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6 Ways to make income without physical products – digital products and passive income ideas!

And so I know, a lot of people are looking for ways to add digital products to their lineup if they have physical goods, so I’ve got six different ways to add income without selling physical products, and these are really great career paths.

There are a lot of people who dive headlong into one of these niches and really go for it and make full-on careers out of it. So, let’s talk about it now, alright, so, first and foremost, if you are an illustrator or a designer or a letterer freelance, this is probably a no-brainer. But if you’re someone like me, I used to freelance a long time ago, and I didn’t really like it, but out of necessity, a lot of people are coming back to it and a lot of people make their entire careers.

They have booming careers just from freelancing. Like that’s, that’s just what they do and it’s amazing, and so, if you’re looking for resources for that, you can firstly, email your friends and contacts. Just let them know hey, you know, I’m looking for freelance work, here’s my portfolio and you know, do you have any leads for me. Do you have any connections that might be good, always reach out to your friends first, because they might have a bead on something that you don’t even know about.

So it’s good to just put it out there and let people know that you are freelancing because people won’t know otherwise put yourself out there. Another way you can kind of find work and get resources is through your local AIGA and there are used to be meetups. Oh not so much anymore, but they have lots of really great digital resources and community there. So look up AIGA in your area and they will definitely have something for you.

Ok number two is patreon, so patreon is something that I have been thinking about. Getting for a long time and haven’t pulled the trigger and I think I might get into it now – I don’t know it – then I’m going to list of things to do, but patreon is really great for pin club sticker clubs, post car clubs, print clubs. You can do physical products and send things out monthly to subscribers at different tiers, but you can also do things like you can have exclusive podcasts or Q & A or draw with me sessions.

What else I wrote something else down: oh yeah, exclusive, newsletters exclusive lives, stuff like that that you can give to people wallpapers downloads, think of them all the time and things like that can be rewards for people pledging and supporting you on patreon, so some resources for That you can patreon has a lot of really great resources on their blog anyway, a skill share class by someone from patreon you can do.

I have a link for two months free on Skillshare down below, so you can check that out, and I know I love Fran Fran, nerd and I’ll put a link to her article too about how kind of she runs her own patreon, which is really interesting. It’s nice to see behind the scenes of someone who is so successful and kind of how they manage their time, and things like that. So I think patreon is a really great way, and I know she has been really brands been really grateful for having that income during this time.

So her supporters, even if it’s just you know a couple bucks a month. You know if you have enough, that’s huge and you’re able to you, know, make your art and do your stuff and still create, and I think patreon is a great thing. Okay, the third thing you can do is add downloads to your shop. So this can be everything from downloadable, coloring sheets you can have. Let me check my list because I have a whole list that I made for you guys.

We’ve got printable prints, actual prints, someone can print out postcards stickers, just tell people to print it out on sticker paper, and then they can cut them out. This is cutting out. Apparently, banners Photo Booth props. How fun with Photo Booth props be right now, when you’re stuck it home, you can make your own kind of photo booths and take silly pictures to pose things like that. You could do wrapping paper into greeting cards photographs that people can print out and then you can get into the pattern so, like embroidery patterns cross stitch patterns, if you crochet and knit at all, you could sell those.

There are marketplaces places like Ravelry, where you can sell patterns, and things like that. So there are lots of different things you can do to add. Downloadables for a couple of bucks into your shop. Etsy also allows downloads, which is really great, so I actually have a list. I made a little checklist for you, so you can download that below so check that out that way, you don’t have to remember, and I mean I’m checking my notes too, because there’s so many different things to do so.

I’ve put them all in a checklist for you so download that below alright. The fourth option is a virtual workshop. So if you have a skill or something that you can teach you can do this pretty easily. I mean I have my courses that I teach and I use a specific platform and have websites and all that stuff. But you don’t have to go that far with it. You can just open a Facebook group and just have a pop-up Facebook group go and teach something live or go put up a article that you’ve already made and chat with people, and then people can pay you for access to that.

So you could have a workshop that you charge like 25 to 100 bucks floor depending on what the subject is. So you can use a Facebook group for that. You could even like have a special email list and send out like unlisted YouTube articles, so they have access to it. You could do a YouTube or an Instagram live, and then people can pay for access to that article after you do it, and but I do think probably the Facebook is probably the easiest and cheapest probably quickest way to get that out there and get that done.

So start brainstorming on things that you can teach other people, because there is definitely room for that right now: okay, the fifth one is kind of a big one and a little bit more difficult, but it is a way to go. You can license your artwork, so there are people who make their entire careers out of licensing artwork. I actually purchased a course called art licensing for letterers, and I reached out to the creators of the course Katy from Katy made that and she has a friend that she did it with, and I asked her like: is this just for letterers, or can this be For illustrators in general – and she said it was great for really everybody – they were speaking to letterers because that’s what they do and but I’m not really a literary.

But I wanted to make sure before I purchase the question she shot it when she said she said it would work for anyone so and that’s something to think about too. If you want to look into art licensing that way, it’s that’s when larger corporations or other businesses purchase the rights to use your work on their stuff, and that way you don’t have to do any of the product production they’re, really just paying you for permission to Use your artwork, so that is definitely another way to go and it kind of goes into my sixth thing, which is print-on-demand, so you can use things like red bubble.

Society6 spoon flower printful places like that who you kind of have your own sort of storefront and you put your designs up and people can pick whatever they want to put your work on or you can have kind of presets things that you have chosen and then They handle all the production of it. You get a much smaller percentage of the actual sale because they are handling all of the printing, all of the production all of the shipping everything.

But there are a lot of people who make a ton of money from those shops. All of this comes with a caveat that you need to have an audience and you need to be promoting yourself. I don’t want you to feel bad about promoting yourself even right. Now the way things are in the world, while I’m filming this – and you check out my article about not feeling salesy when you go to sell, because that will kind of help flip your mindset a little bit around selling and make you feel a little bit better Because you have something to offer, you have something fun.

You have something that can put a smile on people’s faces right now and that’s really really important. Okay and in terms of building your audience, I do have a free webinar all about building your Instagram audience specifically. So you can check that out below and it’s got lots of really practical tips. Lots of high level stuff tips on how to photograph even tips on engaging captions and I’ve got a little bit about your email list in there as well.

Because I think that’s super important right now so definitely check that out, because you do need to any of these options that you choose. You still need to be promoting them to your audience, because you can’t just expect to like put a spoon flower shop up and then just have it go. Gangbusters, like you, still need to put the work in, but if you put the work in and whenever you feel like focusing on, you know kind of go all in and figure it out and do it for yourself.

And then you can have digital products to sell. On top of physical stuff – and I think I can really help so yeah so give me a like and a subscribe, our secret emoji for the article is pizza because we’ve been eating a lot of pizza during our quarantine. Yeah. So give me a pizza if you made it this far. If you found this useful, let me know below which one of these you think you would want to get into or if you’ve already done this kind of thing and let me know which ones are working for you and we can talk about it in the comments.

I would love to have a good discussion about ways that we can all add digital products to our pin of physical products shops and and how to make that work. So yeah and I have the check list down below of the different kind of downloads. You can add to your shop so check that out too just check out the links below I’ve got a lot of links below you guys. So I’m give me a like and subscribe and thank you so much for reading.

I truly appreciate it stay safe, wash your hands and I will see you next week why

Website design packages are a great way to improve your digital marketing image.

 

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Online Marketing

Where to Market Enamel Pins – Best Ways to Get Seen!

You have been working on your pins. You’Ve been setting up your shop and now I’m going to show you exactly where to be: to increase your reach and to get your stuff in front of excited customers, but before we do that, go ahead and hit that bell, so you could be notified subscribe. I do articles every Friday, so do all that and then come back and then I’m going to show you exactly where you need to be to sell your pins.

Okay, so you’re ready to start marketing your pins but you’re not quite sure where to start, except for Instagram, I’m going to get to more Instagram tips in a second, but there is more to marketing than just that one app. So, by the end of this article, I am going to show you exactly where you need to be and exactly what you need to do to get seen on multiple platforms and increase your reach to sell your pins okay, so the first up is Instagram duh.

I’Ve talked about this before I have a whole webinar that you can read all about tips to grow your following on Instagram, but the biggest thing I want you to know about in this particular article about marketing on Instagram is to figure out what is working for. You so this is different for everybody. Everyone’S audience is different. What they respond to is different, so I want you to go into your analytics and I want you to look at the things that are giving you the most engagement, and I want you to look at the things that are giving you the most likes and the Really important ones are the click throughs, so those are the ones that people are looking at and clicking through your profile and they’re, going to your shop so figure out what those are along with followers.

You want to see the stuff that brings in more followers, but once you get those followers there, you want to see what they’re engaging with and you want to see what is converting them and it’s making them click over into your shop. So when you see and organize those things – and you can see the pins and the photos that people are most likely to click over to your website, you can duplicate those kind of photos.

You can share those same photos again. Don’T do it like super soon, but you can absolutely reuse photos every few months and you can duplicate the kind of subject matter. That’S in those photos and the type of caption that you use – and you can use that to your advantage, because you know it’s already working okay. So let’s talk about Pinterest for a second. This is a platform that I have been experimenting with, and I’ve been really excited with the results of it.

Pinterest is basically just a search engine and there are entire courses. You could go into how to use Pinterest for your business, but for again the purposes of this article we’re going to take a higher-level look. So Pinterest is a search engine, so that means you can put a pin up and then it’s there. So if people are looking for it and if people are looking for certain things, if you’ve got keywords, if people are responding to photos that are similar to yours, Pinterest is going to show them.

They’Ve got their own algorithm too, so you can utilize Pinterest for your shop by creating a board for just your shop, so you can have all of your own products in there. You could have a board for your Instagram. You can cross promote on both of those you can repin pins from each one. You can have boards that are themed, so I have one that’s like super cute pins cap, pins and I’ve gone kind of granular with the types of boards that I have around pins, and so in those boards you can pin other people’s stuff, which is awesome because You’Re supporting the community and you’re, showing your followers and just people scrolling through Pinterest, really awesome fun stuff.

That also works with your own aesthetic and you can put your own stuff in there too. So I think it’s really really fun. It takes kind of minimal effort to get used to it. Of course, there are people, it’s their whole job. A lot of people go really hard into Pinterest, but for our purposes I think it’s good. If you want to just dip your toe in a little bit see how it goes and make just a handful of boards and pin stuff and just kind of read.

I haven’t even really touched mine in a couple of months and my views. My monthly views keep growing, which is pretty awesome, so I would definitely recommend taking some time once a week every couple of weeks and just go through, pin some stuff. That’S been on your Instagram pin some stuff, that’s in your shop and just kind of get the pins flowing on Pinterest and then see you’re, just kind of see your accounts go up.

I think Pinterest is about the fourth or fifth referred to my site. So I definitely get sales from Pinterest, so it’s definitely not as much as Instagram or direct traffic, but why not take advantage of it if it just takes a couple minutes um every few weeks to kind of dip your toe in and try it out so definitely Recommend being on Pinterest, for that reason, okay, are you kind of excited to try Pinterest now, like I was on the fence about it, but once I started doing it, I got really excited about it.

Oh, so let me know in the comments if you are either on Pinterest already and are like duh. Of course you should be on there and put your pins on there or, if you’re, not on Pinterest, yet and you’re like yes, give me this. So tell me down below what you think. Okay, this is a big one, email lists, so I talked about this a bit in my webinar to again linked below all that jazz, but email lists are so important.

The thing about social media is that we don’t own that platform at all, so Instagram could decide that it doesn’t want to post photos anymore and then what do we do? You know um. So the thing about email lists is you you own that list? These are people that have told you directly. They want to be on your email list. They want to hear from you. They want to get your content, so it’s really important to take care of these people.

So what I like to do is I try really hard to email. My people once a week with just some little notes. I try to send them coupons every now and then that are just for email subscribers, so they have a reason to be there, and that is kind of the biggest thing that gets people on email lists. So if you’re not quite sure what to do for an opt-in, I like to offer a discount code for people who you sign up for my list and just treat them well like these are your people.

These are your biggest supporters. I know when I send an email out to my subscribers, then I’ll get sales like these are the people that support me more than anyone else and they’re the ones that want to jump on any kind of specials or promotions or new products that I’ve got going On like these are my people and I love them so take care of them and if you’re worried about emailing people – and you haven’t done it in a while just do it, it doesn’t matter.

If an subscribe, the unsubscribe, it’s fine, they wouldn’t have bought anything anyway. So, who cares so I I definitely recommend having an email list. You can start by doing MailChimp. That’S what I started out using and they’re really great they’re super easy to use. You can integrate them and pretty much any selling platform at all. It’S really important start. Your email is start it now. Okay, this last one is a little different.

I think you should always market yourself in person too so have business cards, I’m terrible at always having business cards, but I do have special logo pins that I send out in orders. You know over a certain amount, you get a free local pin. So I keep those with me at all times and they’ve got my the name of my shop on the back of the pin and if anyone comments – and this has been huge since I’ve gotten my eita bags.

But people always comment on my bags because it’s still a pretty new thing and people are super into pins and when they see someone with a pink collection they’re, like I understand you, okay, no and whenever anyone reaches out to me or taps me on the shoulder. It was like, I love your bag. That’S awesome, then. First thing I do is say thanks. I’Ve made it which is like the best feeling in the world, but it’s also really cool.

When you can hand them a free pin and be like here are. My shop is on the back of this and definitely check it out. I was in Target the other day and this gentleman comes up and it’s like. Can I take a picture of your bag? For my daughter, she really likes pins and I was like sure, and then we ended up chatting. I gave him a pin from off of my bag and then he they ended up coming to Flair fest that weekend and they hung out and supported all the other artists there.

So you can’t you can’t underestimate in-person stuff, so it’s the same when you’re at shows always have your business cards. I don’t know it’s just been really fun talking to people about my shop and explaining what I do and having my eat a bag there with my pins. It’S a really great way to like help. People understand, because a lot of times you say I make enamel pins and they’re like, but if you have a physical thing to show them, then it really helps.

So I think it just helps build a deeper connection with just other human beings and with your local community, which is really great and yeah. I don’t know I just think having that physical pin, the one I have is really small. It doesn’t have to be super expensive, but I think having the pin is just this kind of extra over the edge when you give someone a free pen, because I get really excited about it.

So I don’t think, there’s anything wrong with Tooting your own horn in person with actual human beings. Okay, so we talked about Instagram. So I want you to go into your analytics and I want you to take a look and see which posts are giving you the most clicks and the most engagement. These are really important, so you can duplicate that kind of thing for later. I want you to take a look at Pinterest and if you’ve already got one set up, awesome, let’s be friends on Pinterest and if you don’t take a look around explore, you can look at my profile just to see an example of what someone’s doing with pins On that site, so take a look and dip.

Your toe in, I think, it’ll be really good for email list. If you don’t have an email list, get one uh-huh and if you haven’t emailed your people in a while, do it and then and don’t be shy when you’re in person with someone give them a business card, explain what you do be excited about it and be Confident in your work, because you’re awesome and you own your own business and of course you should holler about that.

Okay, so do you feel good about those options? It’S not too much! It’S totally doable and I actually go into more depth. As I said before and my webinar the five ways to grow your following fast on Instagram, I talk more in depth about email lists on there too. This is my go-to webinar. It’S time well, tons of free content go read it already. It’S really important. It’S a great webinar, full of so much stuff that you can really put into action immediately to start growing your followings, so do it go check it out if you like this article, go ahead and take a screenshot and share it on on Instagram on your stories.

Let me know: what’s helped you like this article subscribe, tell your friends all of that good stuff and and give me a party horn to give me a party horn emoji in the comments below. If this has been helpful, let me know what you think. I would love to talk about it. I love talking about social media and marketing and all that stuff. So let me know, I hope you liked it and I will see you in the next article bye,