If you think, as an artist and creative person, you can’t make money with your art, I’m here to tell you that you absolutely can.

This has been one of the biggest struggles for artists wanting to pursue their passions full-time, but it is entirely possible.

In this blog post, I’m going to share with you the eight ways I make a full-time income with my art, allowing me to have money leftover I could use to invest in my other passions and build my savings.

Since 2011, I’ve been a full-time artist, and since 2014, I’ve been coaching other creatives to do this successfully.

Having earned multiple seven figures cumulatively, I’m excited to share the best ways you can start making money with your art today. Keep reading!

Polymer Clay Food Jewelry Business

The first way I make money with my art is through my polymer clay food jewelry business, Tiny Hands, which I started in 2006.

Over the years, I have consistently made $150,000 to $180,000 per year, primarily selling through my Shopify store, with some additional sales from Etsy.

When I tell people I have an online jewelry shop, they often assume it’s just a hobby shop on Etsy and that I do this on the side.

But no, I make a full-time living from my jewelry business.

This was my very first endeavor into anything creative for myself.

At the beginning, I was still learning a lot about art and knew nothing about business or marketing.

I didn’t have a specific focus or niche yet.

I was making all sorts of things under the Tiny Hands name: handbound journals, beaded jewelry, polymer clay items – you name it.

Whatever new thing I was interested in, I tried to experiment and be creative with.

It took years of trial and error to hone my skills and figure things out.

Later on, I narrowed down my focus into just food-themed polymer clay jewelry and making them scented.

The first few years were a struggle in terms of making money but I was having so much fun with it, and so I felt so proud of all the things I made.

I shared my work on online forums and message boards, which were more popular at the time (today, we have Reddit and Facebook groups that serve a similar purpose).

Some of the people there would show an interest in my work and buy my things.

So, over the years, I learned more about the business side of things and got really passionate about that as well. 

Personalized Vintage Map Art Shop

I have another shop I started in 2019 where we sell personalized vintage map art.

This business operates entirely digitally.

Then we just use print-on-demand services like Printful and Gooten to create the actual physical products for us, such as framed prints and canvas wraps.

This shop made a whopping $508,000 in revenue last year. 

My husband took over running this shop a few years ago, and now I serve in a more advisory capacity, like part of his board of directors. 

The story behind this shop is actually pretty funny.

I always wanted to have a personalized business because personalized items are always trending and people love them for personal use or gifting.

So it was the Fall of 2019 and my husband had quit his job for a couple years, at that point, to develop a video game.

It took a lot of manpower to get it going so it was slow to start.

And in the meantime, I wanted to show him how he could make some side income online from freelancing.

Problem was that he was resistant to it since he didn’t have a passion for it.

The holiday season was just around the corner so I rushed to set up this shop and asked my husband for help.

He didn’t know anything about how to start an online shop so I taught him everything I knew from scratch.

Both of us put in a lot of work for this business – more so for him, because he had to learn on the job immediately.

And in just 2020, we made a million dollars in that first full year of business which was really incredible.

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

Eventually, we built up a team to help with orders but for several years I would jump in and help make orders too because we just got 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 – 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. 

Selling Courses

I started Creative Hive in 2014 where I teach other people what I learned from my own business to help them start and grow their own online stores selling handmade products online.

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 more money, is always in demand.

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 mentor.

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 become coaches.

This business takes up most of my time even though it’s not the biggest business we have because I constantly have to produce free content for my audience, whether that’s for my YouTube channel, 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 or very effective.

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.

Important note: it’s not passive income the way a lot of coaches make you think it is.

It is highly scalable in that the amount of work you do to get 1 student is not too different from getting 100 students, but don’t forget that you have to be present most of the time to answer all their questions, coach your students through their challenges, and be actively involved.

Another Jewelry Shop

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

I know, I just love making jewelry.

And, yes, I know that a big chunk of my income comes from having multiple businesses but having the diversity is not only fun but also helps stabilize that roller coaster feeling with sales.

I started the Bright Jewel a couple of years ago.

I source the jewelry components from wholesalers online through Alibaba and I assemble them myself to create these beautiful jewelry pieces.

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 five minutes to put the order together.

This shop is actually picking up momentum, so much so that I actually just invested in a huge box of custom printed jewelry boxes.

They’re so pretty and I’m so proud of them. 

Monetizing My YouTube Channel

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 I regret not having done it sooner.

I was 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 I finally did it and now it typically generates a consistent $700 to $1000 a month in ad revenue.

I, of course, have to work really hard to create videos and 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, editing them, designing the thumbnails, and then promoting the videos later on when they go live.

Being a content creator is definitely a lot of work and it’s not for everyone.

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

Each video takes an average of 10-15 hours of work from me and my team and I think that’s 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 are not afraid to voice your opinions, and you enjoy communicating them.

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

Wholesale Sales

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

I consider this an entirely different income stream from operating a Shopify or Etsy store because it involves a different sales model.

Wholesale involves selling products to stores at a price generally 50% lower than the regular retail price. 

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 sales reps in the Midwest and 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 seeking products for resale.

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 effectively.

So I decided that it was not the perfect product for wholesaling.

I scaled everything down, let go of my sales reps, and stopped doing trade shows.

Nowadays, 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 feel less pressure.

Plus, the few retailers I sell to are really good fits; I love working with them 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!

For those interested in pursuing wholesale, I recommend exploring platforms like Faire.com. It’s a wholesale marketplace where store buyers browse for products to stock. Some of my course students have used it with great success.

Acting

Surprise! In case you didn’t know, I also make money through acting.

Now, I understand some people might not consider acting an art, but it’s called performing arts for a reason, right?

I’ve been pursuing acting out here in Los Angeles since 2017 and the more I learn about acting from all the classes I’ve taken, the more I’m reinforced in thinking that it really is an art.

When I didn’t know anything about acting, I used to think acting was imitation, which I think a lot of people may also think that.

But knowing what I know now, it is 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 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’ve made over $50,000 from my acting so far since 2017 through commercials and TV show work as well as residuals, which are checks you get from when shows you’re on gets rerun or shown again later on like through 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. 

Teaching on Other Platforms

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

The most notable one was in 2016, when I taught several highly produced classes on a platform called Creative Live.

It was such a cool experience.

I worked with their people to create the courses, they flew me into San Francisco to film over 3 days and I had a live audience, a moderator for an online audience, as well as a whole camera and sound crew. 

They took care of everything for me.

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

This happened really early on in my teaching and coaching career, and I got 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.

That’s another example of doing work once and then getting paid over and over again for it, just like with acting!

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

It’s just not as worth it anymore. 

On Diversifying Income Streams

I’m a big advocate for creating new diversified income streams.

I think this is so important and 99.9% of creatives making money as self-employed people have 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 these other ways to make money so you don’t have to stress so much.

However, building these income streams takes time—some take months, even years, to develop. 

Starting a business can be fast if you know what you’re doing.

That’s definitely in my wheelhouse, which is why I run so many of them and I’m always looking for businesses to start.

In addition to the 8 income streams I’ve mentioned, we invest our money into investment funds, primarily using Betterment.

This way, our money basically makes money for us too, although at a much slower rate than all the other ways I just talked about.

Moving forward, I’m also working on writing and publishing a book, so when that happens, that’ll 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 the 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.

Lastly,  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 that 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. 

Remember, every income stream takes time to develop, but with persistence and passion, you can achieve financial success as an artist.