These 5 art revenue streams made me $151,414 last month

If you think making six

figures a month from art

sounds too good to be true, I get it.

But I'm going to show you

how I made $151,414

last month

from five different revenue streams.

I'm going to break down

exactly where that came from,

what it cost me,

how much was profit

and why some of these revenue streams

work way better than others

and how you can get

started with them too.

Because if someone like me

who never went to art or business school

can figure this out,

maybe there's something useful here

for you too.

Before you click away

thinking like this is some guru nonsense.

Let me be super clear about something.

This took me

almost 20 years to figure out.

When I first started

my very first jewelry business in 2006,

it was honestly a hot mess.

I was making products nobody wanted.

I couldn't

find my customers online

and I was pricing everything wrong.

That same business actually

lost money last month.

When you see a number like $150,000,

I know it might sound hard to believe,

but here's the thing.

Neither my husband nor

I went to art school.

In fact, I was terrible at art in school.

I cannot draw or paint.

I have too much fear around it.

We both learned Photoshop online.

And like

for me,

I learned polymer clay sculpting

from YouTube videos,

Google

books, asking questions

and a lot of trial and error.

When I started, my work looked terrible,

but I kept practicing and I got better.

It took me

6 to 8 years to make a full time

income from my first business

because I made

every single mistake possible,

which we will talk about.

But each business after that got easier

because I learned what actually works.

Having multiple

revenue streams

isn't just about making more money.

Of course, that's nice.

Who would ever say no to that?

And I know that a lot of people's

objection is

if you're doing so well

with one revenue stream,

why do you need another?

It's really all about

not putting all your eggs in one basket

some months Etsy sales tank,

sometimes ad costs go up.

Having different income sources

means I am not panicking

when one thing goes wrong.

The next thing to point out

is we made all that money

while only working part time hours.

A lot of these income streams

for us is pretty leveraged income,

which is kind of like passive income,

but not exactly

in that

we don't have to show up

for the money to come in. Right?

It just comes in

whether or not we show up.

But we do, of course,

still have to do some work.

A while back

I documented where my time

was going for an entire week

and I was shocked

that I consistently overestimated

how much time

I actually spent working

because I usually feel like

I got so much done

at the end of the day.

I work on average 3 to 5 hours

per day on my businesses.

The rest of my time is spent

on auditions.

I'm an actor here in Los Angeles

doing creative care stuff,

which is like self-care,

but for my creativity,

reading, playing video games.

I love, love,

love playing

games, taking classes, learning

masterminding with friends,

which I also love doing

because they help expand my mind

and give me different perspectives.

I love also going out

to try new restaurants in town.

Anyway, all of this

money was possible for us to make

without working

full time hours

while we get to live this full life

outside of work.

But keep in mind

that it did

take as many years of business

experience to get to here.

And we also do have a team

that supports us.

So let's break down

the first revenue stream.

You've probably heard

that Etsy is oversaturated

or that it's impossible

to make real money there anymore.

The problem, though,

isn't that Etsy doesn't work

or that it's too competitive,

which is actually true on both accounts.

But I find the bigger problem

tends to be that people get

emotionally trapped by it.

So let me tell you

what happened to my husband

so with one of our stores

selling personalized

art using print on demand.

This business made

$26,200 last month on Etsy alone.

Now, when we started in 2019,

we set up our own website from day one,

and then a few months later

we also started selling on Etsy.

Here's where things got interesting.

Etsy has this like incredible allure.

It is super easy to set up.

There is a built in audience

and you can literally make your first sale

the next day

if you have good products

and photos and good keywords.

And you have, okay

maybe it's not as easy

as I'm making it sound to be.

But my husband did exactly that, right?

He started seeing a lot of sales

really fast on Etsy.

Now I teach people to do more

of what works,

and a lot of people say that too,

and it's usually good advice.

But my husband then took that to mean

I should focus even more on Etsy

because it's doing well.

Sales were coming so easily there.

So the thought is

this is where I need

to spend my time, right?

So he started building

all of these systems

and automations for Etsy.

He would research

the latest

Etsy tips,

optimize listings, constantly,

try to crack the algorithm

and like

really learn

to understand what it cares about.

Meanwhile, our own website,

the thing we actually owned,

started getting zero attention.

Then something happened that I see happen

all the time.

Etsy sales start dropping.

The algorithm change

competition increased, the economy.

Who knows what happened?

But his response was very human.

When something stops working,

something that used to work

well especially

we feel compelled to fix it

right?

So he doubled down

even more on Etsy

and it became

like an abusive relationship.

Etsy would give him

just enough success to keep him hooked.

Then it would pull away.

He would get frustrated, work

harder on Etsy,

and then completely ignore our website.

Our website traffic and sales

started tanking

because nobody

was paying attention to it.

I have seen this exact pattern

with other people

and even with our clients.

I had one client

who built a seven

figure business entirely on Etsy.

They started with my A Sale A Day

Business System program.

They had zero product

when they were starting out

and they became incredibly successful

in a few short years until they weren't.

When sales started dropping,

instead of focusing on

building out their own asset,

their website,

they kept going back to Etsy

because that's

where they'd seen the most potential.

So they're stuck on this

constant downhill spiral.

The lesson here

is that Etsy is like

renting an apartment.

You can make it work

and even make good money out of it.

You can be happy in an apartment,

but you're still paying

rent to a landlord

who can change the rules

anytime they want.

And they do change the rules a lot.

Not to mention

you're not building your own equity.

What we focus on

for building up

a successful Etsy shop is pretty simple.

We optimize our product listings

for high click through rates from search

and running Etsy ads.

Of course,

optimizing our listings in itself

can be like a whole course

because it involves

so much from the product,

the pricing, the keywords,

the photos, the videos.

But generally speaking, bottom line is

I always say

to never make Etsy the main focus.

Now I'm not anti-Etsy,

it is a great place to start.

It's a great place

to diversify,

to eventually

when you want to make more sales

on other platforms.

But Etsy should never be

the only place

you focus your sales efforts

because that is honestly

a recipe for disaster.

You need something

secure, steady and stable like you know

in your relationships

like that

rock in your business, in your life

that is your own website.

Etsy can be part of your strategy,

but it should never be

your whole strategy.

Because when you put all your eggs

in that Etsy basket

where so much is out of your control

and things change, so often

you're not going to stay in the game

for very long.

And it's a harrowing hamster

wheel to be in.

Too many people close their shops,

give up and quit

just a few years later

because of the ups and downs

that are just too much to handle.

Most people think building

your own website is hard to do,

and making sales is also hard

because unlike Etsy,

there's no built in audience

when you are on your own site.

But what if I told you

we made

almost the exact same amount

on our own website last month

for the same business.

$27,809 to be exact.

That's even a little bit more than Etsy.

And building that website was way

easier than you think.

My husband is honestly

my biggest success story.

When I started this personalized

art store back in November of 2019,

he knew absolutely nothing

about online selling, but I taught him

everything I knew,

and we set up our own website

from day one.

We didn't wait until we were ready

or until we had everything figured out.

Like literally in two weeks

we were launched.

And that first full year in business

in 2020,

we made over seven figures

with this business alone in sales

because we owned our own

digital real estate

in addition to renting space

on someone else's platform.

Also, because of what happened in 2020,

everyone was stuck at home

and shopping online,

so a lot of businesses did

well that year.

Now here is what's really interesting.

Last month,

our own store brought in

almost exactly what we made on Etsy.

Right?

But really think about what that means.

We can make the same amount of money

on a platform we completely control

as we can on this massive marketplace

with millions of built-in shoppers.

And we spent proportionately

the same amount on ads

to get traffic to our site.

So they were equally as profitable.

That tells you

everything you need to know about

whether you actually need Etsy or not.

You do not need their traffic.

You can build your own.

You don't need to post

all the time in social media.

You don't need to have a big launch

or constantly releasing new products.

We don't do any of that.

But I will tell you

what we did in a bit.

Unlike our Etsy sales,

which could disappear tomorrow

if they change their algorithm

or they decide they don't like us,

our website sales come from something

we own that cannot be taken away from us,

or at least it's a lot harder.

We control every single part

of the customer experience on our site.

We decide the pricing, the policies,

how the site looks, everything.

And we don't have to be

as influenced

as what the competition is doing

as you would be selling on Etsy.

Plus, we own all of the customer data,

so when someone buys from our store,

they are our customer.

We can email them to remind them

to buy again during holiday seasons,

invite them to sales,

build a real relationship you know.

On Etsy,

they're Etsy's customers

who just happen to buy your product.

There's no easy way

according to the terms of service

in Etsy,

to build

that long term relationship

with Etsy customers,

which means building a business

that lasts a long term for years

and years is much harder

to do on Etsy alone.

I have been in online business

for almost two decades now.

One of the reasons

I can do this for so long

is because I don't rely on Etsy

or other platforms

I cannot control or don't own.

So for our own websites,

we now focused mainly on paid ads

that's Google, Facebook and Instagram ads.

Instead of trying to compete inside

someone else's search engine,

which fluctuates in demand,

we are driving people directly

to something we built and control.

The best part is every dollar

we invest in improving our website,

sending traffic our way,

every hour

we spend optimizing it,

every customer review we get,

all of that builds

into the value of our business over time.

Our website is an actual asset

that if we wanted to,

we could sell someday.

But the Etsy

shop is not worth a lot of money

if anything at all.

Because if we wanted to walk away,

I mean Etsy can shut it down at any time,

it's just too volatile.

Now if you're worried,

building your own website

sounds really hard to do,

which I get, and it's

why a lot of people do start on Etsy,

I have a solution for you.

I was recently actually

looking at one of my A Sale A Day students,

Ryanne's website, and I was so impressed

by how professional and beautiful

it looked and how fast her site was.

She asked for a website

review and I went on there

and it was just like,

I have nothing to say

but good things about your site.

This is incredible.

And I was like,

Who's your website builder?

Because this doesn't look like Shopify.

Turns out

she built the entire thing

using Hostinger,

who is also sponsoring today's video.

So what I love about Hostinger

is they have an AI website builder

that makes it super fast

to create a professional site

even if you've never

built a website before.

You don't need any tech

know-how to do this.

If you can read English

and click buttons on the screen,

you can build your own beautiful

professional website in one afternoon.

Now normally I recommend a .com domain

name to go with your website

because people

are more familiar with that.

But a nice perk with Hostinger

is they also give you a free

.store domain name,

which is perfect

if you're just starting out

and watching your budget.

They have a lot of cool features.

But one of my favorites

that really impressed me was their

AI product listing tool

that can create multiple product

listings at once

and automatically fills

in all the details

based on the product photos

that you upload.

It saves you hours of work,

which means you're more likely

to actually launch your online store

instead of procrastinating on it.

But most importantly,

the checkout process on Hostinger

is smooth and fast,

which makes a huge difference

in making or losing the sale.

So you're ready to stop paying rent

to other platforms

and start building

something you actually own

that will last you for years,

check out Hostinger

in the description below

and I'll put a link here on the video

as well.

Having your own website

sounds amazing, right?

But here's something

most people don't realize.

Just having a website

alone is not enough.

You need the right foundations

or you will end up like my first business

that has been losing money

every single month this year.

Okay,

so I started Tiny Hands back in 2006

making scented polymer clay food jewelry.

It sounds cute,

but I made literally

every foundational mistake

you could possibly make.

First, I was designing products

I loved Instead of thinking about what

other people actually wanted to buy.

I was obsessed with making miniature food

because I loved it as a kid.

But scented

food jewelry isn't something

people search for.

Nobody wakes up thinking,

I really need to buy a strawberry

scented cupcake necklace

for my niece today.

Second,

I had no idea who my customer was

or how to find them online.

I thought my jewelry was for adults

like me who loved cute things.

But how do you even begin

to find people like that online?

It's not like there's a cute things

Facebook group.

It's just too vague.

It's not specific enough.

I eventually learned that

a lot of the people

buying from me

were actually moms or aunties

buying gifts for little girls.

But that took years of trial and error

and collecting all that data.

But even then,

it is still not super easy

to find those people online.

Third,

my pricing

was completely wrong for my market.

My necklaces cost $30 to $50 each

because they take time to make

and it also costs a lot more money

to get this novel product idea

in front of people

who don't even know it exists.

And unfortunately,

most parents

don't want to spend

that much on jewelry for kids.

So there's this huge mismatch

between what I was charging

and what my ideal customers

were willing to pay.

I also

built a whole business

around scented products.

The fragrances don't last forever,

so customers would buy a necklace,

love it for a few months, then email me

being upset

that it didn't smell like

cookies anymore.

I would get refund

requests from people saying

they couldn't smell anything,

but when they returned the package,

we could smell it.

Or maybe they didn't like a certain scent

that I gave a product.

Everyone's nose is different.

Scent is such a subjective experience

and I would be sad that

people weren't

appreciating the charms

more for the charms themselves.

This scent issue also killed

my wholesale business.

I worked with sales reps.

I did trade shows.

I got into over 100 stores

across the United States

at some point,

but stores didn't want to reorder

because customers would complain

about the scent fading

and the price point was just too high

for impulse purchases.

All of these foundation problems meant

it took me a long time

to make a full time

income from Tiny Hands,

and it feels I've never done it,

it feels impossible to grow this business

beyond $200,000 a year.

Even now,

it just struggles

and it continues to struggle

more than any other business I have.

Last month it made $6,652 in revenue,

but after expenses, I actually lost $642.

At this point,

I basically let it coast

while I focus on businesses

with better foundations.

This is why having a website alone

isn't enough.

You need the right

foundations from the start

or you will spend years struggling

like I did.

The foundations

that actually matter are products

that people want to buy

and who are willing to pay

good money for.

You need to know

exactly who your customer is

and where to find them online.

Third, your pricing needs to match

what your market expects to pay.

And fourth, you need a business model

that is sustainable long term,

not dependent on things

you can't control.

When I started my newer businesses,

I made sure to get these foundations

right from day one.

And that's why

the business

my husband operates

now hit seven figures in its first year

and why

my coaching business,

Creative Hive, grew so much faster

and bigger than Tiny

Hands ever did,

despite me trying so hard.

If you want to learn

exactly what these foundations

will look like in more depth

and how to set them up

correctly from the beginning

for your business,

I teach all of this in my free workshop.

I will break down

exactly the system I use to build

profitable online stores

that don't take decades to figure out

so you can make sales

easily from day one.

You can sign up for that

in the link in the description below.

I know what you're thinking now.

You're like, Oh great.

Another course creator claiming

to make money teaching other people

how to make money.

But I've been sharing my income

reports online since 2014.

Way before it was trendy.

My oldest blog post

for my coaching business is from 2011.

This isn't some new thing

I just started to cash in on

and I have firsthand experience

of running my own online stores.

I started a Creative Hive

because I am genuinely obsessed

and nerd out over

marketing and business strategy.

Like I get excited about conversion

rates and sales funnels

and testing different

email subject lines.

I know that sounds weird,

but it's like a game for me.

I learned to enjoy it.

Here's how it actually happened.

I figured out how to build

a successful online

store for myself through years of trial

and error with Tiny Hands, right?

I mean, it is my ugliest baby

would I call it a failure?

Yes, but can I call it a success?

Yes, it is both things.

And I realized I had a system

that actually worked

when everything else

I was trying failed me.

So I started teaching the system

to other people,

and it started working for them, too.

But here's the thing

about selling courses.

I have found

it is way harder than people think

because a lot of people make it sound

super easy and fast to do.

For years,

Creative Hive was barely profitable

and I had a lot of trouble growing it.

In 2019,

I was making about $10,000

a month,

which sounds good until you factor

in all the expenses, right?

It's not enough to be a full time salary.

And at that point

I was already running the business

for several years.

Digital products

in my opinion,

are much harder

to sell than physical products

because everything is intangible.

You have to make it feel real

and valuable to people who can't

literally hold it in their hands.

And there's a lot more competition for it

because it's so easy to make.

So you have to work harder

at communicating its value.

One messaging problem, one funnel issue,

one pricing

mistake can be the difference

between a profitable month

versus losing money.

I spent years tweaking and testing

and honestly struggling

to make it work consistently.

Then about a year ago

I made some fundamental changes

to my sales funnel

and my marketing approach.

I invested over $20,000

in hiring an instructional designer

and over a year

spent

into completely revamping

my A Sale A Day course

because I wanted to create something

that actually gets

incredible results for people.

I also worked with different coaches.

Some of them were amazing,

others not so much.

But I always learned something

from all of them

and I took the best bits

and apply them into my business.

So by 2023, 2024,

I was consistently hitting $30,000 month

and now I'm making more than double that,

and a lot of that

also has to do with YouTube.

So last month for Creative Hive,

we brought in $67,913

and that is not counting

sponsorship or YouTube money,

which we'll talk about next.

So I am not some flashy guru

with my laptop life

sitting on a beach drinking a martini.

I am just someone who figured out

a system that worked for me

consistently too.

And then it also worked for other people.

I have students

like Stephanie from Pottery Awesomeness

Ivan and Gabby from The Paper

Memory, Jenn from Forged Flair

and so many others

selling everything from jewelry

to planners to even quivers

who are building real

sustainable businesses

and quitting their jobs.

And when they started,

they had not even a product idea.

Just sharing information is not enough.

There is an art and a skill

and a lot of psychology and empathy

to how you do it.

And I think that's the major difference

between a short lived

course business

and one that can persevere

for many years.

It's actually being a good teacher.

I actually really struggle

with learning as a kid.

I still do as an adult, actually.

I think that in part

makes me a good teacher

because I always aim to make things

as simple, easy

and repeatable

as possible for other people.

I also recommend having a website

where you can share

your knowledge and build

trust over time with your audience.

Because building authority

for your name

as an educator

is more important in a course

business than a product business.

This is a completely different

business model than my product stores.

Here

I focus heavily on content marketing.

I write blog posts.

I make YouTube videos like this one

and create

free resources

that show people what I know

and my experience, right?

And then, of course,

the percentage of those people

who consume my content

become students of mine over time.

This is also why,

even though I generally don't

post on social media

for my online stores,

I do use it more for my coaching business

as a way to share my content.

But I also don't rely on it,

which I think is a key difference.

It's a lot of what

we talked about earlier with

Etsy right about things

you can control versus can't control.

YouTube is my favorite platform

to build content on

because it doesn't require me

to post constantly or consistently

in order to reach a lot of people.

And my videos have a much longer

lifespan than short form content

on, say, Instagram or TikTok.

So that's super leveraged income

because the time I spend on one

YouTube video

has compound effects over time.

I actually didn't monetize

my YouTube channel

until December 2022,

which I regret not doing sooner

because it is completely passive income

and I didn't take on a single sponsor

until this year

because I was scared

of what people would think.

I get dozens of sponsor emails every day.

Seriously,

I am overwhelmed by them

and I say no to basically all of them

because most are for products

I have never used or do not believe in.

For the longest time

I thought if I turned on ads

or took sponsors,

you guys would think I was selling out.

But then I realized

if I only work with companies

I actually use

and recommend to my students

anyway, why is it a bad thing

that I get paid for that?

And these ads you see on my videos,

you get to watch

this whole thing for free

and get a ton of information.

So this mindset shift changed everything

because between AdSense,

which is the YouTube money

and the sponsors that I work

with, that brought in $22,844 last month.

Kicking myself

that I didn't do this sooner.

Isn't it interesting?

And also kind of empowering

to know

how much we get

in our own way to making money?

Are you making making money

difficult for yourself too

like I was?

That amount of money I made from

YouTube is just from

sponsors and AdSense.

It is not counting the sales

I have made

from people buying my courses.

In 2024,

I tracked over

six figures of sales

that came directly from YouTube,

and that's also not counting

the indirect sales.

Here is what I've learned about YouTube.

Posting consistently

all the time is not the thing

that is going to get you

a lot of views and attract sponsors

and makes you sales.

It just increases your chances of you

landing on a video concept

that people like.

The first 100,000 subscribers

I got was through posting

once a week without fail

for an entire year.

Sounds great.

It was a lot of work,

but most of those 100,000 subscribers

never came back

to watch any of my future videos.

Because I would post new content

and it would get less

than a thousand views

for a channel with 100,000 subscribers.

Doesn't make much sense, right?

But then on the flip side,

there are countless channels

that have just a small handful

of videos like under 50

or under 100 videos

with millions of subscribers.

How often you post

and the amount of videos

you have doesn't play as huge of a role

in getting you a lot of reach

and subscribers as most people think.

Instead,

over the last year,

I've developed a system

that I've not seen anyone else do

to basically guarantee

that every video I make

gets me on the YouTube homepage

so I don't have to waste time

producing a video

that no one is going to see.

Would you rather post 52 videos

to get to 100,000 subscribers

or only post 12 videos?

That is the difference

between the two strategies

because my next 100,000 subscribers

came so much more easily

and with far less work,

and I get to have a lot more fun.

I'm actually creating a pilot program

teaching the system,

showing you how I guarantee that

every video I make

knocks it out of the park.

It is going to be the lowest price

it will ever be

and the only time

you'll get to work with me in this close

proximity, in this container.

So if that is something

that interests you,

you can join the waitlist for that here.

There is a link in the description below.

Okay. So now let's talk about expenses

and what we actually made as profit.

We made $44,000 in before tax profit,

which is about 30% profit

margins across all of our businesses,

which I'm actually really excited

about considering

I had an entire business

that didn't make money at all.

Also, I should mention

that when you're making money

at that scale, like six figures of sales,

it is normal for profit margins

to not look like 70% or 60%

as it often will look

when you are a smaller business

and you're doing everything yourself.

So having a 30% profit

margin is actually very healthy.

So what we spend on

a lot of it goes into paid ads

for the one Etsy shop.

We spend $8,361

to make $26,200.

$50,000.

Went into Facebook, Instagram

and Google ads for my coaching business

and my Shopify stores, which is a lot.

And I definitely did overspend

here on a big aggressive

marketing push last month

that almost lost me money actually.

So I know not to do that again.

I am working on lowering costs here

because it is our biggest expense.

For the print on demand business

we spent $14,096 in

printing costs

and product costs

for the print on demand printers

and our team who enables us to not work

around the clock cost us $14,989.

The rest of expenses

go into

smaller categories like tech

and software, subscriptions, fees

and so on.

If you are thinking

this sounds great,

but where do I even begin?

Just pick one thing.

Just one.

Start it.

See it through.

Get it going real good

first.

Have the focus to do that

before you try to do something else

and spread yourself too thin

because that's a mistake

I see a lot of people make

when they start to diversify.

If you are someone

who overthinks like I do

and the never gets anything done

or is too paralyzed to even start

watch this

next video here

where I talk all about overthinking

and how you might be able

to start addressing that

and get it out of the way

so you can finally build

that business and life of your dreams.