Transcript:
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Are you an artist looking for unique ways to earn money well I want to share
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49 side hustles that you can do specifically tailored for the artist
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Like You many of these will transform your life so you will go from a mere
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hobby artist into someone making full-time income doing what you love
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after you hear this list you’ll be excited to try more than one of these but I want to encourage you to stick
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around to the end because I’m going to share a tip with you that will virtually
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guarantee your success at doing 99% of these things on this list my name is Jay
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Johns and I help artists like yourself Empower their skills and earn a
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full-time living doing what they love I’ve grouped all these ways to make money into six different categories the
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first category is all about selling your art the second category is all about publishing the third category is all
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about self-employed services so services that you offer to other companies the
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fourth category is all about Employment Services where another company needs a specific tasks done and they hire you to
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get it done the fifth category is all about teaching and the sixth category just groups random things together into
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one Epic category so one thing you can do when it comes to selling your art is to sell physical products this can come
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in the shape of prints this could come in the shape of mugs or clothing
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the thing that you really want to consider with physical products is you really want to consider the production
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cost of when you make a physical product and depending on who you’re selling it
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to you want to consider the shipping cost as well you can also sell virtual products these products could be like
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wallpapers or digital files and this uh
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selling virtual products it can be a great passive way to earn money and you
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don’t have to deal with shipping or production costs as much there is your
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initial time to create things but over the long term you don’t have to keep uh
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worrying about additional cost or additional time to fulfilling the uh the
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orders of a virtual product another way that you can sell your artwork is by
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selling prints on Etsy and this is a very very popular one and Etsy is a
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global online Marketplace a lot of people are going on Etsy which is a good and bad thing the good thing is that
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there’s a lot of people buying it so you have a large uh pool of people that could hopefully discover what you
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provide and the bad thing is the competition it could be a little bit saturated but still selling your prints
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on Etsy there’s tons and tons of people doing it every day so that means there’s
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a lot of uh availability and uh and the market is is
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Rich with opportunities to be able to sell your prints on Etsy another way you can sell your artwork is to sell prints
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at conventions uh at conventions you interact directly with your buyers and
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most conventions have some sort of theme or Niche uh with the people who attend
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so you can cater your prints to the people that are going to the conventions
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I used to go to conventions a lot and one of the things that me and my fellow artists did was we’ make a lot of
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superhero prints and depending on the popularity of that
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Superhero uh we could easily sell prints to people who will come around so with
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selling uh any type of art uh at conventions just get a really good spot
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and then make sure you’re selling things that your audience uh came there for so
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if if it’s a anime convention sell anime prints if it’s a superhero convention sell superhero prints another way to
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sell your artwork is by creating a project and using crowdfunding platforms
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to fund your project so a crowdfunding platform is a platform like uh
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Kickstarter or Indiegogo is where you list your project on these platforms
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they’ll take a certain percentage of it but you build out special incentives to reward people for uh backing your
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project and and I’ve seen this be uh quite successful like right now I know a
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person’s funding their comic book on a crowdfunding platform and they’re trying to raise over $44,000 for the project
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and they have over 50% funded and it still has about 30 days to go so using
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crowd funding platforms can be a very very viable way to fund your artistic
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projects another way that you can make money is by selling handmade crafts
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right so you can use some of the uh combin this with some of the methods I discussed earlier and make handmade
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crafts and sell them at fairs you can sell them at SC or you can sell them uh
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build your own website and sell them there but selling handmade crafts is a great way for you to earn additional
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money by using your art another way to sell your artwork is by selling your
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paintings or prints at local shows like going to conventions local shows offer
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you a way to directly uh interact with your buyers uh but what local shows
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offer is uh the ability to uh kind of make more personal relationships because
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it’s a local event uh you can have more of a intimate
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uh discussion and talk with the people who come by and what I found was that uh
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you’ll you don’t have as much competition as a bigger uh
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convention so there’s a possibility where you can even uh have more of a
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dedicated following and make more money because you’re uh almost like you’re niching down and you’re kind of serving
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your local community another way you can sell your artwork is by selling your art at fairs or local market
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and similar to conventions is that when you sell at like fairs or local markets
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you just have a deeper personal interaction with your buyers uh it’s
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like a place where you can uh instantly recognize the people and especially if
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you do it multiple times you’ll just end up building your customer base quicker
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and you’ll just uh build a connection with people in in a more meaningful way
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than if you go to a bigger convention now let’s move on to the next category
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publishing and Publishing is another great way where an artist can make uh
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money uh with their art right the first item in the publishing category is by
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illustrating children’s books right many times uh there are writers looking for
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artists to bring to life the stories and
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pictures that they have in their they have in their mind so they are uh want
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to partner with illustrators who can bring their ideas to life and or you can
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even go the uh full ownership way and sell uh create a children’s book where
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you write and create uh all the illustrations within that book too but
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children’s book is a great way for you to be able to sell your illustration uh
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Services the second way to earn money uh in the publishing categor is by creating
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an art magazine you can create a physical or digital version of your art magazine or do both with a physical
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version you can partner with uh local uh
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uh coffee shops music shops or local uh comic shops to help publish your uh uh
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art magazine In fact when I was uh going to school there was a popular comic book
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store that accepted uh creators to to sell their uh local books whether it’s
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an art magazine whether it’s Com or whatever and they just got like a small percentage of whatever is sold but by
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doing this you kind of bring more people aware of what of your art magazine and
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then if you want to go to a digital route you can always sell it through online uh platforms and use social media
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to kind of help bring awareness to it the third way you can earn money as an
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artist in the uh publishing category is by creating a comic and this one is kind
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of near and dear to me because like I’ve done this and I’m actually currently working with an artist to uh do this as
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well but by creating a comic book you’re creating stories that could potentially
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Captivate people and by doing this you can help build your own uh uh audience
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and help get people to become fans of what you do because it’s the stories
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that Captivate people so creating a comic can be a great way to earn
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additional money it is a lot of work but it could be a great way to help build
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your fan base and to earn money through there and nowadays there’s so many ways
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that you can distribute your comic so it’s almost uh it almost costs nothing
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to put your comic out there for people to enjoy the fourth item in the publishing category in which you can
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make money is by selling art books and this is another one that that I have done and I have tons of uh experience
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with this but when it comes to selling art books you can do it in two ways you you can collect a bunch of your artwork
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whether it be uh digital uh artwork that you’ve created or whether it be a
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traditional work that you’ve just scanned or you’ve uh made a a digital version of and put it in a book and sell
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it the other thing I’ve seen that’s quite popular is people share their processes and tips and put it in a book
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and sell uh sell like the tutorials and tips in their processes that are
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collected in a book and sell that to people too so either you’re putting together a collection of work or you’re
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putting together a source of guides and tutorials to help and and sell that next
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in our category on ways that artists can make money is all about self-employed Services doing portrait commissions are
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a great way for an artist to make money and if I may share a little story with you about portrait commissions is I used
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to do a lot of these and and one of the things I’ve learned a lot
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from them is how you really need to communicate with the client so for example when I used to do them my most
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common client were parents whether that’s the actual parent or grandparent and they’re getting a uh Commission of
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their child and what I noticed is that the parent will come uh to me frequently
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asking about like is it done is it done and of of course uh any parent in that
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situation would be excited for this so it it’s uh it’s normal for this to
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happen but I realize that this would uh when this happened this kind of interrupted my flow so one tip that I
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give when doing portrait commissions is always let your client know especially if you’re doing the commission on the
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spot and live let the client know how long they can expect to wait before they
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get it so whether it takes 1 hour two hour 3 hours or however long it takes um
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communicate that and then uh you will find that the process of doing portrait
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commissions will be a lot more enjoyable for you next on this list of ways that
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Arts can make money it’s all about doing face paintings and I really recommend doing face paintings at uh theme parks
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or fairs and this is because theme parks of fairs already have a lot of people there so you already have a built an
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audience so you’ll find it easier and a lot of times at theme parks are fairs um
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people want to enjoy the festivities people want to partake in them so if
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you’re offering face paintings uh I find that a lot of people just embrace the
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fun of it and especially if it’s a parent getting a face painting with their child uh they’ll gladly spend the
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money so that the the event is enjoyable for their kids next on this list is
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mural paintings and mural paintings are large scale paintings done on large
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surfaces and Mir paintings are usually in some sort of public area they can be
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in an indoor office space or other type of building or an outdoor setting next
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on this list is tattoo designs more and more people are getting tattoo designs so I said growing demand and you can
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either sell your designs online or you can work with tattoo shops to sell your designs uh to them and the that I have
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with these is remember when you’re doing these designs your your your canvas so
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to speak is a human skin so you really want to understand how the skin behaves
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because that will allow you to make um really effective designs that people
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will be satisfied with the next way that artists can make money is by doing live painting events and what I really love
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about live painting events is just the nature of them allows you to monetize in multiple different ways and let me break
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it down for you usually when you do a live painting EV when you do a live painting event you
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get paid the upfront fee and then on top of that you can charge for you can
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charge uh for the painting when it’s done you can accept uh tips and
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donations during the event and also you have a a potential of being uh being
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able to be sponsored for the event so you can have multiple income streams from just doing one single live painting
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event next on this list of ways that Arts can make money is about uh being a character artist and I would like to
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share a story about character artist is I used to live in Las Vegas and I saw a lot of people do this particularly on
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the Las Vegas Strip the Las Vegas Strip is one of the most uh tourist areas that people go to
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a lot of tourists go to and because of this a lot of people try to sell their services or products on the Strip but in
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particular in particular the uh belag Fountain I found was like a really
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amazing area for stuff like this is because people are just waiting at the fountain because the fountain show is
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like 15 minutes long so people will just stand there um in front of the fountain watching it and a lot of people will be
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set up near there to uh sell their service and whatnot so as a character artist you could easily be in that area
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just like with Affairs or theme parks being an area that is uh that has a lot of people in it and uh sell what you
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make and a tip that I have if you want to be a character artist is try to have
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a portable setup because you want to go to areas with a lot of people and sometimes you’ll notice that an area um
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might have a slow traction so you kind of want to adjust so a portable setup allows you to move quickly to different
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areas uh and the other tip that I have is because as a character artist you’re making money based on how many sketches
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you can do so you really want to streamline your process so you can print out uh a good
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amount of characteres per the hour however long it takes so really streamline that process so you can be
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quick and efficient doing book cover designs is another great way that artists can make money and uh when you
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collaborate with authors is a good chance for you to do uh work with them because authors know that a lot of times
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the cover of book will make or break the sale of that book so authors really are
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motivated to having a amazing cover because they know that that attracts uh
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people to potentially buy and a tip I have for doing really good covers is
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that you really want to understand the genre and who the audience is and if you if you’re unfamiliar with who the
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audience is or what the genre is then I recommend going to like a bookstore or seeing uh a similar books of that genre
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and seeing the type of covers they do well and then kind of uh process that in
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research process that in and kind of um use that as inspiration for your book cover creating fonts is another great
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way that artists can make money and what I really love about this is that first fonts are the backbone of like of
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everything everybody uses fonts in in and everything that we do fonts are essential but secondly is you can create
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the font once and then you license it out and you get paid in in perpetuity so
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you get paid for you keep getting passive income based off of the initial work you do and since fonts are so
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integral in our society that everybody needs them you’re bound if you create a great font you’re bound to sell that
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next on this list of ways that artists can make money is by offering Graphic Design Services more and more business
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are popping up more and more uh people and companies just need Graphic Design Services like they’ll need they’ll need
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it for their website they’ll need it for their marketing materials they’ll need it for their online presence especially
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more and more people are uh getting into the digital space whether that be social media or e-commerce so more and more
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people need Graphic Design Services next on this list is commercial illustration and what I like about commercial
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illustration is that it has a broad versatility to it and so it can access many different
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Industries so you can create an illustration and license it out and be
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paid in royalties later on next on this list of ways that artists can make money is by doing album cover for uh musicians
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the album art is essential because the album art could help increase the sales
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of the music album so if you collaborate with an U musician one tip I have is
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really try to understand the musician’s identity really understand the type of music that they’re making so that will
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help you create an epic piece of art that will resonate with the musician and therefore you do a good good job on that
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I’m sure uh being able to do other album Mar covers for other musicians will be
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just on the horizon next on this list of ways that artists can make money is doing custom embroidery more and more
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people want personalized things so custom embroidery allows you to put your art offer that personalization on
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different types of uh material whether it be clothing or hats or whatever it may be and so because of the
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personalized nature of this you can charge a premium Price customer art commissions are another way that artists
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can make money and I know many artists solely making full-time income just by doing custom art commissions and doing
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these type of commissions allows for a personalized nature so you can charge a
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premium price and what I find is when you’re doing these commissions uh it
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creates like a deeper connection with your client so oftentimes you might see your client uh coming back for other
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commissions or often times you’ll see uh them eager to refer your commissions to
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other people next on this list of ways that artist can make money is by doing wedding invitations and every bride
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wants their wedding to be special every bride wants their wedding to be unique and because weddings are happening all
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the time there’s just a huge demand for this and what I like about doing wedding invitations is that you can structure
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them so you can offer many different uh packages so you could essentially uh
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earn a premium price or charge a premium price just from one client another way
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artists can make money through their Art Is by creating wine label art and creating wine label art offers a unique
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opportunity just by starting out doing this you have the potential of earning
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uh $500 to $1,000 per wine label art and if you’re intermediate in this you have
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the potential of earning a th000 to $5,000 and once you build more of a name
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for yourself you have the potential of earning $5,000 to $10,000 in fact I just read an artist who was earning $30,000
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just from one wine label art and in addition to that you can earn royalties
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so every time a wine bottle with your art gets sold you earn royalties per
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bottle another way artists can make money is by creating custom art for marriage proposals because the of the
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nature of this because of the emotion significance of this you can charge a pretty good price for this and usually
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people starting uh off with by making like simple designs can charge up to uh
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$500 and for a little bit more complex you can charge up to the thousands of creating proposal art another way
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artists can make money is by becoming a social media manager and what I like about this is it actually is a really
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solid business decision and it it will help prop Propel your business and
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here’s what I mean by that so if you become a social media manager for an
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artist that has uh that is building their following most of the time these artists have buing in are following just
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don’t have enough time so they are looking to hire out with things that uh
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they uh don’t necessarily want to do in lie of creating art so they want to
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focus on creating art and handle the other higher out for the other uh things they do so if you um offer uh social
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media management service to them and help them do work on building their
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social media pres uh social media presence what I find is that uh through
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doing work with them and doing uh quality work for them is they’re very uh
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generous in spirit and they will use their platform to help bring awareness
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to to your art so if you’re a person struggling to get more awareness of your
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art uh just by the virtue of helping someone else build their uh their art
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brand they end up reciprocating the generosity and help build yours art
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licensing is another way that artist can make money and art licensing is when a
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company pays you to use your art on their various products and art licensing is a fantastic way because I’m sure
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you’ve walked through a store and you’ve seen like like a lot of art on different uh shirts perel uh home decor so so when
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someone buys those products you’ll get royalties from that so art licensing
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licensing your art for commercial application is a great way for you to earn money another way artists can make
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money is by selling our art to online retailers and uh unlike with the art licensing usually when you sell your art
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to online retailers is in one lump some so and also when you’re selling your art
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to online retailers they’re using their large customer base and they are huge uh
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marketing resources to kind of help push your art to even more people so you’ll
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just get more and more exposure with the art by uh working with uh online
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retailers the next way artist can make money is by designing custom imitations and there’s a high demand for this
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because there’s always events going on there’s events like graduations anniversaries birthdays so all these
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events uh are a great opportunity for you to uh provide custom invitations for
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another way artists can make money is by drawing logos more and more companies are happening so and the logo is a key
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part of a company’s brand so this is a great uh opportunity for you to offer a
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service that almost every company needs another way an artist can make money is
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by being a virtual assistant for a creative person and what I like about being a VA is that it can offer steady
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income and as a VA if you’re a VA for a creative person you’ll just gain so much
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uh insights about the industry that will help you with your own uh creative uh
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business as well another way artists can make money is by doing greeting card designs and greeting cards are in high
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demand because there are tons of occasions where greeting cards are are needed like you can do greeting cards
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for weddings anniversary birthdays uh uh uh graduate ation there’s tons of
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opportunity there and it’s an evergreen demand meaning that it won’t uh uh do
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ingredient cards will last last and last so um and what I like about this is that
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uh you can essentially earn royalties for the design that you make the next
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category and ways that artists can make money is is called employment service becoming an animator is a great way for
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an artist to make money because there’s a high demand for more and more animated
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content especially with more and more uh digital platforms out there more and more social media more and more
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companies trying to uh increase our online presence there’s more opportunities and more um desire for
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animated content out there and what I like about animation is that it it’s a
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it’s an opportunity to enhance other skills so if you’re really into storytelling it’s a great way for you to
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enhance your storytelling skills another way artists can make money is by becoming an art exhibition organizer and
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um in this role you’ll be planning and coordinating different art art
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exhibitions and one of the key aspects of this is by helping increase sales and
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and a network and building networks and what I love about this is when you go
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and start your own business is those are two essential skills that you can use
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every day in your business to help grow your business so by doing this by doing
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by becoming an art exhibition organizer you’re already giving yourself the the skills to do it for your own business
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another way artists can make money is through an art rental service by partnering with an art rental service
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you can uh rent out your art and uh earn passive income through it so what I like
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about this is it allows you to focus on your art and all the business operations will be
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held by will be done by that service so you can focus on doing what you love while earning passive another way
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artists can make money is through art restoration and if you’re really into art history this may be right up your
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alley this involves a highly specialized skill of preserving and repairing art
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and you’ll also be working with really high-profile clients like museums Galleries and private collectors so this
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can lead into a very financially rewarding um opportunity for you teaching is the next category on ways
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that artists can make money art classes and workshops are another way that artists can make money this involves you
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sharing your skills with a group of people and this can be done in person or
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online art blogging is another way that artist can make money and this is very personal to me I’ve been art blogging
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over uh three years and it made full-time money or I made full-time
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money with it a little bit after two a half years and what I like about this is there’s so much passive income
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opportunity with this uh so right off the bat is uh you can uh earn money
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through ads when you as your blog gets more and more traffic you can have ads on them and partner with uh companies
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that are specialized in putting ads on your site for you so you can earn passive income through that and also
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when you build up your art blog it helps you build your newsletter a lot of artists art
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newsletters and um so if you’re an artist struggling to get your art
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newsletter to grow uh blogging will be a great opportunity for that and what I found is that as I share more insights
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techniques and stuff like that on my blog it helps grow my newsletter and as my newsletter grows companies want to
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sponsor my newsletter so I’m getting uh income imp income opportunities from the
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sponsorships as well another way for artists to make money is through uh making an art YouTube channel and like
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with a Blog an art YouTube channel uh is a great opportunity for you to earn a
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passive income now you’re still doing like work with it it still involves a lot of work but it’s a great opportunity
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for you to uh earn passive income in the in the future and also uh because of the
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nature of video itself I find that it allows you to uh build your brand faster
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so you can get a lot more rewarding uh Financial opportunities for you down the
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road as you build uh your YouTube channel more and more another way artists can make money is by teaching
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art at senior facilities and a lot of these senior facilities need activities for the residents so it’s a perfect
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opportunity for you to go in and speak with somebody there to see if you can teach art there and what I like about
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this is you’re building a one onone or one to
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many a connection with these different people and you’re helping them build up these art skills which is a very
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rewarding and internally fulfilling thing to do the next way artists can make money is by building up their
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Instagram or Tik Tok like with blogging or YouTube You’re Building up your audience which creates a great
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opportunity for you to earn money through it and I know many of my colleagues are getting brand deals left
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and right and so it’s a great way of getting uh Financial income to you by
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doing these brand Partnerships and also you’re getting uh exposure from these other companies too to help even build
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your audience as well too so building an Instagram and Tik Tok is a great way for
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you to make money in addition to that is you can set up a lot of these platforms like both with Instagram and Tik Tok you
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can have a shop so you can link your shop and help drive more sales to your business as well this next category I
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call like miscellaneous or other but involves items that don’t neatly fit
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into the other categories but are too good to not mention so I’m grouping I’m
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grouping them into this uh other category offering custom t-shirt designs is another great way for artists to make
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money first of all it’s a great and an Empower an empowering feeling to have
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people wear your designs on on on shirts and depending on the way you set this up
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you can earn money passively the next way artists can make money is by making custom W art and this is an evergreen
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demand because lots of places uh need wall art a lot of public places like
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offices home decor interior designers need uh wall art so also the you can
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earn a lot of passive income based off of the way that you set this up as well another way artists can make money is by
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making custom shoe designs and making custom shoot designs is a great way to make money I know uh someone who makes
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um anime shoes and they make up to like they make like like 500 to ,000 dollar
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per shoe so offering custom to shoe designs could be an immensely rewarding
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way for you to uh draw your art on shoes and make a great income from it the next
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way artists can make money is through an art subscription box and what this is is you’re providing high quality art
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materials in a uh reoccurring subscription plan and so
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what I like about this is just by the nature of it it creates a reoccurring Revenue stream for you print on demand
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is another way that artists can make money what this is is you upload your art to a print on demand platform what I
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like about it is you can put your art on different types of products you can put it on shirts you can put it on mugs you
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can put it on tons of different things and then the service or the platform handles takes care of everything so
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they’ll take when an order comes in they’ll fulfill the order they’ll ship it out so they’ll take care everything
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so what this allows you to do is just focus on your art so this is can be a great way without so much effort to earn
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Income At the beginning of this video I promise to share a tip that will guarantee your success with like 99% of
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the things I mentioned here and through my years of running my own business my own art business and through just
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talking with other artists who are struggling to earn income is it all boils down to building an audience if
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you just build an audience around your craft or whatever expertise you have it
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becomes way easier to be able to make money off of your art by building the audience I mean sharing the things like
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sharing your processes sharing tips sharing techniques of what you do I think many artists are afraid of doing
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that because they feel like other people will steal their knowledge but the thing is all of that exists all that
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information there’s nothing new Under the Sun that you can do that is new you’ve learned these techniques from
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other people by sharing these techniques you’re building an asset you’re building a community around your your art and
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that Community will then be able to purchase and support you so that’s the tip I wanted to share today I hope you
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can really uh think about that and process it because I know it’s work it it won’t happen overnight but in time
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you’ll found that you’ll find that a compound and grows