If you have a skill like creating repeat patterns digitally, or graphic design, there are various ways you can turn this into self employment, passive income streams:
- sell
yearly licence to eg fabric company (likely around £250/yr per design, in control of what you charge, but difficult to get, most designers license 1-3 per year)
- sell
print on demand products eg via an Etsy shop or own website (income for ESA would technically be what customer pays? Though profit margins small in reality)
- sell pattern on marketplace like Spoonflower (income for ESA purposes would be % you receive, getting around small profit margins issue, but income unpredictable and uncontrollable, might have a month massively going over £167/week then nothing)
- sell digital products eg on Etsy (simpler than POD physical products and proper passive income with large profit margin, but very unpredictable might have a month massively going over £167/week then nothing)
- create a YouTube channel to teach the skill, or document your journey, and eventually get ad revenue and affiliate link income (very slow which might have some advantages on ESA but not very passive, requires ongoing input. Unpredictable and uncontrollable income)
- create Skillshare courses to teach the skill (probably requires proving yourself in one of the other streams first, unpredictable and uncontrollable income)
- sell own course directly from your own website (could control income by limiting places or making it great value, but would be hard to get students, probably substantial advertising costs)
- sell pattern as a buyout (not royalties, one expensive product eg likely £300-400, might sell one or two a year but would be in control of how much earned)
- start with freebies, deliberately not making income. It’s currently very popular for small brands to offer free products (usually in return to subscribing to an email list) but normally also with upsell side products. For people on ESA it might make sense to heavily lean into this strategy until you have a strong email list and following? In this context it would be free printables. I don’t know how this would fit with DWP rules - is it a hobby until your first sale? Or is it Permitted Work from the moment you offer a freebie from your brand? Is there a clause re offering something for free which you could charge for?
From surface designer survey data, teaching surface design/art skills is in reality the most lucrative income stream, though print on demand products is the most used income stream. Of course people not on ESA would be sensible to gradually grow all of these streams, but that doesn’t seem a likely good answer if we still need ESA due to fluctuating ability to work or limited capacity to work normal hours.
I’m scouring through the ESA legislation trying to work out which option would be least stressful to start with in terms of
- likelihood of losing contributions based ESA for unreliable, spiky income (and end up worse off)
- excessive HMRC paperwork I’m not well enough to complete or hassle from the DWP
- difficulty with future ESA assessments if I show some capacity to work (my health fluctuates and I’m housebound, so can’t access conventional employee work)
I’ll post a reply to myself in a minute going through the wording of the legislation and asking questions, but I’m also interested in your lived experiences or what you’ve heard from other disabled people. Unfortunately, many fewer of us would be on the correct benefits to start with if we had blind faith in DWP staffs’ ability to honourably follow the legislation. I don’t want to contact the DWP until I properly understand how it should work.
I could also start a poll about these options, so let me know if you’d be interested in that.
