How To Create Passive Income in Your Creative Business

Alright, welcome back to the She's Crafted to Thrive podcast. I'm so excited to have you here for this edition of how to create passive income in your business. I did this as a live chat, this conversation that you're going to hear with Dani from The Handmade Seller Magazine, who has been sharing over thousands of women's stories, listening to their stories, and building her own creative business and learning how to not trade time for money as a creative entrepreneur. And that is probably one of the hardest concepts sometimes as creators of trying to figure out how can I create but not always have to be creating in order to get paid. And this live is all about that. We're going to talk about different ways that you can create passive income even in a candle business or a jewelry business. And we talk about different avenues of what that might look like for you and ways you can incorporate passive income for your business. If anything that 2021 taught us with COVID is that having a couple of different eggs in different baskets is not a bad thing, especially when it comes to our money, when we need to be making money and things are happening. A lot of the clients that I have worked with used to go to markets and trade shows a lot before COVID happened, and that definitely shifted quite a bit during the pandemic, and some of them really did well because they already had a strategy to be making money in a passive way or a digital way that's not necessarily trading their time for money in the creative business. So in this chat, I hope we answer some of your questions. This is going to be a live chat that we did with our audiences, so there's going to be questions that we're answering. Um, so you're going to hear a real live version of us, um, sharing things, tips and tools to help you do this, and also probably answering some of the questions that you have probably come up or thought of when you're thinking about doing this for your own business because of the wonderful people who joined us for this live. So stay tuned. Welcome to She's Crafted to Thrive. I'm your host Nikita Williams, and this show is for all the ladies who are making and creating things that they love. You will hear conversations about the real everyday struggles of juggling life and business while trying to maintain passion and harmony. As women, we have the skill of getting things done, but sometimes we get in our own way. It's here where you'll see that you're not alone. You'll discover that success does not mean perfection. Fear and negative thoughts and challenges are all a part of the journey. And on this podcast, you'll find the inspiration and tools you need to have a life and business that thrives. All right, ladies, before we jump into this episode, I want to give a really big and quick shout out to The Handmade Seller Magazine, where artisans and entrepreneurs can go every month to read inspirational business stories from handmade sellers from around the world. Learn tips of the trade, get updated on the latest industry news, and get fresh ideas for the upcoming month or the upcoming week. And if you would like to show some love to The Handmade Seller magazine and just join that community, please check out the website handmadeceller.com and use the coupon code SHE'SCRAFTED for 15% off. It's a digital online magazine subscription, and I'm sure you're gonna love it because I know I do. All right, let's hop in.

Hello folks, I am super excited about today. We are hopping on with Dani from The Handmade Seller Magazine, also the owner of Glassy River Stained Glass.

By the way, if you haven't checked out her stuff, you need to go check it out.

Today we're going to be talking about how to create passive income for your business. This is like really big for, I feel like, any business that's out there, right? Creating passive income for your your business or your coaching business, whatever you have, so that it's not always trading your, your time for money. And Dani was super excited about having this conversation. She was like, I can't wait to talk about this.

Yes, it's one of my favorites.

I think it's such a good one. It's one that I am constantly working on figuring out myself how to make that work for me. Yeah. So how are you today, Dani?

I'm doing pretty good. I'm super excited to dive into this topic.

Yay! Yeah, so let's talk about it. First of all, I think one of the biggest question is like, what is passive income?

I would classify passive income as something that you do once, or maybe, you know, maybe it takes you a couple times, but then you continue to get paid for it after you've done that initial work.

Yes.

So I mean, you've done it once and then, you know, for the next 5 years you're, you know, washing the dishes and you get the cha-ching sound in the background. You didn't actually do anything new to get that sale. It just keeps on generating for as long as it's for sale or running or whatever it is.

Yes. Don't we love that cha-ching sound when you're like, oh wait, or you wake up in the morning, you're like, oh snap, I made $300 in my sleep. What?

That was actually my alarm clock this morning.

Nice!

It actually scared me because it was so loud.

I was like, "Wah!" So why is this particularly hard for creative makers, like makers who are creating things? Why is passive income sometimes maybe more difficult than for others?

Well, I think that just finding the ways that you can tie passive income into your art For example, like I was talking to a jewelry designer the other day and she was saying that there's no way for her as a jewelry designer to earn passive income because all she can do is make and sell a physical product. But that's not necessarily true because you can take your designs and use them in other ways. Now jewelry is a bit unique in that other things like stained glass, for example, someone asked me to turn this into an earring. And I was like, well, but I found out— do you know what enamel pins are?

Yes, I've heard of them.

Yeah, so you can order enamel pins in the— in an earring version. And so I was able to take a design that I had and send it to this manufacturer, and they are making earrings that I can then sell, and I don't have to make them myself but it's my design. So it's another way to earn money from my art. With jewelry, it's a bit different. It's a little more challenging because there's no way to like, you can't use your digital designs of, you know, earrings or something like that, but you could teach people how to do it. You could sell the supplies or you can become an affiliate and just recommend supplies and then get paid every time that somebody, you know, buys that from you. For example, I'm an affiliate with Amazon. I mean, there's so much stuff that you can recommend on Amazon. You know, like when I do tutorials for stained glass, I'll be like, hey, I use this type of tape on Amazon. And then if anyone wants to buy that because I recommended it, then I get like a percent of that sale without it costing the buyer any additional money.

Yeah, I love that you brought that out because that kind of hits on to a question that Tasha brought out. It says, what about passive income for a candle maker? And going back to something that Danny just said, you can create like a mini, like, how to make this candle version of the scent or something at home. It's a guide or a video or it's a class or something like that where you're giving them the list to all of the supplies that they need. And it's just, you have to create that initial class and all the links can be like linked to affiliate places where you can buy all the supplies, and then you make that one time and it's on its own little thing, just passively making income on its own. So I, you know, even if you have a product that seems very like, like jewelry for example, or even candles, that seems like, man, how am I supposed to make that particular thing, um, passive? It can be passive in a different type of offer than you're used to experience, like, to what you're used to doing, that can create that kind of income where you're not trading time for how many candles you can make, but you're just creating that one class or one pattern or whatever to create that evergreen passive income for yourself.

Exactly.

Yep.

One of the ladies I learned from was— she used to go by the Soap Queen. I don't know if you're familiar with her. She now runs Bramble Berry, which is like one of the biggest suppliers of soaps and stuff like that. And all she did was she started out blogging about recipes for soaps and then doing YouTube videos. And I think initially she was doing affiliate links for supplies, and then she was like, wait a minute, I could just sell the supplies. And that's how Bramble Berry came to be, which is now huge. And there's other people that I watch too who, they do affiliate links for the supplies and they teach their art, but they also sell their art as well. Yes, I think is super important to talk about because when I did mention this to the jewelry designer, she said, but I don't want to teach my art because I don't want people to copy me, and I'm afraid that if I teach them how to make it, they won't buy from me. But that's really not the case because not everybody wants to make stuff. I mean, jewelry takes time. Yes, and when people can see the process of you making it, even though they don't want to make it themselves, it actually makes them like you and your stuff that much more because they're seeing the whole process. They're getting to know you, and now they like really want to buy it. I've been noticing from my stained glass tutorials that I'm getting tons of comments from people saying, hey, that's really awesome. I love seeing the process, but are you actually going to sell the art too?

I'm like, yes, that is so important. This kind of goes back to a point we talked about in the last couple of videos, that fear is really based in a scarcity fear of like, okay, if I give this away and it's not even that you're giving it away, you're giving an opportunity for people to understand the value of all the lessons you've learned. Right. And then to appreciate more that, hey, you know what, if I want to make this or get this or have this experience often, it's going to take a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of effort for the person who's learning how to do that one thing. And when you step up and say, hey, I'm willing to share what I do and how I do it, it's beautiful because you're almost opening yourself up for the eventuality for people to realize, you know what, I'm glad she does it. I glad I did it one time, but now I know where I can go to buy it. Totally. And I think it's, you know, it's really scary at first because we're thinking, oh my gosh, I don't want to teach people how to do it. But honestly, I always like to tell my clients, people can always learn.

Yeah.

With you or without you.

Yeah.

If they don't find it from you, they're going to find it somewhere else.

Yes, exactly. So I think when you tie it to an experience of them learning through you, you create another link for them to say yes to you for your art, to buy your art, and also to refer you to friends that are like looking for this for themselves or wanting to learn more. So I love that you brought that out.

Yeah, I see the relationship between educating and selling as just a win-win for everything, everyone.

You—

I mean, you can make money on both ends, you know, like selling patterns on one end, selling art on the other. And what I love about the teaching part is that you're helping people. And that's honestly what content marketing is, is you're just creating content that helps people. The more helped they are, the more they will keep coming back to you and buying from your affiliate links to get the exact supplies that you used or buying your art because they just watched the video and decided it's way too much work to make it themselves.

Yes. And I would say too, when it comes to passive income, I think as creatives we can complicate it a little bit more than it needs to be. And I think if you want to create a passive income, you want to make it as simple as possible. So that might mean that you aren't showing them the whole process, but you're showing them a part of the process that still creates the result that, you know, they want to see. But then it's like if they want it to have the kind of quality and the longevity, they would have to do all these other steps. And you can always share that in a more detailed, you know, video or blog post. And people are like, yeah, no, I'll just buy it. Like, literally, that's what most people— statistically, that's what happens. Like, people don't learn from tutorials. Like, think about recipes. That's what I think about with recipes. Like, there are people who are creating books and testing and doing all these different things. How many of us are actually going to go and, you know, create a recipe book and test all of these other recipes. We're just going to make it. And we're probably going to buy another book because we're like, you know what? Or we might be like, I don't feel like making it. I'm going to go to the restaurant and I'm going to go buy it. You know, big chains are doing it. I think about this in a concept of Red Lobster. Like, what if Red Lobster said, I'm never going to sell the biscuits in the grocery store because, you know, the biscuits are the reason why people go to Red Lobster. Like, really?

Really?

Really?

They don't care about the seafood.

We go for the biscuits. You can make those biscuits at home and they're okay, but they still taste as good as when you go to the restaurant. It's just how we work as humans. So you're just capitalizing on money that's already there for you to, you know, to take advantage of by offering passive income for sure.

And I liked what you said about you don't have to share the whole process. Because I'm new to educating as far as like art goes. And so it's intimidating. And you know, you've got video editing, you've got lighting, you've got all these things. Um, and I'm an introvert, so that makes it harder. So I've just been doing these little bite-sized videos, like at least that's how I started. I just did one that was a little longer and I already don't like how it turns out, but that's fine. But if anyone wants to look, you can go to glassypatterns.com and watch my tutorials. They're not that great. But they are like, people are responding to them and they're finding them helpful. And I have yet to do like a tutorial that's start to finish stained glass because right now that's too intimidating for me. I'm just gonna like work into it. But the other advantage of bite-sized pieces of content, your goal is to also get ranked on YouTube and Google and all that. And if you get ranked for something like how to make stained glass, that's very broad. There's a lot of competition trying to get ranked for that. Whereas if I do how to solder jump rings onto stained glass, that's very specific. There's less competition with that. And it's also something that people are going to be searching for. So it really opens up the opportunity to get found. You know, eventually you probably want like a full-on tutorial, but you want as many of those little bite-sized pieces as you can get for your blog, for your YouTube, And something interesting about YouTube that people may not know is that once you get 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 viewing hours, I believe, you can turn on YouTube ads, which just means that they'll put those ads on your videos and then they'll pay you for the impressions of those videos. Yeah, so it's a whole nother way to make money.

Yeah, and I think the thing too is that if you're thinking like, oh my gosh, that seems like really— like it has to be a whole thing. You could decide that it's just one thing you add to your business that is passive. It's not that everything has to be passive, but wouldn't it be nice to know that you had to create something once? Or if passive to you looks like you show up once a month with something new to a membership or audience or subscription box or something where you only have to show up and do this one thing for one lump sum of time versus multiple times. Isn't that a lot nicer to have that feeling of like you're not always looking for a new client to all of the things, right? Like to every single thing that you put out there because you're creating an audience from a standpoint of wanting to buy from you when they're ready versus like, hey, you have all this inventory and you're just waiting for people versus, hey, I want to try to do this on my own. And then 9 times out of 10, they'll turn into being the clients that are gonna buy your inventory.

Yep, good points. Yeah, another thing that I was going to mention too, as is for all those designers out there, is you can get in with companies like Redbubble. And people probably know about this, but I mean, you can send in a digital design and every time they sell a product with your design on it— I think Zazzle or something is the same way, or CafePress. Or something. You get a percent of that sale. You don't have to do anything. They make the product, they ship it, they sell it. I'm sure a lot of people already know about that, but in case you don't, that's a pretty good way to capitalize on making money from your art.

Yeah, that, and if you want it to have a little control, like, you can use something called Print It Mint, which is another company that's similar to that, but you can order those things and, or have a stock of them and They ship it for you, or you can have them at your own. You can make it on there. They ship it to you. They put it on the cup, the mug, whatever. And you can have it shipped to your home and you sell it from that way. You could do that too. But to me, if you're going to do something like that, if you could do it like what we call dropshipping, it makes it a lot easier because you don't have to worry about holding all of that and creating all of that. It's just, you have to worry about creating the art. That it's going to go on. Is your margins different? Yes. However, it's still a bigger margin than maybe an affiliate from Amazon. Oh, it is. So yeah, it's something to consider. I'm, you know, to think about where do you want that passive income to come from, for sure.

And it can take a long time to build up passive income. It's usually not something that's overnight unless you're selling like something like patterns that's digital, they can buy right now. If you're building up something like affiliate links through content marketing or ads on your blog, that can take time because content marketing does take time to get ranked and show up on Pinterest and all that. It's not an overnight solution, but like long term it builds and builds and builds on itself and it's just awesome.

Yeah, when we say passive income, it The thought could be like, oh, easy money, it just happens. And it's like, it's easy for you to do once, but it will take some time for people to realize that that's something that you're offering and for your audience, or to attract a new audience that might be interested in doing or using that, you know, part of your business. It's going to take a little time, just like it is going to take a little time for you to build your art business. It's just adding that in, it's kind of helping you feel like if you don't create this month, you still have some income coming in, right? Totally. Yeah. The other thing I like to mention too about passive income is that it can look a lot like different for everyone. Like, so I know Dani is doing like patterns, so she has affiliate marketing and I love all of that. But for some people they're like, wait, what, what are all of those things? But It could be as simple as, you know, having a mail where you send, like, I say subscription box, but it doesn't really have to be a subscription box. It could just be that you're sending goodies or things that you make special for a group of people that are in your email list that you know how many of those you're going to have to make and you ship it off and it's once a month and it's like, oh, okay, you don't have to teach anyone. You just make it and then you make it for a lump sum of people., and you can sell that consistently without having, you know, to make it over and over again necessarily. Depends on what it is that you're doing. There's different ways to make passive income work for you. It doesn't always have to look one way, really.

Yeah, you got to get creative in this industry because we're all selling different things, and you just have to figure out what works for you and what's most important. And what's most important for me is my time.

Yes.

Um, and so I'm constantly looking for ways to cut down on things that obligate me to sit down at the computer or the craft booth or whatever. I'm looking for ways to continually generate income off of an effort that I do once or twice. And of course there's still marketing, you know, there's still some little things that keep, keep you busy, but, um, it's a little less work and less pressure on yourself.

Digital downloads are a really easy way, I feel like, to get into passive income in some way, shape, or form. It doesn't have to be a big amount of money, but just imagine if you had a digital download that was like $5 or something and 50 people found it today. That's money that you literally have to make once and someone just put it in their cart and they download. You don't even have to ship it. So I would think if you're thinking about using a digital download and you have maybe like a product like candles or jewelry where you're like, what would I do as a digital download for that? You could do style guides for different things on how to use different beads in different ways. You can do a little mini kit on like, here are the supplies you need to make this one thing, and it's like all of the things that you need, and they can grab it, and it's like a cookie sheet, if you will, of a recipe sheet of all the things they need to do whatever it is that they want to do. You can make a recipe card for craft, if you will, where it's maybe not a video, maybe it's literally just writing out all of the steps. It could be anything. Yeah.

And actually, along those lines, because, you know, I used to make soap a lot, I have bought recipes on Etsy for soap and shampoo bars. And when I looked at the lady's account, all she does is digital recipes. That's it, nothing else. I calculated out how long she'd been selling on Etsy, how many sales she had, and how much she was selling them for, and she was making $18,000 a month.

I was like, oh, so you can sell recipes for candles, for soap, anything. Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful, right? Like, we think, oh, that's too simple, nobody's gonna pay for that. Yes, they will.

That is so not true. It is so not true. They will pay for it.

Yeah, but $18,000 a month is not a— like, that's That's more than what people can make sometimes in a year. I don't even know how to say that. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah.

If you need something to get you inspired, there it is.

There you go. Go create some recipes. Or if you wanted to do some kind of like board, like color boards for jewelry or coloring books or something that's like, I don't know, but I feel like you might have to think really hard outside of the box. If you're like really struggling with it. But I think any business can create some aspect of passive income, and it's just about, as I would say, diversifying where your income comes in, diversifying where money is coming in, and it doesn't take as much time and energy for you.

And diversification, what you just said too, is key as well, because you're going to be far less stressed if you have different avenues of income, because everything goes like this. I mean, yeah, it's always going to fluctuate. And so if you have different sales coming in from different venues and sources and stuff, it's just, it really helps with the stress. But you have to be really careful with not getting overwhelmed because managing too much makes it not worth it, right?

Right. So keeping it simple, I mean, I think that's the biggest thing if you're going to add, you know, anything to your business, especially I feel like as creative people, we really do need all the other things that we do to be simpler, like because we are giving so much of ourselves to our creativity, right? We just— we're giving so much to ourselves to that. So to think about, oh my gosh, now I got to do— like, that just doesn't help. So if you feel overwhelmed, if you're feeling like, well, I don't want to give it away, if you're feeling like I don't want to lose clients because I'm doing this, like, just think about what it will give you as far as freedom for your time to do more of the things you love and the things you create. And also, like, I feel I feel like when you create passive income, you're creating two ways that your audience can learn about who you are and creating another way for people to be like, you know what, I could make this, but I would much prefer to give Dani my coins for the thing that she made.

Yeah. I would say that even if, let's say that I was educating and selling art, which I am, so I'm not sure why that was hypothetical.

I was just gonna be like, Dani, that's what you're doing, hun.

Let's say that I was educating but not seeing any return from that whatsoever. Educating people has made my Instagram account grow way faster because people follow you to get something. Like, even if it's just entertainment, inspiration, education, whatever, you are giving something to people by showing up and just showing them little tips. Like, here's how I do this. Even if they have no interest in doing it themselves, they find it interesting. And so even if I was not making money in the education side, I would still make more money in the art side because it has increased my audience like tenfold.

I love that you said that. Yeah, I don't know if it was this conversation like a couple weeks ago or maybe in an interview I did with our girl from Natural Annie and Anya— Annie. Who was featured in Handmade Killer Magazine. I think it was 2000—

it was 2020, the July issue.

July issue, there we go. And we were talking about this idea of, you know, she started creating, making candles and things and teaching other people to do it. And people were like— they— she was doing make and takes, like those kind of parties, and people would just be coming back they wouldn't be coming back because what she was doing then was only just teaching make and takes. They weren't like coming back to buy more supplies from her because they were done with it. It was like fun for one time and then they're like, okay, they probably went somewhere else to buy the candle. And so we were talking about how it's so funny that we think we have to be one lane or the other when 9 times out of 10 we need to be playing both lanes when it comes to our creativity. Sometimes it's being, hey, I'm willing to teach you, but I'm also willing to give give you the thing that you want. And I was joking with her, I'm like, I created some candles because I love candles. I love them, love them. I think there's been multiple times in my life where I bought a candle kit, got the whole stuff, and then I left it in the closet for months. But all during that time, how many candles did I buy? Like, probably thousands of dollars of candles. Like, you know, it's just like, it's what happens. And now that I've actually done it, I'm like, yeah, there's a reason why that candle kit stayed in the closet, is because I don't have the time. So embrace that, like embrace that about your audience. You know, they may love the idea of creating it, but who honestly has the time? And if you are creating it and that is the sole thing that you do, or one of the things that you do, give them the option to learn about it.

Yeah, there's always far more people who want to buy from you than actually make it themselves.

Far more. Yes. Have you ever done one of those paint parties? Like when you go to the paint parties and they teach you how to paint and you're like, that's so cool, right? Yeah.

But I'm not gonna go and do it myself again. It was just fun that one time. Now I'm just gonna buy paintings.

Yeah.

Rather than try to make one myself.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so I think that's one of the things to think about is just that even though you might be like Nobody wants to learn how to do this. Your audience probably does. They're probably curious.

Yeah, totally. I get questions all the time from people who have no idea what stained glass entails, and then they will comment on one of my videos and be like, wow, I had no idea, you know, that that's what you had to do. It seems like a lot of work. And I'm like, yeah, it is. Yeah, it makes them appreciate the art that much more. And then they understand my pricing, and that's huge. It's so hard to educate shoppers as to how much work and time and money actually goes into what we make.

Yeah.

And so doing those tutorials really lets them into your world and realize, hey, they've just invested hours and hours and hours into making this thing. Now I understand why that's so expensive.

So if someone were to, let's say, decide they're gonna like add a passive income into their business, what would you recommend as the first thing to do? Like the first step.

So the hard part about that is that we're all selling different things.

Right, exactly.

So it's hard to say you should do this when it may not even work for your industry. My first go-to, because it's fast and easy, is digital downloads. So if there's any way that you can figure out how to include and sell some sort of digital download in your business, I would say absolutely go for it. If not, switch to content marketing, education, and try to use affiliate links, ads, stuff like that so you can get paid for your content. The other thing is finding out if you can mass-produce part of your art in some way, like the earrings I told you about. I just ordered 50 pairs of earrings to sell from based off my design, and so hopefully that goes well. I mean, because So that's not something that I have to keep making over and over again.

Yeah.

Really, it's just so different for everybody. Explore every possibility that you can find. Think outside the box. Any way that you can not tie your time to your income, it's a good thing.

Yeah, I love that. Oh man, you'll have to tell me how to do, like how that works, because I've heard this this before, and I think this would be perfect for like jewelry designers and things like that who have beautiful pieces that could translate to something, another medium. Like instead of just being jewelry, it could be like, it could turn out to be like a cute little trinket bowl or something that could be, you know, like do the different shapes and things like that. It could be something that's like put on a canvas to make like this like very montage-y kind of thing. I don't know, because jewelry is one of those things I feel like is really difficult to find out a way to—

Well, that actually gave me an idea because I don't know how you would, you know, put a jewelry design onto another product, but what you could do is get products to complement your jewelry and sell, like a jewelry dish. You could buy jewelry dishes in bulk, photograph all your jewelry in those dishes, and then list those dishes for sale as well. Yes. Or any other accessory that would go well with your jewelry that you don't necessarily have to make, but you can buy in bulk and sell and not do as much work.

Yeah, you could buy it once and then have a link to your thing that says, if you want to buy the jewelry link, you can go to my affiliate link where you can buy this piece if you didn't want to like store the piece, if that, if that makes sense. That's another idea.

Look at us, I know we're geniuses.

Yeah, because jewelry is to me is one of those things, like I have a couple of clients that are jewelry designers and for them, even when it comes to like getting ideas on like how to build their email list, it's like really hard to kind of decide like, well, people when they go to find jewelry, they just buy jewelry, right? But there are other things that they're doing and oftentimes it is a connection, a collaborative kind of experience that they're looking for. You're not just wearing jewelry naked. I mean, some of us do. I'm not saying I'm one, but some people do, but 9 times out of 10, it's like a whole experience, right? And so it's like, how can you bring that experience as a whole, but you're providing that to them without being the source of the thing? And I think what, what you were just saying, yeah, find people that are great collaborators or work really well or parallel in your lane of what you do that can also bring in that passive income for you that you don't have to physically make or do anything. I'm going to show you this piece that is from a girl that I've she's a resin artist. It's kind of dusty. And she makes these beautiful like trinket bowls. And I was telling like, she was like, I would love to be into interior design work. And I was like, hey, that's a really great passive income opportunity. She's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, what if your interior designers were like wanting to like showcase their work or something and they wanted to do it like in houses that are being whatever, you can rent out your pieces and it's like you don't have to make them again, you just rent them out. And she's like, like, OMG, like, that's passive income. You do it one time and you just repeat the process. Come buy it, come, come pick it up, bring it back. You know, there's just— you have to really, if you want to make that something a part of your business, you got to think outside of the box. Oh, for sure.

And you, you and I used to be realtors, so I mean, we saw staged homes all the time.

Yes.

Um, so that is absolutely— anyone who sells any, like, signs, any sort of decor, you know, macramé, Yes, you could totally rent that out to interior designers and get that into homes, and they might even let you leave like a price tag on it.

Yes, I've seen that with art too. There's a woman on Instagram where she has her art. Realtors use it all the time. They don't even just— it's not just at homes, they use it at hospitals and things like that where, hey, it's sitting up on a wall, you may not be in front of different people, a cafe or something. That's another way, like, that's another way for your, your, your piece pieces to be found or for you to make income. Yeah, our real estate brains went off there, didn't it?

I know, and your outfit just gave me another idea. I was looking at how cute your earrings were.

Oh, really?

Yeah, they're cute. And your head thing, and I was like, hmm. And I'm really like fashion illiterate. I'm very bad at it. And so when I look at like jewelry and stuff on Etsy, I'm like, that's really cute, but I don't have all the other stuff to go with it. You know, I don't even know how to match it. So what you could do is blog or something about, you know, your earrings with the whole outfit and then do an affiliate link to everything you're wearing.

Yes.

I got this shirt on Amazon. I got my headband on Etsy and Etsy has an affiliate program too. So you can join that. I just think that would be a really great way to help people like me and make money.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I need to, I didn't realize that Etsy had an affiliate program. I knew that if you were a seller, you had an affiliate automatically if you were a seller on there.

The other thing to note about Etsy's affiliate program is they are extremely picky. If you have like a blog and all you do is talk about Etsy stores and stuff, they say that you're too targeted towards them and they won't approve you. Like, it's very strange. So you have to blog about other things apparently in addition to Etsy stuff. So I don't know, but maybe if it was a fashion blog, they would totally go for it.

Yeah.

For me personally, I feel like blogging is a lot of work. Like, I know you do it once, but I like hate— and I hate writing. So we've already had this conversation.

I know.

Like, we've already had this conversation. So for me, that's not passive for me. Like, it's like painstakingly a lot of work. But if I were to have a link in my, like, my show notes of my podcast or on my Instagram where you go to my link in my bio and it's like, hey, check out, you know, these videos that also link to my Amazon, blah, blah, blah. There you go. Versus having, you know, a blog post. To me, that's passive income. I talk about, you know, platforms that I use. That's another thing you could talk about. Absolutely. Like when you're, yeah, when you're using different platforms for your business, like different tools that you use for creating things, or even if it's things you use to run your business, you can talk about that. And other people can be like, hey, where do you, they have affiliate programs too. I have a membership program where their affiliate is like so ridiculous. It's like almost— it's 40%, 40%. So let's say someone buys something, it's $79. 40% of that is mine and I will continue residually for the next year, get 40%. That's passive. Like when I could ching ching, that's— I'm like, I did nothing.

Exactly.

Yep.

I used to create blogs and rank them on Google. I know we've talked about this and I had nothing but affiliate links on there and I had blogs that were doing $500 a month. Yeah, it's just a really good passive income. And you brought up a really good point of also the tools that you recommend, because Shopify has an affiliate program, Canva has an affiliate program. Just about all those big companies— Weebly, Squarespace— they all have them. So if you ever like mention it, you know, on YouTube or wherever, put that little link in there. You should get paid for the time that you spent recommending their product.

Yeah.

Basically their sales force.

Yeah. You could also create a little free PDF and grow your email list to let people know like, hey, this is the— if you want to start a business, like, see, there is like a handful of like, let's say of the 100 people that say yes to you, there's a 2% of them that's like, hey, I want to start my own business. You could still profit from that. You can still profit from that by being like, hey, here, download my list. And use these affiliate links. And sometimes you can create— you can have affiliates where you can give a percentage off of something because you are an affiliate. So there's a perk for them to using your link beyond just you making money. So I feel like when you think about passive income, you just have to be a little bit more open and creative from a more business side of your brain than the creative artsy side of your brain. I think it's where the passive income really comes in.

And you know, with a lot of artists and stuff and handmade sellers, I think just about everyone eventually at some point gets a message from somebody who's also like starting out in their category, say it's jewelry, and says, hey, you know, I'm just starting out, what advice do you have? That is when it's a really good opportunity to create that free download to get them on your email list, because things like supplier information, that's valuable information. It's hard to find good suppliers no matter what category you're in. And so that's something that you can absolutely give away as your freebie that then gets people on your list, and then you can email them about, you know, other things.

Yeah.

Or you could sell it. You could sell, hey, here's my little startup guide to how I started my jewelry business. $10, download it, and you're off to the races.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that's a really great passive income. Yeah, basically your knowledge is money in the bank. Your experience is money in the bank. Whether you produce the product or not, that is still valuable. Because how much time did it take for you to probably pull all of that to where you are right now? Like, how long did it take Dani to learn stained glass and, you know, run Handmade Seller Magazine? Like, it took a long time. So if someone were to say, here in a pretty bow, here you go, why not charge for that?

Yeah, you basically just saved them 6 months of their life or however long it is, you know, by just sitting it.

Here it is. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I love this topic because I feel like as a creative, you constantly feel like you have to create, like you have to be starting something new all of the time. And I feel like this is like a weight, kind of like, okay, I could create one thing once and then I can just sell it over and over again. Wait, what?

And then take a Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Totally, I agree. The pressure to always create is there and it is exhausting. It's fun, it's why we got into this, you know, to begin with. It's fun, but it can definitely wear you down if you're pressuring yourself to do it. And so the passive income methods sort of release some of that pressure a bit.

So I hope this topic was really helpful for you guys to see that it's possible to make some income even in something you thought is probably impossible, but it's possible.

Hey, we had some good ideas.

Yeah, we did. I was like, hey, we could use some really great ideas too. So awesome.

All right, ladies, that is a wrap. Please be sure to check out Handmade Seller Magazine with the founder Dani, because this live wouldn't have come to you without her and sharing her amazing expertise as a, um, creative entrepreneur and just a really great marketer of products, goods, and services online. If you want to check out her magazine and give it a try, again and that's handmadeceller.com, and use the coupon code SHE'S_CRAFTED to get a little gift from us. And I can't wait to hear how you're going to include a passive income strategy to your creative business. All right, as always, please remember that yes, yes, yes, you are crafted to thrive.