How to Diversify your Income in a Small Creative Business

It’s a phrase that’s uttered a lot: "Diversifying Income" but it is often shrouded in business talk which turns most of the creative sector (myself included) right off.  But, when you move away from the exclusionary jargon, it is absolutely key to building a thriving creative business.

When done right, in a way that suits your business and feels aligned with your strengths and values, having several income streams coming in gives you more stability.  It helps you weather the storms of (what feels like never-ending) uncertainty, allows you to grow your business and also provides flexibility.

Also, as AI and other factors in our swiftly evolving economy gain an increasing impact on how we work, having several ways of generating money is a very good idea, future-proofing you to some extent from new developments.

Let’s put “Pivot” in the bin

I’m potentially going to make you shudder slightly here by mentioning the word “pivot”.  Remember that old chestnut from 2020?  If you were self-employed during that full-on year, then you will certainly recall it. However, I’m now going to encourage you to pop that word straight in the bin.

It is not about pivoting, it’s about doing things “as well as”.  The more strings to your bow, flowers in your vase or monkeys on your trampoline, the better.

(I apologise, I got a bit carried away with the analogies there.  I do really like the image of monkeys on the trampoline though!)

It is not about pivoting from one business model to another, but to increase your offering by adding in extra things which can cater to your ideal clients in a different way,

Adding value and engagement pathways

I recently had a lovely Instagram live chat with Samantha Boot and we were discussing just this: how, in this case, online courses could complement and enhance what you do, provide a new way for people to engage with your work and also, perhaps most importantly, gives you the opportunity to earn more whilst doing less. This is a concept rather rare in the creative industries, but ultimately, isn't this what all small business owners want?  There is no shame in striving for that, despite the starving masochist artist image we've been sold for years.

Semi-passive and passive income

It’s not just about expanding your services either - if you’re a graphic designer, adding website design to your offer doesn’t diversify things much.  You are still trading time for money and if you’re ill and unable to work, neither of those services get delivered.  The key is to develop different ways of generating income, especially those which aren’t time based at the point of purchase. What can you do which involves preparing something in advance and then automating most of the sales process?

Online courses are a good one here, especially for creatives.  How many times have you delivered an excellent live workshop, which you put heart and soul into creating, only for it to happen once and never again?  What a waste of your resources, time and expertise!  Turn that course into a pre-recorded resource that people can enjoy whenever and wherever they want.

What about printing on demand or selling digital products?  Another couple of potential income streams that don’t rely on hours of your time for each customer.

Collaboration and affiliates

I often talk about good piracy and how to gently rebel against systems and rules that don’t really suit you.  A very good lesson to learn from the golden age of piracy in the 18th century, is that they kept their businesses light, responsive and worked with a small team.  When they needed to achieve a big thing, though, like taking down the Royal Navy, they would create a flotilla of lots of pirate crews.  They totally got the freedom of self-employed/freelance life, but also leaned heavily on collaboration when it was needed.

Who could you collaborate with to create a new income stream?

One way of doing this would be through affiliate marketing.  This is fairly new in the creative sector.  I’ll be honest, I’m still getting my head round it, but there’s huge potential here.  For example, I’m planning in the future to offer affiliate opportunities for people who have previously done whatever course I’m re-launching.  If anyone signs up to the course through their link, then they get a decent percentage of the sale.  It’s a pretty easy job to be an affiliate and it earned me a few hundred pounds last year.  If I focus my energies, it could be much more than that.

Side shoots

Perhaps there’s a side shoot to your business? What skills do you have in your wider life that could be utilised? 

I know a lot of advice is around being very specific and niching in your business.  However, I’ve ignored all that advice and brought lots of strands of work together from coaching to beadwork retreats to designing innovative heritage visitor experiences to facilitating board development days for charities.  They all connect, albeit loosely, through galvanising people into action and reconnecting people with their creativity.  Perhaps there are some strands that you could bring in that are connected through a golden thread of a theme?

Repackaging

Or, is there something you could repackage to make it more attractive to a different sector? 

Sometimes it’s not about reinventing the wheel, but just taking what you’ve already got and seeing if it’ll work in a different format (like turning a live workshop into a pre-recorded accessible online course) or rewriting the sales pages for a product to suit a different audience.  An arts workshop could become a corporate wellbeing activity, for example.

Strategy

Ultimately, whatever you decide to add into your business, strategy is queen.

If you don’t know who your ideal clients/customers are, then you would be shooting in the dark without a head torch.  Knowing who you want to work with and what problems of theirs you are solving, will help you diversify your income effectively and in a sustainable way.

Really drilling down and knowing your “Why”, who you are trying to attract and the difference you’ll make to them and the world at large will help you decide what to do first.  We’re not short of excellent ideas as creatives, the trick is to know how to filter them, align them to your strategy, accept you can’t do all of the things immediately and take meaningful action.

If you need help with your strategy, I’m adding new material to my library of useful things each week in my Coaching With Sarah programme.  Not only will you get a focused creative challenging cheerleader working with you one to one, you also get access to a myriad of creative business and life coaching resources to help you get your strategies in place to really maximise your potential.

And, if an online course is surfacing as an excellent place to start to diversify, then check out the Marvellous Online Course Course where I take you, step-by-step through building your first course, cutting out the unnecessary stuff and showing you how you can create excellent courses cheaply, creatively and in a short amount of time.

February 2024