In search of perennial income

You know, the one so often called, passive income, when it’s really never ever passive

I won the lottery last night. I won £3. Of course, when I got the email ‘We have news about your lottery ticket’ there was the usual brief moment of anticipation and what if it was a big win. But they never are. I really, really should switch the lottery subscription into a savings subscription – but, obviously, there’s a little voice at the back of my head telling me that the very second I do that… my numbers will come up. Ha!

I work in educational publishing, on a freelance basis. I have done since 1999, and before that I worked in-house, for a couple of years, and before that I studied publishing (and French Language and Literature) and before that I worked in a small publishing house in my home town (well the town nearest the village I grew up in). I have worked in publishing for more than half my life. I have been a freelancer for almost half my life. I am very good at it. I get plenty of work – I get often get more offers of work than we (my husband also works with me in the same business) can take on. (Not that there are never times when we have to send out those emails saying ‘We have capacity,’ and reminding people of the wide variety of services we offer.)

I usually enjoy my work. I can get frustrated when we end up in a period where projects have overlapped for whatever reason and we are working evenings and weekends and not getting a break for ages. I can get bored when projects end up meaning doing very similar things every day all day for ages (like the three PowerPoint setting jobs that seemed to happen at once). I can get stressed with some project management jobs, because I have a tendency to take it too personally and feel ultimate responsibility for every failure, more than any success.

It’s more enjoyable when there are two or three different jobs going through at once, with nice long deadlines, because then you can vary what you do – edit in the morning, do some project management in the afternoon and set PowerPoints in the evening while watching TV on the second screen, for example.

But… a bit more than ten years ago, I started realising that there was another way I could earn money. I could earn money from drawing and from creating pretty patterns and other decorative elements. This was something I hadn’t considered since I was in school and I used to doodle in the margins of my exercise books and on the covers of my exercise books and paint patterns on blocks of off-cut cardboard I found at home and draw zentangle-like doodled postcards and birthday cards for friends, and paint William Morris-inspired decorative borders and name plates. And someone said ‘You could totally sell your cards in Moonflower’ (Moonflower was, and still is, a gorgeous little independent store that sold lots of beautiful little nick-nacks and wrapping paper and gift cards). Oh! Could I? But I didn’t do anything about it. And in the meantime went off and became a publishing person. One who always made homemade birthday and Christmas cards. One who drew and coloured to wind down and let go.

Until a bit more than ten years ago, when I started making patterns in Adobe Illustrator. (Really, truly awful patterns, I would say now, but I loved them then.) And not long after that the internet threw me some adverts or blog posts or something, I don’t remember exactly, but I dove into my first course – Module 1 of Make It In Design’s Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design. Oh boy! I learnt so much, I met quite a few friends, I did the other modules. I joined a studio and people started buying my patterns. I spent all my spare time learning more and getting better and taking all the courses I could afford (and possibly a few I couldn’t afford). I loved it.

But I was only making pocket money, really. Compared to what I make in my publishing business. I was making bits of money here and there – a few hundred every couple of months for a buyout, small bits and pieces of money here and there for non-exclusive pattern use.

What I should have done then was dig deeper and push harder and reach out for big licensing deals and make more and more patterns for studios and simpler patterns for stock use and so on and more patterns for Spoonflower and so on and so on. If I’d pushed forward in that, I would probably be making considerably more than pocket money from patterns by now.

But instead I got drawn in by illustration. Taking all the courses (again), spending all my spare time on learning more and more and practising more and more and building an illustration portfolio. I still made patterns, but not very many and more as a wind-down kind of activity that sometimes led to some incidental income, rather than in any concerted way. I dropped the patterns so much that they no longer appear on my portfolio – it’s all just illustration (in the process of changing that though, soon the patterns will be there, too).

And then I started making money from illustration. A bit more than pocket money, this time. I illustrated a couple of books in a couple of years. But still nothing close to what I make from working in educational publishing. And then what? Then I started getting portfolio reviews, and joining memberships and coaching groups and so on, to find the mysterious answer to how to become successful in this industry (these industries?). I have notebooks filled with all the advice and all the methods. I have many different ideas, some that have been started; others that have not progressed beyond a list in a notebook.

If I had two years’ earnings to live off, and the ability to go completely full-time on both pattern design and illustration (because I’m afraid I have realised that I love them both and don’t want to lose either one of them) I would absolutely be able to get to the point where I am making as much, if not more, money from them as I do from publishing work. Because I know how hard I work and how determined I am and that I am good at what I do and would become even better if I was dedicating myself to it full-time, rather than only in those elusive spare hours. Because I did that when I wanted to get into publishing. I did that when I wanted to get freelance publishing work while I was at uni. I did that when I wanted to get freelance work when I left my in-house job. I absolutely have the drive and the motivation.

But I can’t take two years out. Because we have a mortgage and bills and teenagers who need to eat and go to college. I can’t turn away publishing work if I don’t have illustration work booked in. This is how it is and it’s time to understand this and come up with a solution.

Which is where the title of this post comes in. Perennial income. I need to build up a perennial income that will provide the security that two years’ worth of earnings would. I need to build up a perennial income that will bring in £2–3K a month and then I can afford to push the boat out, pitching, writing, illustrating, and getting the illustration and pattern design jobs I really want and attracting more amazing clients.

So that’s my mission for 2024 (yes, I know we’re a decent way into it, already, and that, despite my bad maths in my last post where I somehow thought there was month more of the year left than there was, there’s only a bit over ten months of the year left, but that’s plenty of time). I am going to make a concerted effort to build up a perennial income (or more of one, I do have a bit already). That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take on illustration projects – I will take on illustration projects in the same way I take on educational publishing projects; as long as I have time and abilities to fit them in. But I’m not going to expend too much energy looking for them this year; not until I’ve built that perennial income buffer up.

At the moment, I’ve been drawing pieces to go into a colouring book. I had a bit of a thing with colouring books and cards (and wallpaper - my Spoonflower perennial income that keeps on giving is mostly one design that was colouring wallpaper!) and I thought I’d see about digging back into that. But I’ll be trying a lot of things – patterns to Patternbank and microstock sites, POD, more Spoonflower, selling more prints, and other ideas I come across. I thought I might share what I end up doing here – both for the accountability benefits and because maybe it would prove interesting or useful to someone else looking for ideas of how to grow a perennial income.

Oh, and obviously, please feel free to take out a paid subscription, so you can contribute a teeny bit to that perennial income.