What is passive income? 19 passive income ideas for creatives

As a designer, your skills keep you employed. But what if you didn’t have to continually find new clients and deliver new projects to earn income? Generating a passive income from your design work is a great way to earn income even when you aren’t actively working with a client.

Welcome to our collection of 19 passive income ideas for designers. We’ll explore strategies to boost your income with simple projects that don’t take forever to get started. It is possible to earn a passive income from graphic design, so check out these ideas to spark your thinking.

Before we discuss passive income ideas for designers, it is helpful to define the term. Too often, “passive income” is sold as an unrealistic dream where you effortlessly collect cash with no work involved.

The truth is a bit more complicated. Most of the time, you’ll need to invest work upfront to build your source of passive income. And even when you’re finished, you’ll probably have to do a certain amount of work later on, like providing customer service, doing administrative work, and keeping your content up-to-date.

Some of the ideas on this list will require a little more ongoing work, while others require less. But each offers more freedom than the classic “work for hire” model you may be accustomed to as a designer.

If you like earning a consistent income stream without always needing to find new clients, you’ll love this post. So, let’s dive into 19 ideas to help you earn a passive income from graphic design.

Do your design skills extend to websites? Creating templates and themes is a good graphic design side hustle. When you make these, you’re building website frameworks for others to use on platforms like WordPress and Squarespace.

You won’t have to maintain websites for others. Instead, you’ll simply design layouts and offer them for sale. If you want to grow your freelance practice, you may even receive requests to customize templates for your clients.

Creative platforms like Envato feature millions of digital assets created by designers just like you. Creating for Envato is one of the ultimate side hustles for graphic designers.

You can earn money from themes, templates, and graphics that you’ve made. They’re hosted by Envato, so all you have to do is create, upload, and earn. It’s an easy way to build out your passive income portfolio. Learn more about becoming an Envato author.

Like to talk and share your knowledge? Turn that into a passive income stream by starting a podcast. Not only is this a great way to build your brand, but it also gives you a platform you can monetize.

The main revenue stream will likely be sponsorships and advertisements. You can promote services and products you love. Advertisers pay based not only on your audience size but also on how engaged your listenership is. You can build a passionate listener base every advertiser would love to meet. Once you build an audience, anything is possible!

This is one of those passive income ideas requiring ongoing work. You can reduce this, however, by creating large batches of podcast episodes in advance. Read more about the benefits of content batching.

Digital assets and online media aren’t the only forms of passive income for graphic designers. You can also create designs for apparel, like shirts, hats, and more. You can then market them on online marketplaces like Etsy.

In a way, apparel is its own form of promotion. With a memorable design style, the word can spread. It’s a fun way to show off your creativity and design skills while earning a few extra dollars as you go. You can even use drop-shipping tools, so you don’t need to stock inventory. Get a free guide to print on demand passive income.

Many people want a beautifully designed website but lack the skills. You could make a graphic design side hustle out of filling that void. UI kits include tools like buttons and icons for websites.

Here are some examples:

Build your designs and market them to others via your website or a creative platform like Envato. You might be surprised by how quickly your design style starts showing up in the apps you use. These eye-catching and very practical kits are a popular way for graphic designers to earn passive income.

Teaching is rewarding, because you can share your skills and help others learn. But it’s also a great way to earn money from your graphic design know-how.

Why not channel your knowledge and create an online course? It’s one of the best strategies for creating an engaged audience that will follow you across platforms.

Whether it’s freelance writing or creating a guided course, you have options to monetize. List your course on YouTube, and you can enable monetization in most cases. Our “Photoshop for Beginners” course has 14 million views and counting, so there’s plenty of demand for courses like this.

You could also create a premium course and charge based on access. Or you could upload it to a platform like Coursera or Udemy and earn a share of the income.

Tried and true, blogs are a long-standing method of generating passive income for graphic designers. You can share what you know on a variety of design topics. It will take some time to build an engaged, reliable audience. Remember to build your content in advance and then schedule it to reduce your active involvement.

Once you have a following, you can begin to monetize your blog through advertising or affiliate marketing. You can earn commissions for sales of products and services you link to. It’s fulfilling, and if you build a decent audience, it can be one of the more lucrative side hustles for graphic designers.

If you’re a designer with an artistic eye, why not try font design? Crafting custom text styles for others is a unique form of passive income for designers.

For best results, aim at unique designs, or those that fill a specific niche. You can then sell them on your own, or license them for sale through an online marketplace.

Making art is fun, and perhaps it’s how you first got into design. But it’s also a good way to earn money with graphic design. Try your hand at designing posters and unique wall art.

Then, you can sell it through an Etsy store, for example. A good way to succeed here is to find a niche. Focus on specific types of imagery, and you can stand out from the competition and gain a loyal following.

Even in 2024, there’s still a big market for printed invitations and greeting cards. And many people want to get away from chain-store designs and find something special. Why not help fill this gap? Here’s an example of a designer who’s doing just that.

Passive income ideas like this one allow you to be creative and make money from it. You can sell stock designs, take commissions for custom layouts, and more.

Apps like Adobe Illustrator and InDesign are extremely popular, but they have quite a steep learning curve. So there’s a big demand for presets and templates to make it easier for people to create professional-looking results. If you’re looking for graphic design side hustle ideas for 2024, this is definitely one you should explore. 

Tools like brushes and layout themes perform design work for others and help you earn a profit. You can sell these on your own website or via a creative platform like Envato.

Social media brand kits help companies share their content in a consistent and recognizable way. Building these kits unlocks passive income for designers like you.

Some brands may not have the expertise or time to do their own graphic work. So why not create multipurpose kits and sell them on digital marketplaces? Just set them up once, and if they’re popular, you’ll have a solid income stream for months or years afterward.

Writing a book unlocks passive income for graphic designers like you. And while book publishing was traditionally expensive, eBooks have broken down the hurdles to entry: you can now self-publish at little or no cost. You can even repurpose existing content into an eBook.

Once you’ve published and marketed an eBook, you can sit back and collect money as it sells. And thanks to digital publishing, you can make regular updates to your book with minimal effort.

Similar to other writing-and-sharing ideas, a newsletter can be a great way to earn passive income for designers. You have multiple ways to monetize a newsletter. For example, you could:

All these outcomes are possible with a successful design newsletter. Again, be sure to create plenty of content in advance so that you’re not stuck thinking up new content every month.

Think about your favorite shop, coffee bar, or brewery. Odds are, they have (or need) custom stickers for sale! As a designer, you can create these stickers for others. Here are some ideas to inspire you:

With some simple graphic design work, you can refine amazing designs for brands. Or you can sell online with your own designs. With a site like Redbubble, you can easily market designs and sell them directly to customers.

Whether you have a website, blog, or just a social media profile, affiliate marketing is a quick way for designers to earn some passive income. In essence, this means partnering with companies and other creators to promote products or services. You get rewarded every time someone clicks through your content and makes a purchase.

Be authentic: only partner with products and services you can authentically recommend. Affiliate marketing works best if you share tools you already know and love. Explore affiliate programs for those tools as one of the most effective side hustles for graphic designers.

Going viral on TikTok is an unconventional but very real way to earn passive income for graphic designers. Offering your knowledge of aesthetics and graphic design lets you share your expertise and passion with others.

Your first step is to spend time developing a large audience following. This part may take some time and effort, but then you can monetize that audience via affiliate marketing, sharing others’ work, or finding new clients for yourself.

Often lost in the shuffle of graphic design are pattern designs. These are incredibly versatile, and any pattern that you design is endlessly reusable. They can be used for backgrounds, printed layouts, and more. Even wallpaper uses patterns! 

Create patterns and license them for sale as stock imagery. A simple pattern layout can show how to earn money with graphic design. Build it, share it, and you can find yourself with a consistent passive income stream. Then add more designs to your portfolio to increase your income. Stuck for ideas? Check out these beautiful examples:

Want to build a community around your design skills? Patreon offers a unique way for designers like you to earn passive income. It’s a platform where creators can offer exclusive content to paying subscribers.

Set up different membership tiers, each with its own perks. Your basic level might include monthly design tips. Higher tiers could offer in-depth tutorials and downloadable assets. The key is to provide value that your followers can’t get elsewhere.

What kind of content works? Think behind-the-scenes looks at your process or early access to your latest projects. Again, just ensure that the rewards don’t require too much ongoing work. Generating an income without too much extra effort is the essence of passive income.

As you can see, there are countless ways for graphic designers to start side hustles. When you start earning passive income, it frees you up to work only on projects that excite you, knowing that you’ll still be earning income without constantly needing to find new work. Imagine the thrill of waking up to payments from your passive income sources.

Now, it’s your turn. Pick out your favorite passive income ideas for designers from this list and try them out. Over time, you can build up passive income streams that make you less dependent on client work!

Looking for more inspo? Check out our guides to starting a creative side hustle and making money on YouTube.