“Money – it’s a gas” from lyrics to Pink Floyd’s Money, a sketch in ink & pastel from my art journal

I have a pretty healthy relationship with money, but still things come up that give me pause. How do people decide how much they’re willing to pay for an original piece of art? How do artists decide the value of their art? (Not by the hours spent, I can tell you that much.) How do all of these people I read about online haul in so much passive income and sometimes from such crazy sources? I want some of that cray cray money. Who doesn’t want passive income?

It’s been on my mind lately because stories keep popping up in my news feed. Stories about people making money from blogs and dividends, but also from unexpected sources.

One story I read recounted the experiences of people who buy stuff at Dollar Stores, package that stuff up and ship it off to an Amazon warehouse, and then sell it with a decent markup. How do people even think of these ideas? That example isn’t truly passive income, because you still have to find deals, buy the stuff, and then send it to Amazon, but once it’s at Amazon, it’s income for relatively little effort.

I think my brain was just never programmed to think up genius ideas for raking in money. That’s why I’m not a billionaire yet. Eons ago, I read Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss, the God of passive income. Actually implementing his ideas didn’t quite work out for me. I guess I was too chicken to allow drastic changes to happen in my life. I’m remedying this situation now, so I gobble up every story on passive income that Google throws at me (well, honestly, some are pretty dumb, so I don’t actually read them all).

Here’s a sampling of today’s headlines:

• Passive income : fact or fantasy
• 5 things to do now so you can retire before 40 (that ship has passed)
• 5 ways to generate passive income and keep your job
• Passive income vs. passion income
• 7 myths about passive income you can’t afford to believe

Some people make a bundle through social media, like YouTube. I recently caught up with someone I knew as a child, a neighbor. He told me his nephew is making a killing off of a YouTube channel. The kid is a self-made star.

Some people seem to just wake up one morning and say, “hey, I think I’m going to be a star and rake in the dough,” and poof, it happens. Interesting to think about, isn’t it?

Artists can make passive income by uploading their art onto websites that sell prints, t-shirts, mugs, etc. The artist gets a small cut from each sale. I have a Fine Art America account where I sell pillows, gift cards and shopping bags with my art. I also have an Etsy store to sell my prints because I’m fussy about the quality. In this case, I’m tne seller and so I get a bigger cut, but it’s not entirely passive, because I make the prints myself and ship them. It’s still less effort than creating an original painting, plus it’s incremental extra money for a painting and that helps close the gap between the actual hours spent on creating it and what I can sell it for. I like closing the gap.

There are a lot of other ways artists can make passive income from their art. What do you do to make passive income? Please share your ideas in the comments. Whether for art or other types of passive income, please share!