Digital Illustrator Crafts Creative Designs

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Today's featured side hustler brings us a timely lesson. She says, no matter what you do, time will pass. No matter what you do, time will pass. So if you have an idea and don't pursue it, if you don't pursue that side hustle you've been thinking about, well, the time is still gonna pass and you will have accomplished nothing. Maybe you've accomplished some other things, let's say, but not the idea you had.

But if you do start or you do pursue that idea, you know, it's still gonna take time to reach your goals. Lots of stuff could happen along the way, but at the end you'll have something that you've made that you can be proud of. So in other words, the time is gonna pass either way. No matter what you do, time will pass. Why not spend the time doing something that's important to you?

I thought that was a really wonderful lesson and a great lead into her story. Because in this story, an American expat living in France draws on her artistic ability to promote the African-American community. She makes and sells multi-ethnic graphic illustrations and also teaches the craft through courses. The story's coming up in just 30 seconds after this message from our sponsor. [Music]

In 2016, Nottawa Floeck was an American expat living in France with her husband and two children.

As a legal secretary for an international patent firm, Nottawa was a valuable employee to have on staff. Among other skills, she was fluent in both English and French. But when she asked to take on more work in order to get a raise, the answer was no. So that door was closed and she knew at that moment she needed to do something else. Nottawa could already do traditional drawing on paper, but she believed digital art was the future.

So she began learning to draw on a computer using a free open source graphics program called Inkscape. It was hard at first, but she practiced every night after she put the kids to bed. An hour of practice would soon flow into two, sometimes three, as she gradually developed her skills by watching tutorials, taking lessons and practicing. She focused on creating digital art that celebrates the African-American community. As her skills improved and she began creating drawings she liked, Nottawa posted them on Instagram.

People started liking her drawing, so she posted more. And after a few months, someone messaged her and wanted to buy a custom illustration of Michelle Obama. He wanted to buy it for his T-shirt business that was dedicated to multiculturalism. But Nottawa didn't know how to invoice the customer for the illustration. He suggested using Etsy, the well-known online seller's marketplace.

And using that suggestion, Nottawa opened an Etsy shop, made a listing for his custom illustration, and he bought it. Paper Flow Designs, the new name for her business, was now in business. Nottawa opened the doors in 2017 and has now sold over 10,000 SVG files. SVG, that stands for Scalable Vector Graphics, basically just a digital drawing. These illustrations are typically bought by crafters who upload the files to cutting machines to make vinyl images that can be applied to objects like T-shirts or mugs.

Now, while Etsy is a great marketplace to sell your items, it can be saturated with lots of other shops competing for limited attention. Nottawa learned SEO to increase traffic. She then uses her Etsy traffic to drive visitors to her website, where she sells several courses that teach crafters how to create their own digital drawings. And her flagship course is called So Simple SVG Files. It's a set of self-paced video lessons that take students through the process of setting up the Inkscape software, learning how to use the tools of the program, making their first designs, and saving them as digital files.

These days, Nottawa gets most of her online traffic through Pinterest. Even though she found her first customer through Instagram, or that customer found her, other social platforms aren't working well for her because they require a constant stream of content. Startup costs, however, were a grand total of $120, which included buying a tablet and the first course she took to learn the graphics program. In 2021, she earned over $24,000, which she hopes to double this year. 80% of her income comes from the website, which she started to help promote her Etsy shop.

She gets paid from ad revenue, course sales, affiliate income, and of course, the digital drawings themselves. Oh, and big news, Nottawa left her day job in January of this year, and now works her side hustle full time. She's still figuring out her future plans, but it's focused on growing traffic to the site and increasing sales. [Music]

Hope you enjoyed this story. As always, remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

I really liked the quote from Nottawa that we started this episode with, "No matter what you do, time will pass." No matter what you do, time will pass. So why not spend that time working on your goals? Why not spend that time doing something that matters to you? Why not spend that time building for your future? Just an encouragement for you there.

Today's show notes, including links to Nottawa's website, the Inkscape software, anything else I mentioned in the episode will be at sidehustleschool.com/19911991. Almost episode 2000, how about that? Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for being part of this community. I hope you'll subscribe or follow, come back tomorrow.

It's completely free. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From The Onward Project.