Taking Your Creative Side Hustle to Full-Time Income

In this video, I break down the topic of taking a creative hobby into a full-time business. It's certainly not for the faint of heart, but it can be done! This is just a broad overview of my approach and what I've found to work, but there's plenty of things I probably left out. Also, this is just my perspective, so feel free to disregard it 💁🏻‍♂️

How to Make Money as a Creative

If you’re a creative person, it’s likely you just want to focus on your craft – whatever it is – and not deal with the business side of things. Of course, some people are creative and also enjoy business side, but I’m guessing most of you probably don’t.

So whether you’re a photographer, painter, writer, editor, or anything else that may get lumped into the creative field, in this video, I’m going to cover some ways you can take your passion to a full-time career.

Develop Your Craft

There’s a saying that goes something like “be so good, they can’t ignore you.” And while I like that it encourages you to keep improving your craft, it can feel hopeless when you feel like you’re pretty good, but you’re still being ignored and unable to make money off of your passion.

Well, here’s what you may not want to hear, but I think it’s sound advice: get any job you can that will cover your expenses and leave you with enough time and energy on evenings or weekends to develop your craft even more on your own time.

Last week, I made a video about how much I made at 10 different jobs throughout the last 15 years, and many of them weren’t very exciting or even exactly what I wanted to be doing at the time, but the truth of it is I don’t think I was good enough to do what I wanted to at many different stages in my life. Even when I thought I was a pretty good photographer or motion graphics artist, I can look back at my work years later and see that maybe I was just mildly above average at best.

When it comes to actually getting better at what you enjoy doing, here’s what I recommend.

First, try setting a challenge for yourself. When I wanted to get better at creating music, I challenged myself to do one track a day for a month and post it on my Instagram stories. It didn’t matter if anyone really watched it or not, but making it public like that helped keep me accountable to myself and my goal.

So even when I was exhausted after a day of filming or even had family in town visiting, I was able to find 30-45 minutes a day to work on a track and post it.

I got better with the software I was using, I got better at making music, and I had a lot of fun. Even if 90% of what you do ends up in the trash, that doesn’t matter. You may find a few things you actually created were pretty cool, and, at the very least, you’re building up that creative muscle. In my case, a lot of the songs I started during this challenge ended up on my first release, which ended up generating some pretty good income.

Even when I was working as a video editor, I realized I enjoyed making motion graphics in After Effects more than editing video, so I spent a lot of my weekends watching tutorials and working on little projects for fun so I could learn the software better. And a few years later, when I was building my reel and interviewing for motion graphics positions, I signed up for an online course on motion graphics, just so I could really feel like I could take my work to the next level. And it helped a lot, and I got a great job as a motion graphics artist… but I had to deliver groceries with Instacart while I was doing all of this to pay the bills.

Start Generating Side Income

Let’s say you’ve got a decent job – maybe not your dream job, but decent. Maybe you’re working in marketing and you’d rather be a freelance graphic designer or something, I don’t know.

Assuming you’ve developed your craft like I just talked about, it’s time to start getting paid doing what you enjoy. You want to get an idea for what the market is like. How hard is it? Is it something you really want to pursue or would you rather keep it as a hobby? Dipping your toes into side income is a good way to feel it out.

Running with this graphic designer example, there are a lot of ways to start bringing in revenue. One idea is creating graphic elements that you can sell on something like Etsy or Creative Market. For example, here’s a seller on Etsy selling these Instagram Story Highlight Covers. Just these simple icons that look nice and trendy and plenty of people who don’t have that skill might want to buy. This seller has sold over 3,500 of these at $4 a pop, which is over $14,000 in income from these 20 designs.

You could also list on Upwork or Fiverr and try and pick up some freelance work. The point here is to put yourself out there and see if people will pay for your work. The actual amount isn’t as important as the experience you’ll gain from doing this.

For another example, if you’re a photographer and you want to become a full-time wedding photographer, look to start second shooting weddings for another photographer. This gives you a ton of experience and gets you paid doing what you enjoy.

Take it Full-Time

You’ve developed your craft and you even started earning a little on the side doing what you love. Well, how do you make the jump to doing it full-time? You probably want to completely replace your current income with the work you’re passionate about, or at the very least cover all of your expenses like rent and food.

It’s time to set another goal for yourself and figure out how to bridge this gap. How many weddings do you need to book as a photographer? How many freelance writing gigs do you need? How many Instagram Icon things do you need to sell?

And then the most important question is how do you actually make that happen?

This is where you’ll want to flesh out your business plan in more depth.

I’ll go back to the wedding photography example, since I’m pretty familiar with it. Let’s say you currently make $40,000 pre-tax at your current job and you also started shooting weddings on the weekend, charging $1500 per wedding. Simple math will show us that you need to book 27 weddings a year to match that income. That’s a good amount of weddings and something that would be hard to do your first year. The answer here is you’ll likely want to keep working your day job while you start building up your wedding photography business on the side. As you build your portfolio, you are also building up your reputation as a business. A lot of clients can come through word-of-mouth and connections you make, so a business like this can actually grow pretty organically.

But for the most part, you’ll probably need to do some more promotion, advertising, and networking. I think this is another area a lot of creative types cringe at the thought of because it feels like selling out or just plain uncomfortable. But here’s what a lot of artists need to hear: there’s nothing wrong with making money from what you do. It doesn’t make it less of an artform or you less of an artist or a creative person. No one’s looking down on Mozart because he did commissioned work.

The fact is if you’re talented at something and it’s something that people want or the market has a need for, then you should be able to get paid doing it.

I would try and take all of the money I earn working on the side and put that towards growing my business.

If you need to pay for ads in a wedding magazine or on a blog or even if you need to travel somewhere to go to a workshop or build your body of work on your own dime, it’s an investment in yourself that can prove worthwhile. Maybe you can find a mentor who will do 1-on-1 Skype session with you to help you figure out how to grow your business in your niche. That could be well worth the couple of hundred dollars it might cost to do that.

Another great way to really grow your business is by joining the communities where other creatives are. Reddit or other online forums or even just connecting with people on Instagram. I recommend an approach of helping other people and providing value in some way – instead of looking for what other people can do for you or self-promoting.

In a non-pandemic world, this could be in person meet-ups and events and getting to know people who are already doing what you want to do. And again, the mindset here should be offering value to other people since if you’ve had even mild success doing something especially in the creative field, chances are you’ve had a lot of people want to use you in some way or another.

A few years ago, my wife and I hosted a photography workshop and a guy named Nick went to it. When we launched a co-working space, he signed up. Then, when we needed someone to shoot video for us, he was around and ended up being a really talented videographer. He ended up going to Hawaii with us to film, and went on a road trip with us up the west coast for work… all because he wanted to join our community and didn’t approach us asking for anything – just offering to help when we needed it.

And of course – you don’t have to start your own business. Lots of companies have creative departments, and if you absolutely hate the idea of handling all of the business that goes into going full-time on your own, working a 9-5 in a creative position at a good company can be amazing. Having that security, set hours, and a reliable paycheck can be really nice, so don’t feel like you absolutely have to go out on your own to enjoy what you do.

Final Thoughts

So let’s recap:

First, develop your craft. This should be on-going, no matter how long you’ve been at it. You want to adapt with technology and trends so you’re setup for success. Spend your nights and weekends learning, practicing, and building your body of work.

Second, start charging for your work. Sell paintings, digital assets, design or writing services, t-shirts, whatever. The idea here is to get used to charging for your work, get a sense of the market, and see what you can do with it while keeping it a side hustle.

Third, take it full-time. Figure out what you need to sell or book in order to replace your current income or cover your basic needs… then figure out how to make that happen. Workshops, one-on-one mentorships, and advertising all can play a role here in helping you make this happen.

There really is so much to un-pack with a topic like this, but I just wanted to outline my approach to something like this. Of course, you can always save up as much you can, quit your job, and then force yourself to make it happen… but that is a lot riskier and certainly not a good choice for everyone.