Friday, June 25, 2021

Create || 10 Ways To Make Money From Your Art


Creating art is great fun, it's a way of expressing yourself, it makes great therapy and it can be a great way of making money too. There are plenty of ways to make money from your arts and crafts, but not everything works for everyone. With this in mind, I thought I'd share ten ways we can make money from our art, by selling designs as a one off, multiple sales or on products. 




1. Sell prints on Etsy

There are many places you can sell prints of your art work, but Etsy definitely seems to be the best contender here in the UK for budding artists, although I must warn you it is very saturated with plenty of other brilliant artists! Don't be put off though, a saturated market is tough but it does make those sales even more rewarding! Click here to see my tips for selling on Etsy.

2. Sell merchandise on sites Rebbubble & Society 6

Print on demand sites like Redbubble are great for testing the water with your designs, seeing good quality mock ups of your work on a number of items and getting started into the world of art selling. The problem I've found though is that sales are slow, but it's a great way to earn a little extra passive income, as once the designs are loaded, you really don't need to do anything else unless you want to market your items further. When you upload your work, you'll then have the option to download mock up images of your designs on items like bottles, bags and cushions. It's great fun and a good place to start.

3. Sell your art as stock images or process pictures

Another way of generating an income from your art is to upload files to stock image sites. People will then use your designs in their professional or personal projects for a small fee. This works particularly well with graphics, clipart type images and patterns, but photos are highly sought after and you can literally upload pictures of anything!





4. Take on commissions

Whatever art form you prefer, you can take on commissions for designing things like logos and branding content, as well as things like personalised cards, wall art and pet portraits. One tip would be to take on one at a time so you don't get overwhelmed with orders and never take on anything you're not comfortable doing or that you really won't enjoy. You can advertise your commissions as listings on your site/selling site, as well as on your social accounts.

5. Teach or sell a course

If you have a great skill that you could share or teach others, selling a course to teach your methods is a great way of bringing in an income and with online courses and tutorials, you can sell it to as many people as you like, so the possibilities are endless! You could even set up a local group to teach in person, for a more personal touch. 

6. Sell card designs

Designing and selling cards is great fun and a really popular way for artists to supplement their income now. With sites like Thortful and Scribbler getting increasingly more popular, it's a good time to jump in and have a go at turning you artwork into cards. 




7. Start an art blog

Starting a blog is always a good way to learn, share and get your ideas out in writing, but you can also eventually get to having sponsored work, paid for links or product reviews relating to your art. I regularly share what I'm up to, but you could also share processes, shop updates and instructional posts.

8. Sell in a local craft collective shop

You may have shops locally that will sell your art work for you, with many small businesses opening up as a kind of collective for locals artisans to share their makes in one place. These shops are really popular now with makers and buyers, with  Britain being very much into supporting local and small businesses. With these kind of shops, you usually rent a shelf/card rack and pay a monthly fee as well as 10% of sales, though they all vary slightly. Usually there is no long term contract, so it's a good way to sell prints and products to see how they do in a real store setting.

9. Sell patterns on Spoonflower

If you're a pattern creator, you may want to upload your designs to pattern sites like Spoonflower that print unique fabrics and wallpapers. This is similar to Redbubble, offering mock ups of your designs in real life type situations and then gives people the chance to buy your designs for their own projects in various fabrics and papers. 


10. Sell exclusive fabric designs

With WAHM and small businesses on the rise, their popularity is growing all the time. Many of these small businesses like to have exclusive fabrics so that their items will be truly one off in every way. You can also sell non exclusively so that the pattern can be sold over and over. I'm new to fabric design, but it's looking like a really fun way to share my art! I just wrote about it here.