Contributed by Janette  (PandaB5)

If you’re not retired, you probably follow a daily routine – get up, go to work, come home, cook, clean and all the rest that goes with modern living. It’s a world where you need money, and that means you need to generate an income – for most that translates into earning a salary.

But some manage to escape this rat race without winning the lottery. What’s their secret? They have passive income streams.

A passive income is income you don’t have to continuously work for. For example, you could invest in shares that pay dividends. If you reinvest the dividends in more shares, you could systematically increase your wealth and income until your dividend income is sufficient to pay your monthly costs.

Another method is to buy property. Over time (and this could take many years), your rental income should exceed the costs of maintaining and financing the property and you’ll have a passive income stream.  

What about graphics?

Unlike investing in shares, or buying a second property, you can start generating a passive income using your creative skills even if you have no money: there’s free software like Daz Studio, Blender, and Gimp. As you start earning money, you could add to your software library.

Graphics as an electronic medium gives you an edge over conventional art forms like paintings, and other handmade goods. That’s because you can sell your graphics multiple times. For example, if you made an outfit for a Genesis character, you could potentially sell the outfit hundreds of times.

Of course, selling outfits for Genesis won’t entirely generate a passive income stream, because Genesis characters continue to be updated. But it could be a semi-passive income stream, because making an outfit consists of these steps:

• design the outfit,
• create the outfit in a 3D program like Blender,
• adjust the outfit to fit Genesis characters,
• create textures and materials for the outfit,
• setup the outfit and morphs in Daz Studio,
• create and setup the materials in Daz Studio,
• package everything,
• create a store listing, and
• promote the outfit.

When a new Genesis version is released, two things will happen: First, many artists will continue buying the previous version’s outfits (especially if they’re heavily discounted).  Second, you might only need to revisit a few of the steps to update your outfit to work with the new Genesis version.

There are other items that are more timeless, like photographs, props, scenery and 2D graphics. Once they’re created and accepted into store, you could potentially earn an income from those products for many years.

You don’t necessarily have to be a Renderosity vendor

If making content isn’t for you, you could still generate a passive income from your renders. For example, you could sell your renders as stock images. Stock images are still popular with blog writers, website creators, news outlets, and game developers.  

What are the benefits of generating a passive income from graphics?

There are several benefits to using Renderosity to build up a passive income stream. For example, if you become a Renderosity vendor, you’ll:

• know which promotions are coming up,
• get store credit immediately for any sales which you can use to buy other Renderosity products,
• can cash out your money to spend as you wish twice a month (if you’ve earned over a certain limit).

If you have the right skills, and make goods that appeal to users, you could make a lot more than just pocket money (look at what the top vendors are doing). It often depends on:

• the time of year (whether people are on holiday, away from their computers, or have other financial commitments),
• how original your content is,
• the quality of your content,
• how large your store is, and
• your ability to market your content.

The last point is especially important if you have a unique product. It’s up to you to show artists how they can use your product by posting gallery images.

It’s not as easy as it looks

 Unlike other passive income streams, making money from art requires a significant time-investment at the start. You’ll need to learn how to make content, set up objects in Poser and Daz, and how to package items for store. (If you’re regularly making art, you’ve probably already learned a lot more than you realize.)

It could also be disheartening because you could spend 40 hours making a product and have only a few sales – earning a few cents an hour in the first month of release. But every product brings you closer to your goal of earning a passive income: you grow your store, promote yourself as a vendor, and learn more about the market.

And if you look around, you’ll note some vendors only make content infrequently, others haven’t made any new content in years. Yet, their content is still selling at Renderosity. Those vendors have successfully created passive income streams for themselves.

 Interested in becoming a Renderosity vendor? Click here  to find out more.