Hello artists, let’s be real, many of us young artists are really anxious about how we’re going
to make a living and we all dream of having a garden like Joaqin Sorrolla, a pond like Claude
Monet or a house like Pierre Bonnard. Well, those guys never had the internet, and in today’s world
there’s never been more opportunities for artists looking to make some money out of their hard work.
I’m going to show you 15 ways to make money as an artist and I’m starting with something
I believe every creative person on the planet should be doing and that is content creation.
The reason I put content creation as number one is because even if you’re nowhere and you have
no idea what you’re doing except the fact that you love making some kind of art - documenting
that journey in a meaningful way can grow you an audience that might one day become
interested in buying your work or giving you monetary support through other means.
If a quiet introvert like myself can build a channel and sell some work then so
can you. The great thing I love specifically about YouTube, is as you grow over time your monetized
videos will continuously bring in ad revenue and the more successful videos you create,
the more that passive income builds up- and that leads me onto the next
two possible sources of income and that is sponsors and affiliate links.
These two very much relate to content creation, because you’ll need some kind of an audience
to attract sponsors in the first place and to also get clicks on those affiliate links. If anyone
doesn’t know what an affiliate link is, it’s a personalized link where you can earn a commission
if someone purchases the product or service you’re promoting. So for example,
in my description box I have affiliate links for both TubeBuddy and Epidemic Sound which
are services that I both use myself to help run this channel. If anyone purchases a subscription
through any of those links, I’ll get a small cut so a big thank you to anyone who does.
As for sponsors, last month I actually had my very first sponsored video
and going forward I have a good idea of what kind of companies I’d like to be sponsored by -cough-
skillshare, notion, winsor and newton pls notice me.
Once you start growing in your niche, these sponsors may reach out to you
but you can also reach out to them with a creative idea, script, or offer to convince
them that sponsoring you is a great idea. The kind of money you can make from sponsorships can
be anything from a few hundred pounds to a few thousand depending on your audience and reach.
Number 4 is digital products, and to throw some ideas out there I’ve seen many popular digital
artists sell their brush sets for both procreate and photoshop, and also complete photoshop files
showing a breakdown of the different layers they work through to create a piece. What’s great
about digital products is you have infinite stock, you don’t need a physical space to keep anything
and you don’t even need to set up your own online store to sell things.
Recently I’ve created my own store on Gumroad, which is a popular
platform to sell digital products and you only need to sign up and link a payment
method to get started. For my first product, I’ve put together a very practical startup
guide for artists looking to get into content creation and specifically tailored it towards
YouTube. I go over how I started my channel, the mistakes I made along the way and exactly
what kind of skills you should be learning to go forward and create high quality, meaningful
content that builds an audience. If you’re interested the link will be in the description.
We’re now going to travel from the digital realm into the physical, and
it’s obvious that selling your original works is a way to make some money, but the difficult bit is
HOW. Let’s start with the different ways you can sell through a gallery because
when you’re young a lot of this stuff feels like a massive secret.
If you’re looking at blue-chip galleries, basically galleries that sell “high end” art
and expect them to even glance at you it’s just not going to happen early on so focus on more
practical ways to get exposure for you work first. If you’ve just graduated from a degree
or a masters and you feel like your art is at a point where it’s ready to take on the world you
might want to start looking at applying to group exhibitions in your local area. Usually a group
exhibition will fall under some sort of theme and the work chosen tends to work well together.
A really fun and extremely popular exhibition that runs yearly in London is the Royal Academy
of Arts Summer Exhibition and this year the theme is “Climate”. One of my previous tutors, Gethin
Evans, has a work currently on show called “Toxic Beauty” and I think it’s a very juicy painting.
If you can’t get into a group exhibition to sell work through
applying, there’s also an option of renting out a gallery space with all of your artist friends.
Last month I had a small show on at the Tub in Hackney with some previous classmates and
I managed to sell one of my gouache pieces there, so even
if you’re paying for a space it’s possible to make some profit depending on how much you sell.
And finally for the gallery section we’ll talk about every artist’s dream,
a solo exhibition. Just how does one even obtain such a spectacular feat - well .. a well received
group exhibition can be a start. If you have your work in a show where the right eyes are
falling upon your masterpieces, there’s a chance that a gallery may approach you to offer you
a solo show OR give you an opportunity to exhibit pieces at one of their group shows.
This can also happen during end of year degree shows, but it’s more common to see this in
postgrad degree shows as the work tends to be at a higher level and ready for the market.
Now that we’re done with galleries, let’s move on to prints. Prints can be an incredible source
of income for artists, I’ve seen artists such as Zhi Yong Jing on Instagram use prints as a primary
source of their income (100k+), and the great thing about prints is that it’s possible to get
high quality prints for an affordable price, and then sell them to your audience for a price that’s
significantly less than your originals. It’s a win for you and your collectors.
Recently I did my own set of limited edition prints with Art4Site and they came out really
well, I’ll be excited to do more once I work out what the hell I’m doing with my life.
Enough of the physical stuff,
let’s jump back into the digital realm and sell some NFTs. (Insert dumb NFTs, copy and save joke).
Yeah I had to throw in an NFT joke somewhere, I’ll be honest I really don’t know
much about the NFT space, so forgive me for my terrible humour and go and google if you dare.
Jokes aside, the next source of income could be from creating and selling
courses related to your practice. Whether that be a detailed course on your style of oil painting,
teaching people how to sculpt with a certain material or how to put a shark in a tank,
creating courses and uploading them to platforms such as Skillshare and Udemy
can work very well. Bare in mind though, to create a course you obviously have to get really good
at the thing you’re trying to teach and also know how to make high quality video content.
But if making videos and putting together courses isn’t your thing, selling your time as a mentor
or doing some tutoring is also an option, it’s pretty much how I survived in China and
it can be quite rewarding to see how students evolve over time. You can always do some research
in your local area to see if there’s anyone looking for drawing or painting lessons,
there’s also the option of teaching kids as there are many parents out there looking
for creative outlets for their little demons.
The next money making machine I’m going to talk about is Patreon. For anyone who doesn’t
know Patreon is a website that allows you to create exclusive content for those who choose
to subscribe to you and pay a monthly fee. I’ve seen Patreon work incredibly well for artists,
SamDoesArts being an insanely successful example of how well this can be done,
he’s earning an absolute minimum of 10,000 a month
at the moment releasing procreate brushes and tutorials each month.
Once again the catch here is you need to build some kind of an audience that
are willing to support you or are at least thirsty for the information you’re providing
-cough- content creation.
But the idea here is to provide your audience with something they’ll be interested in aside from what
you normally do. This could be a peak behind the scenes, casual or more detailed process videos,
some vlogs if you’re not a vlogger, giving access to some digital products like brushes or ebooks,
or even creating a full course with new tutorials releasing every month like Ross Draws did
with his bootcamp. You can obviously get creative with this, but you really want
to provide some extra value to those who are willing to break the bank for you every month.
Now the last 3 I’m going to go through are things you can start thinking about after
graduation or once you feel like your art is mature enough to exist outside of the studio.
The first of these 3 is applying for Art prizes. Now depending on what you do as an
artist the types of prizes you’ll apply for can differ. So come here, listen closely because I’m
about to give you a sneaky practical tip that will be incredibly useful for you. Pull up
some online postgraduate exhibitons or go to the websites of your favourite contemporary artists
and find where they’ve posted a list of the art prizes they’ve been awarded with. Before you know
it you’ll have a long list of prizes you can look out for every year and apply because if you win
you’re usually looking at thousands of pounds that can help support your practice.
Next we’ll look at artist residencies, which is where you simply find somewhere that is looking
for artists to come and work in a designated space and usually you will have some kind of funding to
support you while you’re there. It’s common to have artist residencies inside universities so
that students can have access to a working artist, but you also have special residencies such as
the one that the artist Flora Yukhnovic did at Victoria Miro in Venice. So look up residencies
in your local area but also keep an eye out for opportunities that might even take you abroad.
The final source of income I’m going to go over is selling work at Art fairs.
Art fairs have become an insanely popular business model for many galleries because
you just stick everything in one location and have an audience coming in to buy things left
right and centre. Art fairs are where the magic happens like the Art Basel banana,
but let’s keep it real if you’re watching this you probably don’t have a few hundred grand
to splash on a booth and you’re probably going to want to look more locally at smaller art fairs to
get some eyes on your work. Regardless of whether you’re a fine artist or illustrator, there really
are affordable opportunities out there for you to find a temporary small space and sell your work
at these fairs. Just look up fairs that happen closest to you and see where your work might fit.
So that’s it for my 15 ways to make money as an artist, as you now know a big part of all of this
is growing an audience that is willing to support you so check out my guide for content creation
in the description box below, and if not then
click here for another video where I spill more secrets that many artists keep to themselves.
Finally here is my awkward goodbye.