Passive income is a buzz word. Online blogs make it sound like something extremely easy and quick money. I want to start by saying it is not easy and it is not quick. It's not money you make while you are sleeping, there is a lot of work that needs to be put in regularly and up front. All my sources are from personal experiences and I have mentioned how much money I made from each source.

What is passive income? 

It's income generated through sources you don't indulge in full-time.

For a designer, it's an alternative way to make money compare to offering hands-on services. If well executed it can give you a very flexible career but there is a lot of work that needs to be done before you reach that stage.

Reality Check

Making money through all the options listed below without a decent following is extremely hard. One way to overcome this is to find a particular niche and offer something unique. Something that is not done by a lot of people and something you would end-up sharing yourself if you stumble upon it. And once you have that you need to market the hell out of it, It's 60% marketing and 40% working on the product.

Design Assets

Selling any design assets directly from your website or a popular market place like Envato, Creative Market, Adobe Stock, Yellow Images, and UI8. 

What are Design Assets?

Graphic Templates, Mockups, UI Kits, Icons, Fonts, Patterns, Illustrations, Stock Photos, Video Templates, WordPress Themes, Web Templates, and anything you have downloaded as a designer to shorten your workflow. 

This category is my personal favorite as I do this for a living full-time.

You need to find a niche and do a lot of research on how you can be unique. I started this as a side gig and it took a few years to understand the potential and earn anything decent.

My Experience

Now I do this full-time so I can't call it passive income. But when I first started it took me three years to get from $200 yearly to $1200 monthly treating it as a side gig. 

At this moment due to my recent success and pursuing it full-time my earnings are 5X but there is a lot more going on and I will cover that in a different post. 

Merchandise and Print

I am sure you have heard of Soicety6, Threadless, RedBubble,TeePublic and others. The idea is to upload your illustrations and graphics and let these services print them on things like T-shirts, Bags, Posters, and Mugs.

They give you royalties and for something like a $20 T-shirt you earn between ($1 - $5).

You could put in the extra effort and make your own store using Printfull or something similar to have better margins. All the platforms mentioned above won't market for you, it's up to you to sell your things. 

My Experience

I started Literary Swag but failed to market it the way it should have been done. I had no intention of doing it full-time and selling it through my personal store was a lot more work than I anticipated. 

First six months I earned around $3000 in profit but I stopped pursuing it as it was demanding a lot of time. So currently it is a Threadless Artist Shop that costs me nothing and generates around $100 per month.

Picture Books and Card Games 

If you are an illustrator I am sure you have thought of designing a book at some point. I think it has never been easier to self-publish but again marketing is the key and you need to be good at it. 

There are a lot of mediums for your illustration now like printed books, e-books, ipad books, and I recently indulged myself by making card games.

My Experience

Last year I published two card games Doggo Cards and Monarchs of India, the story behind it needs a series of entire posts. I went all in and spend a good amount of money in bulk manufacturing them. The returns have been very decent I sell around 5-10 boxes a day on Amazon and generate around $1200 in revenue monthly. Marketing, Shipping, and Returns are all taken care by Amazon which makes this a true passive income source.

I also published a book called Tales of Invention: Potato Chips with my sister as the writer. However due to production delays it never really took-off and now exists as an eBook.

Things I haven't tried: Offer Courses, Patreon Subscription, and Youtube

I don't have the patience to make Vlogs so you will not see me in front of the camera anytime soon. But that being said I have been thinking of making a written course on Digital Assets, Online Presence, Portfolio Building, and How To Publish Card Games. If you are interested in something like that do leave you email below and I will notify you once they are ready.  

Verdict

If you are just stepping into the world of passive income for designers. I would suggest search your niche, try finding something that is not saturated and give it a shot. You need to market your products really well so be ready for that, it is extremely hard and rare to sell something without marketing. I hate marketing but over the years I have found particular marketing mediums that works for me like this blog post or doing Q&A on Instagram. Find what you are comfortable with and you can do consistently. All the best.