Over 30 ways you can MAKE MONEY as an artist in 2023

today in this video i'm going to be

sharing with you over 30 ways that you

can make money as an artist and i want

you to use this video as a resource i

want you to use it as a career planning

tool to give you ideas and to inspire

you to really start taking your art

career seriously

so i've broken down the list into a

couple different categories but i want

to start off first by talking about

physical products because these are

probably the things that you think of

first when you think of building a

career as an artist and how you can make

money so the first one of course is

obviously

originals so for me as an oil painter

this is going to be an original oil

painting where it would be like an

original watercolor piece but either way

i have to put in a lot of time and

effort and materials into manufacturing

one single product so of course you have

to charge more for it you have to

account for not only your time so your

individual labor but the packaging the

materials the marketing costs and

oftentimes people will be priced out of

this product they cannot afford

originals and that is where prints and

stickers come in prints and stickers are

smaller reproductions of your work maybe

you create some custom designs for

illustrations just for stickers but

either way you can sell these products

just

on math

maybe you sign them to provide extra

value in the case of prints if you offer

limited edition runs or gclays for an

even higher value reproduction but

either way

you do not have to put in the same

amount of time and effort into creating

both of these products both of these

types of products so you can sell them

at a far reduced rate and the rest of

the things on this list for physical

products are just a lot of reproductions

just a lot of ways to have merch things

like comic books graphic novels or zines

you can go the traditional publishing

route with this or you can do like a

really slap shot zine i think zines

really started out as a sort of a diy

kind of effort and you can really make

that into whatever you want it to be but

either way you only have to make the

initial artwork once and then you can

sell it as many times as you would like

and then next up we have things like

keychains totes t-shirts enamel pins oh

let's see we got washi tape earrings you

can have like more handmade things like

needle felted cat ornaments or christmas

tree ornaments or sorry

cat toys or christmas tree ornaments and

just so many things that you can have

your art on that you can design and

create and just sell in an online shop

and that's i think like what people

think of when they think of how to make

money as an artist but we have barely

scraped the surface of this list so

let's keep going

digital products are a more passive

income stream again like prince and

merch

you only have to make the design once

and then you can sell an infinite number

of copies so i would highly recommend

that if you are a beginner that you

start with a more passive income stream

to get you going because it requires

so much less effort to maintain first

things first we have printables this can

be things like coloring book pages or

purely digital goods like notion

templates when i first launched my shop

i wasn't selling any art in it i was

just selling notion templates things

that i use every single day to run my

small business i have things like my

content calendar

my pricing structure from my artwork all

of that kind of stuff

you can mark it there is a market for

people just like you or one step behind

you that are interested in the tools

that you use to succeed and to sort of

keep yourself organized and then next up

we have ebooks so if you are someone

where you already have a lot of tools

under your belt where you already have a

lot of experience you can write an ebook

or maybe a short tutorial worksheet or

something to guide people through your

process or you have tips for just

starting out and then you can market

that as well to an audience or maybe

sell it on a marketplace like etsy

amazon ebooks or gumroad next up we have

tutorials showing your process or

technique this is more of like the kind

of the video kind of realm it could be

an ebook adjacent thing but i'm thinking

more like sort of an exclusive video

there are a lot of fine artists

especially oil painters that offer

real-time process videos that's one idea

or tutorials or processes showing the

tips and tricks kind of the behind the

scenes of how they are able to achieve

the effects that they do in their work

and these can be absolutely instrumental

educational material to someone like me

who is very much still an intermediate

or beginner painter and then next up if

you are more of the designer or

illustrator kind of artist and less the

fine artist or painter you might want to

consider designing things like patterns

fonts or illustrations for other

designers especially graphic designers

and offering those products for sale on

a platform like creative market creative

market is a place where you can get

fonts

repeatable patterns illustrations for

things like package design or web design

or like maybe you're making a poster for

a band

that kind of thing you find all of those

assets on creative market and there are

people that make fonts and repeatable

patterns and illustrations that probably

rake in six figures just from that and

the benefit of a platform like creative

market is that it is a search engine

slash marketplace so you don't really

need to have a robust marketing strategy

to really succeed on that kind of

platform all right so in the next

category we have social media based

income streams it is probably more

achievable and easier than ever to make

a living as an artist today than it was

in all of previous human history so

think of social media as a tool a way

for you to build your business and most

importantly fund your creative practice

that's why i like to invest in platforms

that will actually give me a return on

my investment that actually pay their

creators

so you're watching this video on youtube

for that exact reason i love youtube i

love posting videos here i am just

amazed at the following that i've been

able to build and now that i'm monetized

for the past couple of months i've been

making money on my entire

library of videos and all of the content

that i will post in the future so that

is where that first income stream comes

in in this category google adsense so

youtube google adsense pays a pretty

decent rate especially if you make

videos on popular topics like how to

find your art style or how to make money

as an artist like i'm talking about

right now next up i want to talk about

social media sponsorships so adsense

pays one rate but honestly i make so

much more money from sponsors than i

will probably ever from adsense and

that's because sponsors just like really

love small creators and as artists we

have a lot of companies that are really

interested in marketing their product to

our audience so this video is not

sponsored by anyone but i have made

thousands of dollars from sponsorships

in the past and that is like literally

that's for me that is life-changing

money money that i would not get

otherwise that makes a huge difference

and you're not just limited to youtube

by the way i've seen people do

sponsorships on places like instagram or

twitch or even tick tock so there are

lots of ways that you can make money

from your social media following once

you try to like once you've built it up

a little bit but that's why it's sort of

its own category i feel like social

media and art

can be intertwined in a little bit of a

weird way sometimes so

it is a way to make money but it is not

the only way to make money and it is not

necessary to have to have a social media

following in order to succeed as an

artist all right and one of the last

things in this social media category is

actually patreon so patreon is just so

instrumental for so many creatives

patreon is

like just the holy grail of income

streams for artists it is just insanely

good it has so much flexibility and what

patreon is at its core

is like a membership platform basically

so your most engaged audience the people

that love your work the most pay a

certain amount of money to you every

single month for rewards that you can

set and customize however you please so

you can offer coloring book pages maybe

an artist newsletter i offer

mentorship tears i also have like an

artist chat one-on-one call type of

situation

and then you can also offer physical

rewards like prints stickers originals

if you're on youtube you could do early

access to videos or even bonus videos

that's what i do on my patreon

really the sky is the limit you can do

whatever you want there are some artists

that just have one tier on patreon so

everyone just gets the same reward and

they do like an enamel pin club so every

single month they design an enable pin

then they send it out to all of their

patrons you can really make this

whatever you want it to be i think the

benefit here is its flexibility out of

all of these companies that i've been

talking about like twitch and youtube

and instagram

i think patreon has the most creator

focused mindset

it was founded by a creator and i think

all of the decisions that patreon has

been making have been positively

benefiting the people on their platforms

and i cannot say that about a lot of

social media sites out there and patreon

isn't really a social media site it's

kind of

the next step of that so once you have a

following already established

then you should start thinking about

pushing people toward your patreon to

help support you and to help to enable

you to create more art or more content

or whatever it is that you're in the

business of making the next category

that i want to talk about are more

serious or established routes

things like a very sort of traditional

art career in the art industry space so

for the first income stream we have

courses

this could be on a platform like

skillshare or you could design your own

website and offer your own course

this is not suitable for beginners but

once you reach a certain skill level or

you have something to teach that people

want to know you can offer this as an

income stream and as a place for people

to get a lot of value from the online

course space definitely has kind of a

bad rap and i think that's mostly

because there are lots of people on the

internet that are creating courses that

don't really have a super valuable skill

to teach or don't go about it in the

right way and the way that you should

always approach this

is to just

teach exactly and thoroughly what you

think

they need to know so so imagine the

version of you that did not have those

skills

what did that version of you really need

to know what was instrumental in their

learning process and then start to

create your course kind of around that

and the focus should always be to

provide value and not to just extract

money relatedly you could also offer

coaching or mentorship maybe you are a

very experienced artist maybe you're an

adjunct art professor and you have just

a lot of experience giving young

inexperienced artists feedback that is

great you can sell that skill and people

will pay you for that all right and next

up we have two income streams that i

think can be really important for a lot

of people those are art fairs slash

conventions and then also galleries and

exhibitions two very different things

but they can work together in a really

interesting way so art fairs and

conventions

are a really great option for lots of

different kinds of artists if you sell

physical products like ceramics mugs

maybe tapestries quilts fiber art

paintings stickers prints

you will probably undoubtedly have art

fairs or conventions that you are

qualified to exhibit in oftentimes you

do have to pay a booth fee

so a fee for like a table at the at the

event but if you are confident that you

can sell out of all of your stuff or at

least make your money back

that's huge i know artists that travel

all across the country all of the time

to sell their work at art fairs and

conventions and oftentimes it is a great

way to market yourself in person to

people that don't know you and have

never heard of you so next up we have

galleries and exhibitions this is again

one of those more traditional or

established routes of becoming an artist

and i'm not gonna lie to you guys i

tried to get my work in galleries i did

succeed but i was not successful in

selling my work

or at least selling it enough to really

make it worth it for me so i stopped

doing that but there are lots of artists

that make it big in galleries and the

traditional art world that are able to

move beyond the need to have a robust

marketing strategy

because the gallery will market for you

so once you get to a certain skill level

once you get accepted into galleries

that is a really really amazing route to

go with if you can find the right

gallery

some galleries are just not interested

in helping you market yourself and won't

be worth it but every single gallery is

different and you are bound to find one

that works for you if that's an income

stream that you're really dedicated to

next up we have something that's a

little bit more niche but still very

very traditional and very very

established and that is art licensing so

what art licensing essentially is is

that you design something and then a

company will license that design from

you to put it on other stuff so almost

everything that you see

in your daily life was designed by

someone think of every single time that

you have gone to a store

someone designed the packaging

the posters for that movie someone

designed the pattern on that rug that

blanket that pillowcase that shirt

all of those things those were designed

by somebody things like like kitschy

wall art and pillowcases and rugs and

like

everything that you've ever seen in

urban outfitters all of that was

designed by someone and what i'm trying

to say is that you can be that someone i

will link some resources down below if

you are interested in art licensing can

be really good if your art is like

botanical inspired or very sort of like

generic i don't mean that in a bad way i

just mean like if you are painting

like photorealistic people or fan art

that probably isn't going to be for you

but if you are an abstract artist

especially

art licensing that you should seriously

consider pursuing because again it is

one of those income streams where you

don't have to have a large following to

succeed and that can be instrumental

because we only have so much time in a

24-hour period you know what i mean and

you might have obligations that other

people do not you might have kids to

take care of you might have a medical

condition that restricts the amount of

hours you can work in a productive day

and

finding ways to make money as an artist

that work for you are like half of the

battle of trying to build a career so

that ends the more traditional kind of

category of income streams and now i

want to move on to freelance work so

freelance work is often a little bit

harder to get into

it does require a more established skill

set it can be harder to find clients but

i do think it is important to mention

just because it's again

again again

one of those income streams where you

really don't have to have a large

following i know that the artists that

you see on art youtube like people like

me we do have a following to speak of

and that is largely how we are able to

make money and how we are able to sell

our art but you don't have to make your

art career like i have made my art

career you don't have to be an artist in

the same way that anyone else that you

know is an artist there is a place for

you

in this world if you want to make money

as a creative

so

freelance work the first thing that i

want to talk about is sort of like

concept art or storyboarding for film

and animation studios maybe game

development this is probably one of

those spaces where you're going to want

to go to an art school or at least

you're going to need a lot of

determination marketing yourself because

a lot of the leads and stuff for this

like a lot of the ways that you get jobs

as a concept artist or a storyboarder is

not just because of your portfolio it is

also because people that you know will

advocate for you having friends in the

industry is so so important and

oftentimes you will do project based

work so maybe you work for

like an animation studio

as a storyboarder for like a specific tv

show but maybe that tv show only has one

season or maybe it ends after your first

year then you will of course have to

look for a different job which is where

other income streams come in but this

can be a really interesting way to make

money if you are interested in concept

art storyboarding or animation so the

next two income streams that i want to

talk about are book illustration

editorial illustration for book

illustration you can get started

illustrating other people's books and

then you can maybe write your own come

out with your own book once you have

sort of a grasp on what to do and the

work process

and

there's tons of resources for how to do

this anusha sied here on youtube has

done tons of award-winning picture book

illustrations she's an amazing

illustrator and i will link her in the

description if you want to watch her

videos on this topic because it is super

useful

people here on youtube as well like

megan wang have done editorial

illustration which i also think is

really really interesting editorial

illustration is things like magazines uh

maybe newspapers the washington post

comes to mind like

have you ever sat down and just like

seeing political cartoons on things like

the onion

someone drew those

someone drew those like i guarantee you

everything that you see in your daily

life almost everything was designed by

someone very purposefully

and you can be that someone i know that

i just threw a ton of stuff at you and i

don't want you to feel super intimidated

and that's why i made this video right

here if you haven't watched it yet it's

basically all about how to launch your

art career from start to finish the

different phases that you go through and

what i recommend you start out with i

hope you guys have a great rest of your

day that's all i have for you and i will

see you in the next one bye guys