing, packaging and dispatching for you.
One way to do POD is to have the site sell your work directly for you and, in return, you receive a small percentage of the profits. Apart from prints, you can also sell your art featured on other third-party items (scarfs, bags, mugs, etc.).
The other way is drop shipping services, which is similar to PDO marketplaces, but entails to integrate a PDO site with your artist website so you can retain the customer’s email addresses and control your own prices.
Although with drop shipping services you have more control of the business, you have to do all your own marketing and that involves from integrating their online platforms with your personal website to white labelling the goods as your own products.
In any case, bear in mind that there’s a lot of competition in PDO platforms therefore, though generating substantial income is not impossible, it will require some time to get noticed.
Licence your work to brands Another passive income idea is to licence your artwork directly to a company. Depending on the terms you agree to, you may often anticipate receiving a fixed fee at the moment you sign the contract in addition to further money from royalties received when products containing your work are sold.
Although most large companies will often contact you first to ask you to licence your work, you can contact nearby businesses in your area you like or more niche internet shops that you are connected to on social media.
Sell digital products on online marketplaces
I explained in my previous blog post on ways to gain money as an artist how you can generate income with online teaching and by creating and selling guides and ebooks. In addition to those ideas, you can also sell digital downloads like software templates and presets. These items are often sold in online marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon Digital or the likes (or in your own website directly!) and people find them in your social media channels or using Search Engine Optimisation.
For those who have a strong social media presence you should also consider the following:
Subscription services
Membership sites such as Patreon allows people to support their favourite creatives, who offer exclusive content and / or prints and other goodies to their subscribers.
Affiliate marketing
It consists in the use of affiliate links to certain products you recommend. Most companies have affiliate programmes, you just need to register, get the link to the particular product you’d like to promote and post it on your website or social media channels. When someone clicks through that affiliate link and buys a product, you will receive a small commission from every transaction.
Referral programmes
In contrast to affiliate marketing, with referral programmes you normally recommend products to you actually use and enjoy. Otherwise, they work pretty much in the same way.
Advertisements Another form to generate passive money from the audiences you already have is possible by displaying adverts on your blog or Youtube channel through platforms like Google Ads, for instance.
If you’d like to know how to implement these ideas and have a roadmap in place for you, book a 1-1 consultation call with me.
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