How to Create More Consistent Income in your lettering business

Ah, that elusive consistent income. As new business owners, it’s what we all crave, consistency. Would you believe me if I said this didn’t start happening for me until late 2018/ early 2019? Yep, two years into my business. While those first two years I was part-time, I still wasn’t able to figure out how to get consistent income into my business every month. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I still have some high months and low months. But the key to these last two years is that my low months are now at sustainable place where I’m making a decent profit. 

So-- how did I do it?

 Here’s a few things for me that have moved the needle on this!

Add in year- round items with an Etsy shop

Okay so when I first started out, I was pretty much only doing weddings. What did that mean? It meant I was making most of my money 3-4 months out of the year, which posed a huge problem when I made the leap to full-time. So the first thing I did was start expanding to non-wedding products on Etsy. I started to add things like doormats, home decor signs, laser cuts, stuff that can be used year round and was also giftable and a lot of it, personalizable. P.S I’m launching an Etsy course in March, be the first to get all the details and sign up for the waitlist here!

Take advantage of the holidays

2018 was my first big holiday surge. And after a few years of only making money during wedding season-- it was a welcome influx of cash for those fall/winter months when wedding work was sparse. And while I actually make a huge portion of my yearly income during Christmas I’m now also focusing on a few other big holidays throughout the year like Valentines day, mother’s day and halloween. Those are awesome gifting and holiday-themed decor buying months when people are looking for unique items and honestly you can be so creative with your offerings on those occasions! 

Adding digital products and education content

If you’re newer to business you might think that there’s nothing you can offer yet in this space. But I really don’t think that’s true. If you have skills like a design background or just love to letter, start thinking about what you can offer as a digital product. Maybe that’s lettering worksheets in your style of lettering? What about coloring pages? Or if you’re nailing something like instagram right now, why not create an instagram guide that shares your strategy? Adding digital products is a great way to start building products that have a super high profit margin and also make a huge impact on your audience. 

Have you thought about wholesale?

I started doing wholesale in 2019 and it has been a good steady stream of income for me throughout the year. For a while, selling wholesale seemed super out of reach for me because I didn’t know how to go to trade shows, find retailers, etc-- but then a new platform called Faire debuted. Faire is a lot like Etsy but for wholesale and there are a TON of retailers on there looking for unique items to stock their shop. It is super easy to use as well. The fees are high, but if you’re pricing your products correctly it is still doable and they have some great perks for using the site as well. 

So that’s it! The key really is to figure out how you can diversify your income. If your only doing one thing, you have to be doing it REALLY well to make a sustainable monthly income. But if you add several sources of revenue, when you have some slow months in one category it’s not the end of the world.