A CREATIVE'S GUIDE TO BUILDING A PASSIVE INCOME BUSINESS, FROM THE VERY BEGINNING.
At the time of writing this, Autumn 2019, I’m a part time artist and occasional designer, full time parent and restaurant worker (on maternity leave). This is my journey to turning my ‘side hustle’ into a real money maker, with an aim to quitting my day job in a restaurant and focussing full time on the things I love most: my family and creating things.
There’s probably loads of you like me who want to do what they love and make money rather than partaking in the endless rat race that pulls us from our family and means we barely scrape a living. I’m hoping that in 5 years time I can look back on this post and say: “Here’s where it all began.”
HOW TO START A PASSIVE INCOME DESIGN BUSINESS - STEP 1
Very first thing I’d recommend doing is watching Chris Do’s interview with Dustin Lee in which they discuss the start of Dustin's passive income business. This is a great place to start as it will give you inspiration and great step by step instructions on what to do first. Check it out here.
Included in step one I would say go to Dustin Lee’s site Passive Income For Designers and sign up to his free email course. That’s what I did, and that’s what I’m documenting to share with you here. Although I am summarising, I strongly recommend you join Dustin's email course as there's more links and advice than what I have stated here...
Dustin’s advice in a nutshell:
• Start before you’re ready and before things are perfect.
• Spend 30mins a day specifically on your goal of passive income.
• Start creating something small (as in it doesn’t take more than about 3 hours to complete) and get it out there for people to buy or download for free.
•Open a Creative Market (or similar site) account.
•Publicly commit to show accountability for actions.
How I put that advice into practice:
• Drew some Halloween colouring sheets.
• Put the colouring sheets for sale as a digital download on my Etsy Shop.
• Posted on Instagram and Facebook about their availability.
• Started following some Instagram drawing challenges to improve my skills and make new personal connections with other artists.
WHAT I HAVE LEARNED ON MY PASSIVE INCOME JOURNEY...
As a mum of 2 kids and the primary ‘housework-doer’ I have to be realistic that I won’t always have the time to focus attention on what I want I do to grow my business.
The main thing I learnt from step one is to not set my expectations too high. I don’t expect to make money over night and my family’s needs come first; but that’s not to say I can’t do a little something each day. On the days where my own time is in short supply, I will listen to an inspirational podcast or audiobook to keep my momentum up.
Keep following my blog to see how I practically implement the ideas put forward by Dustin Lee and you can see what worked, what didn’t, learn from my mistakes and get some freebie gifts along the way.
Want to see how STEP 2 went? Read this...