So you’ve got Photoshop skills. Now what? here are Top 10 ways to make passive income with Photoshop
You know that it’s a marketable skill. In fact, the leading US employment site Glassdoor named it one of the top skills for entry-level jobs.
But what if you could be making money with Photoshop every month, without putting in the work.
It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
But it’s not. It’s called passive income.
And people with Photoshop skills have every opportunity to get their hands on it.
Before we get into passive income for Photoshop, let’s first get into what it is.
What is passive income?
Passive income is when your earnings are not directly related to the actions you perform. You set it up once, and money comes rolling in, without having to do anything.
Let’s compare:
Active income: when you get paid for completing a certain task. It’s a hands-on task that requires you to be actively involved in producing the output that the customer has purchased. (Top 10 ways to make passive income with Photoshop)
Example: image post-production editing
Passive income: when your clients are able to pay you for a product that does not require your active involvement.
For example, your clients are able to buy your photo editing presets that is available 24/7 online, with an automated buying process
Now that you know that passive income is a great way to earn money while creating a product only once, here are 10 ways to earn passive income by selling your Photoshop art:
1. Create Photoshop tutorials and/or courses
When you’re a master at any skill, the obvious option to provide a product of value that people will pay for is to pass that skill on. and Photoshop is no exception.
You can teach others by recording your tutorials or courses and uploading them to existing course markets
For example, SkillShare and Udemy are great places to start.
If you have a devoted audience and brand, consider selling your courses on your own platform, directly to your audience. (Top 10 ways to make passive income with Photoshop)
Potential earnings: $200-3,000 /month
The SkillShare website states that new teachers earn on average $200 in their first months, with top-performing teachers making up to $3,000.
2. Create fonts and sell them online
Another great way to generate passive income is to create and sell your own fonts.
Places you can sell fonts:
Myfonts.com (50% commission)
Creative Market (30% commission)
Sellfy ($29/month + 2% transaction fee)
Potential earnings: Varied
Very few sources disclose the amount they’ve made through creating and selling fonts. The majority of sources say that font selling can make money, though unless you sell a font to a major company; it’s very likely you won’t be making astronomical amounts. However, it is possible to make a living.
3. Sell your Photoshop presets and LUTs
When you’ve mastered the art of color grading and you’ve got your tried and true presets and LUTs, you’ve essentially got a new byproduct that can add value to other people’s lives.
Sell your presets online to help amateur photographers attain the same effects that your professional eye has created. (Top 10 ways to make passive income with Photoshop)
A great example of a person selling their LUTs and presets is Sorelle Amore, who uses her YouTube audience following to popularize her presets collection “Hipster AF” and to sell on Instagram.
Potential earnings: up to $100,000 /year
4. Create and sell stock images
If you have a ton of images that are just taking up space in a hard drive, why not put them to work and offer them up as stock images?
Though these days stock photography sites, like Shutterstock and 500px, have developed higher standards and don’t just take anything, rejecting about as many images as they accept.
Pro tip: because of the high volume of stock photos being uploaded, it’s suggested to keep uploading regularly to ensure that your percentage of the market doesn’t decrease with time.
Potential earnings: up to $500 /month
5. Create and sell graphics
Photoshop can be used to create all manner of graphics, not only photographs.
A great way to set up an additional stream of passive income is to sell Photoshop art – create graphics that are ready-made and sold online to anyone who may need visual elements.
Graphics can range widely:
Icons
Decorative images
Stock illustrations
Desktop/mobile wallpapers
Textures, shapes, stamps
Etc.
Potential earnings: $5,000
For example, the creative collective “Offset” offers a variety of stamps, textures, shapes, image masks, and even retro diagrams that buyers can use to enhance their digital images. In this article, they describe how they market their products and get the word out.
6. Create and sell website themes
With over half a million websites created every single day, it’s reasonable to assume that website design is also in demand.
With a growing amount of non-technical or design-skill-oriented individuals trying their hands at creating their own website, an entirely new industry came to be – the industry of website themes.
Website themes let you create the design for a website, and use that theme over and over again.
You’ll be able to create the website layout in Photoshop; however, to create a usable theme, you’ll need to turn the design into code. If you’re not skilled at coding, consider hiring a freelancer for the job.
You can sell them at a variety of locations:
Theme forest (for WordPress themes) – 12.5%-55% commission
Creative Market (Magneto and other platform themes) – 30% commission
Sellfy (for any platform themes) – $29 /month + 2% transaction fee
Potential earnings: varied
As with any digital goods sales, the results are varied and depend on a wide variety of factors.
The top-selling Theme forest template Avada is making upwards of $20 million, having sold over 440,000 copies of the theme for $60 per piece. That is, of course, an outlier.
In fact, of the 8,000 WordPress themes on the platform, only 19 crossed the $1M threshold in 2016, and the average theme that sells over 100 licenses has taken 2.5 years to do it. Though you may not be making millions (at first, at least), a solid earning is certainly in reach.
7. Sell designs on print on demand sites
If printmaking is your thing, you might consider selling your products on print on demand (POD) sites.
The concept is simple:
You upload images of your designs to either a print-on-demand site or your own website.
The image is displayed for sale on products of your choice that the POD platform offers (common products include posters, mugs, pillows, etc.).
Visitors purchase the design on a product that they would like.
The POD provider prints and ships the product to the customer.
There are different print-on-demand sites that you can make use of, many of which are very similar.
Some popular sites include:
Potential earnings:
On POD sites, you’ll be earning royalties on sold items. Most sites let you set your own profit margin that you’d like to receive, on top of the POD provider’s base price. So your profit margin depends on you.
8. Create and sell document templates
When in the business of designing with Photoshop, the sky’s the limit as to what you can do.
So why not expand to creating different document templates? People often look to ready-made templates to kick their performance up a notch and look a tad more professional, put together, or thoughtful.
Here are some ideas of document templates that you can sell online to create passive income:
Resume/CV templates
EBook templates
Email templates
Magazine layouts
Wedding, baby shower, bridal shower invitations
Etc.
Potential earnings: $5,000
9. Printable planners, journals, workbooks
Creating printable planners and journals, in a plethora of different niches, is a way to provide great value with a product that can be infinitely scaled.
If you have any other niche you’re interested in, you can put together and sell a journal or planner for your specific topic.
Say, for example, you’re passionate about organizing your workday and developing a workload to create sustainable income – a challenge that many creators may have. You can create a printable workbook that sets goals, challenges, etc.
Etsy is one marketplace where you can go to get inspired as to the different kinds of workbooks, planners, and journals that are available, and at what price points.
Potential earnings: up to $2,000 /month
10. Create and sell mockup images
Mockups are the potential holy grail of digital products.
There are so many cases when they’re in demand. From online sellers using print on demand to branding specialists who need to demonstrate their new-found brands to clients, to software products that have to be demonstrated on screens.
Potential earnings: $500 – $30,000 /month