It really annoys me when I hear people say that artists will never make good money. I know a few artists who already make a good living from selling their original works as well as their prints, but if you are an artist or creative looking to add new streams of income to your usual process then look no further! Here are a few great ways for you to make long term additional passive income as an artist without too much additional effort!
Passive income ideas for artists source 1: Sell Downloadable Prints on Etsy, or through your own website or Blog via Sendowl
If you have already been selling prints of your work, then the next step you can take is to start selling digital downloads of your prints. You can sell digital downloads on Etsy, which is a great option as Etsy is a huge platform where your work has the potential to get lots of exposure! The beauty of this is you only need to upload your artwork once, and then it can be downloaded each time someone buys it without you having to do any more work. You sell the download for less than a hard copy posted print would cost, but it requires almost no effort on your part. The buyer can then take the digital file to be printed at their local printer. This is a great option for people who want to buy your art but have trouble getting products shipped! If you want to sell digital downloads directly from your website, you can also do this from your own shop (woo commerce for wordpress) or you can use Sendowl to easily take payment and deliver your digital products to your customers.
Passive income for artists source 2: Selling your designs on products and dropshipping
Did you know that you can have your own online shop on your website, without having to hold any stock or post items? This is what’s known as dropshipping! There are lots of great printing and drop shipping websites in the uk now, a few good ones are Two Fifteen, Printful, and Print Pit. All you need to do is create a mock up of the product you want to sell (let’s say a T-shirt for this example) You would go to the printers website, download a mock up template, and add your image.
Once you have done this you can list the t-shirt for sale on your website for say £15, and then when a customer buys the product, all you have to do is order it from the printers, which might cost you around £9, and they will ship it directly to your customer! This saves you time, effort and space, you make a nice £6 profit for processing a simple order, and there is no worry of being stuck with leftover stock you can’t shift, as you just order the products from them as your customers do!
Passive income source 3: Selling an online course sharing your skills
If you have a knack for teaching, then selling an online course on Skillshare or Teachable is a great way to generate passive income! You only need to create the course once, but it can be downloaded by users again and again as it is purchased, which means after the initial effort of creating the course, you don’t really need to do anything (apart from some promotion maybe). A great example of how an artist has done this is Dana from The Wonder Forest, with her Watercolour Workshop, which is a beginners video course on how to paint in watercolour that she sells for $215!
Passive income source 4: Uploading your designs to Print On Demand Websites
Artist and Designer, Cat Coquilette, wrote an amazing in depth article about how she makes a living selling her Art on POD websites such as Society6, and Redbubble. Click Here to read the article.
Cat also writes about hot to get started licensing your own art- take a look at her website- there is loads of juicy information for artists to get started creating an income in this way!
If you know of any other ways artists can make passive income just let me know in the comments below, and I will add it to this post!
Emily xx