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3 Easy Ways to Make Money Online as an Artist

SarahBurnsStudio

If you’ve ever wondered how artists make money online, you’re not alone. Most people know the old phrase “starving artist,” and there’s a reason that exists. 

Before the internet became a prominent fixture in our lives, the road to becoming a famous (and well paid) artist was quite different than it is now. You either needed to know the right people, or, to work for decades (maybe even a lifetime) and enter countless exhibitions until your name was recognized worldwide.

While that is still an option, I’m assuming you’re here because you’d prefer to learn all the ways that artists make money TODAY.

What’s it like being a full time artist?

It’s not as easy as just getting really good at painting. As much as I would love to spend all day every day creating art, and have a lovely deposit in my bank account each month – that’s a fantasy.

The reality of being a full time artist is that I paint far less than I do all the other things.

The “other things” include:

Each of those can be broken down into dozens of more detailed tasks, but you get the idea.

And then, a few hours a week I get to pick up the brush and paint.

The point of this is to demonstrate that it takes far more effort than anyone imagines – but once you have a system in place, you find a way to balance it all. And the cool thing is that passive income is an option for artists.

Let’s talk about a few easy ways to make money online as an artist.

1. Sell Prints of your Art

Step one would be – of course – to make good art. It doesn’t have to be world-class, it doesn’t even have to be “great.” Plenty of artists sell mediocre art. I’m saying this from experience! I started selling prints of my art well before I was good (by my own standards). It comes down to getting your art in front of the right eyes. There are over 7 billion people on earth. Someone out there is bound to want to hang one of your paintings on their wall.

Step two is to have a high-resolution scan or photo of your art. This is where digital artists excel because their art is already digitalised and easy to reproduce. As a mainly traditional artist using watercolor, gouache and oil paint, it’s not quite that easy for me! If you create small works of art, I recommend a scanner, as it allows for a very high resolution image and very little blur or distortion. As I tend to paint larger, I most often have to take photos of my art. I use a Canon 6D Mark 2 (DSLR) and photograph at them 300 dpi then adjust/crop/edit in Photoshop. I’m able to create prints as large as I need (my printer can handle 13×19 inch prints) with extremely high quality.

Now let’s look at the three main ways to sell prints online:

1. Personal Website Shop

This is ideal for those who like the have full control over their prints. You will need to make them yourself, or order prints from your favorite printer. You have to restock inventory, package and ship everything yourself. 

And for your efforts, you get 100% of the profits.

Key Strategies for your personal website shop:

2. Sell work through art sites with built-in search engines (like Etsy)

This is another self-fulfilling option, but you get the added bonus of Etsy’s (or similar) built-in search engine. Etsy promotes their site and attracts millions of people worldwide, and allows them to search for specific items.

You pay a small fee to use their websites.

Key Strategies for selling artwork through sites like Etsy:

In addition to everything above:

3. Sell artwork through print on demand sites (society6, redbubble, inprint)

This is for people who don’t want to go through the trouble of printing and shipping their own art. These sites do all the work and get most of the profit of your sales. You also don’t have any way to quality control your products and shipments. But they take care of all the customer service!

Key Strategies for selling artwork through Print on demand sites:

2. Sell Commissioned Art

Imagine opening a package to find a custom portrait of your husky or a painting of the mountaintop you got married on! This is the excitement that lies in commissioned art.

Commissions – or custom art – are a big part of my income. Most of my sales are custom requests, and it’s not only a great way to make money but it’s really awesome to know that the paintings are extremely sentimental to the clients.

How you price your commissions is completely personal but don’t sell yourself short. Custom art is the most special of all requests – your client can’t go to Walmart to buy it. They can’t get it on Etsy. So the value is higher.

Key Strategies for selling commissioned art:

3. Monetize Your Content

Selling art is only one small piece of my income. Making content is an important piece of the puzzle and over time you can monetise all your hard work. “Content” can consist of Youtube videos, blog posts, skillshare classes, digital and physical Patreon rewards, and more.

It’s…a lot of work, and each week there’s more to do.

My strategy consists of painting as often as possible, and recording as much of that journey as I can. I also take lots of photos along the way. This leaves me with hundreds of gigabytes of video and photos to utilise throughout the year.

It’s exhausting, but in order to have enough content to share, I typically need to produce twice as much content as I share – half of it is not up to my standards and ends up in the recycle bin.

There’s not enough hours in the week to make individual content for each platform, so here’s how I handle it.

For one painting, I record as much of it as I can (if not the entire thing). I also take progress photos along the way and high quality photos at the end. I can use them in the following ways:

Videos

  • YouTube
  • Skillshare
  • Instagram Post / Stories
  • Patreon Tutorial
  • As part of a future sketchbook tour

Photos

  • Social media
  • Blog
  • Website
  • Newsletter
  • Prints
  • Ads
  • Competitions

In order to monetize these, there are different rules for each platform. But here is an abridged list:

Ideally you want to have as much passive income as possible so you have more time for doing what you love.

Buy prints of my art on Etsy

So what are some other ways you make a living as an artist online? Let me know and start a dialogue in the comments!

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