These 8 art revenue streams make me $83,893/month

Summary

The speaker shares eight strategies for generating a full-time income through art, including running a polymer clay jewelry business with annual earnings of $150,000 to $180,000, selling personalized vintage map art with $508,000 in revenue, offering courses through Creative Hive with $414,000 in sales, and operating another jewelry shop, The Bright Jewel. Additional income streams include YouTube ad revenue, wholesale sales, acting, teaching on platforms like Creative Live, and speaking at conferences. The emphasis is on the viability of multiple income streams for creatives to achieve financial stability and pursue their passions.

Takeaways

• 🎨 The speaker makes a full-time income from their art, emphasizing that artists can be financially successful.
• 💍 They started a polymer clay food jewelry business called Tiny Hands in 2006, which generates $150,000 to $180,000 annually.
• 🛍️ Sales primarily come through their Shopify store rather than Etsy, contrary to common perceptions of online jewelry shops as hobbies.
• 📈 It took several years to establish a niche and understand the business aspects of art, highlighting the importance of persistence and learning.
• 🗺️ Another business venture involves selling personalized vintage map art, which made $508,000 in revenue in one year and is now managed by the speaker's husband.
• 📚 The speaker teaches courses through Creative Hive, sharing their business knowledge to help others grow their online stores, which made $414,000 in sales last year.
• 📈 Selling courses and coaching can be lucrative but is competitive and requires building trust and providing value to students.
• 💎 A third jewelry business, The Bright Jewel, sources components and assembles them, fulfilling a creative need and providing almost passive income.
• 📹 The speaker monetizes their YouTube channel, earning $700 to $1000 monthly from ads, demonstrating the potential of content creation.
• 📦 Wholesale is another income stream, selling products at a lower price to stores for resale, but it requires effort in finding the right retailers and managing relationships.
• 🎬 Acting is considered an art form and can provide income, though it's often not as lucrative as people think, and many actors have multiple jobs.
• 📊 The speaker also earns income through teaching on platforms like Creative Live and speaking at conferences, illustrating the concept of leveraged income.
• 🌐 Diversification of income streams is crucial for financial stability and reducing stress, and it takes time to build up each stream.
• 📈 The speaker is working on writing a book and considers affiliate marketing and sponsorships, though they prioritize community trust over monetary gain.

Q & A

What are the eight ways the speaker makes a full-time income with their art?

The speaker makes a full-time income through their polymer clay food jewelry business, personalized vintage map art shop, selling courses via Creative Hive, another jewelry shop called The Bright Jewel, monetization of their YouTube channel, wholesale of their polymer clay jewelry, acting, teaching on platforms like Creative Live, and investing in funds like Betterment.

How much revenue does the speaker typically generate from their polymer clay food jewelry business?

The speaker typically generates between $150,000 to $180,000 per year from their polymer clay food jewelry business.

What platforms are used by the speaker to sell their polymer clay jewelry?

The speaker uses their Shopify store and Etsy to sell their polymer clay jewelry, with most of the sales coming from their Shopify store.

What was the speaker's initial focus when starting their creative endeavor?

Initially, the speaker did not have a specific focus or niche. They made a variety of items including handbound journals, beaded jewelry, and various polymer clay creations before honing in on food-themed, scented items.

How did the speaker's business evolve from its inception to a more structured business model?

The business evolved from making various items under the Tiny Hands name to focusing on a niche product, learning about business and marketing, and eventually building a team to handle orders, customer service, and marketing.

What is the significance of the speaker's personalized vintage map art shop in their overall income?

The personalized vintage map art shop is significant as it generated $508,000 in revenue in one year and is now managed by the speaker's husband.

How did the speaker's husband become involved in the personalized vintage map art business?

The speaker's husband became involved after quitting his job to develop a video game. Initially resistant to freelancing, he was taught by the speaker how to start and manage an online shop, eventually taking over the business operations.

What is the name of the speaker's coaching business and what does it focus on?

The coaching business is called Creative Hive, and it focuses on teaching others what the speaker has learned from their own businesses to help creatives start and grow their own online stores.

What is the speaker's perspective on selling courses and coaching as an income stream?

The speaker views selling courses and coaching as lucrative but highly competitive. It requires trust building and a genuine love for teaching and helping others to be successful in the long term.

How much revenue did the speaker's coaching business, Creative Hive, generate in the last year?

The coaching business, Creative Hive, generated $414,000 in sales in the last year, primarily from selling a program called the A Sale A Day Business System.

What is the speaker's view on having multiple income streams and part-time jobs alongside creative work?

The speaker supports having multiple income streams and part-time jobs, stating that there is no shame in it. They believe it allows for less pressure and a more stable income while focusing on creative work.

How does the speaker's additional jewelry shop, The Bright Jewel, contribute to their income?

The Bright Jewel contributes a smaller portion of income compared to other businesses, having made several thousand dollars so far. However, it requires minimal attention, making the income almost passive.

What is the speaker's experience with monetizing their YouTube channel?

The speaker started monetizing their YouTube channel recently and regret not doing it sooner. They feared it would upset subscribers, but found that most were understanding. The channel now generates a consistent $700 to $1000 a month in ad revenue.

How does the speaker's involvement in acting contribute to their income?

Acting contributes to the speaker's income through earnings from commercials, TV show work, and residuals, which are payments received when shows are rerun. The speaker has made over $50,000 since 2017 from acting.

What is the speaker's view on leveraging income through one-time work that generates recurring payments?

The speaker views this as a form of leveraged income, where work done once can generate payments over time, as seen with acting and teaching on platforms like Creative Live.

What advice does the speaker give regarding pursuing multiple income streams and having a part-time job?

The speaker advises that there is no shame in having multiple income streams or a part-time job. They believe it allows for less pressure and a more stable income while focusing on creative work.

Outlines

00:00

🎨 Making a Full-Time Income with Art: Multiple Streams

The speaker shares their experience of earning a full-time income through their art, highlighting eight different ways they achieve this. They discuss their polymer clay food jewelry business, Tiny Hands, which generates $150,000 to $180,000 annually, primarily through their Shopify store. The speaker emphasizes the misconception that online jewelry shops are merely hobbies, but for them, it's a substantial source of income. They recount their journey from having no business or marketing knowledge to learning and growing their business over the years. Additionally, they mention their venture into personalized vintage map art, which became highly profitable, making $508,000 in its first year. This business is now managed by the speaker's husband, while the speaker takes on a more advisory role.

05:01

📚 Selling Courses and Coaching: Creative Hive's Success

The speaker elaborates on their course-selling business, Creative Hive, which was established in 2014. This platform teaches others how to start and grow their own online stores. The business generated $414,000 in sales the previous year, mainly from a program called the A Sale A Day Business System. They discuss the lucrative nature of selling courses and coaching, while also acknowledging the competitive market and the importance of trust-building. The speaker admits that creating and selling courses is time-consuming and requires continuous content production for various platforms, such as YouTube, emails, and social media.

10:02

💎 Diversifying Income with Multiple Businesses and Acting

The speaker continues by discussing the importance of having multiple income streams, mentioning their additional jewelry shop, The Bright Jewel, which sources components from Alibaba and assembles them for sale. They describe this business as fulfilling a creative need despite being less handmade. They also touch on the monetization of their YouTube channel, which generates $700 to $1000 monthly through ads. The speaker shares their experience with wholesale selling, explaining the differences and challenges compared to retail online stores. They mention their acting career as another form of income, dispelling the myth that acting is not an art and discussing the misconceptions about the income actors receive.

🌐 Leveraged Income Streams and Future Ventures

The speaker concludes by discussing various other income streams, such as teaching on platforms like Creative Live, which provided a significant boost to their coaching career and continues to generate residual income. They also mention speaking at conferences and panels, and investing in funds like Betterment for a slower but steady income. The speaker advocates for the importance of diversification in income streams, reducing financial stress and risk. They share their plans for future income streams, including writing a book and considering affiliate marketing and sponsorships, while also reflecting on their past experience with freelance web design work.

Keywords

💡Polymer Clay

Polymer clay is a type of modeling clay that can be baked to harden. In the video, the speaker mentions using polymer clay to create food-themed jewelry, which is a significant part of her art business. This keyword is central to the video's theme as it showcases how a creative material can be transformed into a profitable product line.

💡Full-Time Income

Full-time income refers to the earnings one receives from working full-time, typically in a job or business. The video's theme revolves around the speaker's ability to generate a full-time income from her art, which counters the common belief that artists cannot make a sustainable living from their creativity.

💡Tiny Hands

Tiny Hands is the name of the speaker's polymer clay food jewelry business, established in 2006. This keyword is integral to the video as it represents the speaker's first creative endeavor and a significant source of her income, illustrating the potential for success in the creative industry.

💡Shopify Store

A Shopify store is an online retail platform that allows entrepreneurs to sell products directly to consumers. The speaker mentions using her Shopify store as a primary sales channel for her jewelry, emphasizing the importance of online platforms in establishing and growing a creative business.

💡Etsy

Etsy is an e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. The speaker uses Etsy as a secondary platform for selling her jewelry, highlighting the role of marketplaces in reaching a wider audience and generating income from creative work.

💡Personalized Vintage Map Art

Personalized vintage map art refers to customized artwork featuring old maps, often tailored to a customer's preferences or specific locations. The speaker mentions this as another business venture, demonstrating the diversity of creative products that can be commercialized for income.

💡Print-on-Demand Services

Print-on-demand services are businesses that print and ship products as ordered by customers, reducing the need for inventory and upfront costs. The speaker uses services like Printful and Gooten for her personalized art business, illustrating an efficient way to manage creative products without the hassle of physical inventory.

💡Creative Hive

Creative Hive is the name of the speaker's coaching business, where she teaches others how to start and grow their own online stores. This keyword is significant as it represents the speaker's expansion into education and mentorship, showing another way creative individuals can generate income.

💡YouTube Channel Monetization

YouTube channel monetization refers to the process of earning revenue from a YouTube channel, typically through advertising, sponsorships, or other means. The speaker discusses monetizing her channel, which adds another stream of income and underscores the potential of online platforms for creatives.

💡Wholesale

Wholesale involves selling products to retailers at a lower price than the retail price, who then sell them to consumers at a higher price. The speaker discusses her experience with wholesale for her Tiny Hands jewelry, providing insight into an alternative sales channel for creative products.

💡Acting

Acting is a performing art where actors portray characters on stage, in films, or on television. The speaker mentions her work in acting, emphasizing its creative nature and discussing the financial aspect of working as an actor, which adds another dimension to the video's theme of creative income generation.

Highlights

Artists and creative people can make a full-time income from their art.

Eight ways to make a full-time income with art are shared in the transcript.

Polymer clay food jewelry business under the brand Tiny Hands generates $150,000 to $180,000 annually.

Sales are primarily through a personal Shopify store rather than Etsy.

Initial years in the jewelry business were financially challenging but provided valuable learning experiences.

Personalized vintage map art business made $508,000 in revenue in one year.

The importance of starting with a passion and gradually learning about business and marketing.

Creative Hive was founded in 2014 to teach others how to start and grow online stores.

Selling courses and coaching can be lucrative but requires trust-building and high-quality content.

The Bright Jewel offers a creative outlet through jewelry design and has made several thousand dollars.

Monetization of a YouTube channel through ads can generate consistent monthly revenue.

Wholesale as a different income stream involves selling products at a lower price to stores for resale.

Acting is considered a performing art and has been a source of income since 2017.

Teaching on platforms like Creative Live can lead to significant income through commissions.

Diversified income streams are crucial for self-employed creatives to spread risk.

Investment funds like Betterment provide a slower but steady income.

Having multiple income streams or part-time jobs is a valid strategy for creatives.

Transcripts

If you think artists and creative people can't make money, I'm here to tell you

they can.

I'm going to share with you the eight ways I make a full time income with my art

and have more money left over to go into my other passions and for savings.

The first way I make money with my art is through my polymer clay food

jewelry business.

I started Tiny Hands in 2006, so I've been running that for a long time now.

Generally I make $150,000 to $180,000 per year

selling this jewelry through my Shopify store and Etsy.

Between the two, most of my sales come from my own Shopify store.

I know it sounds crazy because when I tell people

I have a jewelry shop online, people automatically think

it's just a hobby shop on Etsy and that I just do this on the side.

But it's like, no. I'm making a full time living from selling

my jewelry.

This was my first endeavor into anything creative for myself.

And when I started, I didn't know anything about business or marketing.

And frankly, I was still learning so much about art in general.

In fact, when I started, I didn't even have a focus or a niche.

I was making all sorts of things under the Tiny Hands name.

I made handbound journals because I really loved paper and journals.

I made beaded jewelry from projects

I learned after attending my first jewelry making class with my mom at the time.

And when I discovered polymer clay, I made different things

like video game items, animals, stars.

I didn't hone in on just food and making them scented until actually

a few years later.

So it took me years to figure out a lot of things out.

The first three years was definitely a struggle in terms of making money,

but I was having so much fun with it and I felt so

proud of the things that I made. So I would share them on online

forums and on message boards, which were a lot more prevalent back then.

These days we have things like Reddit and Facebook groups, which are basically

the same thing. And I would share my work with other people in those communities.

Some of them would show an interest in my work and buy my things.

So over the years I learned a lot more about the business

side of things and got really passionate about that as well.

I also have another shop I started in 2019

where we sell personalized vintage map art.

Everything is digital for creating the products

and then we use print-on-demand services like Printful and Gooten to create

the actual physical products for us, such as framed prints and canvas wraps.

And then they handle the printing and shipping the products

straight to the customer for us.

For the last year, we made a $508,000 in revenue just for that business.

So my husband runs and manages this business now.

He took over running it a few years ago and I kind of just sit in

like one of his board of directors.

The story behind the shop is actually pretty funny and interesting.

I had always wanted to have a personalized business because that's always trending.

People are always shopping for anything that's personalized, right?

So it was the fall of 2019 and my husband had quit his job

for a couple of years at that point to develop a video game.

It took a lot of manpower to get it going.

So it was a slow start.

And in the meantime,

I wanted to show him how he could make some side income online from freelancing.

But he was resistant to it because he didn't have a passion for that.

So the holiday season was just around the corner.

So I rushed to set up the shop and asked my husband for help.

He didn't know anything

about how to start an online shop, so I taught him from scratch.

He did influencer outreach.

He did product description writing,

I design,

and came up with the product ideas and set up the Shopify store.

And the year after that was 2020 where we made $1,000,000

in that first full year of business, which was really incredible.

It was mostly just us fulfilling orders, doing customer service and marketing,

and eventually we built up a team of other people to help us make orders.

But for several years I would jump in and help make orders too,

because we were just getting so overwhelmed with sales

that our team couldn't keep up.

Now this business has kind of

matured a bit

and my husband is taking a more hands off

approach to focus back on his video game which is his dream.

And I'm taking on a more active role in that shop again,

particularly with the marketing for the Shopify side of things.

Another way I make money through my art is from selling courses.

So I started Creative Hive in 2014 where I teach other people

what I learn from my own businesses and help other creatives

start and grow their own online stores selling their handmade products online.

For last year, this business made $414,000 in sales, primarily

from selling a larger program called the A Sale A Day Business System.

Selling courses and coaching is definitely very lucrative

because the market for selling information

specifically on how to make money is always in demand, right?

However, it is also super competitive and hard to make a name for yourself

because it takes a lot of trust building to make a meaningful income as a teacher.

A lot of people have had negative

experiences with so-called coaches that can't deliver on their promises,

so people are naturally a bit more suspicious and defensive around creatives

who are also coaches.

This business takes up most of my time, even though it's not the biggest business

we have, because I have to constantly produce free content for my audience,

whether that's for this YouTube channel for example,

like with this video you're watching right now,

or if it's for an email, social media post or blog post.

While I know there's a lot of appeal in selling

courses or turning to coaching as an additional income stream,

I think you have to really love teaching and helping other people because otherwise

you're likely going to create a course that's not very good.

And if your product isn't good and you can't help your students

get results, then it's hard to have long term success with this.

It's not passive income the way a lot of other coaches make you think it is.

It is highly scalable in that the amount of work you do

to get one student is not too different from getting a hundred students.

But don't forget that you have to be present

to answer questions, coach your students through their challenges

and be there for them.

Okay.

Another way

I make money online through my creativity is with yet another jewelry shop.

Yes, a big chunk of my income comes from having multiple businesses

and having the diversity is not only fun for me,

but also help stabilize that roller coaster feeling with sales.

So I started The Bright Jewel a couple of years ago.

I source the jewelry components from wholesalers online through

primarily Alibaba, and I assemble them myself.

This line is definitely not nearly as handmade as my polymer clay jewelry line,

but it still fulfills a creative need for me.

Coming up with the designs,

curating the product line, even taking the product photos, creating the branding.

All of that to me is super creative work.

This is the smallest business of the four.

It's only made several thousand dollars at this point.

But to be fair, I give it literally zero attention.

So when I make sales, it truly is almost passive income

and it takes me like 5 minutes to put the order together.

This shop's is actually picking up in momentum, so much so that I actually

just invested it in a huge box of custom printed jewelry boxes.

There's so pretty and I'm so proud of them and I feel like I need

to pause here and run and grab some to show you.

A few moments later.

Oh my god, here.

Isn't that so pretty and it's got the gold foil and it's a slide out box.

Ooh. I feel like such a big business girl with custom packaging.

Okay.

Now, related to my coaching business,

I do also make some revenue through monetization of my YouTube channel.

I started running ads

only pretty recently and frankly, I regret not having done it sooner.

I was actually really afraid I would make a lot of my subscribers

angry for turning on monetization, but it really hasn't been the case.

It seems for the most part that people are really understanding

and they're familiar with how YouTube works.

So finally I did it and it now generates

a consistent $700 to $1000 a month in ad revenue.

I, of course, have to work really hard to create videos like these

and to get as many views as possible, which is all super time consuming to do.

Researching video ideas, coming up with video titles,

what to say in each video, then editing them, designing the thumbnails,

and then promoting videos later on when they go live.

It's a lot of work to do.

Thankfully, I have a team that helps me with many parts of the process,

but being a content creator is definitely a lot of work and not for everyone.

Each video takes an average of 10 to 15 hours of work for me and my team,

and I think that's on the short end of things.

I know other YouTube creators spend way more time than that.

It can easily be a full time job.

I think being a creator can be really good for you

if you have something to share with other people,

you're not afraid to voice your opinions and you enjoy articulating them.

I had a lot of trouble with this in the beginning.

You can see some of my earlier videos.

I had to script everything and I was so stiff and uncomfortable.

And back then,

I was too scared to say things that people didn't want to hear but needed to hear.

So another thing I do with my polymer clay jewelry is wholesale.

Now, I consider this an entirely different income stream

than just having a Shopify or Etsy store because it is quite different.

Selling wholesale is selling products at generally a 50%

lower price than your regular retail price to stores.

So these stores then resell your products to their own customers.

I used to do wholesale a lot more for Tiny Hands.

At one point I had a sales reps in the Midwest and the East Coast

who would take my jewelry in their cars

and drive from store to store to pitch my work to store owners.

I had done trade shows

which are like craft shows, but specifically only for store buyers.

So the people shopping

there are shopping for products specifically for resale purposes.

At the height of my wholesale business, I was in over 100 stores

across the United States.

But because my jewelry is scented and it's so niched

that most people don't even know such a product exists,

it was hard for retailers to sell them.

So it's not the perfect product for wholesaling.

I scaled everything down.

I fired my sales reps, stopped doing trade shows,

and now when I do wholesale, I do it on my own terms.

I definitely don't make as much money from wholesale now as I did

then, but at the same time, I have a lot less pressure.

Plus, the few retailers I sell to are really good fit ones

that I love working with and I make zero effort in finding them.

Instead they find me through the marketing

I'm already doing.

So it's making sales without any extra work, which is great.

If you're interested in doing

wholesale for yourself, definitely check out sites like Faire.com.

It's a wholesale marketplace where store buyers shop for products to carry.

A few of my core students from A Sale A Day Business System

use Faire.com with some really

great success.

I also make money through acting.

Now I know some of you might be thinking, acting isn't an art,

but it's called performing arts for a reason, right?

So I've been pursuing acting out here in Los Angeles since 2017,

and the more I learned about acting from all the classes I've taken, the more

I'm reinforced in thinking that it really is an art.

When I don't know anything about acting.

I used to think acting was imitation, which I think a lot of people

may think that, but knowing what I know now, it is so, so creative.

It's expressing your creativity using your body as the instrument,

like a painter, using a paintbrush or a musician with a violin.

Another misconception people make about acting is that they think it pays a lot.

And I'm here to say that unless you're part of the 1% of actors

who are A-list celebrities, the pay is just okay.

Many working actors can make a living from acting but

the majority of actors have second and third jobs to support themselves with.

I am so proud

I have made over $50,000 for my acting so far since 2017 through commercials

and TV show work, as well as residuals, which are from checks

you get when shows are on gets rerun or shown again later

on through like international platforms or online media and so on.

In a sense, it's almost like passive income

because I may get paid

$1,000 to be on set for one day, but then make thousands more dollars later

on over time in residual checks when the show actually gets run on TV.

Speaking of residuals, I also make money from teaching on other platforms.

The most notable one was in 2016.

I taught several highly produced courses on a platform called Creative Live.

It was such a cool experience.

I work with their people to create the courses.

They fool me out into San Francisco to film over three days

and I had a live audience, a moderator for an online

audience as well as a whole camera and sound crew.

They put me up in a hotel, paid for my food, got me a professional makeup artist.

It was all just so cool.

And this happened really early on in my teaching and coaching career,

and I got so many of my earlier coaching clients

through Creative Live.

Showing people that I had the competency to teach

really helped build trust with people who then later became paying clients.

And it was also really great for introducing me to thousands

of my ideal customers.

It's been a while now since I taught there,

but the way it works is I get paid a percentage split

based on how many people bought my course for that quarter.

I've been paid tens of thousands of dollars

in commissions for teaching with them at this point,

but since it has been a while, the checks have gotten a lot smaller.

That's another example of doing work

once and then getting paid over and over again for it

just like with acting. I call that leveraged income.

Every now and then I would also get paid to speak at conferences or panels.

I used to do this a lot more, but less so these days

because it involves a lot of time to travel, to location,

find accommodation and all of that, often only to be paid a few hundred dollars

so it's just not as worth it anymore.

We also invest our money into investment funds.

We use Betterment and our money basically makes money for us,

although at a much slower rate than all of the other ways I just talked about.

I'm all for creating new diversified income streams.

I think this is so important.

And 99.9% of creatives making money as a self-employed

person has diversity in their income streams.

That way we're spreading the risk, right?

If one thing doesn't make money, that month you have

all of these other ways to make money so you don't have to stress so much.

But of course, these income streams also take time to build up.

Some take months, if not years.

Starting a business can be fast if you know what you're doing, and that's

definitely my wheelhouse, which is why I run so many of them.

And I'm always looking for new businesses to start.

Moving forward,

I'm also working on writing and publishing a book,

so when that happens, that will be another form of income.

I know a lot of creators also do affiliate marketing and sponsorships.

That's something I never really got into.

I get so many emails

from brands wanting to sponsor a video on my YouTube channel.

But if I haven't used a product myself, I just don't feel comfortable

recommending it.

And the trust that I've built with my community is way more important

than a few hundred bucks.

So that's a big reason why I haven't gotten into it very much.

Previously,

when my businesses were still babies, I also did freelance web design work.

That really helped pay the bills when my business

wasn't making that much money yet in the early days.

I always say there's no shame in having multiple income streams

or having a part-time job to allow you to focus on your art with less pressure.