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TOP

INCOME STREAMS

Fo r C re a ti v e s
L E T ‘ S D I V E R S I F Y YO U R C R E AT I V E B U S I N E S S

with
Eva Kosmas Flores

Ev a K o s m a s F l o r e s
 We l c o m e ! ! !
Hello my friend! I’m so happy you’re here, and I beyond excited to share these income stream
possibilities with you + your business! As you know, running a creative business isn’t easy,
but you don’t have to make things harder for yourself by putting all your eggs in one pro-
verbial basket. If the past few years have shown us anything, it’s that depending on multiple
*different* sources for your income is an essential safety net in case any of those sources gets
temporarily put on hold.

Ha vi n g mult i p le d i fferent income streams al l owed

me t o keep my b us iness’ income stabl e at mul tipl e
s i x f i gures des pite the wil d shifts in the economy,
t h e wo r ld , a n d the social media l andscape.

And I want you to have that stability, too! And I also want you to have more peace of mind
when it comes to your finances, knowing that if something happens to shift one area of your
business, you’ve got some other income goodness coming in to help keep things moving
along. Sound good?

In this guide, I’m going to take you through the most effective income stream options for
creatives, broken down into two categories: passive and active. Passive income sources re-
quire effort at the beginning to get them set up, but once they are in place they don’t require
much or any time or maintenance. Active income sources, however, require time and energy
throughout the entire process.

And with that, let’s dive right in and start getting some food for thought for possible income
streams to incorporate into your business. Onwards my friend!

Cheering you on from the sidelines,

Eva

Ev a K o s m a s F l o r e s
 PA S S I V E I N C O M E
Digital Products
Digital products are a GREAT passive income stream because of the hands-off
delivery of your product to the customer. Many websites and sales platforms (like
Squarespace and Shopify) allow you to automatically have your digital product
emailed to the purchaser as soon as the transaction goes through. Which means
your work lies in creating the digital product, but after that you don’t have to
worry about distributing it. No manually emailing files, no shipping physical
products in the mail—nada. Just good old fashioned automation saving you time
+ energy while bringing in some extra income.

The range of digital products is vast within the creative business realm, but some
common + popular ones are templates, PDF guides, e-books, presets, digital stock
image packages (for sale on your own site), and graphics. And if you’re worried
about your digital product being distributed illegally, you can place a prompt at
checkout that requires purchasers to agree not to distribute the material.

Stock Photos
If you’re a photographer, selling image licensing on a stock photo website is a great
way to bring in some added income. You likely have hundreds (if not thousands)
of images you’ve shot for social media or for your blog that are just sitting around
taking up space on your hard drive. Instead of just sharing those images once on
the original social media or blog post, you can upload them to stock photography
sites and start putting them to work for you long-term.

Now, you might be thinking “well, I could just sell stock images on my own site rath-
er than using a third party website”— which is true! BUT, if you’re only selling them
on your site, you’re *only reaching the audience you already have*. Whereas if you
upload them to a stock website, you’re reaching agencies + marketing companies
that wouldn’t have come across your work otherwise.

Most stock photography sites do have specific file size + resolution requirements,
though, so you’ll likely have to go through your archived images and re-export
them to the specific required image size settings. But if you can incorporate this
into your routine, like doing a stock image export + upload day 1x a month, it can
be a great cash injection for your creative business.

Ev a K o s m a s F l o r e s
 Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs are perfect for earning income from things you already love
and recommend to people anyway. There’s a wide variety of affiliate programs out
there, but the general idea is that once you sign up as an affiliate, you’re given a
link that tracks your referrals, and you earn a percentage or a flat rate (depending
on the program) for every purchase made through your referral link.

I definitely recommend sitting down and making a list of the types of products
that are in line with your brand + you could become an affiliate for. For example,
I sell Lightroom presets, so it makes sense for me to be an Adobe affiliate and use
my affiliate link whenever I link to the Lightroom suite product. Or if there’s an
online course you’ve taken before and loved, you could become a course affiliate
(like I have for my programs). Or if you cite the tools + equipment used in your
recipes, you can become an amazon affiliate and link out the ingredients + gadgets
used in every recipe on your blog. The earnings opportunities are huge!

Running Ads on Your Site

If you have a food blog or moderately-trafficked website, incorporating ads onto
your site is a great way to bring in extra revenue to your business. You can run ads
on your site by signing up with an advertising network. The ad network will give
you a code to install on your site, and then the ads will autopopulate in agreed-up-
on areas of your website. Some platforms require you to have ads in specific places
on your site, whereas others are more flexible in terms of ad placement visibility.

As for the advertising networks themselves, the range is vast and it largely depends
on the content of your website (food vs lifestyle vs tech, etc), and they range in the
amount of traffic you need to have in order to be accepted into the program, too.

For example, with Google AdSense, there is no minimum monthly views for your
website to start showing ads. But with more specialized ad networks, like those
geared just towards food blogs, for example, they’ll have a minimum monthly page
view requirement that can range anywhere from 20k to 50k page views a month.
If you’re below that number, you can always start with Google AdSense and then
apply for a specialized ad network once your traffic has grown.

Ev a K o s m a s F l o r e s
 ACT I V E I N COM E
One-Off Physical Ser vice
The most common active income source for creative business owners is offering
a physical service, (like a photoshoot package, for example), and there is a lot of
work and overhead cost that goes into offering services for freelance clients. From
scoping out the project, to signing the contract, to delivering the service, to get-
ting payment, it’s an involved and hands-on income stream from start to finish.

For many creatives, this tends to make up the biggest chunk of their income. And
it makes sense, because of the large amount of hands-on labor involved in offer-
ing a physical service like photography or design, you can charge more for it than
your more passive offerings. But I *highly* recommend that you try not to center
all your income around this one single source — while it is a fun + exciting part
of creative running a creative business, it can be relatively unstable and unreliable,
with client contracts differing greatly from one month to the next. So do yourself
a favor and mix it up a bit based on some of the other options in this guide :)

Subscription-Based Ser vice

Having your own subscription service, where subscribers pay a monthly fee in
exchange for a product or service, is a bit of a happy medium between active and
passive income. You can create a more hands-on subscription service, like creating
a monthly or quarterly photography package subscription for clients with a year-
long contract, so you know you have a set amount of income coming from that
client for the year, and the client knows that they have a consistent amount of
new content coming their way, as well.

Or you could also create a slightly more passive subscription service, like offering
paid monthly meal plans and sending out PDFs of the meal plans + grocery lists
each month to your paid subscribers. This requires work in creating the digital
product each month, but since you can deliver that single product to multiple
subscribers without having to do the work all over again for each person, it can be
an extremely profitable revenue source.

Ev a K o s m a s F l o r e s
 Sponsored Content
If you have a moderate or engaged following on social media or on your website,
you can be paid by a company to act as your own personal advertising platform
for them via a branded blog post or social media post. Sometimes these are one-
offs, like a single social/blog post, or sometimes they’re more long-term contracts,
where you agree to creating multiple social/blog posts for the brand.

Typically, the larger + more engaged your following is, the more you will be paid.
But don’t feel like you need to have a ton of followers to start doing paid content,
micro-influencers are a real thing and brands are very focused on working with
them. The important thing is to make sure that the payment matches the amount
of work involved in that specific post. If the concept pitch involves additional
overhead costs, like ingredients, and the rate they’re offering is mediocre but you
still want to do it, push to be reimbursed for the expenses before signing the con-
tract. If you’re interested in doing sponsored content but don’t know how to put
yourself out there, add a line to your IG profile with your contact information for
partnerships, like “For partnerships, contact email@email.com”. You’ve got to tell
the world what you want in order to make it happen!

Hosting Workshops / Retreats

Hosting workshops or retreats are a great way to share your skills with interested
folks, bring in more income, and also create publicity and more word-of-mouth
for your services. People who attend will spread the word about you and your
event, (as long they enjoyed themselves of course!) And if you don’t feel like you
particularly have something to teach, you can always create a beautiful retreat
experience for your attendees that relies less on education and more on fun + cap-
tivating experiences, like a wine-tasting tour of Tuscany, etc.

There is, however, a lot of work that goes into planning events like these, and
the actual event itself takes a lot of energy as well. There’s also a good amount of
overhead costs to contend with, like venue rental, catering, and travel expenses,
so make sure you have a good budget in place with all the expenses figured in
**before** you price the registration fee and open ticket sales for your event. The
last thing you want to do is open ticket sales, sell out, and realize the amount you
charged wasn’t enough to cover all your expenses.

Ev a K o s m a s F l o r e s
 Hey there!

THANKS SO MUCH FOR

DIVING INTO THIS GUIDE!

I‘M EVA
I hope you found these income stream details helpful as you grow your creative business. I know it can
feel overwhelming at first, but putting into place some of these income diversifications will definitely
help you + your creative business blossom in the long run and set you up for success!

If you’re wondering “who is this lady?”, I’ll give you some deets! I help purpose-driven creatives (like
you!) hone their visual imagery + business, *without* sacrificing their passion, joy, or sanity.

I’m also re-rehabilitating 29 acres of clear-cut forest, an avid beekeeper, nature-lover, and I have a
definite hot sauce-collecting compulsion.

From picking up my first camera 18+ years ago to shooting my first cookbook to growing my busi-
ness from $0 to $500K over the past decade, I’ve been there in the trenches with you and *know* the
unique challenges facing creative folks, both artistically AND practically.

I’m no t h e re to b rag ab out i t — I’m he re t o show yo u w ha t’s po s s i b le .

LET‘S MAKE SOME MAGIC HAPPEN!

Ev a K o s m a s F l o r e s