As a working illustrator, you typically only get paid when you work or when you have live projects on your books. If you have art licensing contracts, you may well get ongoing commissions - which is basically passive income - but if you’re not interested in art licensing as an income stream for your illustration business, there are other options for creating passive income.
Passive income may not be something you’ve thought about as an illustrator, but wouldn’t it be great to earn an income passively which leaves you more time to create work you passionately want to create?
Even if you’re already a working illustrator, there are probably times and projects which don’t exactly leave you feeling inspired or creative…if you had your own streams of passive income, then you wouldn’t actually *need* to earn a living from your illustration, you could cherry pick the projects you work on, safe in the knowledge that the income is coming in anyway.
That’s certainly the approach Jonathan and I are taking with our business ventures - we’re focusing on creating multiple stream of (as passive as possible) income to leave use free to work on and do things we enjoy and are passionate about.
For you, it may just be about creating more income, supplementing what you already have or it may be about creating income that leaves you free to illustrate when you want and what you want.
Whatever your motivation, this article will give you an overview of some of the options available and some suggestions for how to get started…
Creative Ideas for Passive Income
The nature of passive income means that it usually requires a fairly intensive period of work followed by reaping the rewards. The reward reaping doesn’t necessarily come quickly either but once you’ve found a model that works for you, it’s simply a case of replicating it, as many times as you can, until you have a decent number of income streams that make you a healthy supplemental (or even full time) income.
Some common types of passive income include:
- Affiliate marketing - setting up websites which promote products, services or resources you recommend in exchange for an affiliate payment every time someone clicks on your link to purchase something.
- Digital products - selling tutorials, art lessons & other digital products (like ebooks, desktop images, graphics, icons) online.
- Physical products - selling ready-made/ready-printed prints, posters and other pre-made products via an online website. This isn’t exactly passive if you have to ship the products yourself but it’s a way of earning additional income from your illustration work and skills.
Skills Needed
Creating passive income isn’t a walk in the park - it takes a fair amount of hard work and doesn’t always ramp up quickly. That’s why so many people give up before they get anywhere. However, if this is a strategy which you’d like to pursue, then it will give you a huge advantage if you can focus on acquiring the following skillset (either by learning yourself or finding people who can help):
- Design & branding
- Website design and development
- Copywriting
- Traffic generation
Most online streams of passive income revolve around being able to build a decent website - design plays an important part too - and then being able to drive traffic to it and market it.
Affiliate Marketing
This can be done from your existing website/blog but needs to be handled very carefully if you’re going to do this. Affiliate marketing is basically the practice of getting a small commission when you recommend something that other then buy.
For example, if you read a book you got from Amazon, sign up to their affiliate program then link to that book on your website (using your affiliate link), every time someone buys that book from clicking on your link, you receive a (very) small amount from Amazon (Amazon’s affiliate program isn’t especially generous!).
This is a great strategy if you already have a sizeable audience who listen to what you say and act on your recommendations. It can take a while to see any results but if you are dedicated to making this work, it can be a great source of long term passive income.
There are a number of popular affiliate networks which run programs from some of the big brand names out there, as well as individual affiliate programs for individual products made by other bloggers, illustrators and peers.
Pros of Affiliate Marketing
- You don’t have to create your own product/service to sell.
- The earning potential of affiliate marketing is huge.
- You have full control over which products you promote and can choose to be an “ethical” affiliate marketer by only promoting services & products you’ve used and personally recommend.
- You don’t have to have huge amounts of traffic or a big readership to make money from affiliate products but you do need a responsive one.
Cons of Affiliate Marketing
- Making sales requires either decent traffic or a responsive audience - one requires cash, the other requires time & effort.
- You need to find a quality, relevant product to sell to an existing audience, which doesn’t always exist.
- It requires a steep learning curve to get to grips with affiliate marketing, especially if you go down the route of mini sites.
Affiliate Marketing Summary: This is an excellent monetisation strategy to pursue since it has some of the higher payouts and you can choose to promote the products you want to sell. It requires somewhat of a learning curve however if you’re focusing on niche mini sites or a fair amount of time and effort if you’re aim is to build a responsive, engaged audience who will buy what you recommend.
Affiliate Marketing Resources:
Recommended Premium Resource:
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners Course
Having thoroughly tested this beginner’s affiliate marketing course ourselves, we highly recommend this step-by-step program if you’re completely new to affiliate marketing and want a simple-to-follow approach which helps you make that very first sale.
This was created by Corbett Barr, and is designed for complete beginners. It is structured in an easy-to-follow, actionable format and Corbett answers your questions throughout, should you need any additional help. This is the only resource of its kind we recommend.
Selling Digital Products
This is perhaps the strategy which appeals to many creative entrepreneurs since it involves creating your own products. As an illustrator, you could leverage your skills and create sets of digital images/icons for sale to bloggers or web masters; you could write an ebook for other illustrators or you could create a range of online art tutorials showing people how to paint/create custom fonts and more. There are so many things you can create - you need to turn your thinking to education….who you can educate and what you can teach them. You can create the following types of digital products:
- Ebook
- Audio courses & programs
- Video courses & programs
- Software/Online Apps
You will of course need specific skills such as being able create the product in the first place, the know-how to set up a website or online platform to sell your products and you’ll also need to figure out a way to market your product and drive traffic to the site.
Pros of Selling Digital Products
- You keep almost all of the income.
- You get full control over the type and quality of the product you’re selling.
- Once you get the hang of this, the possibilities are endless!
Cons of Selling Digital Products
- You have to create the product which can be a steep learning curve.
- You need an audience who’ll buy it.
- Ongoing sales usually requires ongoing marketing so unless you automate this, it’s not exactly passive.
Resources for Selling Digital Products
For the sale of digital products, you may need to consider using the following resources:
- Paypal - the only viable solution to receiving and making payments online
- WordPress - to build cheap websites & blogs as online sales platforms
- Headway - the developer’s licence which means you can use it on as many sites as you want
- Google Analytics - to track traffic stats and measure your progress
- ejunkie - for selling and delivering digital products
The following services can also help you shortcut the process of creating your own products, without having to spend a fortune to hire other professionals to help you:
- Jing - to record quick on-screen tutorials (for longer ones, you’ll probably need additional software like Camtasia or iShowU or Screenflow)
- Casting Words - transcription services which are great for transcribing audio interviews etc. for ebooks
- EditZen - professional proofreading and editing for your ebooks
- Gramlee - grammar checking & proofreading
- Product Shine - affordable, professional buttons and graphics for your digital products
Physical Products
This is one of the most commonly pursued strategies for creative entrepreneurs because it involves creating! As an illustrator, you could create prints/postcards/gift cards/posters from your illustrations or create a range of illustration-based products in advance.
This is not quite passive income since you’ll probably be packaging and shipping the products yourself plus taking care of any customer service queries. There are ways around this - by outsourcing and using dropshipping services - but these probably won’t appeal to most illustrators and are unnecessary unless you really don’t have the time to handle these aspects yourself or it grows too big to handle yourself!
Pros of Selling Physical Products
- You get the joy of creating physical goods you can sell yourself.
- You keep all of the income.
- You get full control over the type and quality of the product you’re selling.
Cons of Selling Physical Products
- You’re in charge of packaging, shipping and customer service.
- You may need storage space for your product “inventory”.
- You need an audience who’ll buy it.
- Ongoing sales usually requires ongoing marketing so unless you automate this, it’s not exactly passive.
Resources for Selling Physical Products
To sell your own products online, you’re likely to still need the following resources:
- Paypal - the only viable solution to receiving and making payments online
- WordPress - to build cheap websites & blogs as online sales platforms, unless you plan to use another storefront website like Etsy.
- Headway - the developer’s licence which means you can use it on as many sites as you want
- Google Analytics - to track traffic stats and measure your progress
- ejunkie - if you’d like to use a cheap shopping cart to help you track physical inventory
The key to creating passive income streams…
The key to creating passive (or any type of additional) income streams is to start NOW! If you know this is something you want, then there is never a better time to start than right now. Even if you don’t quite get it “right” the first time round, the experience and learnings you’ll gain from doing this are immeasurable. Start now and you’ll have a headstart for next time round.
Once you’ve got a plan to experiment and set up additional, passive income streams, watch out for the forthcoming guide about building 1,000 True Fans…to help you market yourself and your products.