How I earn more whilst working less as a creative

Top tips to maximise income in a 20 hour work week

Hello, I’m Molly and I write about my slow and simple life in the Scottish Highlands. Subscribe for free to enjoy occasional posts from me. Or, better yet, join our slow community of kindred spirits to unlock ALL my content, including exclusive writing, videos and resources, to help you live the life you REALLY crave. We’d love you to join us for a cuppa…

This year, I stepped away from the hustle culture to pursue my own creative career. Now, I earn more than I ever have before. Curious? Keep reading…

I won’t lie. My decision to leave my previous role as a conservationist raised a few eyebrows. Especially as I had decided to turn my back on this field completely and go fully self-employed with a very different career path.

I had no back ups. No part time jobs. No freelance gigs. No paying clients waiting in the wings. All I had was my content. It was without doubt a risky move.

I go into detail about why I made this somewhat controversial decision HERE.

Going self employed has been a big learning curve. Over the last few months, I’ve had to retrain my brain from thinking that I should be working all the time. From feeling guilty when I finished work early or that fact that I’m not contactable 24-7.

Its taken some practise and, although I’m still far from perfect, I now feel that I’m finally achieving balance. And, to my surprise (and relief!), I’ve learnt that I don’t have to work all the hours under the sun to meet my income goals.

How I make money

Before I get into the nitty gritty of how I’ve achieved this, first, a bit of background on where I get my income from.

As all of my income is very changeable, I, like many creatives, have set up multiple income streams to give me a bit of security. These include -

• AdSense from my YouTube

• Brand deals for sponsored YouTube videos

• Paid membership on my Substack

• Affiliate marketing

• Paid products on my Etsy and Teemill

I love the variety in my job and no working week is exactly the same. However, as a rough estimate I probably work 20hours a week, which is far less than when I was working full time.

Strategy

The following points are the strategies I’ve used to maximise my income so I can work fewer hours.

Have clear goals

Before I could be ‘successful’, I needed to define what success looked like to me.

Having clear goals is crucial when it comes to decision making. I ensure these goals are realistic, but also ambitious, so I’m always striving to improve.

I plan my goals over different timeframes. I want to have an idea of where I’ll ideally be in 5 years and then break this down into smaller, manageable chunks, so I always feel like I’m making progress.

If you want help setting goals, I’d highly recommend

Sarah Fay

’s workshop that goes into detail on how to do this effectively.

Minimalist media strategy

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - you don’t need to be all over the internet to be a successful content creator.

I’ve been very selective with the platforms I’ve chosen to create content on. I’ve abandoned all short form social media, preferring to focus on creating high value content on platforms that I most enjoy, play to my strengths and fit my long term goals.

This is one of the main reasons why I have consistently grown on both YouTube and Substack and continue to hit my income goals.

(Read more about how I do this HERE).

Don’t sell yourself short

Its all too common for creators to undervalue their work. I have definitely felt this in my own career.

However, over time my confidence has grown and I’m starting to feel more comfortable asking for reasonable fees in return for my content.

For instance, when it comes to getting brand deals, I no longer work with brands that pay significantly lower than my normal fee. I’ve found that, if I stand firm, 9 times out of 10 brands will end up paying what I’m asking for anyway.

Obviously when you are starting out, you may need to be more flexible. I’ve put in a huge amount of time working for free. But don’t let this diminish your value. You will be surprised how much money you can make even as a small creator.

Enjoying this post? To get even more content like this, you can sign up to my paid membership, and join our slow community of kindred spirits. We’d love to have you..

Passive income

A large part of my monthly earnings comes from passive income.

This means that, after the initial time investment, you can continue to earn money with little effort over the long term. I’ve also chosen income sources that have needed low or no upfront costs, e.g., I only sell digital products on my Etsy shop to significantly improve my profit margins.

This can be a powerful income strategy, but I would say that these income sources do take a lot of initial time to set up. I also don’t believe there’s ever such a thing as ‘passive’. I still need to put time into promoting my affiliate links and paid products to continue earning.

Also, like social media, there are lots of different ways you can do passive income, so don’t waste time trying to do them all, just pick the ones that work best for you.

Maximise content

As I publish content less regularly, I want to make sure that I maximise every opportunity to make income.

This can be a delicate balance, as you don’t want content to become too ‘salesy’. The trust and respect of my audience as a creator is always my number one priority and something I will never compromise.

Having said that, you don’t want to become too scared to promote yourself that you end up missing out on obvious sale’s opportunities.

The way I approach this is by carefully planning all my content using templates I have created in Notion. This includes a section where I list what my CTAs (call to actions) are going to be, so I don’t miss a promotion opportunity. I try to vary this and only include relevant CTA’s, ensuring this remains useful for my audience.

You can check out all my Notion planners, including my Blogger Planner, on my Etsy store.

Create a content calendar

I think I mention this tip in pretty much every Substack I post about my creative career, but its so important that I don’t feel I can miss it out.

A content calendar means that I always know what I’m doing. I typically have my Substack and YouTube content planned 4-6 weeks in advance and I plan all of this in my Notion (there is a content calendar template included as part of my Blogger Notion Template).

This means that, at the beginning of every month, I spending time reviewing the previous month’s content and finetuning my plans for the next month (there’s also a monthly and yearly review template included in my Blogger Planner).

Although this can take some time, it really pays off in the long run and I cannot recommend it enough.

Mindful productivity tips

As well as having a clear strategy, I have honed my productivity over the years so that I ensure my time is never wasted. I’d like to write a whole post on this at some point, but some of my top tips include -

• Plan days around energy - I have the most energy in the morning, so this is when I tackle my most important and taxing task of the day.

• Don’t multitask - science has proven that, although this can feel like we are getting more done, multitasking actually makes us less effective and its much better to focus on one task at a time.

• Avoid distractions - my phone is permanently on do not disturb and all my app notifications are turned off, which has been a gamechanger when it comes to how quickly I can get tasks done.

• Time block - by scheduling my day into different blocks, I can reduce decision fatigue and smoothly move from one task to another. It also means that I create a realistic schedule and don’t feel overwhelmed by my to-do list.

• Reduce admin - emails suck so much of our time. I now schedule all of my admin into one 30 minute slot a day, often in the afternoon, and avoid checking my emails outside of this so I don’t get distracted.

• Schedule free-time - this is just as important, if not more so, than work tasks, so I make sure to prioritise my free time and add it in my calendar as a commitment I cannot miss.

All in all, I’m very much aligned with the saying - work smarter, not harder.

I’d love to hear about your own experience and advice, especially from my fellow creators, so please do share in the comments.

Until next week,

Molly xx