10 Sure-Fire Passive Income Ideas for Artists

1. Local Lead Generation

Local lead generation still tops this list of passive income ideas for artists. Website designers can create and design their own website for lead generation. A website with an impressive design can easily attract an audience, which you can turn into leads.

The logic of local lead generation is simple: rank your website, produce leads, sell it to local business owners. This is where the primary income of this idea comes from. Another good thing with local lead generation is that you’re not stuck with just one source of income. Since you’re building your own website, you can also generate a passive income source from ads and sponsors.

I’ve been making around $52k per month with local lead generation. However, it takes time getting there. You still have to rank your website in order to generate leads. Plus, you’ll need to disburse capital to build your website. But if everything goes right, you’ll be able to experience ROI in a year or so.

3. Setting Up a YouTube Automation Channel

Starting a YouTube automation channel is another great passive income strategy for artists. Like having an online shop, a YouTube automated channel can help an artist expand his portfolio and gain an audience as you publish content showing your art online. Furthermore, if you already have a shop set-up, you can plug it on your channel.

A YouTube automation channel also provides multiple streams of income from ads, sponsors, driving traffic to your online shop, and even affiliate marketing–which I’ll be discussing in the next section. Now you can do all the work on your channel, but an automation channel is definitely better. 

Though you’ll need to expense money for this one, you’ll definitely get it back once you feel the ROI. The average RPM, or Revenue Per Mille (revenue per 1,000 views), is around $5 - $10. Meaning, if your videos garner around 10,000 views, you can earn $50 - $100.

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing focuses on promoting products for commissions earned from those referrals. This is a great passive income stream for anyone, even artists. With an affiliate link, you can promote other products and earn commission from having it purchased from your referral.

You can promote an affiliate link to your YouTube channel posts. Or you can even do affiliate marketing for your own products from your online ecommerce shop. Think of it as a combined business venture as an artist. Affiliate marketing can open up a lot of passive income opportunities if combined with other ideas.

Income from affiliate marketing would depend on what type of product you’re promoting. Your choice of ecommerce platform would also affect how much commission you’ll be earning from a successful conversion. Various platforms offer around 5% - 10%. So if you’ll be affiliate marketing a product which is at $50, you would get around $2.5 - $5 as commission.

5. Making Your Own Blog

Blogging helps artists establish their portfolio online, enabling them to store all their work easily without the need for keeping them physically. Having a blog can also be an opportunity to have multiple income streams in the future from ads and sponsors once having gained enough followers and audiences.

However, like building a website, it will definitely take time to have it set-up. You would also need to shell out capital in order to make your own blog. But fret not, as even if your blog doesn’t have enough followers yet, it’s still usable as your own portfolio. Soon enough, you’ll get to feel the ROI, and can also even use it for affiliate marketing.

Once your blog is set up and is attracting an audience, you can expect ROI already. Though not much yet in the early stages, it’ll surely grow as you gain more visitors. Some established bloggers are already making around $55,000, so that may be something to motivate you if you want to start on making your own blog.

6. Selling Digital and Physical Books

If you’re a novelist and have stories already built, you can definitely put them into books and sell them. It’s a great way to get exposure for your novels and expand your reach. Selling books is another example of passive income ideas for artists since it generates profit even after having your books published.

However, unlike eBooks, physical books need more attention before achieving passive income. Apart from the novels you’ve written, you would also have to look for a publishing company for your works.

This is the best passive income idea for book writers since it is a stable income source after publishing your books digitally or physically. Your books would still be sold out even after not making any new ones. An average eBook sells for around $10 and $15-$20 for physical books. Of course, there are factors that would affect the pricing such as word count, quality, and reputation.

7. Selling Graphic Design Courses and Guides

There are lots of aspiring artists out there who are looking for online courses and designing guides. You can use this as leverage to sell your own courses and guides, which makes a great passive income idea for artists. If you have your own website or blog, this would make a great lead generation method for you, too, which you can use for future courses and guides.

Selling courses and guides are pretty much passive income streams after publishing them online. It’s looking for buyers that’s going to be the work. A good branding, reputation, and marketing strategy is what will help you sell your courses. And once you’ve got an audience, you could use those leads again to pitch your fresh courses and guides to them.

Online courses and guides are priced at‌ least $50 per course, so that’s great passive income if you’re open to it. And given the technicalities of graphic designing, you can definitely do more than that while keeping a competitive price.

8. Print-On-Demand Products

If you have design ideas, you can incorporate this into various products and partner up with print-on-demand companies. A lot of designers collaborate with print-on-demand companies, wherein these companies will handle the products and shipping. Once products are ready, it’s pretty much just waiting on passive income from people buying the products you designed.

The only work you’ll need to do for this idea is to design the products. The prices of the products vary depending on what it is, like mugs, for example, which sell out at an average of $10 - $20 per piece. Shirts are also sold at around $15 - $25 per piece, so those are good numbers to earn passive income for artists.

9. Licensing Your Designs

As an established artist, companies will come to you and pitch for them to have the license to publish your designs on their products. There are plenty of opportunities here since you can have multiple companies licensing on one design, given that each company uses it on different products. It’s a good passive income idea.

However, this would be easier if you’ve already established your name or have had your designs put up online for companies to see. If not, it would be added work to look for companies and pitch in your own designs. Depending on your agreement with a company, earnings from licensing vary from 3% - 25%. According to sources, it’s also best to have exclusive licenses of a design for 1 product only.

10. Establish Your Own Online Designing Agency

Perhaps the best passive income you can think of, having your own agency, is definitely an end goal for most. Though the logic seems impossible and farfetched, there are steps you can take to attain the status. You can start out by looking for clients. Once you’ve landed your first client, you can look for a freelancer and let him/her do the tasks.

If you’re persistent in building your own online designing agency, then you would have to do a lot of work first before getting the passive income status. You’ll have to spend time on the paperworks to make your online agency legal, hire VAs to help you in getting clients and freelancers, and a lot more. You also need to spend some capital in order to get the business running. But once you’ve set it all up, you can earn as much as thousands of dollars as a business owner.