I love doing client work and it’s still my bread and butter, but even with the best self-promotion, I have very little control over when someone has a good project for me. Whereas with other income streams like online courses and in-person workshops, I’m in control of pretty much everything, from the subject to the time and monetary commitments.

Diverse income streams give me the ability to generate income more predictably vs. wondering when it’ll come to me. When I first started freelancing I was content to do client work but when I experienced client work slowing down slightly for the first time in 2016, I realized I had to figure out some other ways to make money! I started with workshops. And, because workshops were such a win for me, I started looking for other ways to supplement my client-work income.

(I’m writing about this because I wish someone had explained the benefits of diversified income stream to me earlier! Would’ve saved me a lot of stress and confusion.)

I’ll get back to workshops in a minute. Lemme just lay out the basics of a diversified income stream for you, and why I get a lil’ passionate about it.

TL;DR: Diversify Your Income For More Peace of Mind

As a lettering artist, I do everything from full-page editorial pieces (~$1k) to big advertising campaigns ($10k+). Most gigs are flat fees - I don’t get any residuals or royalties or anything. My average fee in 2019 was $4,500 for a project.

But that average number comes from a range of projects like:

Book covers
In-store signage
Stationary
Live lettering events
Murals
Sponsored content
Social media campaigns
Magazine covers
+ more

As you can see from this list, freelance client work can go in a bunch of different directions. It’s unpredictable, so when things are good it can be massively exciting. For example, I once made $30k in one month! (That was an epic month haha.)

Buuuttttt I’ve also made ZERO dollars in a month. Unfortunately, zero dollar months are more common than 5-figure months for most freelancers, especially when you’re starting out! And that’s scary, right?

When client work is slow, it fills you with crippling doubt and puts you in a scarcity mindset, making you say yes to less-than-ideal projects with less-than-ideal budgets.

This is why diversifying income is so important for freelance artists. When you spread out the ways you earn money, you insulate yourself against those “slow times,” giving yourself the ability to take on (and seek out!) projects that truly excite you.

For me, teaching workshops was the most natural way to monetize my creative skill set in another way besides client work. They are fun and fulfilling and a great way for me to connect with my online audience IRL.

But there are MANY ways to diversify your income as an artist outside of doing client work:

Selling physical products at craft fairs
Selling physical products online
Selling digital products online
Set up a Patreon page or membership program
Start a blog and do brand partnerships
Start a blog and sell ad space
Affiliate marketing
Speaking engagements
Licensing your work to companies
+ more I probably can’t think of right now!

Actual Real-Life Numbers, Hot Damn!

I now have six main streams of income that support my business: online courses, commercial client work, brand partnerships, digital products, public speaking, and in-person workshops. As I said earlier, I started out with doing only commercial client work, then began doing in-person workshops to supplement that income. I continued to branch out from there, and it’s made a HUUUGE difference in the way I earn and in my ability to be selective about the work I do.

Before diversifying, my highest income year just doing client work was $90K net profit (after expenses but before tax). In 2019, my business made a net profit of $225K. And in the spirit of being totally transparent for educational purposes, that wasn’t even my highest-earning year (but that’s a topic for another blog post I think!).

In 2019 my income streams broke down to these percentages:

39% online courses
33% commercial client work
10% brand partnerships
7% digital products (webinars + workbooks)
6% public speaking
5% in-person workshops

That spread isn’t exactly the same each year, but that's the beauty of diversification: if one income stream slows down (either intentionally or unintentionally), the others are there to pick up the slack and give me more financial peace of mind so I can focus on what I love most: making creative stuff!

In fact, one big benefit to diversifying your income is that YOU can make changes and adjustments pretty easily. It’s tough to be flexible or nimble when you’re only doing one thing (client work) and especially when your work is dependent on someone else’s approval. I don’t think it’s an accident that the stream I have the most control over - online courses - was also my most profitable source of income in 2019!

Workshops are a great example of the ways you can make adjustments to an income stream based on your opportunities and your limitations. During the first two years of me teaching workshops, they made up anywhere from 10% to 20% of my annual income because I decided to host a lot of them. Later on, I scaled back workshops to focus on online courses, hence the shift in income percentages.

Here are three examples of real-life financial breakdowns from workshops I’ve taught.

(Please understand that I’m using workshop examples because they have been a great diversification option for me. If affiliate marketing is your jam, do that! As long as you’re convinced about the awesomeness of diversifying your freelance income by the end of this article I’ll call it a win.)

My very first workshop, held in NYC for 3 hours:

“Beginner Hand Lettering”

5 x early bird tickets @ $80/ea plus 15 x regular tickets @ $100/ea equals $1,900 gross sales.

$1,900 gross sales minus $700 venue rental and $100 supplies equals $1,100 net profit (equal to what I’d make from one editorial project!).

This one was a LOT of work because I was learning as I went. But I had a GREAT time and I immediately had some ideas of things to improve for the next workshop. For starters, I knew it would take me less time (and money haha) to put on the exact same workshop because I now had a solid idea of how much to spend on materials.

I also knew that changing the venue to a less expensive space would be an easy way to improve my profit from the workshop. And I realized I could adjust ticket sales for another simple way to improve profits.

Specifically, this workshop sold out QUICKLY - I’d thought I was going to need the early bird tickets to drum up interest but I did NOT haha. Even the “full price” tickets went quickly. After testing that price point on the first workshop, I knew I could bump the price a bit (and skip the early bird tickets) without losing potential attendees.

Same workshop but held in Los Angeles:

“Beginner Hand Lettering”

19 x regular tickets @ $125/ea equals $2,375 gross sales

$2,375 gross sales minus $325 venue rental and $100 supplies equals $1,950 net profit (equal to what I’d get paid for a book cover)

You’ll notice in this workshop that I didn’t sell early bird tickets, I bumped the price of the regular ticket up a bit, and I went with a much less expensive venue. I did spend about the same on supplies, but the whole process of sourcing them was much smoother than the first time around, saving me a bunch of time! And I’ve made similar tweaks to this workshop each time I’ve hosted it since.

The key takeaway here is that I don’t do the same exact thing for years and hope the money keeps coming in! (Because if I did that, it wouldn’t!) I’m always looking for ways to improve.

An advanced workshop, held in NYC for a full day:

“Sketchbook Lettering for Social Media”

24 x regular tickets @ $275/ea equals $6,600 gross sales

$6,600 gross sales minus $830 venue rental, $200 supplies and $380 catered lunch equals $5,190 net profit (equal to what I’d make from a sm/m mural)

After the success of the “Beginner Lettering” workshop I had a lot of interest in and requests for a more advanced workshop so that people could really dig into a specific aspect of lettering. “Sketchbook Lettering for Social Media” was the result, and you can see how much more of a profit I made on this one!

This is a great example of finding a way to significantly improve an income stream by paying attention to the lil’ trickle - my beginner workshop - for a while and THEN making some big changes. At first, I stuck to tweaking small things about the 3-hour workshop, while listening to my audience about what else they might want and keeping an eye out for things that could be changed if I ever hosted something different.

When my audience’s requests lined up with a type of workshop that would be a significant improvement, income-wise, I was all about making that happen! Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t start with something as ambitious as “Sketchbook Lettering for Social Media,” because it would have been overwhelming and I might’ve even LOST money (welp).

But once I had that workshop income stream trickling in with the beginner class, I was able to make adjustments that kept improving the way I was earning from workshops and eventually turn that little trickle into a healthy stream.

**Six Income Streams Other Than Client Work**

1. Sell Physical Products

A perfect option if you’re just starting out! I started selling posters of my work while I was still in school. This option helps you leverage some of the artwork you may already have on hand - just find a complementary physical product to pair it with and you’re ready to start selling!

There are so many combinations of what you can sell and where you can sell it that I’m just going to go ahead and give you a big ol’ list of ideas for this one:

Posters
Third-Party Shop (they produce the product for you)
Phone Cases
Craft fairs
Prints
Via social media
T-Shirts
Personal website

If you feel really passionate about physical products - especially a specific kind of product like coffee mugs - this is a great way to ease into non-client income. One of my favorite physical products projects was Wiggy Banks. It started out as a passion project where I was lettering funny phrases on glass jars and (much later) turned into a brand partnership - number 6 on this list!

2. Sell Digital Products

Ok, maybe this is the most low-impact way to get started with another income stream! Selling digital products can be even less of a commitment than physical because once you have the artwork (or assets) prepared, you don’t have to worry about re-stocking anything.

This category also includes digital prints of your work. Many artists find success with selling their artwork in a way that allows the customer to download the digital file and print themselves. This is great for those of us (me included!) who aren’t excited about keeping physical products on hand or fulfilling orders.

Some examples of the kind of thing you can sell digitally:

Workbooks
Procreate brushes
Photoshop actions
Stock photos
Digital assets
Mockups

My podcast co-host Stefan Kunz does digital product sales really well. You can check out his online shop for some examples of digital product to sell. I haven’t done a ton of digital products myself, but from the few I offer (like my social media webinar for lettering artists) I’ve had a decent amount of success!

3. Teach Workshops

Of course, I think teaching is the easiest way to start out with diversifying your income stream, because that’s how I started out! Teaching other people what you know is a natural way to leverage your skills into a profitable and rewarding new arm of your creative biz, especially if you live in (or visit) a large metro area. Even if you have a small audience or don’t live in a huge city… imagine making an extra $500 from teaching for a few hours on the weekend?

For example, Nina, a lettering artist in Calgary, Alberta used my creative workshop launch kit to start teaching local workshops. She had a modest 1,200 Instagram followers when she decided to launch, and ended up with 8 students in the first workshop. Even if you start small, with only a handful of attendees, you will get lots of amazing feedback, build confidence, and turn followers into lifelong fans!

My good friend Joanna used my creative workshop launch kit and partnered with a stationery store to host workshops, so she doesn’t have to worry about providing the space or the materials for her class. She runs a three hour class about once a month - always on a weekend - and she made over $4,500 in profit in 2019!

And the biggest success story from my launch kit? My podcast co-host Stefan made over $40,000 of profit from workshops in less than a year! Stefan’s workshop success is partly a product of his massive engaged audience (which he worked really hard for and spent years building). He hosted workshops in several different cities and countries. I’m including him here so you get an idea of just how well workshops can work as an income stream someday :)

One last note about workshops if you’re still unsure: a major plus of teaching workshops is that you don’t have to be an “expert” in your field. Not everyone wants super detailed technical instruction from someone with 30 years of experience. People are just as hungry to learn from:

Artists who look like them
Artists who speak casually
Artists who are self-taught
Artists who they can relate to
Artists who are only a few steps ahead of where they are (more attainable!)

4. Create and Teach Online Classes

In 2019 the biggest piece of my income “pie” came from online courses! This kind of income stream is a natural extension of in-person workshops. Once you teach an in-person class a few times you have a great idea of what people are looking for and what kinds of questions they might have, so it makes creating online courses a breeze!

Of course, you don’t have to have experience teaching in person to create an online course, but it definitely helps. The more teaching you’ve done in person the less time you will have to spend figuring out what information needs to be included (or prioritized) and the less chance you will have students who get confused or frustrated with the course offering.

There are plenty of options for teaching online. If you’re just starting out and aren’t really sure how to make it all work, you can make a class with an online teaching platform like Skillshare. Sometimes, if you already have an audience, platforms will reach out and offer to produce your class for you too, which is what happened in my case with Skillshare and Brit+Co. And if you want to build your own course where you control everything you can use a platform like Teachable that allows you to offer standalone courses. Teachable is what I personally use now because I have my own audience to market to. It’s more work on my end, but it’s also more profitable.

Online courses are to in-person workshops what digital products are to physical products. There’s usually a lot more work upfront, but once you get all the materials created and ready to deploy, you can have basically an unlimited number of students! Best of all, you have control over how much (or how little) interaction you need to have with students. For some of my online courses I am more involved, while some are more go-at-your-own-pace and do-your-own-thing.

5. License Your Artwork

Make work that companies can license (rent) for limited use, which means you can generate income from the same piece of art multiple times. Art that works well for licensing is generally art that can be used across a variety of mediums, like a positive phrase for a postcard, a poster, and a t-shirt.

I’ve only done a handful of licensing work. So far, most of my art has either been something that I have sold (or used) for my own projects or something created as part of a client-led project.

I’ve heard through the grapevine that licensing can be a super viable income stream, and just because I don’t have a ton of experience here doesn’t mean I’m gonna leave you high and dry. My friends Ilana and Katie are an amazing resource for artists who are looking into licensing - what I know about licensing my lettering work I have learned from them! They have an online course on licensing for letterers that is a major deep dive into everything you might need to know. If licensing your artwork is an income stream that’s speaking to you, you should check the course out.

6. Do Sponsored Content or Brand Partnerships

For partnerships with national brands, this income stream requires having a medium-to-large audience already. (Smaller audiences - especially local ones - can be a good fit for local and regional brands.) For most artists, brand partnerships tend to happen later in a career, mostly because personal style is still kind of evolving and “clout” is still being built.

I wanted to get partnerships on your radar, though, because it can be a really creative and fun way to add to diversify your income streams! It can include things like creating artwork specifically for a brand or a campaign and then talking about it to your audience, or you and the brand putting on an event together, or the brand choosing a specific product for you to try out and share with your audience.

One of the things I love about brand partnerships is that it allows me to work with brands that might not have me on their short list for a commercial project just yet but where the admiration is mutual - I like what they’re doing and they like what I’m doing! For me, this has meant working with some of my favorite creative brands, like Adobe Creative Cloud sending me to Adobe MAX and having me share the experience with you and Vans sending me shoes from their new collection to create creative content with.

You can do it!

Although workshops are the income stream that got me started on diversifying my income, they’re definitely not the only thing I’ve got going on these days, six years into my freelance career. I also do online courses, brand partnerships, speaking gigs, and I offer digital products, as well as continuing to do commercial client work.

I’m sharing this with you so you believe me when I say that developing other income streams to compliment your client work isn’t as scary or difficult as you think it is.

What I’ve learned from 6 years of running my own business is this: allowing yourself to try something new or put yourself out there is 70% of the battle. Once you go for it, your creative instincts will kick in and you WILL figure it out and learn as you go. Like my friend, artist and author Adam JK always says, “Failure is just research unless you never try again.”

Like I said earlier, workshops were only the start for me. I think most creatives are naturally good teachers because we are passionate about our subject matter. But I have branched out from in-person workshops too, and I know plenty of artists who are 100% not about that life and have found other ways to diversify their income.

Some sell postcards or stickers or apparel. Some have branched into developing and selling digital assets. Some have gotten really into licensing their work. There are SO MANY OPTIONS available to us artists these days - whatever you’re good at, I promise you there’s a complementary income stream out there for you.

x Lauren

P.S. Have I convinced you, or at the very least intrigued you? If so, leave a comment below telling me what new income streams you’re interested in adding to your business! And if not, let me know why so I can address it. Either way, I hope this article is helpful to you in your own creative business endeavors.

Diversifying Income for Artists and Freelancers: Your Secret Ingredient for Success