6 Ways To Make Money With Your Art

Photo by Marko Blazevic from Pexels

Making money as an Artist on the face of it, seems quite difficult, but if you make a plan then you can really make a living for yourself in the art industry. The following Six are all suggestions on ways you could make money with your own art whether that be painting,drawing or something that you make as a sculpture, not all suggestions may fit the art that you do, but they are valid ideas designed to get you thinking about your artistic plan of action.

Before we get into each ways you could potentially make money, it is important to remember that there are no quick ways to make money unless you are lucky enough to start earning instantly, nearly all the steps mentioned below take a certain amount of time to build up and create the income, there is no fast track, there is just the process of doing and it could take months before you start to see regular earnings.

Before considering any of the following ways to make money with your own artwork, you need to really narrow down what type of artwork that you create, so you can make a plan to focus on a handful of these money making ideas and really make the best use of your time.

1. Commissions

These are the first pieces of work that you might have a go at first, friends and family are usually your first port of call to test out this method and really think about pricing, then from there you can think about offering commissioned art pieces as a service and structure your pricing in different tiers, such as (just an example) black and white ink drawings £50, full colour drawings £100 or a larger painting £200.

Knowing your worth in time and effort that it takes to create the art that you do is vital to your pricing.

The best ways to do commissions is to offer either fan art of games, books or movies, customers are always looking for an original art piece that is nostalgic to them or that creates a feeling for them.

You could offer portrait commissions of friends and family or even pets from your potential customers. People often want a good quality original piece of art that they can look at and remind them of a loved one or pet that has passed away or just as a focal point in someones house.

Once you get more established as an Artist you may become known for creating the art that you make and be recommended to other potential clients. Also don't forget about personal work too, you can create original art that has not been commissioned and future fans of your work will buy that.

Speaking as an Artist myself, I've had mixed feelings about doing commissions, on the one hand, some customers have been great and allowed me to do my own thing with great results, but on the other you are likely to get them customers that drain your very life force and stress you out with never ending revisions which make you question your sanity and whether you actually want to offer commissioned art ever again in the future.

In this instance it is a good idea to take an upfront deposit that is often non refundable to allow for any extra revisions, the more you take on art this way you are more likely to weed out those time wasting people who want your art for next to nothing or they may not pay you at all.

2. Art Prints

My Venom art prints 

Similar to art commissions, art prints allow you to make limited editions of your original art from ink drawings, to paintings or art that took you a long time to complete. Again you can do a mix of fan art and personal art. Statistically speaking fan art is going to sell more so do more of that artwork and if you can broaden what you offer, for example, if you only draw manga stuff, but feel you can draw Disney or cartoony stuff then aim to offer that in print form too.

Do your own research and see what print companies are local to you that offer good deals on getting your art printed on quality papers. You could print your art prints out yourself if you have a good printer but that option is considered more expensive for you what with buying good paper and printer ink cartridges.

You could sell art prints at Comic Conventions, art fairs and art shows, usually you build up your stock of prints over time and you have to re-invest profits back into getting more prints but selling the prints will pay for this over time as you build a name for yourself.

3. Print On Demand Products

Selecting certain art that you've already done for POD products such as T-shirts, Mugs, Hoodies, Postcards and Skateboards can be quite lucrative if you hit on some best selling designs.

There are a number of print on demand websites that you could join and sell your art:-

Zazzle

Cafepress

Redbubble

Teespring

Society6

Being creative about the best use of your time and fitting your designs on specific products is the main thing you do on these sites. Not all designs you create will fit on certain products, so you have to work out what art can go on each item.

The best thing to do is create artwork that is seasonal which is all through the year, aim for the holiday designs such as Christmas, Birthdays, Halloween, Valentines Day, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, St Patricks Day.

Look for the top trends or best selling designs that are already on the print on demand websites and try and create new designs accordingly.

4. Publishing Books

There are books you can get published, usually through the self publishing route through Amazons KDP (Formerly Createspace) program and the types of books you can upload could include Art Books and Sketchbooks, Colouring Books, Comic Books/Graphic Novels and even low content items such as Journals, Planners and Diaries.

The Amazon marketplace is a great place to have your books available for sale, although it is quite competitive, like anything your have available for sale you have to have a marketing plan in place to get your books out there and seen, hook them customers in!.

5. Licensing Your Artwork

Licensing your art on a companies brand products could be an option for you. either on the in house company products such as cards, T-shirts and Skateboards to name a few, you can negotiate a price for essentially renting out your designs for a limited time or indefinitely.

This is where your own research comes into play, make a list of potential companies to write proposals to on spec. and be prepared to have some good quality samples of your artwork in high definition attached within your written proposal.

Licensing deals have been known to be in the 5 -6 figure range for some Artists as your art could be featured on some household products you may already know as you just never know what is possible until you do the work to get there.

This is something I am working on and will document my results in a future blog post.

6. Create An Art Course

Whatever art you make and create, you might consider making a course on the processes of how you made a specific piece of artwork. and to do this you may have to have written notes on the process, also work out whether there will be video instruction with photos and detailed information that students can follow with ease.

There are sites out there that can help you create a course and help you structure one and have it ready for sale with a link.

Udemy

SkillShare

But there are some premium sites were you can pay to host an online course or membership, such as Kojabi, but they are expensive.

Let me know which ways you make money with your art the best in the comments. I'll be following up with a second post with more ways to make money as an artist. 

If this post has been useful for you, please share with others that may find it useful too, thank you!

Also read Making Money With Fiverr As An Artist

Making Money With Fiverr: Important Things You Need To Know

 

There are important things that you need to know about the fiverr site when trying to make money with your freelance offerings. And some of these things can demotivate you to continue with the site or to continue to grow with your freelancing career.

Currency Conversions

Whatever part of the world you are from, you will have to work out whether you have a good currency conversion in your own money as the site pays you in American US Dollars, so for instance I am from the UK and so if you earnt $70 I would have to work out Fiverrs cut which is 20% and then calculate the currency into your own to determine the actual amount you will receive by taking both amounts off, so it would be worth my (and yours) while to price high, so that your earning amount is a decent amount you can actually do the work for.

Fiverr Level Tiers 

There are 3 main tiers for offering your gigs and they are Level 1, Level 2 and Top Rated Seller. All levels you would have to maintain standards to keep at that level, the higher the level the more gigs you can create, but bear in mind if after the 15th of each month you don't meet Fiverrs standards you'll be demoted to the lesser level.

Fill Out All areas of your Gig offer

By filling in every part of your gig offer you are really making sure that your freelance gig has the best chance at getting noticed and you being messaged for work.

Make sure you provide samples of current artwork or whatever you provide, you usually get 3 top photo spaces and also an additional PDF spot were you can show a digital book sampling of your work.

Fill in the keywords in all the places you can, on photos including categories and try and create an in depth description of your offer, you need to convey exactly what it is your are offering for sale, make it clear, try to anticipate questions that the customer might have, for example, do you do Logos as well as just illustrations, explain that if you do or you don't.

Don't forget to work out a good price for the work you will do and also work out any gig extras which can make you extra money on top of your gig, always charge for extra revisions and make it clear in your description. For example if you are selling an $85 illustration and the customer wants to use the art for a t-shirt that will be replicated many times over, then a commercial licence extra is needed on top of that, the price is up to you.

Lastly fill out your profile page too with enough info about you that you can fit in, the description is short, but maybe direct customers to message you first before ordering, which leads in to the next bit...

Always message the customer along the way

At the start it's best to talk with the customer and get a good clear idea of what they want, speaking from experience, I always do this now, as before some clients would just pull the trick of more revisions needed after you've finished like they've changed their mind about what they wanted and it meant more work for me that usually was unpaid as you felt backed in to a corner.

Keep in touch with the client every step of the way as they will appreciate it, if you are late to deliver for whatever reason, it's good to let them know, so that they can add on extra time if needed.

Letting the customer know about the design or work with updates is the best way to reassure them and let them know that you are working on their work and they may be more likely to tip you, you never know.

Use The Fiverr Forum

The forum is a great way of interacting with other sellers on Fiverr, you can find tips that work, find out problems that have solutions or even ask for help from more experienced freelancers.

Use the Fiverr App

Download the fiverr app on your phone and you can get real time customer inquiries and message notifications which makes it a lot easier especially if you are away from your computer or out of the office.

If you want to sign up to fiverr here's the link - http://www.fiverr.com

I'll update this post with more useful info in time, if there are changes.

Make Money From Creating Fantasy Art

Making money from creating fantasy art is easier said than done. It takes a creative individual to create some good fantasy art, whether that is a painting or a drawing or a special fantasy comic book or graphic novel. Fantasy art is a highly popular artistic medium that has been around for a long while, over a couple of hundred years I suppose and there have been many artists over those years creating some stunning pieces of work to inspire.

Typically creating some worlds and scenes in a drawing or painting takes some good solid draft work, but it is achievable with having a self belief in your own art and believing it can sell, if you can match the quality of other fantasy artists you admire, then sure selling your own art would be fantastic. Making money with your fantasy art can be done in other ways, with selling wallpapers or screen savers online, these are the screens that can appear when you leave your computer ideal for a certain amount of time. Wallpapers are photos or illustrations that display on a persons computer desk top and this is the first image they would see when they switch on their computer.

Clip art would be the next one, as clip art has advanced over the years from the early pixellated versions of Microsoft Paint clip art as many are created now with Photoshop or some advanced art software like Gimp, they really make things much simpler in the design and certainly more smoother, although they do take time to learn, but they are very worth it.

If you have some reasonable talent in the style that you draw and create your own art, then you could consider selling courses and tutorials which others would benefit from, maybe students or artists who are just interested in the art style that you draw and even the stuff that you draw. You could start off with basic drawing tutorials that get advanced at a later stage or you could show people how to draw specific things, like tattoo art, comic book art, portraits etc. There are endless possibilities!

Whenever you may hear online about making money, you might find that most stuff online is just for these site owners to make money and they present money making products that sound good and that they may work to some degree, but not overnight or within a week like the products sales copy suggests. So with this in mind, you need to be making your own corner of the business world, creating your own line of products that you will use as evidence that you are serious about this as a viable business.

But among the obvious ways to make money with your art, there are others that require a certan amount of pushyness that will help to get your foot in a few industries, like games development and other Illustration based concept environments. An art portfolio is needed to show your best fantasy artwork and present it in a way that will show your capabilities as a fantasy artist/illustrator, bear in mind that the creative industries are very competitive, so you have to think of ideas to stick out of the crowd and either get employment in creating art or making money with your art directly.

Next time when you begin drawing, have a little think about the possibilities of marketing your artwork, who would buy it? think, what would your art best suit?, what genres? and what styles?

Always think ahead of your artistic creations and try and categorize them into manageable earning entities that create many strands of income on their own.

Go on, make money with your fantasy art!