30-Year-Old Spends Only 2 Hours a Day on Her Side Hustle, Earning $27,800 Monthly

Domonique Brown spent the early days of the pandemic posting her drawings on Instagram from her kitchen table in Jurupa Valley, California. That habit now underpins a brand sold in Target stores nationwide and a side hustle bringing in $27,800 (£21,000) a month, most of it passive income.

Brown, 30, founded the lifestyle brand DomoINK in April 2020. It generated $333,600 (£252,200) in gross profit over the past year, an average of $27,800 a month, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The business outearns her full-time job as a graphic designer, a role that pays a $90,000 (£68,000) salary.

The gap is widened by how little time the brand demands. Brown said she spends about two hours a day on it, handling customer relations, posting content, and creating new work when inspiration strikes. She does not open the side hustle until her nine-to-five is finished for the day.

From Empty Walls to a Following of Thousands

The brand began as a fix for a personal problem. After buying her first home, Brown could not find Black art and décor that reflected her, so she drew pieces for her own walls and posted them online.

The reaction was instant. Followers asked to buy the work, and she opened a shop to meet demand. Within months, Etsy sales were covering her mortgage.

Social media did the heavy lifting. Brown has said it let her build the equivalent of her own gallery at almost no cost and reach hundreds of thousands of people. One video of her drawing Martin Luther King Jr in crayon went viral and led the sports outlet Bleacher Report to commission an illustration.

Her wider work has since been licensed onto everything from socks to credenzas through the marketplace Society6 and stocked by HomeGoods, Macy's, and Urban Outfitters.

How a Puzzle Led to the Target Deal

Brown's break with Target did not come from a pitch. A Target buyer spotted her artwork on a jigsaw puzzle she had designed for a separate collaboration with Jiggy Puzzles, a piece called 'Cali Views' showing two sneakers walking through California, she recalled in a 2023 interview with Revision Path.

The buyer reached out, and Target asked her to design prints and home décor for its Black History Month range. The collection launched in February 2023. She has since worked with Disney and Samsung and placed a hair accessories line with Goody Tru at Walmart.

There was a personal echo. Brown had once worked at Target as an 18-year-old cashier, a job she left abruptly. 'It was definitely a full circle moment for me,' she said.

A Side Hustle Built Over Years, Not Weeks

Across all of DomoINK's sales channels, Brown's annual earnings reach roughly $267,000 (£201,900), and her original paintings have sold for as much as $5,000 (£3,800) each.

None of it arrived quickly. She spent years building an audience before the money followed, posting work that drew few likes and watching Etsy listings sit for months without a sale. She has credited her marketing and public relations background, including an MBA, with helping her treat the art as a business rather than a hobby.

She has also been frank about the cost. Early on she took on too many projects, stopped sleeping, and saw the quality of her work slip before she learned to pace herself.

Her main advice for anyone chasing the same path is to expect rejection. 'You got to be okay with the rejection at first,' she said. 'It's definitely not going to be like you post your artwork, that one piece, and it just blows up and you're drawing for Target next.'

Keeping the salaried job, she said, was deliberate. The steady income meant she never had to sell out of desperation, giving the brand the room it needed to grow.