Stop trading time for money - The dream of passive income

A few weeks ago I called my dear friend. We hadn't been talking for ages and both of us had to tell a lot and at the same time didn´t know where to start. Eventually she asked me how my Instagram is going and I answered defensively that it was not going so well, that I didn`t post often enough, that I didn´t engage in the amount I should, that I had not enough time to create and simply was to busy with my day work and being there for my kids. I am not sure what I expected as an answer but I was not prepared for what came right at me. No compassion, no motivational words, no good advice. My friend replayed rather uninspired: "Oh well, that´s how it is for everybody. So what?!" At first, her words hit me like a punch into the stomach. I was puzzled and speechless. But thinking about it I understood that she behaved like a very good friend, giving me a reality check.

I realised that we all are in a hamster wheel. No pity of a friend will change that. It is me who has to change and that is when I started looking into passive income.

Why passive income?

If you are not born wealthy, you might know the deal of trading your time against money. If you are a teacher, photographer, designer, salesperson - you work several hours a day and get paid for it. The day just has 24 hours so that's the limit. If you are a mom as I am the day has even fewer hours if you know what I mean. We can put this also differently and state that you do work many hours as a mom but you don't get paid for it in money. I know we get plenty of love but that doesn't pay the bills or gives us a solid retirement.

You have heard the solution for this before, I am sure about it. I have seen it, too. What the internet will give you as a solution is called PASSIVE INCOME. Even if passive income is not at all that passive but requires you to be quite active, it still is this huge dream we all have. I love being a teacher and I know that people make fun o

f teachers for having so much spare time like during holidays but believe me, it can be unbelievably stressful, loud and shattering. Could I generate a passive income regularly, I would probably not work full time as a teacher.

It doesn't matter to whom I talk, everybody says I love my job but if I could generate passive income I would not go anymore, at least not full time. Passive income makes it possible for the artist to focus more on creating. Parents can spend more times with their kids and are a lot more flexible with their working hours. Active people can focus more on their sport. Adventurous people are freer and can work from anywhere in the world. Come on, we all want that. Can you relate?

What is passive income?

Passive income means that you have actively arranged or created something that generates an income long after you have done your part. You get an income without trading your hours or at least by trading just a very few hours. Let me give you some examples to clarify what I mean:

• You are a designer and you created illustrations that can be printed as postcards, posters, stickers, bags, clothes or that can be used digitally on social media. If we assume that it took you 2 hours to create that illustration but you are not just selling it once to one customer. You sell it on your homepage, Etsy store or a licensing platform again and again and again. The income from these sails is passive.

• You are a mom with huge experience and an interest in cooking sugar-free but tasty kids meals. You collect your favourite recipes in an e-book and sell them on Amazon KDP. It took you several days to write this book but you are selling it many times from the moment on that it is published. The income from selling this book is your passive income.

• You have magnificent handwriting and you're lettering is a joy for the eye. With your pedagogical skills, you decide to create an e-course to teach other people how to do lettering. Making that e-course takes you 35 hours, selling it on skillshare generates passive income every time somebody is paying to watch your e-course.

There are many other ways of generating passive income. Everyone requires some investment. As a lot of passive income strategies generate only a small amount at a time and can be fluctuating it is always necessary to diversify. So don´t put all your eggs in the same basket.

The most common ways of creating passive income as a creative

If you google passive income you will find information about real estates and investments. I won´t write about that. Instead, I will give you the most common ways to generate passive income as a creative.

1. Open your own print store with high-quality prints. I did exactly that yesterday. You find my shop here. So in a while, I will tell you how it is going.

2. Offer your art as print-on-demand. The difference here is that you upload your art to a print-on-demand company like printful or society. You can integrate it into your own homepage if you like. The different companies offer all kind of products where your image can be printed on. There are posters, canvas, phone cases, mugs, towels, t-shirts and many other items. The print-on-demand company takes care of everything: the payment, the print, the delivery and it's just printed the moment somebody actually buys an item with your print.

3. Sell printables on Etsy or Creative Market. Printables are graphics, images or illustrations that you created. You sell them as a digital file. The customer downloads and prints your image.

4. New but growing are NFTs. NFT stands for non-fungible token. The problem with digital art always has been that it is easy to replicate or even to steal. Even if you sell a digital drawing in a limited version you could never guarantee that it is not copied and spread online. That's where NFTs come in: NFTs were designed to guarantee ownership of a specific digital artwork. If someone buys your digital art as an NFT this person is saved as the owner on the blockchain. (Short and easy explained, the blockchain is a record-keeping technology, like a database.) Comparing this with an analogue artwork: Everybody can buy a print of the Mona Lisa but just one can own the original. So, if you want to sell your digital art, you can mint it as an NFT and sell it on a marketplace like Rarible, Opensea, Foundation and others. I am a curious person so I had to try just to see how things work. So since yesterday, I am selling one of my images as an NFT. I will let you know how this is going.

5. Start a membership space like Patreon and offer the members insights, behind-the-scenes, freebies, access to your advice and coaching or whatever it is that you know or can do and that is interesting for others. To obtain membership there will be a small monthly fee. Here it is up to you how much membership will cost, what's included and how many different tiers of membership you will offer.

6. If you are a photographer, you can sell your photos to stock photo pages like Getty Images, Adobe Stock or Shutterstock. There are more and more stock photo pages calling for stock photos. Comparing the different sites in terms of how much royalties they pay or which conditions they have is highly recommended.

7. The same counts for stock videos.

8. Even though the competition is huge by now, creating your own Lightroom presets and selling them online is still a way of making some money.

9. As a Photoshop pro, you can even create your own brushes, actions or overlays and sell these.

10. With an eye for design and aesthetics, you can design all kind of templates in Canva, Procreate, Illustrator or Photoshop. Possible niches are social media bundles, Instagram stories and posts, wedding invitations, Pinterest Pins, Planners and so much more. Create and sell them online.

11. Write an e-book about your niche and sell it as a pdf online or with Amazon Kindle.

12. Create a print-on-demand book or notebook and sell it for instance on Amazon.

13. License your images and get royalties every time a company uses your work.

14. Sell your digital art as a book cover on pages like The Book Cover Designer, Book Cover Zone and many others.

15. Sell crafting templates like knitting patterns on your homepage or on a marketplace like Etsy or Creative Market.

16. Earn with placing ads either on your blog, podcast or YouTube channel.

17. Start an affiliate program. Here a brand or another website pays you for sending traffic to their page or product through links that you place on your website or your blog. On my website, you will find affiliate links to Adobes programmes like Photoshop. I only earn a small sum when somebody clicks on the link and activates one of their packages. For the person clicking the link, there is no price difference or disadvantage.

18. Open a dropshipping store on your homepage. Pick products, that you can imagine selling, from a dropship company, place them in your shop and earn from sails without ever have seen the products you are selling. The dropshipping company takes care of every step in the production, payment and delivery process. Obviously, you will just get a share of the income.

19. Design and sell stationery like postcards, paper, stickers etc.

20. Make an e-course about something you know very well and sell it either on your website or on e-learning platforms as skillshare.

Why another article about passive income?

As I said I am a curious person and my curiosity didn´t find enough information online about how these different kinds of passive income actually worked. So I decided to try some ways, monitor how much work went into creating it and how much passive income it actually generates. I will let you know about the good, the bad and the ugly. I have already started and will soon write about my experiences. Stay tuned and let me know which questions you have.