How to Make Money as an Artist: Proven Ways to Creative Career You Will Love

1. Introduction: Hi there. You're probably here because you love creating art and that's great. But maybe you haven't discovered yet how to support yourself or you're already making living anyone to expand your income with your creative side projects. Either way, these class is for you. What is better than earning money with your art if you already lovemaking? I am Iva and I'm an Artist, Illustrator, Podcast Host and Lecture. You might be thinking, who is this person and why should I learn from her about this topic? Well, let me tell you a little bit more. I'm host and I produced a podcast in YouTube show called Art Side of Live, where I interview visual artists from all around the world about how they can make living as an artist. After interviewing more than 200 different artists, again, pretty good insight on what are some of the most interesting possibilities how you can make a living as an Artist. In this class we will talk about many different ways how to make active and passive income. We will cover what to expect from each potential income stream, how much you can possibly earn and also where to start. You will get a pretty good overview so you can decide what would be the good fit for you and your future. After taking this class, you will know what to expect from each of the many ways, how you can make a living as an artist, and how you can start with creative projects you will love and you can support yourself with them as well. We'll talking about almost 20 different ways how to make a living as an art is, it is quite a lot, and that's why I split up the lessons into short videos, so it's easier to take it step by step. You can pause anytime you want, if you need to write down any interesting notes. You can also reward to the video so which are the most interesting to you. You click the "Follow" button to follow me here on Skillshare, if you want to be notified about the upcoming classes, which there will be more and formal inspiration, you can follow me on Instagram or on YouTube where you can find many stories from other other artists too. I can't wait to share all of these insider tips I learned along the way with you and hope to see you in the class soon. 2. Employment: Let's start with one of the most obvious options of making income as an artist, which is having a job. For example, in an animation studio, gaming studio, agency or other company you might love, such as Disney, DreamWorks, Sony Animation, Blizzard, Activision, Lego, Google. There are many you can choose and you might be super-happy there. As you might have heard from the society around you, having a job and being salaried employee is the most traditional way of making a living. It's a active income which means you are trading your time for regular paychecks. If you're in Europe is usually once a month. If you're in the US it can be every two weeks or every month. How does it work and what to expect. Getting a dream job as an artist in a studio or a company you love can be very fulfilling experience. On top of a standard benefits like regular paychecks, bonuses, benefits. You get to work and learn from team of other talented artists which you can look up to. It can be very inspiring to get to come to work every day and looking forward to your teammates learning together and creating awesome projects. Depending on the company, you might also work on the big project that entertained and the live millions of people. Like feature films, AAA games, and huge online platforms. Many high profile artistic jobs are usually grouped in certain locations so depending on where you are, you might have to move. The traditional location for animation studios as you might already know are Southern California, London, Sydney, and Paris. For gaming, it can be Southern California again, Berlin, Stockholm and for the toy company it's all around the world. What is the potential income you can make in an artistic job? In a nutshell, it all depends on many factors. Industry, location, company, the role itself and experience required. There are many career options for artists in different companies. I will just name a few. Let's take an example of a visual development artist in LA, because who doesn't love those amazing movies and animations. The base on a payscale.com which is a website gathering salary information from all around the world. The visual development artist salary in LA can range anywhere between 75,000-147,000 per year which is a very nice salary. If we take gaming studios as an artist you can earn highest between 70,000 per year or a 113,000 per year, while the bottom 10 percent of artists who have lower skill and experience level earns less than 34,000 per year. Another example can be graphic designer in Sweden where the main income is amazing 280,000 per year. Sweden seems to be the best place in terms of salaries for graphic designers. However, have in mind that a lot,sometimes even 50 percent of it goes to taxes and contributions in Scandinavia. Another example can be an illustrator in USA where the main income can be around 48,000 per year. If you're interested in average salaries in your area you can just visit the payscale.com or other website or do a simple Google search. There are many websites gathering analytics from the industry so you can learn what you want to find out. You can also research based on a company and location to set realistic expectations. So don't forget to always consider the cost of living, taxes, social and health insurance, and other contributions when you are calculating the net income. Countries around the world are very different for example, taxes and contributions in Scandinavia are very high but also the quality of living is very nice everything has pros and cons. If you decide you want to do this, how to start? If you want to become an artist in a studio or a company you need to create a portfolio. Yeah, you might be thinking, yeah, I heard this before. As an art directors usually want to see your previous work in a real-life project is beneficial. You are usually selected based on your technical skills and soft skills as well. You should acquire art fundamentals depending on the area of the industry you want to work in, such as anatomy, color, and light composition, perspective, form and value and you should also learn to work with the industry standards softwares such as Adobe Creative Suit or Maya or ZBrush for 3D. You also need to learn how to fit well into the theme in terms of the culture, so having some social skills helps through. The companies also require a certain level of professionalism, which you can show based on your previous experiences by attending an art school or certified art courses, they want to see if you are creative but also reliable and you can finish something. If you have a chance to attend job fairs the companies usually organize every year then make sure to attend and share your work. Following is one of the most important pieces of advice I always give others and also I hear from other artists. For example, if you want to be a character designer you need to have a character design sheets. If you want to be visual development artist you need to have pieces with awesome storytelling, and if you want to be a big round artist prepare a portfolio full of environments and props. For those environments in the style of the company you want to work for, so try to put yourself in the shoes of a hiring manager and think like them. They want to see that the artist they hire will be able to create art in their selected art style and that the artist knows what the company and their customers need. I will not go into the great details and examples of building a portfolio in this class. We can do this in another one and you can watch my interview with Julia Blattman or Victoria Ying, to learn more about how to prepare portfolio for the animation studios. In the next lesson, we will look at what to expect from being a freelance artist, freelance average hourly rates and about how to start your freelance career. I'll see you guys in the next video. 3. Freelance: Welcome back. Let's continue with the second-most traditional way how to make living as an artist, which is being a freelance artist. Freelancing is mostly an active type of income because you are trading time for money most of the time. However, you are free to combine different income types and different generating activities, so shape your balance of active and passive income. As a freelance artist, you have the right to freely choose clients and entrepreneurial activities. So how does it actually work and what to expect? If you're a freelancer, you are conducting business in your own name or your company name. So depending on which country you live in, there are some special rules for being a freelancer. For example, in many European countries, you have to have at least three different clients in a calendar year. This is to prevent the employers to push you into a freelance role instead of salaried employee. That's because you are less expensive as a freelancer than an employee to them. The biggest difference between being in a job and being a freelancer is irregularity of your paychecks. Unless you have a long-term client who will work with you regularly, you will have to get used to good and slow months. So a lot of freelance artists usually save up so they don't have to stress over the financially slower months. Another thing is that sometimes clients have long payment terms, meaning they would pay you in 30 or 60 days, so savings and correct cash flow management should help you to overcome these obstacles. Another difference is that you are responsible for paying your taxes, social, and health insurance contributions. That means that you should save up for paying for those or pay services of Certified Public Accountant to help you with the whole process. You can be a freelance artist in all types of artistic industries, from movies, to games, magazines, book publishing, comics, art shows, outdoor art, business illustrations, tattoo art, or other small and large business projects. The sky is the limit really. So many studios and companies hire freelancers based on the seasonality of their projects if they can't afford to pay salaried employees because they might not have projects going on all the time. So if you're awesome in what you do and you have a great amount of projects behind your belt, you usually get booked for a long time ahead, so you don't need to worry about finances. One of the biggest advantages of being freelance artist is that you have flexible working hours and you are able to arrange your work around your life compared to being an employee. If you are a night owl, you are able to work at night, if you have a family, you can bring and pick up your kids from school or you can go shopping for groceries when there is least amount of people in the shop. Just a side note, if you are a freelancer on a project in a big studio, you usually have to keep the office hours. However, if you are really good, you are able to negotiate the terms for your lifestyle. Location independence is another big advantage which applies in some cases and especially if you don't need to keep your office hours, you can be in Bali or in Australia while the rest of the northern hemisphere freezes in the winter or vice versa. Having the luxury to switch locations also gives you another advantage of paying the lower costs for overheads. It requires a little bit of planning and experimenting though. Another big advantage is that as a freelance artist, you can potentially work on various and very different projects which give you exposure to different new ideas, new people, and skills. This can also massively build your portfolio which then consequently opens doors to more and more different projects. It is definitely an exciting way to make living as an artist. So what is the potential income you can make as a freelance artist? Well, as a freelance artist, your income heavily depends on many variables such as services you offer, your experience, your previous projects, prices you ask, type of clients you work with, location, your taxes, and contributions, you have to pay to government. Also, a stage of your artistic career also influences how much you are able to ask in terms of prices. If you are just starting out, the clients are not willing to pay you a lot because they don't see your previous experiences. However, if you are working in the industry for a longer time, you can leverage your experience from previous projects and ask for more than the average market salaries right now. Big studios and the companies are usually transparent in terms of how much they pay freelancers compared to a smaller business because sometimes they don't know how much you should ask or how much they should ask you. Again, based on payscale.com, the website which gathers salary information from around the world, here are some examples of average hourly rates asked by different artist professionals. So let's say US, for example. A character designer could earn from $28 per hour, a concept artist around $21, graphic designers $17 per hour, illustrators $20, animators $40 per hour, web designers $21 per hour, and so on. In the UK, for example, graphic designer could earn between £35-£70 and senior graphic designers, £70-£100 per hour and more. Bear in mind that these prices are probably in London and London is very expensive. So an hourly rate is not the only way how you can price your work. Some freelancers price their work based on a project scope and the length of the project. It is especially the case when the artists are very fast and charging per hour would mean less money for them. In such cases, the client pays for your experience and quality of your work rather than hours. Sometimes, it makes sense to incentivize the clients for longer projects with a discount. So if you need a steady cash flow, longer projects, these would make more sense. However, be mindful of your developing skills and you don't tie yourself up with a long-term project if you enjoy working with different clients. Well, as you can see, there are many ways how to price your work and it all depends on your lifestyle, your preferences, industry you want to be working in, your location, and experience level. If you're still wondering what to ask in terms of price for your freelance work, check out the book, Graphic Artist's Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines, it has many useful information about pricing and details, for example, if you are creating cover art for a children's book or if you are making a banner for the website, so there are many examples. How to start, if you want to be a freelance artist, you can either start from scratch or have a full-time, part-time job first, and then change your career to freelance alongside all of this. Some artists like Gabriel Picolo, who I interviewed in the Episode 15 of Art Side of Life podcast, actually worked in a hostel while working on his portfolio and 365-day challenge where he was discovered and started to gain momentum with clients. Others work on the full-time jobs as lawyers or managers before answering to their true artistic calling. So having a job while you're preparing to take this leap is actually a great thing because it helps you build your skills, portfolio, reputation, and contact, you will need once taking the leap. It also takes away the financial pressure that is common when you start as a freelancer so you don't have to feel like, "Oh, now I have to create art to sell right away," you can really focus on developing your skills. The main thing you can see across all of these examples is that, the same as in the job, you need to have a good portfolio. It should show your style and type of your projects you are capable of doing. The same as with full-time artist, you should master the art fundamentals and the software used in the industry. Having a project and various clients also shows you have the social skills and you are able to handle different demons of the industry. In terms of your artistic style, you should stay true to your passions and interests. I know you might have heard it before, but create a body of work in the style and area you actually want to work in. So when the real clients will come, you are really enjoying what you do. So for example, do you like food posters in the old English Illustration style? So do that. There will be clients who would recognize you for it. If you are just starting and you are building your skill set and contacts, you might have to create some free projects for your portfolio either for yourself or for some clients who are open for such collaborations so you would have real clients in your portfolio. Regarding the location independence, you will have more options once you have some years of experience under your belt. In the beginning, it's easier to start with the local companies and build your skills, portfolio, and reputation through them. Some freelancers also prefer to work with the agent who will find them clients, negotiate contracts for them and the agents usually take from 10-30 percent of your income. This option is great if you are more shy and introverted and you don't have good sales skills, or you just don't want to deal with this part of the business at all and you just want to draw. Another very important part of your business model as a freelance artist is marketing and promotion. So you should constantly present your work online, engage with your fans, and participate in competitions and challenges to bring exposure to your artworks. So as you may already know, most of the artists nowadays publish their work on Instagram, or ArtStation, Behance, and Dribbble. Being a freelance artist has a lot of pros and cons and it's beneficial to have some good research before you decide for this type of work. So the main thing is that you would like running a business and this business is basically based on you and it requires a lot of grit and commitment. To gain a better insight into the life of freelance artists, I recommend you to watch interviews I did with TamberElla, Asia Ladowska, and Pernille Orum. In the next lesson, we will look at private commissions, so hope you'll enjoy that too and see you there. 4. Private Commissions: Welcome back. In this part we will talk about private commissions. Another way to make money as an artist is to make art commissions. It is very similar to freelance work, but in this case, you are also dealing with private individuals, not only the companies. People can hire you to do the family portraits, pet portraits, movies, game and comic characters, maybe religious scenes, but also shop windows, murals, wall office, or anything for events such as wedding invitations, valentine's cards for couples, and yet again, the sky is the limit. How does it work and what to expect? To sell art commissions, you should focus on some niche. For example, my guests from episode 5, Asia Ladowska, focuses on manga female characters and her Instagram account has a distinctive style. Based on her portfolio, she did a lot of commissions for her fans. Another example is Holly Fae from episode 195, who draws mermaid as commissions for her mermaid fans. You can think of a topic which is close to you from all the aspects of the life. Are you into specific comics, movies, books, or nature, animals, underwater world, birds, what about the witches, strong female characters, male characters, Steampunk, Sci-fi, Star Wars, Indiana Jones. Also, what about weddings, babies, children, everything you love to create can be used and sell as a art commission. One of the big advantages of art commissions is that you can sell them for a standardized price and they don't require so much project management compared to being a freelance artist and dealing with kinds. You can also create them on the site in your free time. It is a great site income. What is the potential income you can make from private commissions? Pricing your art commissions is a science and art combined and the prices depends on your needs, your competition, cost of materials, location you live in, and on demand of course. Some artists asked for $20 per portrait, other charged 620. It all depends on your audience and what are they able to pay. If you cater to children and teenagers, their budget is much smaller than if you cater to adult fans or for example, for Star Wars or brides who are paying for the whole wedding, any fee you do commission as a wedding invitation is just a small part of their overall big budget. Usually commissions would require physical materials like water colors, acrylics, or oil are more expensive than the digital commissions. However, these also depends on how popular you are as an artist. Because if you have millions of fans, you can ask more, you do higher demand. If you're still wondering what to ask for your commissions, you can check the prices of other artist in your niche on Etsy, for example. How can you start? If you want to start offering art commissions, you should first build the portfolio and present it online. You need to let your visitors know that you are open for commissions and promote it in posts and stories, for example, on the Instagram. You can research how other artists describe their commissions, so you can get inspired to write the best descriptions. Write it in the bio, and how they can contact you is a very important thing as well. Is it through direct message or is it through e-mail? Don't be shy about promoting yourself and let people know how they can contact you when you are open to do commissions. Another way is to find specialized niche. For example, Facebook or LinkedIn groups and forums where people discuss about the specific topic. For example, if you love drawing food, find local foodie groups. If you love drawing mermaids, find mermaid groups. If you love drawing pets, find for example, pet sitting groups. If you like drawing couples portraits, find local groups and meet-ups about dating and wedding, and offer your services there. Let them know you do art commissions and then you accept orders. If you are more entrepreneurial, reach out to your favorite magazines, newspapers, or bloggers and offer them your illustrations as the cover images of the articles. There is a group for almost every niche and the sky is the limit, as we already said before. If you want to learn more about art commissions, I recommend you to watch interviews I did with Holly Fae and Asia Ladowska. In the next lesson, we will look at print-on-demand sites like Society6 or Redbubble. See you there. 5. Print on Demand: In this video, we will talk about print on demand. This is when you sell your art through print on demand websites. So you grant the license of your art to print on demand manufacturer who can sell it on different products such as bolsters, mats, pillows, shower curtains, and many more. Each time they sell a product with your art, you get paid a percentage over retail price. It is one of the most passive type of incomes because you create artwork just once and then they can sell it many times on different products automatically. How does it work and what to expect? More and more artists are turning to print on demand websites because they give them the freedom to focus on creating artwork instead of having to worry about production, storage, and shipping. Print on demand websites such as Threadless, Red Bubble, Society6, Drawdeck, Designed By Humans, Art Crate, Fine Art America and others offer a huge range of products for sale. It is only limited by your imagination what type of art you put on them. Some artists offer their character illustrations, others offer pattern illustration, and it all depends on you, your styles, and what you are passionate about. Each of the platforms is focusing on different types of people. So check out the style on Society6, Threadless and other platforms, and which of the platforms would fit your style the best? Licensing your art through print on demand website is a great full-time income generator or is a side income to your freelance or a full-time job. Even if you don't want to turn this into full-time income and maybe you have as sketch book full of art, print on demand sites are a great place to make some money. Or you can just give products with your art as a gift to your family members, friends and this can be a unique gift and you don't have to spend money on non-personalized gifts. Print on demand websites are also a great place to test your designs without the risk of spending money on inventory. Instead, you invest time into creating more art. The print on demand products focuses on the whole range of products, providing broad variety of product types and sizes to the customers, selling on print on demand sites means you can also enjoy a location independent lifestyle. For example, our guest from the Art Side Of Life interview, Cat Coquillette from episode 198 lives fully from selling on print on demand sites and licensing. She enjoys her lifestyle is a digital nomad, traveling the world. So what is the potential income you can make from print on demand? As I already mentioned with print on demand, you get paid the percentage when a product with your design is sold to a customer. This percentage varies based on the website, but typically is around 10 to 20% from a retail price, you can potentially earn 10,000 and more per month. But this requires you to have big variety of products because many times it's a hit or a miss. Some designs sell better than the others and the volume ensures you get more hits than misses. When you start, you might make only few bucks, but don't get discouraged. It will pick up with more art you put out there and promote yourself. So how can you start? There are different ways how to start with print on demand. One way is to start creating art you love and upload it to print on demand website? Is there anything you would love to put on a T-shirt and actually wear it? Or is a poster you would put on the wall? What about an art would put on a rug on the floor in your actual house or a mag you could enjoy your morning coffee in? Your art can make other people happy, so make sure to share it with them. Another way is to target trends. These include doing a lot of research to understand what people buy and enjoy at the moment. This could be effective, but could also turn into constant chase of the next big thing. Targeting a super hold niche is also a way. It is all about identifying your own passion niche and combining it with trending niche. So for example, mermaids and unicorns, witches and flowers, bags and coffee, and you can invent something for sure. The big part of selling on print, on demand website, it's constantly uploading new designs and promoting the product with your fans and consumers in general. So make sure to develop a routine of creating and uploading and repeat. It may sound like a lot of work, but if you'd like to create art that fits well on different products, this is the best way to make an income from it. If you want to learn more about selling on print on demand sites, you can also listen to the interview I did with Cat Coquillette episode 198. In the next lesson, I will talk about art licensing. See you there. 6. Art Licensing: In this part, we will talk about art licensing. What does it actually mean? You license your art when you give permission to a manufacturer or retailer such as Louis Vuitton or Target to use their products and various merchandise with your art. It is mostly passive income because you create your art work once and it can sell many more times automatically. How does it work and what to expect? Licensing your art is very similar to licensing your art through print on demand site. But it is bit more lucrative because you're usually indirect business relationship with a retailer or a manufacturer. This means you can negotiate potentially higher percentage from the sales. When you license your art, you are paid percentage each time the product is sold. You can negotiate this percentage upfront usually you grant a license only on one type of product for a certain time, in a certain geographical location. For example, you can grant a license for your art that appear on one home collection, for example, for one year and for example, in north of US only. As an artist you would normally collaborate with our directors who are responsible for defining the next collections of style. This means you might need to create art they ask you to do compared to print on demand, where you can create whatever you like. When you license your art, it is usually for products and merchandise, such as stationary, home decor, accessories, fabrics, and apparel. Many artists choose to collaborate with licensing agents who bring them deals and negotiate terms for them. Depending on the type of collaboration, the agent ask anywhere between 10-50 percent on the deals which they will make happen for you. This might sound a lot, but they might bring you deals you wouldn't be able to close on your own. This is usually thanks to their industry contacts and the relationships they built over time. It is better to have a half a big pie than the whole of a small pie at the end. The advantage of art licensing is that if you land a good client with good distribution, like Target, for example, your art can appear on millions of products which may be sold as well. Another great thing is if you land a deal with the producer of luxury goods, that may mean very lucrative outcome for you. Another advantage is promotion, manufacturers tend to showcase exclusive collections done by the artist via their websites, blogs, and on their social media. This means income and free promotion for you and your art, which may open doors to more licensing deals in the future. Working with multiple manufacturers also gives you the opportunity to build and expand your brand and portfolio across several platforms, which is great. What is the potential income you can make from licensing? If you license your art, you can usually expect 3-7.5 percent of the wholesale price. This might sound very little, but consider if the sales move in millions of dollars, which can be a good bill. Based on my research I have done, some artists earn north of 700,000 per year from art licensing. This is usually after a couple of years being in the industry though, so you have to wait for it. On the other hand, some creators who are just starting out get 1,000 per year, which is also not that bad if you have something else going on. Remember if you strike great deals with manufacturers with the great distribution, earning almost a million per year is highly likely, but it requires a lot of hard work beforehand and grade negotiating skills as well. There are also some other cases of artists who have very specific art style and they also have big fan communities which make them highly in demand. They can earn north of 10,000 per month. To start with art licensing, you should create body of work which can be suitable for being used on products and merchandise, such as stationary, apparel, home decor, home goods, and others. Can you imagine your art being there now? That's good. It's also good to start with art licensing if you have some experience selling on print on demand sites. The sales on print on demand site show you which designs are the more popular ones among the customers and help you focus in their portfolio. Many artists I have interviewed mentioned they hit the most success with art licensing through agents. It is because the art agents usually have the necessary contacts and the relationships with manufacturers and retailers, as I mentioned before. But it doesn't mean you can't succeed without an agent, but it's definitely faster with them. You can attend the next available art licensing expo, either as a visitor or as an exhibitor. These type of event gather professionals from the art licensing world under one roof, which gives you an awesome glance and chance to get a sense of how the industry works. Art agents are also humans like any other, and having face-to-face contact is better than anything to develop good relationships. What is more? Many manufacturers and retailers are directors they then set shows, so you may get a chance to talk and strike a deal with them directly and this is even better. You can strive to book meetings with art directors before you go to these trade shows. If you don't have a chance to attend art licensing expo in person, many art agencies and even retailers and manufacturers run regular open calls for designers. Make sure to check out their website and social media to stay up to date and seize the moment when it comes. Another way is to find an agent through artists you currently follow and admire. They usually share who represents them in such a way you can create a list of art agents to talk in the future once you are ready. Don't forget, opportunities are everywhere you go, when you go shopping next time checkout, for example, the stationary you like, who is the manufacturer there? There are many manufacturers you might have never heard of and they might be looking for a new designers like you to refresh their product line. If you actually start with print on demand and have success, it can be a great advantage for you because you can show to the potential art agents and manufacturers that your design sell. In this way you gain better negotiating power and it might get you a better deal. At the same time, it is valid if you have bigger social media following because it shows the other side that you are in demand and the consumers actually like your art and there is a higher potential that your design will sell well for them as well, if they license your art. Don't worry though, you can start without big social media following or big sales through print on demand. These points are more like a bonus, not a must. If you want to learn more about art licensing, I recommend you to watch my interview with David Owens. It is episode 148. In the next lesson we'll look at selling your art through stock platforms. See you there. 7. Stock Platforms: In this part, we will talk about stock platforms. Stock platforms are specialized websites to get the photos and art which can be sold to individuals and companies for private and commercial projects for the licensing fee. You as a creator, usually get a percentage from a sale or ongoing license. Some of the well-known sites are Adobe stock, Envato Market, Envato Elements, Creative Market, Shutterstock, and others. These platforms are usually great for photographers, illustrators, graphic designers, web designers, and product designers. Is one of the most passive incomes because you can create the odd ones and you can sell it many times. So how does it work and what you can expect? Selling the art through stock platforms is very scalable, passive income, especially if you're fast and you can create big volume of artworks. What is very interesting for you as a designer is as these platforms has size-able community of customers who use it regularly. This means you don't have to spend as much time into marketing and promotion as with other platforms. The main thing is to upload as many artworks as possible to make sure at least one of them or more pop up in the search. These platforms have invested a lot of money into user experience so the customers can find what they need fast. Let's take Adobe Stock as an example. Users can filter similar images and try to search for a different types, colors, and style. Not necessarily for an artist. Everything is going lightning fast. The stock illustrations, images and photos are used by a lot of people in the companies. For example, marketing managers use them for the internal presentations, agencies can use them for a client pitches and idea proposals. There are also a lot of graphic VIP in product designers who need to make their design process faster in the companies or as a freelance, and instead of creating artworks from scratch, they would buy and license these ones from the stock platforms. Each stock platform focuses on a different niche, because they need to differentiate themselves on the market. For example, Shutterstock is the great to sell photos, realistic and artistic. Creative Market is great for watercolor art works and typography. Envato Market and Elements focuses on commercial illustrations and VIP and graphic designs. There is a platform for whatever style you like the creating. The advantage of selling on the stock platforms is that is very nice passive income stream. If you create the art anyways, uploading it doesn't take so much time. In this way, you can create a sizable body of work that is available for sale 24-7. This also allows you to live location independent lifestyle if you want, because you just need reliable internet connection to upload your art. What is the potential income you can make from the stock platforms? As I mentioned before, with the stock platforms is all about volume of art you have available. The reason is that the items sell for very little, and I have seen items being sold for $0.20, but also a couple of dollars. It seems that the average on Adobe Stock is around $0.99. Plus there is also a licensing model similar to a Netflix and Skillshare, which Envato Elements uses. Then you are paid based on the use of your artworks. The overall potential is from a couple of hundreds to thousands of bucks per month, and it all depends on the amount of work you can put out there. How can you start? If you already have a sizable body of work which is interesting for the customers on the stock platforms, you can just start preparing them for the upload. Each platform list specifics, what formats and sizes they support. If you just want to start from scratch, make appropriate research on how these platforms work and what they sell the most. Try to check out your favorite creators and how they described their work. This will help you to better hone your focus on your portfolio there. These platforms are also great at writing and recording a lot of content where you can learn tips and tricks specific for the creating and uploading your art. Take advantage of those to get better. The best way to stand out is to have a story in your artworks to evoke emotions. Think of customer-user cases. Where will they use the artwork? Is it the marketing campaign talking about food may be or is it hair, is it website, is it for a magazine or a blog, is it for a wedding invitation? Always think about the context where your art can be used. Try to think in terms of how your artwork can help them to catch the attention of their customers and their audiences. Your art should focus on solving your customer's problems. You can also think about search terms and keywords people are usually searching for on this platforms. If you want to look for inspiration, just visit those platforms and search with the intention to buy for a specific case you like. What catches your attention and your interest? Try to understand why and learn from it. Is it details? Is it color? Is it shapes? Is it the story? Don't forget to give back. If you get some good inspiration from other artists, give back at minimum in the form of follows, likes, and comments. The world of stock platforms is well-developed and may create a nice side income for you in case you have a big body of work, so take advantage of it. It can be also a side income from other areas you already might have. In the next lesson we will look at the patron, so see you there. 8. Patreon: Let's talk about Patreon. Patreon is a membership platform that makes it easy for artists and creators to get supported by their fans called patreons. Patreon website allows you as an artist to create Patreon tiers from $1 to couple of hundred of dollars. Your fans can support you either one time or regularly, every month, or per post, every time you actually release new content. You can set your own rules. It is an active type of income because you need to deliver benefits to your fans regularly at the minimum every month. If you are not very social and you enjoy working from home and maybe you are a little bit introverted, but you still enjoy working with your community, these might be the great option for you better than getting a job or freelancing. Because the people who support you are your true fans and super fans, and like these, you can build even better relationship with them. How does it work and what can you expect? If you already have engaged followers, let's say on Instagram or YouTube, the great way to make living can be actually Patreon for you. Which would offer your fans content like tutorials, live stream, podcasts, blog post, or even physical packages and consultation calls. Sky is the limit as usual, and it all depends on what your fans value from you the most, just ask them. Nowadays you can do easy questionnaires through Instagram stories so there is nothing you can lose. The point is that you don't need a lot of followers, just very engaged ones. You can turn your true fans into a super fans and into your supporters on Patreon. They will be happy to do so because they appreciate your work so much and they want to give back and want to see even more from your work and learn from you. Patreon can really bring you closer to your fans because they are invested in your life as a creator. It provides even more direct contact with your fan base. The advantage of Patreon is that it delivers regular monthly income and it can even totally replace your income from a job or freelance career. Depending on where you're located, it can provide you with a pretty decent lifestyle and it can be also great way to leave a location independent lifestyle if that's what you're after. What is more, you can create art you are passionate about because your patreons are supporting you exactly for that. It's a great win-win for many creators. What is potential income you can make from Patreon? When you start with Patreon, earning couple of hundreds of bucks per month is pretty good start. If you take Fran Meneses aka Frennard, and Sara Faber, whom I interviewed in the episodes 157 and 121, earn around 5,000 per month. Sampled cast creators on Patreon can earn more than 50,000 per month, which sounds pretty great. They're providing special value for their listeners with the special content just through Patreon. It all depends how much value you can actually create for your patreons on monthly basis. People usually pay more if you provide them with the physical goodies and mail it to them or you create something very spatial just for your patreons. You can just start being very creative and think, what can that be. How to start; there are a few signs you can look out for if you want to start with Patreon. First, you are already sharing art on a regular basis and you are constant in your art style. The second thing you can consider is that you have already engaged group of fans who like, comment, discuss your work, and they're very vocal about supporting you. The third thing can be, did you have a consistent growth in your fan base and it grows quickly and continuously over time. When you notice some of these signs, it might be a time for you to open Patreon and share it with your community in every piece of content you create. Find the promotion style that these natural to you, not too pushy know too salesy, so your fans will be happy to support you in any way they can and they feel like they will benefit from your Patreon and they will not think about it like, I am just giving money to someone but how much I can learn and gain from this creator I really like. Post regularly and always answer comments and questions, share more of what you are already doing, consider sharing your creative process, behind the scenes of the content, show the patrons your studio, or record a special Q&A videos just for your patreons. You can also give your Patreon goodies like stickers and postcards, and make your patreons feel special as much as you can. Patreon can resemble a full-time job and it may become overwhelming and times. That's why try to find the work process that you can optimize to find the right rhythm of delivering patreons benefits. Frennard and Sara which I already mentioned before, are very nice examples of great Patreon success. Their branding is great, they have great Patreon profiles, they post a lot and provide their patreons with tons of great content. You can also support them and get inspired how they do things right on Patreon. In the next lesson, we will look at selling your art and own products through Etsy. See you there. 9. Etsy: Let's talk about Etsy. Etsy is a e-commerce website and the global marketplace for unique and creative goods. People sell a wide variety of products such as jewelry, bags, clothing, home decor, art, toys, and even with each items older than 20 years. Etsy is recognized worldwide by creative and craftspeople who are used to purchase through the platform and others who appreciate art a lot. There is a good chance to achieve success if you open your own Etsy shop. It is mostly an active type of income because you have to produce, peg the orders and ship them to your customers. Some artists choose to sell digital downloads only or they can connect their purchases through Brendan Demon stores, in which case, Etsy can generate passive income as well. How does it work and what can you expect? The fact that the Etsy is an e-commerce platform means that if you open your own shop on Etsy, you become a shop owner. It is similar to having a physical shop with the inventory visitors, customers, orders, shipping, delivering, and all of that around orders, accounting and marketing too. The huge difference is that you don't need to pay rent of a physical store. Well, technically, you have to pay something to Etsy, in the form of fees, but it's considerably smaller than if you would have to pay rent in the shopping mall, for example. Your shop is open 24/7 to people all around the world. Well, maybe except when you go for holidays. Compared to print on demand platforms, your profit can be much bigger per item because you are in control of costs of goods sold and shipment costs. You're free to produce as cheap as you want or as sustainably as you want. On the other hand, you also carry the risk of inventory. If you want to optimize your costs per item by ordering big amount with Etsy or actually any online shop, you are first and foremost a business owner. The advantage of selling your art and own products or Etsy, is that it's recognized worldwide by creative and craftspeople. They visit Etsy regularly and even the loyal customers considering Etsy for their creative purchases, so this gives you a great advantage over the example of opening own webshop and your own website if you don't have a big fanbase yet. Because there, you would need to heavily invest into promotion and marketing to get it out to the people. It can be very rewarding to see your work in other people's homes and to hear from happy customers. This is something that many Etsy shop owners claim as the biggest advantage. What is more? It gives you freedom to create what you want and what your customers appreciate. If you set up your processes right, it can be a nice location, independent type of career, which would allow you to spend a lot of time with your family or traveling. What is the potential income you can make from selling on Etsy? Joining and starting an Etsy shop is for free. The way it seemed makes money is by charging you as a seller fee when you list and sell products. There are three basic selling fees, a leasing fee, transaction fee, and the payment processing fee. On average, 30 percent from the price of the product goes away to all the Etsy fees and to what it costs you to produce the product. This gives you around 70 percent profit, which is quite healthy, and you can sustain your activities. Some shop owners on Etsy earn more than one million per year. Others can earn somewhere between a 100 or 1,000 per month. It all depends on how long you have been selling, what type of products you sell, how do you promote, and if you have a great customer reviews. Many shop owners also follow seasonal patterns and sell the most around Christmas or major holidays. It all depends on what your niche is. To get a better overview, let's take an example of one of our guests from the podcast, Wolfram, aka Paper Wolf from Episode 43, sells beautiful paper sculptures through Etsy. In six years of running his Etsy shop, he has sold almost 8,500 items. If you take a medium price per product in his shop being around 50-$60, he has made almost 500,000 in revenues, which is more than 80,000 per year. Wolfram also sells items for a couple of thousands of $s for the licensing or shops, so the amount can be even bigger. Etsy is definitely not the path, the quick path, but it can be a great way to replace your full-time job freelancing carrier or just having it as a side hustle. How you can start? To start with an Etsy, I would recommend you to first start thinking of the product range and the way to produce it. For example, do you absolutely love coffee mugs with your art on them? Then maybe research a local and international mug producers. What is it their are printing range? How you can actually create the products you would love and your customers will love? You can do it in your local chamber of commerce or on Alibaba in China. If you don't mind producing there. Do you want to sell stickers, pins, posters? Then research local and international printing shops or the samples test ordering, symbol, and more complex items. Make as much research as possible. You can also ask friends which producers they are using if you like their products. If you are very crafty, and you love producing for example, your own jewelry or you are very much into 3D and you can print on a 3D printer. Explore these options too. There is always someone out there who would love yourself enough to buy it often. Again, try to also understand what the other creators on Etsy are creating and how do they price their products? These will help you to get a better overview what your cost would be and how much you need to price your products to turn a good profit. Then also think about how you would serve your customers. How would you ensure the best reviews? Think about personalization and making them remember you after they purchase. They can come again and again. Once you are ready, open a shop on Etsy, customize it to your liking tell people about you. To make them trust you, record a couple of YouTube videos of your behind the scenes. Also introduce yourself, what are your hobbies and why you created your shop. Tell them a story, why you sell your products. Show them the meaning to create a connection. Sky is the limit when it comes to your imagination. After you start getting sales, yeah, make sure to answer comments, give thanks to the positive reviews and address negative ones, show that you care. Etsy, also provides you with a good analytic tools so you can understand the traffic to your shop, clicks and orders. This can help you to plan your production calendar and optimize the inventory management tool. It's quite exciting platform to be on and can reward any type of creators and crafts creatives. If you want to learn more about selling on Etsy, I recommend you watch the interview with Wolfram I mentioned. This was the Episode 43. Also Nina Stajner from Episode 65. There is one more interview with Maya Kern in Episode 174, which is also great, and we talk about creating your own products in great depth. She gives a lot of great tips on selling through her own online store. In the next lesson, we will talk about self-publishing and selling your own book on Amazon. Looking forward to see you there. 10. Amazon Self Publishing: In this video we will talk about Amazon. In a case you don't know Amazon, it's an online e-commerce platform where you can sell almost anything. It started as an online bookstore, but now as the name hints, it sells products from A-Z. Because Amazon has a strong roots in selling books, they wanted to support books publishing as well, which makes sense. They're publishing platform called Kindle Direct Publishing, allows you to publish both electronic and paper bag books. Did i mention that they're paperback books or print on demand. These means Amazon print it and sends it for you when there is an order. No inventory risk for you, which is great. A self publishing a book on Amazon is mostly a passive type of income because you create it once and it can sell many times automatically. How does it work and what do you expect? Self publishing a book on Amazon is a very interesting option, because of the sheer volume of customers who use it to shop every day, publishing your own book, it's all free and you get to keep up to 70 percent of the royalties from the sales. The fact there are so many buyers on Amazon means that you don't have to have a big social media following, but it definitely helps to kick off the traction, but Amazon provides you the tools to get discovered from the start. Creating and publishing a book can be very rewarding experience, especially for those of us who love creative and arts e-books. Publishing a book is also a great plus, because it enhances your brand and opens doors to being a speaker, a lecture on a different events and the educational functions. Having a self-published book on Amazon can be a nice addition to your Etsy shop as well. Because you can collect sales on Etsy and order them through Amazon or directly connect these two. What is more, if you want to publish a story book besides the e-book and paper bags printing on demand, Amazon also allows ACX where you can create an audiobook. ACX is a marketplace of narrators and studios which can help you produce the audiobook, actually from A-Z. With Amazon self-publishing services, you can reach millions of customers worldwide and keep the control of your work. You can publish all kinds of books from notebooks, to small story books, novels, and even graphic novels, and comic books, you get the point. There are so many ideas for the books you can create. I'm sure you will come up with something very creative and you don't have to invest in inventory and the books are easy to produce and the royalties are higher per unit sold than if you went through the traditional publisher. Thus, thanks to the Amazon huge distribution, self-publishing can get you a very big exposure. What is the potential income you can make from self-publishing a book on Amazon. With Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, you can earn up to 70 percent of a Kindle e-book sales and 60 percent on the paper book sales and 40 percent on the audio book sales, and publishing is for free, which is very nice. You can potentially earn $100 and more per day, which is a very decent monthly income of about $3,000. Where to start? Many RDs usually start with a low content books like journals, calendars, notebooks, our tutorial books. This is because they are the best format for all kinds of artwork you want to create. They're easier to create them writing and illustrating a graphic novel for many months. This is very nice mellow way to start. For example, simple book like this you can start with, can be a journal lined with your art or an illustrating journal. You can also create the sketchbook with deeps symbol how to do tutorials or workbooks, activity or coloring books, or also as a notebook for your lectures and speeches if you do them. Yet again, as I mentioned in previous lessons, this is an entrepreneurial activity, so do as researchers possible. Who is your target audience? What do they appreciate in a book? What do they long for? What are they like needing in their everyday life? What is your unique passion and also specialty you can use to produce these book? Or what books actually already exists out there on your topic? How are they special and how can you improve them? What would be your spatial take on on the selected topic. Basically, how do you make them yours and how do you make them stand out? All of these questions and insights you find by looking for answers will give you a good base to decide on the product pricing and promotional tactics as well. During the research, you will also do a lot of work in progress sketching, designing. If you have a community online following an appreciating your work, make sure you share it with them, some behind the scenes, and also ask them for their opinion. They will appreciate it very much and they will reward you with the first sales. Don't forget to ask your community and they will also feel more involved. They will very much look forward to your product when it's out there. Similar to your products on Etsy, makes sure to define the whole customer experience around your books, how to use them, what do they do if they have questions, and how they can help you by submitting reviews and comments. You can always ask your community for reviews because this will help your book get more exposure and you can help more people with your book this way. The word spread and more people know about it. Don't forget to ask for reviews. If you always wanted to publish your own book, this is definitely your chance. In the next lesson, we will look at crowdfunding and how it can be viable way to make living from your art. 11. Crowdfunding: This part belongs to crowdfunding. What it is? If you don't know, crowdfunding is a concept that has been known for centuries through the work of a fundraising organizations, usually charities and common good causes. Crowdfunding platforms allow creators to raise money for their projects. From tech to arts, from food to music, from games to comics and illustrations, and as usual, sky is the limit. They allow you as an artist and creator to turn to friends, family, and strangers on the internet to provide an initial investment to your potential idea and a project. Crowdfunding is considered to be mostly an active type of income, at least in the beginning, because you have to produce the promised project and deliver rewards to your supporters called backers. How does it work? What can you expect here? There are plenty of crowdfunding websites out there, but let's talk about one of the most popular crowdfunding platforms which is a Kickstarter. On a Kickstarter, each project creator, sets their own funding goals and deadline, offering rewards in exchange for pledges. These rewards can be anything from thank you card notes or post on social media to actual products and online or in person mentoring. Funding here is all or nothing on Kickstarter. Projects only get founded if they reach their funding goal. That's a trade-off for the free access to Kickstarter massive user base, and usually though the projects bring in much more pledges than the requested. If you do your project planning right, whatever is left from the money after you deliver the rewards to the backers, you can keep it as a profit. Crowdfunding and the Kickstarter are great. If you have an awesome idea for a creative project, which is maybe not out there yet, but you lack the proper funding. You can ask to fund all artistic projects such as art book, which is very common among artists, artwork series, graphic novel, board games. They are also very popular among a broader public, not only artists. You can also create video games or even toys and special collectibles. I'm sure you can come up with something super great in these regards. Just a research what is popular on Kickstarter and maybe it will spark your ideation process. When you make a Kickstarter campaign, you have a complete control over how your promotional campaign runs and what the rewards you would provide to your backers. What is the potential income you can make from crowdfunding platforms? Let's talk about some examples, as in previous chapters. Many artists who produce on their own usually ask for funding goals in the amount of up to 10,000. But for example, Lois and Asia Ladowska who has appeared twice on my show, on YouTube and podcast, as I mentioned before. The art side of life, teamed up with a 3D total publishing house to take care of the production. Because of their massive following on social media, they actually raised a couple of $100,000, with their goals being around$ 25-35,000, and they actually exceeded their goals, which they set for the Kickstarter campaign. Many campaigns actually set their goal to the least viable funding to keep it very low, because this helps them to reach the goal faster and get funded much more in the end. The least viable funding is the minimum amount of money you need to actually deliver the rewards through backers, if you don't know what that means. But having said that, that means how much you actually make from the crowdfunding campaign depends on your campaign goal and how well you did your promotion planning, including all the cost of goods sold, the production materials, the marketing, and so on. Publishing a campaign on Kickstarter is free. However, if it succeeds, Kickstarter takes five percent commission on all the funds collected, plus there is a 3-5 percent payment processing fees, so make sure to factor in these 10 percent in the funding goals when you are doing the planning. What is more when you calculate your production costs and taxes and contributions, always include the buffer because many guests I interviewed say that you always run over the costs due to the unforeseen circumstances, and these also happens in life. There is always something you don't expect. Most of the money you raise goes to the production of the product, but you can also raise money for promotion or your time, you worked on the project too. How can you start? Many artists I know who have run Kickstarter campaigns have either did it themselves or teamed up with the external companies to help them produce their products. Like I mentioned, books, board games, card games, or comic books. The second or the later means that you don't have to worry about the production and inventory in exchange for the big percentage from the funding going to the partner you choose. The most successful campaigns on Kickstarter are of a great production quality with the great descriptions, high-quality videos showing the prototypes and making a very creative rewards for the backers. It is not rare that if you have a considerably hide funding goal, you take months to prepare everything before starting your campaign, so also considered these, if you are thinking about starting a Kickstarter campaign. Overall, the rule is the higher the quality of your dedication and explanation to your fans, the better. They need to feel your passion for the project, and they need to feel the anticipation of a successful outcome too, especially when they can hold your great product in their hands in the future. It is considered a best when you can offer a broad range of rewards. Sometimes the backers just like your product, but they are not ready to fully commit. If you open up $1 pledge with the reward being, thank you, it may be enough for them to support you because they just want you support you no matter what. They don't care about the reward as much. You never know those $1 pledges might in the end, help you to achieve your goal overall. What is more to incentivize overreaching your campaign goal, you can prepare extra spacial secret or very magical goals called stretch goals. Maybe they are not magical but they are special. For example, if you are funding goal is $5,000, you can prepare stretch goals at $7,500 or $10,000 or so on. This is great and creative way to incentivize and reward your backers, to back even after you reach your planned goal. There have been many guests I interviewed on that side of life, who did successful Kickstarter campaigns such as Lois, you might know her as Loish on Instagram, she's a character designer. I interviewed her on Episode 1 and Episode 175. Also, there is already mentioned Asia Ladowska in Episode 179, and she's creating manga, illustrations and characters. There is also Jason Brubaker in Episode 7, and he's creating a graphic novel, I mean, more graphic novels and storytelling through characters. Another one I can mention is Anthony Christou in Episode 57. There are more episodes you can watch if you want to have more inspiration from different artists with different projects, how they started and how they ran their Kickstarter campaign in the past, and what they actually think about it. You can watch the interview, for example, with Anthony who shares a lot about how he sell ran the campaign and founded the project. Loish and Asia share about their experience with collaborating with 3D total as an external partner and how overreaching their funding goals by 10's of thousands of $ changed their project. In the next lesson we will look at how you can make income from art fairs and conventions. See you there. 12. Art Fairs: Let's talk about art fairs, also called conventions or expos. They're essentially big gatherings of artists, companies, studios and art enthusiasts. The chances are there're some in art related field, big or small, close to you. Art related fairs are great way to gain exposure to yourself as an artist, to your art, and also make contacts with like-minded people, and even get new customers and clients, and maybe even potential new employers for you. Art fairs are an active type of income, because you have to create the product and the merchandise and be present in your booth for the duration of the fair, or walking around, meeting people, selling through your fans and art enthusiasts. How does it work, and what you can expect? Many artists start to explore the world of the art fairs as visitors, because you want to see if you actually like the festival or I mean art fair, before you go and start selling on it to book a booth. Seeing what's out there, what people buy, and what do they ask for in terms of prices as well. Before you start creating products for your booth, I mean, to sell on the art fair, just walk around the specific art fair you want to go to. Or you can ask your friends who already been to some of these art fairs. Also, art fairs are a great way to network with new people and make contacts with the studios and companies you want to work with, as I already mentioned before about the employers. If you're looking for a job or a freelance gigs. There're lots of art fairs around the world, where you can sell your art and meet your fans and even clients or employers, as we already talked about before. There is a chance there is something happening near you where you live, maybe even next month so you can just Google your area in art fairs. Because there are usually many people on these art fairs, it is very fun way to build connections and get your art out there for a new fans to see. It is a good way to validate that you actually have a sellable art, and to build an initial mailing lists for the subscribers. All of these I'm talking about if you already have a booth there on the convention. If you actually compare, if you're extroverted or introverted person. If you're more introverted and having a booth, you'll let the people come to you so you don't have to be the one approaching new people, if you're little bit more stressed and not do extroverted. Art fairs are also good for introverted people. Lots of fairs are very specialized and you can meet other passionate people, especially in your crafty area. You can think about like comic cones, where they're very much about the comic books and characters from these universities. You can also think about the video games related fairs and other niche oriented conventions. For example, even toy fairs where they're focused only on the fantasy toys. You can research and I'm sure you can find something which excites you in the art fair, your product and your art would be a great feet forward. If you want to generate income from your art and art expos, you have to register as a seller and book a booth or a table. This allows you to sell your products and artworks to the crowds visiting the fairs. The number one reason I totally recommend attending art fairs is that you meet like-minded artists. If you're waiting in a queue for a talk or workshop or something happening there, you can start easily talking with someone else next to you, because they have nowhere to go, and they also want to spend the time in the more fun way than just being in a queue. Like this, you can actually make pretty good friends, because most probably they've the same hobbies and similar passions to you. A huge part of the fairs are the demonstrations, as I mentioned, the workshops. You can go to different demonstrations by various artists, and you can learn a lot. The workshops and the specific demonstrations and talks is one of the big reasons I love to go to art fairs, because there is always something new you can learn. Any person is quiet fun experience to have in addition to the online courses you might be already taking. Another reason is that biophysically selling what is out there, and having the chance to talk to other artists face to face, you gain inspiration for your future projects as well. When you exhibit your art, there's also a high chance that you'll get new fans, customers, clients, and even employers quickly. This is because when the potential employers scout the convention floors, and they get interested in your artworks, they get the chance to find out if your personality and the attitude would fit their team and maybe their company. In this way, they can get a better feeling for you as an artist, as a person. It is more than if you were just selling them this image online, or if you apply through the online form, because you might create this immediate connections and they might hire you right there on the spot. I know actually many companies, they don't hire differently. They just go to art fairs because they always want to talk with creatives on the spot, even though you have the Skype calls and other potential ways to get to know the person more than just reading about them online. But it always helps if you can meet the person face to face. Even though you might be thinking like okay, there're no big fairs in my area. But you can start thinking, can you actually save up and go to one of your selected fairs, so you would actually prepare your portfolio or few products you can show, and book the fair you really love. You can, for example, go like, okay, I know I want to go to this fair in New York. I will think like, okay, how much will it cost me? When can I be ready, and what can I bring? This can be in two years. But you would know that, okay, I want to plan and I want to go to expose myself to create more opportunities for myself. Meanwhile, you will focus on different projects, and of course, you can reach out to different potential clients and employers. But maybe you will just plan this for the future as one of your options. What is the potential income you can make from selling on art fairs? Your potential income from the art expose depends on their size, the number of products you are able to bring, and of course, the demand from the audience. The bigger the fair, the higher the chances more people would stop by at your booth. One of my friends who use regularly selling through some of the art fairs in LA says that it usually covers her costs, and makes minimum double and sometimes the triple the cost in income. Of course, this is with the big number of people who usually attend art related conventions. Also, she already knows what would sell the best on some of these conventions. What is more even if the visitors than by directly at the fair, they may decide to do so from home through your online shop. Don't forget to bring your cards to show like this is where you can buy my stuff, even if you don't want to buy now. In some of the small expos, the booth, I mean the table costs around $200, and in the bigger ones, it can go even up to 5,000. Even if you have the 5,000 to pay for a table, this doesn't mean you're going to the convention yet. For some of the very popular conventions, such as San Diego Comic-Con, you actually have to join a waiting list to get a chance to pay a pretty hefty fee. It is word at the end because you can generate a pretty decent sales. As I mentioned, even though some of these fairs or expose can be very expensive, usually you get the prize back, but you also have the thing that you have to pay for accommodation. Maybe it's a good idea to join the accommodation with your friends, and share the costs of the room, because it might get also booked out in the area and you don't want to travel too far from somewhere, which is one hour away to the convention center, because some of the conventions they last around for days, and then you would have to travel back and forth with all your stuff you have to set up in the morning. Think about also the location of the accommodation before you go, because you want to be as close as possible. As I mentioned, the room sharing on top of the table costs or the booth you would book in the convention, you should also think about the cost of transportation, especially if you are out of town where the convention is happening, plus the production of the costs of your artworks and the actual products. The good thing is that if you don't sell everything you produce for the convention, you can save it for the next expo, or also offer it in your online store or on Etsy. How can you start with all of these? The best time to start with art fairs is if you already have some selling experience, for example, from your online shop, and in this way, you can see which artworks and products sells the best for your customers or your target audience. Basically, what your customers say and what would they like to see next? As I mentioned, what helps is the production experience and that you are able to price your products to make a profit, to actually cover the costs for all the convention expenses. Once you are ready to exhibit, Google what trade shows and art fairs are in your area, and book a table. Research what are the events at the particular expo, and what other artists are selling the years before. If you are comparable in the area or maybe if you would stand out, which is also a good thing. In this way, you will get a better idea on who attends the fair you chose and what will probably sell the best, so what you should actually prepare. Because a lot of people like to buy just small things when they're on the conventions, because imagine if you walk around, you don't want to buy giant things because you maybe want to buy more stuff from different art is to create something like a collection, plus they don't have to carry heavy stuff all around or fly with it. Imagine you would bring maybe pins or small prints, or even an art book, which is actually bigger thing but people usually like to buy this on the art fairs. Always think art prints small things and some other additional items. But of course, do your own research so you would be very prepared for your art fair. You can have them printed and produced locally or internationally, and have them delivered to your home for the self transport, or directly to the convention center. If the shipping costs are very high, you can also print in the city where the convention takes place, and pick it up there, which is very nice so you don't have to have to carry it in your luggage if you fly somewhere. I already mentioned that stickers you can print, for example, with thicker meal, or you can order prints from imprint or the quality local print stores. Which conventions you should check out, or maybe if I mentioned some I like, or I visited in past years, I like conventions like CTN in LA for concept artists, because they have a lot of workshops and talks also with the artistic stands, so there is a combination of what you can expect from a three-day convention. If you're into comics and characters, San Diego Comic-Con, WonderCon and New York Comic-Con are very good. If you live in Australia and you create zines and small books, checkout, the MCA Zine Fair in Sydney. For children's books and illustrators, you can check out Bologna and Children's Book Fair in Italy, and also Bologna is very nice place to visit just for the architecture and Italian history and food. It is one of my favorites just why I'm just mentioning it. For more children's books related events in the world, you can check out the Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators. For all creators from all areas of the digital entertainment industry, including sound designers, game and VR developers, entrepreneurs, marketers and digital artists of all kinds, I really like Trojan Horse Unicorn, which currently happens in Malta, and it has very funny name. I will stop here because there are many, many different conventions, and it is up to you which one you would like to visit, and how far you are willing to travel, and of course, how much money you want to spend. In the next lesson, we will look at how you can make income from selling art in the galleries. See you there. 13. Selling in Galleries: Let's talk about exhibiting and selling through galleries. Actually, when I was growing up, I thought this is the only way you can make a living as an artist. As it turns out, it's not the only option, but let's talk about it. Having your art exhibited and sold in galleries can be a very rewarding experience and also it can be a very lucrative experience. A lot of wealthy and reach people buy art only and selectively through galleries and the gallery agent distributors. If you want your artwork in the gallery frequented by millionaires, it can mean you might become one soon to. But selling your art in galleries is both active and passive type of income. It is active because you have to constantly create artworks to exhibit and sell, but it is also passive income because galleries can take care of selling the art for you. So how does it work and what can you expect? In order to get your artworks exhibited in the best galleries you choose, you should be a great salesman or saleswoman. You have to do a lot of networking and reaching out to galleries. In this way you get to know people, who know the people, and you may get some good recommendations. If you don't want to be a salesman or saleswoman, you can always get an agent who will help you to get to these galleries. Back to the topic. Make sure you have your own artistic vision defined before you go networking. Gallery owners are always interested in consistent style and one interesting subject matter throughout the paintings you create. For example, Bryan Mark Taylor, who was my guest on episode 115, who is an amazing plein air painter, and who is fascinated by China. I mean, in recent years he visited a few times and he's traveling around the world to capture the moment on the exact place. He has distinctive style, full of color and light that fits well into the galleries. He is also usually painting oil paintings, which is also great feat for galleries. As I mentioned, galleries are a great place to sell your art, especially if you are mostly into traditional and fine art painting with oils, acrylics, and watercolors. Of course, there are galleries specializing in photography and digital printed as well. You just need the research which gallery is best for your art. Or you can adjust your art to fit the gallery you want to be in. The advantage of selling in a gallery is that they do the marketing for you and bring targeted buyers who are the most likely to buy your art. What is the potential income you can make from selling in art galleries? Depending on the artwork medium and your artistic vision and experience in the industry, the painting can sell between $1,000 per painting or a couple of $100 per piece. Oils are usually recognized as one of the best mediums and you can get around 30,000 and more per painting. Because as I heard, oil paints are usually very quality, so they last much longer plus the artists usually spends a lot of time creating one piece. Therefore, most of the artists can ask more for oil paintings than other mediums. But talking about prices and percentages, galleries usually take pretty big part of your commission. Sometimes up to 50 percent per sale. Some operate on a monthly subscription basis where you can get paid like $300 a month to display and then they take only 30 percent. It all depends on the gallery you want to exhibit in. Just research what are the percentages they are planning to take from your commission. How can you start? Before you start exhibiting in galleries, strengthen your art fundamentals, define your style and artistic vision. You can also try different techniques to find your favorite. Do you like oil? Do you need to learn more about acrylics? Do love watercolors? Also, studying old masters like Michelangelo and their fine art techniques may give you a lot of creative ideas and will help you refine your style. Actually, fun fact about Michelangelo, he was a great businessman, which I found out about just a few years back, because I didn't know you were so good at entrepreneurship and he was actually considered a millionaire at his time because he was so good at making deals and connections with local people and how you can actually make living with art. If you're interested in more of these story, checkout Michelangelo story. You can just Google it and they are actually few books about his story and what he achieved in the past. If you have a chance to apprentice in a workshop of a modern master painter, you can definitely do so. It's a great way to strengthen your art fundamentals and gain exposure in the industry. Like Kevin Murphy from the episode 197, is a modern master painter and the creator of the Evolve Artists Program. For your portfolio, select 8-10 strongest species in the same style and have the backstory for every piece. Because people usually appreciate if you can share more why you created and how you are creating the peace. What is its meaning? What emotions do you want to evoke in people when they are looking at it and so on? In order to gain exposure, try to join group shows and art competitions. You will get a great feedback from a jury represented by the industry professionals plus you will get a chance to network and create new contacts we choose always beneficial. Lastly, start with a local gallery to learn their submission criteria. There's the market. Some galleries only choose artists on the art fairs. Make sure to understand all the standards to get the most out of your work. For example, one gallery locally told me that they don't accept any submissions even if I physically walk into the gallery, because they said I have to go to the art fair and they have to discover me. Because it took them a lot of time, because they were getting a lot of submissions, so they didn't want to go through these big amounts of submissions, they just want to go to the art fair and select by themselves, which makes sense. They want to save time. But anyway, you can find pros and positive side on everything. Let's talk about exhibiting in gallery, because exhibiting in galleries with clients which loves your work, is one of the best experiences you can have as an artist. So it's definitely worth to explore. If you want to learn more about stories from the artists exhibiting in galleries, you can watch some of the interviews which I did, for example, with Marc Scheff from the episode 164 and Marc Allante from the episode 171 and Kevin Murphy from episode 197, which was one of the recent ones. In the next lesson, we will look on how you can make income from running Google ads alongside your content. See you there. 14. Google AdSense: In this video we will talk about Google AdSense. Anybody be thinking, what? But anyway, you might already know what it is. But for those who don't, Google AdSense is an advertising program owned by Google, which allows you as a Content Creator to monetize your content through third party ads. Do you know the ads that run before each YouTube video and sometimes while you watch the videos? Yeah. These are served through Google AdSense. The Google AdSense is currently available for YouTube videos, websites and blogs. This is when you heard maybe before, that someone as a blogger is making money and you might be thinking, how they are making money with blog. It is a great way for content creators who attract a lot of visitors to their content. It is a passive type of income, because all you have to do is to activate it for your online properties, and let it run. How does it work and what to expect? You can implement Google AdSense for your website and blog after it's six months old, and it requires to install a piece of code which you will get when you open your Google AdSense account. If you are publishing YouTube videos, you can connect your Google AdSense account, and activate it for the videos. But there is a small catch now. You are eligible to activate the ads only if you have more than thousands of subscribers, and minimum of 4,000 public watch hours in the past 12 months. This is just to make sure that there are no ads running on inappropriate content. What is the potential income you can make from Google AdSense? The amount of income you can make from running ads alongside your content is directly co-related to visits and clicks in terms of your website and blog and views of the videos. It is calculated based on the CPM, which is cost per thousand impressions, CPC, cost per click, and in special cases, CPA, the cost per action, which is purchase. For example, if you are creating art related videos content on YouTube, you can earn around $100 per 100,000 views, which are impressions. Which means this is $1 per 1,000 views impressions. If we look at another example, like a website which serves on average of three pages per visit, each with two ads and impressions, CPM cost per 1,000 impressions of $1 would therefore earn $6 per 1,000 visits. If you have a lot of visits, you can potentially earn $100 or $300 per day, for example, which sounds pretty great. More visits and clicks you have on the website, the more you can earn. As you can see, usually this is not a lot of money if you don't have many visitors on the website or a blog, or millions of views on your YouTube videos, and you would need to constantly produced viral videos and viral content, to make sizable income with these type of AdSense income. However, if you are creating the content anyways, it's a good thing to activate the Google AdSense program because it can create a nice additional income every month. How can you start? We already mentioned some of the things, but in order to start with the Google AdSense, you need to meet the eligibility criteria. You must be at least 18 years old, you have to own the rights to the content you produce, and your company needs to comply with the Google AdSense Policies. Once you apply, you need to verify your mailing address and account. Google usually mails you a spatial code by post, and also sends you a small amount to your bank account with the spatial code attachment. These you would have to put into the account activation form. Once you are all done with the account formalities, you can set up your ads preferences, especially what type of ads and ad formats you allow alongside your content. On YouTube, you can specify which videos can run ads, and which not. It is fully in your control. If you are working with a sponsor, you might consider turning off the ads in front of the video. By now, people are so used to YouTube ads that having them available by default is completely acceptable. Usually Google does the rest in terms of deciding which ad would do the best next to your content, based on your location and video preferences. In the next lesson we will look at how you can make income from sponsorships, so see you there. 15. Sponsorships: In this video, we'll talk about sponsorships or sponsored content. So sponsorship means that you as a creator let brand sponsor creation of your content and in exchange, you will tell your audience about the brand's products and services. Maybe you can think of those big artists and creator channels you might have watched on YouTube, sometimes they say the video is sponsored by XYZ. This means the mentioned brand chooses to sponsor the creation of their content. It is mostly an active type of income because you have to produce the content promoting the brand in exchange for the sponsorship. However, if you think about it, you would create the content anyways, right? So why not getting paid for it? How does it work and what to expect. If you're a content creator and you have big community of fans and followers, you should explore the possibility of having brand sponsoring you. Sometimes they even reach out to you. Although, remember that the time, energy, and creativity you pour into creating content for your community is actually worth money. Even when brands just want to send you their product, it is completely okay if you're a huge fan of their products or services and you find a great use of them. However, if you have hundreds of thousands of views on the video, don't fall for the trap of sponsorship shout out for just couple of art supplies. You don't have to have a massive audience to run sponsorship campaigns and be valuable for the brand. Some brands very much value niche audiences. For example, if you have a community of very dedicated people who love pugs and crochet or some other specific niche. So some brands might want to give you a great sponsorship deal, especially when you have those specific niche audiences. I had the first sponsorship deal when we had only 7,000 followers on YouTube, which is not a very big number. Working with brands as a content creator can have big advantages. Because besides the income, you can learn new skills like negotiation, project management, and new production techniques. If you have never worked with clients before, it is also a great way to try that out too. Who knows? Sponsors may become your clients in the future too. So keep your doors open to those awesome opportunities. What is the potential income you can make from a sponsorship? Your earning potential from the sponsorship deals depends very much on a niche you are active in, the size of your following, and on the size of the brand, on the campaign type and length of the campaign. So as you see, there are many variables. Some brands want or can afford only one shout out, some brands value long-term sponsorships where you promote them in more videos than just one. You can think of it this way. Sometimes the rule can be, the bigger the brand, the less flexible they are in the negotiations and they usually set their price with the style of my way or highway. There are always exceptions to the rule. Similar to AdSense. The prize you ask for promoting brand's message depends on your views in terms of YouTube videos and visits in terms of your blogs and websites. In addition to this, the number of followers and it is calculated in CPMs, the cost per thousand impressions. For example, if the average of your video views is 50,000 views and the SPM is $10, then you can ask the brand you to pay $500 per video with the sponsorship message. If you create a video every week, then you can earn up to 2,000 per month. The CPN goes up based on the how niche and engaged the community is. So even though you have maybe a low amount of followers, but you have very special community and the competition in your area, it's not that high, you can ask for more money. So how can you start? Sponsorships are quite a complex topic and the negotiations depends on many factors. In short, you don't have to have a million followers to start with sponsorship deals. Some brands value more if you post content regularly and you have highly engaged community, as I mentioned before. So make a research, reach out to brands which you think can bring a lot of value to your audience. You never know which one is open to a sponsorship. When choosing the brand you promote, think of your audience, their needs and their challenges, which brand could help them. Be very selective and always think what value the brand can bring to your audience and to you. Don't recommend products and services that you haven't tried or you think are not the best thing for your audience. Also, be conscious of your value and the value you bring to your community. Don't settle for the deals of free products for the sponsorships unless you really have a use for the products and you love them. So for example, would you trade $2,000 I mentioned in the earning potential for an art sideshow which cost like $150? That's up to you. But I want you to consider what is the value of your audience? All in all, sponsorships are great way to monetize your content and ensure you have a lifestyle you dream of,. Especially if you are a frequent content creator, it's time to start with them. As I mentioned, always think, is it the brand you would use anyway and you would love to work with them? Think about your audience. What is the value of your audience? Do you have a specific niche? Of course, you can start already now. Don't think your audience is too small. In the next lesson, we will look at how you can make an income from affiliate deals. See you there. 16. Affiliate Deals: Affiliate Deals. What does it mean? Being an affiliate partner means that you earn a commission from every customer you refer to your partner. It is similar to sponsorship deals in a sense that you promote your partner products and services, but you only get paid after the sale. Again, if you are a content creator and you have the engaged community, it is a great way to make income from your favorite products and services. Affiliate deals are mostly passive type of income because you make the shout-outs. An affiliate links part of the content, once that your fans can view and click on the links many times over and over in the future. How does it work and what to expect? If you have a brand or a product or service you love, and you think your community can benefit from, then explore if the brand actually runs affiliate program. If they do, you can sign up immediately and you don't have to even contact them. They usually have it on the website, and you usually get approved within a couple of days. For example, if you have read a great book and you want to enrich the lives of your fans, it is easy to sign up for Amazon affiliate program and promote the book with the special link Amazon gives you. In that way, you get a small commission with no additional cost to your fans. They can get a great tip from you about the book. It is a win-win situation. Don't forget to mention that it is an affiliate deal, or a sponsorship deal, as we talked about in the previous video, because most of the countries have it by a law that you should mention if the content is sponsored or if it is an affiliate deal. Plus, of course, it's a nice thing to say to your fans so they know what is happening. If you have a big fan base, there is a chance that the brands will reach out to you, offering affiliate deals too. It is similar to the sponsorship only except the offers that enrich the lives of your community. What is the potential income you can make from affiliate deals? Some creators earn a couple of $100 per month, and others are able to generate a couple of $1000 per month. The potential income you can make from affiliate deals depends on the deal itself, and the volume of sales you are able to bring to your partner. For example, you can have a commission of $10 per each sale or 10 percent from the price of each sold product. Big and established brands usually work with commissions in percentage, for example, 5-20 percent with the smaller brands, you are able to make deals with fixed amounts per sale. How can you start? Again, the best way is to research which of your favorite products already have an affiliate programs. Because isn't it great to work with brands you already admire and love? The easiest way to start with the affiliate deals is through Amazon. Because they run the biggest affiliate program in the world. You can sign up once and get connected to almost of all Amazon websites around the world, like US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, or Japan. Then you can look at the smaller brands like art tools, software, devices, anything that you love and you may use every day and you think your community would benefit from. Chances are that they already run affiliate program as well. When you sign up to be affiliate partner, you will get the unique link which identifies you as an affiliate partner. Share this link on your website, YouTube channel, product pages, podcasts, or social media. You can even write or record reviews of your favorite product and include your affiliate link. Anything that helps your community to find great products and services is great way to do it. As I mentioned, don't forget to inform your audience that you are sharing affiliate links because it is required by law in many countries. You can do it either by saying it when you are recording or as a short written disclaimer on your website or in the description of your YouTube video. In the next lesson, we will look at how you can make an income from teaching art. See you there. 17. Teaching Art: In this video, we will talk about teaching art. Teaching art or any other art skill can be very rewarding experience. You can get to inspire and educate other people and at the same time, you strengthen connection with your community and create new relationships. What is more, through teaching you improve the most because when you prepare, you need to organize and explain your process thoroughly by analyzing your own process and trying to find out how to best explain it to students. You actually learn yourself and you make the process better and more efficient. This helps you in your own artistic career too. Teaching art can be very active type of income, but also passive type of income. It is active when you teach in-person, either groups or one on one, and it is passive if you create online courses which can sell many times without you having to do anything except promotion. How does it work and what you can expect? If you want to teach art in person, the best way is to contact the local school or educational institution and propose them with the subject you would like to teach and what is your expertise. Schools are usually very open to have a special classes from professionals in the industry. Some might be even open to run a regular class for you, so try to research as many possibilities as you can. Regarding the subject, you can teach specific art skills for example, the art fundamentals or you can teach skills related to running an artistic business or having an artistic career. When thinking about subjects you can teach, try to think what you wish you knew when you were just starting out as an artist. This usually brings tons of ideas. Another option you should explore is creating online courses and distributing them either on your own website or platforms like here, like Skillshare. These allows you to reach a global audience and expand your community exponentially. In this way, you would be able to help more people from all around the world because learning from those who already have experience will save them so much time in their artistic journey. What is the potential income you can make from teaching art? Depending on the school or educational institution, some may pay 400-800 per lecture or workshop, while others pay up to 5,000 for a two-day workshop, which you can travel to. Of course, plus travel and accommodation expenses are usually covered. The prices depends on their funding and how much they ask for their ticket, but it also depends on you because if you have a big fan-base, you are able to ask for more. If you are planning your own workshops, you could, for example, ask $10 up $150 per person depending on the region and what art tools, food and drinks you can provide. Also, counting the price of the space you will have to rent. If you want to sell online courses, the prices vary from $10-2,000 depending on a length, subject covered and your experience. Then there is a Skillshare which uses models similar to Netflix, meaning you get paid based on the amount of time your classes are watched. Some teachers on Skillshare claim a couple of $100 and other couple of thousands. You can read more about these on the Skillshare website. If you have a big fan base, there is a good chance you get contacted by founders of well-known online art schools and you can take advantage of their already created community and distribution. When you want to start teaching in person, the best way to start is to make a research of schools and educational institutions in your location or in the neighborhood countries. Then collect contact information of people who are responsible for events and curriculums in those schools. After these, you can create an elevator pitch for yourself as a teacher, propose the subject you want to teach, and what students will get out of your lecture and workshop. Show examples of your best work and previous talks or public appearances, if you have any, because this helps them to make sure that you can actually stand in front of the other people and teach them. If you want to organize lectures and workshops yourself, research what is out there through Eventbrite and Meetup.com in your area. If you can, try to attend to learn about the audience and their needs. Write down the locations and rental prices. This will help you when you are setting the price for your lectures and workshops later on. If you are more into teaching art online, then research Skillshare's teaching website. It has all the resources will help you to organize yourself and your course in the future. If you have a big fan base, then make the course available on your website too. Promote it on social media so your fans know about it and they can learn from you. Try to also think about the whole customer experience after the purchase. What are the homeworks, class projects, how can they test their skills? Always try to answer their questions within the first 24 hours and listen to their feedback and improve on the go. If you want to learn more about teaching art online from other artists, you can also watch my interviews with Kevin Murphy, founder of Evolve artistic program in episode 197, Lois a.k.a Loish in episode 175, or Marco Bucci in episode 185, or Nathan Fowkes in episode 86. In the next lesson, we will look at how you can make an income from your own membership side, so see you there. 18. Membership Sites: In this part, we will talk about memberships. What is a membership website? Membership website is a subscription-based platform where you regularly provide your subscribers with valuable content. In order to keep access to your content, they would pay you a monthly fee. Running a membership website is an active type of income, because you have to continuously engage with the community and deliver valuable content. How does it work and what can you expect? Creating membership website is the best suited for content creators with big following who are used to producing a lot of valuable content on a regular basis. The content you provide can be from tutorials, courses, guides, Q&A videos, tips and tricks, blogs, challenges, and many other types of content. The most valuable thing you can provide to your subscribers is access to the community of like-minded people, helping and inspiring each other, solving challenges, and growing together. You can even find new friends there. Some membership platforms actually make subscribers to go through an application process, to ensure the group flourishes with each new member and that they are very good fit for each other. Membership websites are all about creating the tribe of people who support you in your work. It's all about the regular engagement and consistently delivering valuable content. What is the potential income you can make from a membership website? Depending on the amount of people you can bring, the value too. The income from a membership website can go up to thousands per month. Therefore, you can imagine 1000, true fans, and each of them would pay you $10 a month to learn from you. That's a very decent reoccurring monthly revenue. How can you start? First, you should think about the valuable content you would be able to deliver to your followers on a regular basis, most probably few times per month. As I mentioned before, it could be tutorials, courses, or a series of courses, Q&A's, block post, tips sand tricks, how to use, and other challenges you might think of. There are so many options you can come up with. For example, you can create community for pattern designers where you and they share tips and tutorials and experiences with each other. For example, who is a good client to work with? Or which companies are great to license with an other types of content? Then you can also share tutorials and tips, how to create patterns or how to create a pattern portfolio and other valuable insights. Every month, it should be filled with the content that makes the members better pattern designers, because we were talking about the pattern design membership website. Once you define your site purpose, it's time to look at the technical solutions. If your budget allows you for it, you could have a custom build membership site, even not, it's easy to have one done with WordPress or ready-made solutions available. You want the reliable software with minimal downtime. Before you launch, make sure to involve your fans in defining the content and the rules of your community. They will reward you with a lot of feedback and ideas that will make your memberships better. Membership websites can be a great way to provide your fans with valuable content, connect with them on a deeper level, and provide yourself with a reoccurring monthly income. This was a summary of some of the most popular ways on how you can make living by making art and support yourself in your creative ventures and bring value to your community. In the next videos, I will wrap up with the thoughts and finding the right fit and introducing the class project. 19. Class Project: Let's talk about which might be a good fit for you. After going through the lessons, you might be asking, which one is the right fit for me and where should I start? That's absolutely natural thing to do. Before you jump into one of the options, think about yourself, your likes, and dislikes. Think about your why. Why do you make art? Why do you want to make the living by making art? Ask yourself, what is the most important for you? Do you want the location independence? Do you want your freedom and flexibility? Are you searching for recognition for your art? Do you want to see your name in the movies or game credits and you draw and create day and night? Or do you prefer creating part-time? Or do you like working alone or in a group? Answering these questions will help you stay on track, and stay motivated along the way. When things get tough, you can always get back to your why. Why is this important to me? If all of these questions are very hard for you to answer, maybe, personally, t-test can help. I did the one on 16personalities.com. It really helped me to understand myself and how I interact with the world much better. This free test may help you too. As a project, I would like you to draw a simple mind map. Like this is a combination of ideas of an income which appeal to you the most. Because when you create a visual plan, it will help you to materialize the future plans and commit to yourself to progress with your dreams. I'm very much looking forward to seeing your mind maps. 20. Final Thoughts: Everyone, we are at the end of this class, and I hope it helped you to shed light on some of the ways how you can make a living from making art. I hope it would help you to decide what might be the best fit for your dreams and your lifestyle. I found my calling after changing careers a few time, doing tons of research and trying different things. I started my artistic and creative career as a concept designer for advertising campaigns. After there, I started as a designer for Lego, the Toy company. I was very lucky to work with great themes where I was inspired by others every day and the job taught me the importance skills I use today when working with clients and managing my artistic business. Then my life situation changed and I had to move locations, and this meant I had to look for other ways to make income. I turned into freelance work, private commissions, and doing my own workshops. Then I had an idea with the art side of life podcast and YouTube show, which has brought me to sponsorship and affiliate deals. I started art side of life because there was something I wish I had when I was growing up and thinking about being an artist. Podcast and YouTube show also helped me to get new clients and start teaching on a local school in international schools, and doing more workshops locally. A couple of months ago, I started a print on demand and licensing too. All of these allows me to create, being contact with people from all around the world, and learn new things every day. Remember, you can do anything you want and it's never too late to change. Doesn't matter what is your background or where you are from. I believe in you, and imagine that in few years, your life can be totally different than it is now, and someone would thank you for putting yourself out there and sharing your unique gift with the world. Because everyone from us has something special and different which you can share with the world, and the person who would come to you and thank you will tell you, ''I needed that.'' Thank you very much for taking this class and if you want to get notified when I release a new class, follow me here on Skillshare by clicking the ''Follow'' button or on the social media. Thank you again and until next time, bye.