What's a good passive income for a creative type (web designer / developer / illustrator / musician)?

September 7, 2007 8:29 PM

I'm a full-time web designer employed 9-5 and I'd love to find a way to make a little bit of extra income on the weekend without locking myself into a full-blown second job as a freelancer. My marketable skills are - web site design, html & css development, music composition and illustration.

Since I don't want to work more than a few hours a week on this (I want to keep it casual to avoid that feeling of coming home from work to more work) I've had to rule out taking on complete web design and html projects which would be the logical choice for me but very time consuming. Other ideas I've considered are:

- Making and selling once-off web templates (seems to be a saturated industry though?)

- Selling stock illustration

- Selling my ambient / soundtrack music (but where??)

- Hiring myself out for the design phase of a project only

Any other thoughts would be very much appreciated :) I feel like this is one of those "I've been looking at it too long!" things and a fresh perspective would be fantastic.

posted by katala to Work & Money (4 answers total)

The first thing you do is find out whether this would violate your employment agreement with your current employer. Even though you're in a 9-5 job, if you're salaried, then they probably have a legal right to everything you create, even off the job, which is related to their business. That was the case for me.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 8:47 PM on September 7, 2007

I'm in a similar boat, working 40 a week coding asp and sql. I've had some offers for side work, but turned most of them down due to my limited aesthetic abilities. Some coworkers with the photoshop skills have been making nice money doing static web sites on the side, so i've been thinking about learning that aspect also. I suggest you hit up craigslist etc for quick projects that you can pull off with your skillset, or teaming up with a back-end coder to handle the quick artsy stuff while they make things dance (thus reducing the amount of time you need to spend/bill on the project).
posted by waxboy at 8:56 PM on September 7, 2007

Getty Images recently bought Pump Audio. Perhaps that's an option for you for both illustration and music?
posted by blaneyphoto at 9:22 PM on September 7, 2007

Response by poster: Steven - That's a very good point :) I am currently on contract with this employer and haven't yet signed anything so when I do I will be reading the fine print.

Waxboy - Good idea, thank you! I will check out Craiglist.

Blaneyphoto - Sweet, thank you very much :) I'll check it out now!
posted by katala at 3:11 AM on September 9, 2007