Ep. 015 – 10 Things Craft Businesses can do to Create Recurring Income

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Makerspace episode 15. I am so excited to do this one, you guys, I can’t even tell you. So I have put together a group of. Things that you can do for recurring income or passive income, and I want to share those ideas with you. Now, a lot of these I have gotten from people that I know and some that I don’t, but it’s always good to have kind of that real life example.

[00:00:32] And so, yeah, let’s get into it. So I’m going to share at least nine ideas that I have for you to, as a crafter, that you can do to have that recurring income, that passive income, however you wanna call it, that other way of bringing money in every month.

1) Create Patterns

And first of all, we’re going to start with creating patterns. Now, this has been, this is an idea that’s been around for a while. But, uh, it is something that you can still absolutely do. None of her pattern’s been created and kind of a neat thing. I do know a local client that I had, he actually runs what used to be his mother’s doll making and bear making, uh, company, and she created the.

[00:01:27] Patterns for the bears and uh, the dolls and the doll clothes. And she grew it out of her garage, out of her basement and it’s now an online business and doing quite well. And he actually was a client of mine when I was a virtual assistant. And I’ve met her and she’s just a sweetheart, sweetheart of a gal.

[00:01:53] But, uh, just wanted to retire. And so now her son runs it. And then another example for doing this is Elizabeth Chappelle of Quilters Candy. And I’ll have all the links for all of these guys at, uh, in the notes. And you can go to VSM or the virtual street market.com and get all the links for these. But these, this is an example of one gal who made a business, not just of the patterns, but that’s one of her recurring incomes.

[00:02:25] And so that’s a good opportunity, a good way, if you have something that you make, you can create a pattern to make it and. Share that with DIYers. It’s also another option that you can do on Etsy. You can put those in your Etsy store.

2) Create Printables

And that kind of leads to number two is having printables. This is something that you can create and have online for people to buy.You don’t need to be awake. You don’t need to send them anything. It’s something that they download, they can print out right away. It’s up to them on the other side to do all the, the get all the ink or whatever they need. The printer. And one gal that I am actually friends with, her name is Jennifer Alfred of Jenny Lane Design.

[00:03:11] She has an Etsy store. She’s also got her own website. She spent a lot of 2020 creating some, uh, a l s, um, Pins and things that you can print out to wear that. Uh, you speak sign language and it’s a very cornered niche. And she has actually, she still is commenting that she still probably every day has a sale coming off of that.

[00:03:39] And it does take something to create these principles, but then to just post them and leave them and let them sit and let. Let people find them. And then Stacy Collins at Wilshire Collections is another one that has, uh, kind of figured out how to market these and do quite well with them. And then number three is an idea to do courses to teach the crafts that you know, and this is a good[00:04:10] Idea for recurring income.

3) Develop a Course

And um, a friend of mine who is going to be actually so far, I have listed two of the speakers that we’re going to have in our summit coming up in June. Erica Nash of erica nash.com. She has established basically a course on having courses and kind of showing you how to put them together, what kind of platforms to use, and kind of how to market those.

[00:04:42] And you can do this with a number of different things, whether you’re a seamstress or a crafter, wood burning. Anything. You can create courses and those courses can sit there again and people just buy them. You don’t have to be awake, you don’t have to download anything. That’s all happening on the other end of the purchaser.

4) Start a Podcast

[00:05:05] And then we have at number four, you can create a podcast. And one of my favorite gals to listen to is Stephanie Gas. She has developed a podcast and. She also has done courses in coaching, but she’s used this, the her podcast to. Kind of develop that community and develop the following that she’s got. And she’s really kind of made it her recurring income out of the podcast.You can use the podcast alone to create income, but you can also use it to market your crafts, your store, your shop, whatever it is that you need to market. It’s building that community and it’s another way to market.

5) Start a Blog

And she’s also kind of touched on blogging, which is number five, and I would say between Stephanie Gas and also Cammy Rojas, she is from T C N Design Studio and she has developed a blog from her website, and that’s been her recurring income and she’s got a lot of home interiors. She does recipes on her blog. It’s kind of the home, kind of the home creation type of thing. But she has developed courses with the blog, and again, it’s. You can develop ways to, um, create income from the blog as being like an affiliate marketer, something like that.

6) Affiliate Marketing

[00:06:46] When you have a following, there are companies that will pay you to market, and that’s an affiliate. Marketing is actually another way of. Uh, recurring income that you can get into. And I would say the best one for that would be Pat Flynn. He’s a little bit bigger to follow and, but he definitely knows what he’s doing when it comes to affiliate marketing. Stephanie Gas does do some mark, some affiliate marketing, but when it comes to having a blog website, that is something that you can do. Or you can create the blog to again, establish your market.

If you don’t want to be on a podcast, if you don’t wanna be on video, if you don’t wanna have to talk, you can just write out your ideas, your thoughts, your suggestions, whatever it is, and then you can also put your items on there to sell. You can have your own shop on your website, which of course you know, that’s my favorite anyway, is to get off of like the Etsy platform and have your own store because it’s your own real estate and blogging podcast. Those are all another way that you can market those.

7) Teach a Class

[00:08:04] And then number. Well, I guess since we were talking about affiliate marketing, we’ve jumped to number seven and I have kind of inadvertently added to my own list, so, so we have a bonus, a bo, a bonus as the affiliate marketing. Uh, teaching classes is the next one, and I would suggest Kelsey Hope as a good reference for this one.

[00:08:30] Now, this one’s a little bit different than courses just because courses kind of gives you that larger chunk. This is gonna take you a little bit longer to get through than teaching a class. You can teach a class in maybe an hour. A course to me is going to probably take. Kind of that two to three to five hour range.

[00:08:51] It’s gonna go really in depth on something. It’s gonna be multiple teaching lessons into one full course, if that kind of makes sense. Where a teaching, you can just put your class online and just have people download it as they want to, and it’s something quicker to get through, something a little more, more bite sized than a course.

[00:09:17] Um, also another one. So Casey Hope is, um, from Pizazz Online and she does classes for painting and she actually has kind of a neat setup, uh, a membership that she does that you can order what she’s going to be teaching and she’ll send you the materials and it’s kind of more of a subscription model. And another one that does this is Christie Hawkins of this social esl, and she also does painting classes. And if you follow, uh, either one of those gals online, they’re really fun to follow.

8) Memberships – Boxes

And that kind of leads me to my next one with the subscription membership with Sarah Williams, framed by Sarah. She does boxes of. The painting materials, the crafting materials, some of these gals will do quarterly, some of them will do monthly. It depends on the level that you wanna be in. If you’re in a V I P or more premier level, you can do that. You have those options. They usually will offer the courses and the the lessons as well. So, and also Tamara Bennett of the Southern Adornment. She also has a lot of painting lessons, uh, which is huge right now.

[00:10:40] So definitely look into those guys for lessen material if nothing else, but the painting is stinking adorable.

[00:10:53] So the memberships are kind of fun, and you can do these a lot of different ways. Some gals will teach a class and they’ll do it live, and some are free. Some are v i p only. Some, like I said, they’ll do monthly or quarterly boxes and you can download the recorded teaching lesson. And then there is also a platform called, um, Oh, what’s it called?

[00:11:23] It is Crate Joy. I don’t know a whole lot about Crate Joy. Maybe if one of my listeners does, you can kind of fill me in on it. But that one is actually, so they charge, uh, $25 a month and you basically set up your own box that you send out to people. It doesn’t have to be anything to do with crafting. It can be jewelry, it can be, uh, You know, clothes, it can be makeup, it can be anything like that.

[00:11:52] But if you are a crafter that you’d like to send out some pieces to people and, and you have a niche, maybe you are a jewelry maker and you’d like to have people sign up for that, um, monthly. Uh, box that you can send them what it is that you made for the month, and then you kind of have a, a better idea of how many to make and what you need to make, and you can set up that whole year in advance and you, you have a better idea of what it is that you’re going to make.So that’s an option.

Membership – Community

And then another membership option is having a community and a subscription to that community. Whether you’re selling a product or you are selling a lesson or like a service with our community, the maker space, we do that, we provide. Connection and we provide community off of the social media marketing and off of the social media platforms so that just in case they happen to go away or they start, uh, shutting anybody down, we have our own space for that community.

[00:13:01] And that is something that we do charge for. But that again, is, can be a recurring income. I use heartbeat. There’s also a good one on Circle, and I would honestly recommend both. I just happen to prefer Heartbeat. I kind of go for the underdog, and right now that’s what Heartbeat is.

9) Write an e-Book

And then number, I would say nine, is writing a book. You can write a virtual or a digital book. You don’t ha, it doesn’t have to be a hard cover or an actual physical book. And I know, I actually do know very uh, Close people to me that have done this. My own pastor from our church has done this. He’s published his own book, sells it on Amazon. He has had to do this a couple of times.

[00:13:56] He was kind of in the middle of writing one book when the publisher kind of shut down and he had to finish it on his own and figure that all out. And he still sells. He says he sells about, um, at least one a day, but he sells them overseas and he doesn’t have to send them anything. It just automatically gets downloaded.

[00:14:20] And that is an excellent source of recurring income. Erin from Maid Urban is also, uh, a great example of doing this on a craft version. I have spoken to Erin, we’ve never actually met, but she’s just a doll and super knowledgeable with, uh, craft. The craft world, the craft community, how to be in markets, and how to do fairs. She’s got tips on what to make every year, and she has some books that she has written online and I, I will link to those as well.

10) Create a YouTube Channel

And then my last tip is creating a YouTube channel. And this one’s kind of a fun one. Again, it kind of plays into the blog, the. This is basically that blog idea just with video. And so if you’re Kind of getting used to the video idea or you want to step out of your comfort zone. This is a good way to do it. I know for a fact that YouTube is a good way to do it and can actually create, if you create that community and you are consistent and you are online and you’re present, I know that this does work.

[00:15:35] I actually have a friend, he also goes to our church and he has created, uh, an amazing YouTube channel. It’s taken him about 10 years to do so, but he has, oh boy, at last count. I, I wanna say it was two. I have to find out. So he has a 838,000 thousand subscribers and over 219 million views. So he knows what he’s doing. So shout out to Chadtronic. He has got nothing to do with crafting, but he knows how to YouTube.

[00:16:15] But again, it’s just one of those cases where it’s somebody that I know and I can tell you like he’s not a made up character. He’s not. Famous or, you know, he’s not like, he’s just a normal guy who created this amazing YouTube channel and it’s, it is an option. It, it works. Um, another option for a YouTube channel would be Nate Woodbury, and I don’t know him personally, but he does have some videos on how to create your own YouTube channel, and he even has one on crafters creating a YouTube channel.

[00:16:53] So I would highly recommend going and checking him out. I hope that you have gotten something out of th this podcast. I hope that it has helped kind of give you some ideas on things that you can do for recurring and passive income, and yeah, you guys go light your world.