7 Other Ways To Make Money With Your Artwork

 

Following on from my last post 6 Ways to Make Money With Your Artwork I wanted to explore other areas to make money with your art. As before, all of them require you to spend a good quality amount of time and effort on to gain the results that you are after.

1. Freelance your art Services

Unleashing your artistic talent into the freelance world can be liberating and rewarding. But where do you start? The good news is, with a touch of preparation and some strategic steps, you can turn your passion into a thriving business.

First, hone your target. Defining your artistic niche helps attract ideal clients. Are you a master of mesmerizing portraits? A whiz with whimsical illustrations? Pinpoint your strengths and build a portfolio that showcases your expertise. This can be a dedicated website, social media profiles, or online platforms like Behance.

Next, become a marketing chameleon. Network with fellow artists, engage on relevant online communities, and reach out to businesses that could benefit from your skills. Craft concise pitches highlighting your value proposition and past successes. Remember, professionalism goes hand-in-hand with creativity.

Don't forget the business basics. Set competitive rates, outline clear project scopes, and establish communication channels with clients. Consider legal contracts and invoicing tools to streamline your operations. Remember, you're a creative entrepreneur, not just an artist, so wear both hats with pride.

Finally, keep your artistic flame burning. Experiment, challenge yourself, and stay inspired. This journey isn't always smooth, but by nurturing your talent, embracing the business side, and continuously learning, you'll pave the way for a fulfilling freelance career as an artist.

2. Art fairs/ Art Shows

For artists, art shows and fairs are more than just flashy exhibitions – they're vital launchpads for careers and creative growth. Imagine a vibrant marketplace buzzing with collectors, curators, and fellow artists, all concentrated in one place. That's the magic of an art fair.

Exposure is king. These events thrust your work into the limelight, showcasing your talent to a wider audience than any solo studio visit ever could. Collectors from across the globe converge, potentially leading to sales and commissions that fuel your artistic journey.

Networking magic. Art fairs aren't just about sales; they're about connections. Strike up conversations with gallery owners, curators, and established artists. These interactions can blossom into collaborations, exhibitions, or even mentorship opportunities, opening doors you never knew existed.

Trendsetting thermometers. Art fairs are living, breathing trend reports. Immerse yourself in the latest artistic movements, materials, and techniques. This exposure keeps your creative compass calibrated, ensuring your work stays fresh and relevant in the ever-evolving art world.

Validation and confidence boost. Seeing your art displayed alongside respected peers is a powerful form of validation. Positive feedback and genuine interest from collectors and art professionals can be incredibly motivating, fueling your creative fire and propelling you forward.

Of course, the art fair experience isn't without its challenges. Booth fees, travel costs, and intense competition can be daunting. But remember, the potential rewards far outweigh the initial hurdles. So, take a deep breath, polish your portfolio, and step into the vibrant world of art fairs – it might just be the launchpad your artistic dreams need.

3. Art Murals

Murals can transform your artistic passion into a larger-than-life income stream. Imagine your artwork adorning buildings, parks, or even entire communities, becoming landmarks that draw eyes and inspire conversation. This isn't just artistic expression; it's a lucrative career move.

With murals, your canvas scales up, potentially commanding bigger fees than smaller studio pieces. The visibility is unrivaled, offering constant exposure to a wide audience and establishing you as a bold, community-engaged artist. This opens doors to further commissions, collaborations, and even grants, diversifying your income and building your artistic profile.

Forget the limitations of galleries; murals are public art on your own terms. You collaborate directly with clients, from businesses to community organizations, injecting your artistic vision into the very fabric of their spaces. This creative freedom, paired with the satisfaction of bringing joy and vibrancy to public spaces, makes mural painting a uniquely rewarding way to monetize your talent.

4.Sell Art on a Website

Setting up your own online art store can be a transformative experience, opening your creative world to a vast audience and empowering you to be your own artistic boss. But navigating the digital landscape can feel overwhelming. Here are the key pillars to focus on for a successful online art venture:

1. Build a stunning website: Your website is your virtual gallery, so prioritize a user-friendly interface with high-quality visuals. Invest in professional photos that showcase your artwork's details and textures, and consider 360° views or short videos for immersive experiences.

2. Craft compelling descriptions: Don't just list titles and dimensions. Tell the story behind your art! Describe the inspiration, the techniques used, and the emotions you hope to evoke. Engage your audience with vivid language and personal anecdotes.

3. Offer a variety of options: Cater to different budgets and preferences by providing originals, prints, digital downloads, or even merchandise featuring your designs. This expands your reach and caters to a wider collector base.

4. Make it easy to buy: Streamline the checkout process with secure payment gateways and multiple currency options. Offer flexible shipping methods and clear return policies to build trust and encourage purchases.

5. Market your masterpiece: Don't wait for customers to find you. Actively promote your website on social media, art communities, and relevant online marketplaces. Run targeted ads, collaborate with other artists, and engage with your audience to build a loyal following.

6. Analyze and adapt: Track your website traffic and sales data to understand what's working and what's not. Refine your product offerings, pricing strategies, and marketing approach based on your insights. Remember, a successful online art store is a living, breathing entity that needs constant nurturing and evolution.

5. Artist Grants/ Competitions/Giveaways

Participating in artist grants, competitions, and giveaways can be a fantastic way to get your art noticed and potentially jump start your artistic career. Here's how:

Increased Exposure:

• Reach a wider audience: These events often attract curators, collectors, and art enthusiasts you wouldn't normally encounter. Even if you don't win, your work gets seen by influential people in the art world.
• Gallery representation: Some competitions offer gallery representation as prizes, instantly propelling your art into the professional sphere.
• Press coverage: Winning or being shortlisted can generate media attention, putting your name and work on the map.

Validation and Confidence:

• Recognition: Being selected for a competition or receiving a grant is a form of validation, boosting your confidence and artistic credibility.
• Feedback: Competitions often provide valuable feedback from judges and peers, helping you identify areas for improvement and refine your practice.

Financial Opportunities:

• Grants and awards: Winning competitions or grants can provide financial support to fund new projects, purchase materials, or even cover living expenses while you focus on your art.
• Sales: Increased exposure can lead to direct sales of your artwork, especially if your work resonates with the competition's audience.

Networking:

• Connect with other artists: Competitions and events provide a platform to meet and network with other artists, fostering collaborations and support systems.
• Build relationships with jurors and organizers: These connections can be invaluable for future opportunities and career advice.

However, it's important to approach these opportunities with realistic expectations:

• Competition is fierce: Be prepared to face stiff competition from talented artists. Don't get discouraged if you don't win at first.
• Time and effort investment: Researching, applying, and creating work for competitions takes time and effort. Weigh the potential benefits against the investment before committing.
• Not a guaranteed success: Winning a competition or grant doesn't guarantee instant success. Use it as a springboard to further your artistic journey.

Here are some tips for maximizing your chances of getting noticed:

• Choose competitions strategically: Select competitions aligned with your artistic style and career goals.
• Follow submission guidelines carefully: Pay attention to deadlines, eligibility requirements, and presentation specifications.
• Present your work professionally: Submit high-quality images, clear descriptions, and compelling artist statements.
• Promote your participation: Share your involvement on social media and reach out to relevant contacts.

6. Writing an Artists blog

An artist's blog can be a powerful tool to promote your art in several ways:

1. Showcase your artistic process and creativity:

• Share work-in-progress photos and videos: Give viewers a glimpse into your creative journey, from initial sketches to final masterpieces. This builds a connection with your audience and allows them to appreciate the effort and skill behind your art.

• Explain your artistic inspirations and techniques: Write about the artists, movements, or experiences that inspire you. Share insights into your preferred mediums and techniques, showcasing your expertise and artistic voice.

• Offer tutorials and tips: Educate your readers by sharing basic techniques, color mixing tricks, or even short drawing or painting tutorials. This establishes you as a knowledgeable artist and attracts potential students or buyers interested in learning from you.

2. Engage with your audience and build a community:

• Write about your artistic life and experiences: Share stories about your creative challenges, successes, and everyday life as an artist. This creates a personal connection with your readers and fosters a sense of community around your art.

• Host Q&A sessions and respond to comments: Encourage interaction by answering questions about your work, process, or artistic goals. This shows you value your audience's interest and builds loyalty.

• Run contests and giveaways: Offer your artwork or art supplies as prizes to generate excitement and attract new followers. This is a fun way to reward your audience and promote your work.

3. Improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and online visibility:

• Use relevant keywords and meta descriptions: Optimize your blog posts with keywords related to your art style, medium, or themes. This helps people searching for those terms find your blog.

• Promote your blog on social media and other platforms: Share links to your blog posts on your social media channels, online communities, and relevant forums. This increases traffic and exposes your art to a wider audience.

• Guest post on other blogs: Reach out to other artists or art-related websites and offer to write guest posts. This exposes your work to a new audience and builds backlinks to your blog, improving your SEO ranking.

Remember:

• Be consistent: Publish blog posts regularly to keep your audience engaged and coming back for more.
• Use high-quality visuals: Include beautiful images and videos of your artwork to capture attention and showcase your skills.
• Be authentic and passionate: Let your personality shine through your writing and share your genuine love for art.

By following these tips, you can turn your artist's blog into a valuable tool for promoting your art, building a community, and establishing yourself as a recognized artist in your field. So, grab your laptop, unleash your creativity, and start writing!

7. Create an art Raffle

Creating your own art raffle can be a fantastic way to promote your art, grow your audience, and potentially make some sales. Here's why:

Pros:

• Increased exposure: Raffles attract attention, especially if you offer a desirable piece of art as the prize. This puts your work in front of new eyes, potentially leading to new fans and collectors.

• Community building: Raffles create a sense of excitement and anticipation, encouraging people to interact with you and each other. This fosters a sense of community around your art and brand.

• Lead generation: By requiring participants to provide their email address or follow you on social media, you can build a valuable email list or social media following for future marketing efforts.

• Sales potential: Even if you only give away one piece, the raffle can generate interest in your other work, leading to direct sales.

• Fun and engaging: Raffles are a playful and interactive way to connect with your audience. They can be a great way to celebrate your artistic journey and share your work with the world.

Cons:

• Time and effort: Organizing a raffle takes time and effort, from setting up the rules and platform to selecting a winner and promoting the event.
• Cost: Depending on the platform you use and the prize you offer, there may be some associated costs.
• Not guaranteed success: There's no guarantee that your raffle will be a huge success. You may not get a lot of entries or sales, even if you put in a lot of effort.

Tips for running a successful art raffle:

• Choose a prize that will attract attention: Offer a piece of art that is unique, valuable, or relevant to your target audience.
• Make it easy to enter: Use a simple and user-friendly platform for people to enter the raffle.
• Promote your raffle heavily: Share the raffle on social media, your website, and in relevant online communities.
• Make it fun and engaging: Run contests or giveaways alongside the raffle to keep people interested.
• Be transparent and professional: Clearly communicate the rules of the raffle and make sure to follow through on your promises.

Overall, creating your own art raffle can be a great way to boost your art career, with the potential to gain exposure, build a community, and even make some sales. Just be prepared to put in the time and effort to make it a success.

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