How to Make Money as an Artist Anywhere in the World

Are you a creative person wanting to know how to make money as an artist? 

Yes, it is possible to make your creative side hustle a full-time career. But for that transformation to happen. You need to treat your creative pursuits much more than a hobby. 

You cannot expect sales to pour if Instagram is your only artist-portfolio-cum-sales tool. Also, you cannot expect everyone to flock outside your artist studio the moment it opens. 

You need a functional up and running SEO artist blog that attracts the ideal audience. 

If you are figuring out creative ways to make money. Then, you need to read further.  

Know How to Make Money as an Artist Anywhere in the World

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1.     Decide on Your Art Niche – People and Product

If you introduce yourself as an artist. Then, I am sure you know what your artist niche is. 

If you do not know yet. Then, do not fret. Niche is about identifying the art category that you serve. 

Though naming that category is not as simple as – Sculpture Artist or Oil Painting Artist. 

Rather it is as specific as – Molecule Jewelry Artist or a woodworking artist making Bird Houses. 

It is important to be clear on the niche that you are serving. Else all your marketing efforts will go kaput at the later stages. 

Getting your niche correct will make it easier to make money as an artist. Niche selection strengthens the connections between your art and the buyer. 

2.     Create a Self-Hosted Website to Facilitate Transactions



Once you know whom do you serve as an artist. Then, you need to figure out how to serve those people. 

You can display your art at a gallery. But in today’s times, it is important to use the online mode of showcasing your portfolio. 

For that purpose, social media is at your disposal. But apart from third party websites. It makes sense to have your artist website blog. 

Do not confuse a blog with the free one that is available as a sub-domain from Bloggers and WordPress. Those free ones do let you create an artist’s resume. But they do not let you expand as an artist-entrepreneur. 

Instead of complying with the rules of free blog sites. You should create a self-hosted artist blog to have independent control. 

An artist blog displays your crafts. It also doubles up as the platform to facilitate sales and marketing. 

An artist blog is the most important asset of a creative entrepreneur.

3.     Marketing – Offline and Digital

As the adage goes – you need to market to sell – holds true for creatives as well. 

You cannot expect your art to sell on its own. You have to show your website/ physical store to people who matter. 

For that, you have to make use of both offline and online marketing. 

Blogging and social media are effective to bring traffic to your artist website. 

An SEO rich blogging builds a strong foundation for your online presence. It can be your best marketing arsenal until you invest in ad budgets. 

An effective social media strategy speeds up your blogging efforts. It acts as a catalyst to boost your manual blogging efforts. 

Thus, SEO and social media, bring visibility to your artist website. 

When it comes to offline marketing. Strategies may not be cost-effective or hyper-targeted. But still, they add to your overall marketing efforts. 

Though offline marketing is a one-way communication mode. Still, you can make use of some of its elements that are not expensive. QR codes are one of the marketing strategies that bridge the offline and online medium. 

You can include your website’s QR Code on your business cards. That way it will be easy to route offline views to online. 

4.     Logistics

To make money as an artist, you got to sell your artwork. Till your work does not reach the customer, the sale does not close. 

For a physical art studio, it could mean that your patrons could take the bought artwork with them. 

Though for an online store, you will have to ship your creations. 

Most of the creatives use third party stores like Etsy, Amazon Handmade, and Big Cartel. 

These stores release payment after the customer receives your artwork. 

Hence, you should partner with a reliable shipping partner. 

If you know how to make art prints of your work. Then, you will spend less time struggling with the question –  how to make money with digital art. That is because digital downloads are easy to process. Your customers can receive their digital art the moment they pay you. 

5.     Honing Relations

If you have prior experience of selling. Then, I am sure you will agree that warm relations ease transactions. 

Keeping that in consideration, you need to nurture relations with your audience. That is how warmed up relations lead to the first sale. The initial sale then leads to the repeat ones. 

This is where a direct line of contact with the customers comes into play. Since it is not possible to bring each one of your patrons to a chit-chat. That is why bringing people to your mailing list makes sense. 

Email marketing creates an uninterrupted mode of communication with your audience. Emails allow a to-and-fro interaction with the least possible friction. There is enough research to prove that email marketing has an impressive ROI. I can vouch for the same with my affiliate marketing for the crafter business. 

A functional artist website should integrate mail marketing for its visitors. 

In Conclusion

Ever wondered how to make money from drawing and painting without ending up on the streets? 

It is a general notion that it is difficult to make money as an artist. That analogy could be true since a lot many creative people side hustle to earn the moolah. 

Setting up a successful creative business needs an entire sales and marketing ecosystem. 

Though in today’s times it is not that difficult to earn money from your creative pursuits. 

As long as you can build up a database of your loyal fans. You will be able to serve them and pull up the sales of your artwork. 

Header Image Source: Pixabay