Six side hustles for artists, designers and dreamers

“Follow your passion.” – Random Joe on X

If it was that easy, eh?

Well, turns out it just might be.

We are in the age of the internet, where borders know no bounds, ideas have no limit and passion has no restraint. A creative spark can light a whole new means of earning money on the side. The internet has democratised access to large user bases.

Big corporations can no longer play the spoilsport and keep content creation restricted to a select few. Several new platforms and spaces have emerged as “distributors,” allowing the creative spirits from even the most obscure ends of the earth to showcase their talent.

If you have no dearth of talent and a bit of time with a pinch of passion, there are many avenues to earn some extra cash.

1. Sell Digital Assets

You no longer have to pursue galleries to showcase your art. The internet offers a permanent home to display your wares. Sites like Gumroad and Etsy are known to be marketplaces with decent traffic for such digital products. You can sell stuff like creative fonts, wacky illustrations, cool posters, book covers, trendy icons, funky audio and even digital animations to people around the world.

Be sure to focus on niches with a cult like following. This could be an anime show like One Piece or AFL-themed assets focusing on particular teams or players. The most common use case of such digital assets is gifting, so ensure that you also add on elements of personalisation, like adding a name or a date, if possible, to the graphic.

2. Freelance Writing

Be a wordsmith and earn a pretty penny while you’re at it. There is no shortage of writing jobs in Australia and around the world. Freelancing to write has been a popular choice for well over a decade now. While the AI threat may seem to destroy this path, no large language model (LLM) can replace the nuance, flair and context of a great human writer.

Content completely generated by AI without any human touch also seems not to be so good for SEO ranking, as well, so it seems unlikely that our AI overlords will completely take over this field. The focus should be on playing around with different tones and styles of writing and cementing your expertise in a particular field, like healthcare, marketing or even more granular ones like medtech. It is best to work with agencies in the beginning rather than hunting and bidding for projects in the beginning to get in grip on the rigours of the gig.

3. Sell Print-On-Demand Products

Imagine transforming your humorous one-liners into printable t-shirts, mugs, phone covers and banners. And all this is done without the hassle of inventory management. Say hello to the world of print-on-demand. Established companies like Teespring, Redbubble and Printful handle the manufacturing and the shipping so that you can focus on designing and selling.

Having a bit of knowledge about digital marketing and e-commerce management could really help you monetise your design skills. Try to mix your output with a bunch of evergreen one-liners and event-specific designs, like the Matildas winning a major tournament or Coldplay coming to town. You could even bank on widely popular memes and trends on social media (the NFT Nyan cat comes to mind as an example). There are literally no limits in this space.

4. Create Online Courses

Fancy a course on AI prompting, but finding limited options suitable for students in the market? Create a course yourself and publish it on sites like Coursera and Udemy to create a sales funnel. After that, it is all about marketing on social media and establishing yourself as a thought leader to sell your course. A decent web camera and tools like Loom should be enough to start the process. You can even leverage online course creators to speed up the process and set a solid framework to build the course upon.

Placing a similar quantum of effort in determining the topic of the course could be a shrewd move, as there is no paucity of courses on broad and generic topics in this day and age. LinkedIn is an underrated place when it comes to marketing and spreading the word about your offering, so feel free to utilise the same.

5. Dabble in Podcasting

Podcasting is all the rage these days. More and more Australians are tuning in to podcasts every year, with two million Aussies listening every single day. While going solo is always an option, partnering with a co-host or lining up guests from a particular field could help avoid listener fatigue. You can talk about anything under the sun, from mining to sports and business, to the cinema. Selecting something that genuinely intrigues and excites you would be a good call, as it can drive you to be disciplined when the results don’t always reflect your effort. Learn the basics of audio production and work on the little details, like episode cover, to drive attention.

6. Start a Blog or Newsletter

Writing will never go out of fashion. Nor will reading good pieces (you’re reading one right now, aren’t you?). Platforms like Substack and Medium are a great segue to start your writing journey through newsletters. Wix offers the chance to create visually stunning sites with a no-code user interface (UI). Contrary to popular opinion, people still have the habit of reading stuff online.

If you can figure out a solid area of interest for yourself and others, you are good to go. SEO skills can play a huge part here, especially if you go down the website route. You could have a user-supported model through Patreon or strategically place ads in your content to bring home the money.

There are plenty of options to pursue in the hustle economy. People who know their way around words can turn to writing jobs or start their own newsletter or blog. The artsy ones can create creative digital assets and even put them on physical products. Digitally savvy folks can turn to social media and graphic design. The talkative one can dabble in podcasting. Don’t be afraid to try out new things and learn fast on the job.