From freelancing to passive income
I’m Clàudia Orengo, a graphic designer and artist from Barcelona. I have been a freelance graphic designer since 2013 and although I love it, I burned out several times.
The stress of not knowing where and when the next client will come from, of not having steady income, of working on endless projects and getting paid months (or years) after starting that job wasn’t easy. I wanted stability, I wanted financial security, but mostly I wanted freedom. Building multiple income streams seemed a way to get this.
For years I considered the idea of selling my digital creations online, but I kept postponing it thinking it would be too much work, too difficult, or that it wouldn’t work for me.
But it did. Which is why Sheryl has invited me to write this guest post for The Creative Life. My hope is that my example motivates you to take action and start as soon as possible!
I’m not an artist
My design school used to have the strapline “I’m not an artist”. When I saw it for the first time, it triggered something in me. I had never considered myself an artist until then, but something felt off with that statement. Being an artist isn’t bad. Why wouldn’t I want to be an artist?
Years later, I got it. There’s a big difference between designers and artists. As a designer, you solve a problem in a specific situation. You start with a client, a briefing and some kind of need or challenge. And you use your creativity to find the best solution. But as an artist you create first, then you attract clients who want to purchase your art.
I’m a good designer. I love putting myself in the shoes of my clients and helping them find the best solution to their problems. But I also wanted to be an artist.
So I started creating things just for the pleasure of creating them. And one day, after years selling handmade products on Etsy and local craft fairs, I uploaded my watercolour paintings as desktop wallpapers on Etsy (above).
I was shocked when my phone sent an alert telling me I’d made my first sale just a few days later. Why?
- It was the fastest sale I’d ever had.
- I was surprised that people were willing to pay for a desktop wallpaper.
- I didn’t have to do anything else. The product was already delivered for me.
- There were no extra costs. It was pure profit.
What a discovery! Since then, I’ve expanded my digital collection across a variety of products and platforms, and I’m always trying new things. So I’m sharing my experience here, and what I think are the three best platforms to start with, in 2022.
What’s no longer working
I opened a Creative Market store where I mainly sell watercolour clipart kits. I also started selling my surface patterns on Spoonflower and Patternbank.
After success on those platforms, I started opening stores in every new marketplace I could find. Some worked for me, some didn’t. If you want to know the exact numbers and my whole experience and tips on each one of the platforms I’ve tried, I invite you to join my online training, The Beginners’ Guide to Passive Income. (As a reader of The Creative Life, you can get $100 off with that link, or by using the code THECREATIVELIFE.)
But things have changed a lot since I started my passive income journey. Creative Market used to be my favourite platform as a buyer and a seller, producing my highest income.
But last year, some of my students have applied and got rejected. It used to be quite easy and quick to get accepted to sell there, but now you need to show them a portfolio with the exact products you want to sell. And they have so much variety already that they have the luxury of selecting only the ones they like the most.
Not everyone gets rejected. Some of my students have followed my tips on how to apply and sell in Creative Market, and they’ve been accepted to open a store. But it’s much harder than it was when I started.
My sales have also gone down. And I’m not the only one. In their forums you can find lots of sellers complaining about the low numbers, both in traffic and sales. Here’s the graph of my sales from January 2017 to February 2022. You can clearly see how they’ve gone down:
So although I used to be a fan of Creative Market, I don’t now recommend it as the place to start. Luckily there are alternatives.
Passive income platforms to try in 2022
Shutterstock
Surprisingly, a platform that I used to avoid is now becoming one of my favourites. At first, I didn’t like Shutterstock because it pays super-low commissions and there’s a lot of competition. It took me a long time to make my first sale and when I saw it paid barely anything, I laughed and decided to use my time elsewhere.
But in 2021, some of my students were having success with it, and I decided to give it a second try. As the payments are so low, I decided to try something that didn’t take too much time. So instead of creating watercolour graphics, I made vector seamless patterns. From a few illustrations I can create a pattern collection suite and sell them individually.
My goal was to create 100 patterns in 10 weeks, but I made it much faster because I was so excited with the results I was getting. In just a few days I had my first download, and the more products I upload, the more I sell. And of course once they’re uploaded, they stay there forever and keep earning you small sums.
Most commissions are $0.1, but every now and then I get higher commissions of $10 or even $22!
I’ve gone from thinking it was ridiculous waste of time to loving it. So if you are starting out and can create designs that don’t take too much of your time, perhaps start with Shutterstock.
Passive income won’t make you rich
In three months, I uploaded 200 products and made $100 in commissions. That doesn’t sound like much, I know. But I see how quickly it’s growing, and since passive income products can be sold infinite times, I know its potential.
Here’s a graph of my first few months of Shutterstock store growth:
As you can see, November was a really good month, and since then sales have gone down. This was because my top seller was a seasonal, Halloween-inspired design. I also got lots of what they call “single” and “enhanced” sales, which pay much more for each download.
Still, by March 2022, these were my income stats:
Again, none of us are going to retire on this kind of income, but once they’re created and uploaded, there’s nothing else you need to do. The money just continues to trickle in.
Etsy
This is the second platform I recommend to start with. It’s a bit trickier than Shutterstock, where you can upload products very quickly and they manage the pricing and licences for you.
Etsy is still mainly focused on physical products, so when you try to sell digital items, there are restrictions and glitches you need to sort out. For example, you can’t upload large files, or more than five documents. You can’t offer different licenses, with different prices.
Still, it’s free to open a store from anywhere in the world. There are no entry restrictions like Creative Market, and although you need to pay $0.2 for each item you upload, it’s quite cheap and usually worth it.
I have a full class teaching how to sell digital products on Etsy, in which I cover all the steps from product idea to uploading it for sale and managing licenses. But you could start by downloading my free list of 40 product ideas to get inspired on the kinds of product you could create.
Minted
Minted is my third recommendation as a platform to earn passive income. It’s quite different from the regular marketplaces, stock websites or POD (print on demand).
Minted has a closed catalogue, and their team picks what they want to sell. They run challenges (for both stationery and art) and are open to anyone, anywhere in the world.
You simply download their brief and create your submissions.
When the challenge deadline closes, there’s a voting period. Some winners get picked by public vote, but their team also review each submission and hand-pick their favourites.
Once your design is picked, you get a store on Minted. They request the files from you, pay you for a license and from there they take care of everything else.
Every time a customer purchases your design, you receive an email notification. And every month Minted pays you commission on your total sales.
I’m not a top seller and I still have only a small catalogue of designs there, but I’ve made a good income from it. For a while now it’s been my biggest earning platform from my passive income streams. Click the link to see their open challenges.
Start making passive income now
Hopefully all my ideas and tips have inspired you to take action. It took me years to try it, but now I see the results, I wish I’d started earlier. If you take just one thing from this article, make it this: the sooner you start, the better.
Remember that you can download my list of 40 digital product ideas and get a discount on my Etsy training after you subscribe. Or use the code THECREATIVELIFE to join my online course the Beginners’ Guide to Passive Income with $100 discount.
What do you think?