 Well hello and welcome to this video. Now funnily enough there really are a ton of ways to make money from your art and in your art business but today I just wanted to hone that down and share with you the 10 best ways I believe you can make money from your art in 2024. And this is something I get asked a lot. Sophie what should I focus on right now in order to make money from my creativity? The funny thing is I really do believe that you can make money from pretty much anything any way that you can dream of to structure your business I think you really can make money from so long as you have these three critical factors. Number one you have a high quality product or service. Number two you create a clear business plan with a goal and the steps of how you intend to achieve that goal and number three that you are prepared to take daily consistent action. Now if you're going to do those three things I think you are set. And in this video I'm going to walk you through what I believe are the 10 best ways right now and my suggestion for you is listen out for that one thing that really lights you up that you think yeah do you know that's pretty much what I'm doing it's what I want to do it's what I'd love to do or it's what I hadn't even thought I could do but that sounds amazing. And really by the end of the video I'd love for you to leave a comment below and say do you know what out of the 10 income streams this is the one I'm going to be all in on and focus on this year. Now I'm a great believer in focusing on one thing until you've got it up and running and this is going to be a great video for you to kind of mull around and think about which one of these 10 things is going to work for me. Now in case we haven't met I'm Sophie artist coach and entrepreneur helping artists just like you to make more sales by building a profitable art business. Now please do consider subscribing to this channel so that you don't miss out on any future content and if you're enjoying it please give the video a thumbs up as well because that really helps to push it out in the algorithm so it can be seen by more artists who also want to make a living from their art. Okay drumroll are we ready to dive in for those 10 ways to make money from your art I suggest you grab yourself a pen and a notebook I should have props but I don't and let's get started with number one. Yes Originals is going to be the first of that list I still believe it's a brilliant way to make money and of course if you sell these yourself rather than through a third-party say online site or through a gallery you're going to maximize the profit. Now I'm not saying at all that you shouldn't sell it through a third-party person I think it's a great idea that if you want to maximize and get the most money back for your product then obviously selling it yourself from your own platform is going to be the best way to do that. Large profit margins right when you really think about the cost of materials it's pretty easy to work out that you can make a large amount of money with selling especially if you're going to focus on larger originals as well. People love original art they always did and they always will. Whether you sell it online or offline I like I said I would perhaps suggest you focus on larger work I think people really like a statement piece in their home and obviously the cost of materials is not really going to be that much higher to work on larger but the price point that you can charge for a larger canvas is definitely significantly more. I'm just going to give you an example first thing your goal was to make I don't know 36,000 dollars pounds euros this year and supposing the profit on your artwork was just 15,000 you only need to sell two a month if the profit of course were 3,000 you only need to sell one a month and suddenly the business seems pretty simple right what if it was what if the profit margin on a fairly substantial side canvas was 3,000 and all you had to do was sell one a month there are myriad ways that you can work out how to sell that amount of artwork and as a bonus of course you can take photos and create prints of that artwork so you have a second product to sell we're going to talk about that in a minute number two and that is to work with commissions a lot of people hate commissions and I really think the reason why they haven't got a tight enough contract and they're not actually perhaps using a really solid process to work with the customer because I've done commissions in the past and they've been some of the best things I've ever done and I think when they're structured well what a great way to make money you make the sale before you've even created the artwork take a deposit up front maybe even 50% and here's the tip I would make 20% of that non-refundable because it's going to take your time for planning perhaps you've gone and bought a specialized canvas or you're going to have a specialized frame made up front so if they change their mind in the process you at least get to keep that 20% if the customer doesn't like it at the end of the line you've got an artwork you can sell anyway and you've lost nothing right so again you can take photos of that artwork and create a second product with prints after the fact number three chiclay prints what do we mean by that high quality prints what does that equal a higher price point so again a fairly good profit margin also if you sell them yourself you can maximize the profit right you want to have these made to order work with a good local printer or if you really want to and you know your whole business is set around prints then you invest in the equipment yourself I do recommend however that you don't do that until you know that you want to and you can build your business off prints because it's quite costly to get really good quality equipment it's easier to start with just to find somebody locally who's going to work with you once you become collectible you can also consider limited edition prints and that's particularly good because your audience maybe can't afford a large one or they're not ready for a large original but they'd really like a limited edition print gives them a little bit of exclusivity you've only got 10 available of this image for example and they get snapped up again top tip I wouldn't do this until you're collectible because a limited edition doesn't really mean anything to anybody unless there's demand for the product alright number four print-on-demand prints so again you're working from the same image you've either had a photo taken or a high quality scan from the original artwork and instead of perhaps you don't like the idea of having to set up with the print you don't want to have to use a local printer you don't have to do any of that you want something that's a bit more hands-off so what do we mean by print-on-demand prints that's something that you're going to set up online you set it up once and it's pretty hands-off it's a passive income once it's going alright the smaller profits because it's going to be a lower price point product then you can use a platform like Etsy as a shopfront or Shopify if you're a bit more established so again with good SEO so search engine optimization to your Etsy listings you can get some really great sales without very much marketing and you're going to use a print-on-demand partner such as printify printful etc who are going to fulfill the products and I'm going to be making more videos on this topic so make sure you're subscribed so that you don't miss out on those number five ways to make money from your heart this year is staying with the print-on-demand theme and this time we're looking at apparel print-on-demand t-shirts and sweatshirts now before you switch off and you go oh my god Sophie I'm not selling myself out you know you have to think about if you want to build a business you need to have some income streams if you love creating the art and if you're walking around now and you're seeing not many plain sweatshirts and t-shirts but mostly they have images graphics all sorts of beautiful things on there that is because right now at time of shooting this video these are in all-time high demand so as an artist you are right at the front edge of actually being able to create unique work that's unlike some of the other work that's out there that all kind of looks a bit similar so consider this again very hands-off passive income you can also use Etsy plus a print-on-demand partner such as printify printful I recommend printify and I'll explain why in another video again much smaller margins but let's think about it supposing you've created a piece of artwork you've maybe even sold the original you've maybe set yourself up for some prints and you think huh I've got this artwork do you know what if I just maybe even removed some of the edges and made it a bit ragged around the edge look really cool on a t-shirt you could then consider using this as another income stream and putting your artwork on sweatshirts and t-shirts and they really really really are flying out of the store at the moment just remember your margin now suddenly when we looked at originals and then we looked commissions will be the sort of same and then we looked at prints and then we looked at print on demand prints now we're going right the way down so we need volume here you might end up with ten or twenty dollars every time somebody buys one but imagine if a hundred people buy one and a hundred people buy another design fifty people buy that design the numbers can start to stack up now here's the caveat it's not a simple setup it is going to take a bit of learning to get yourself set up but once it's set up and if you're good with your design platforms and you like working on the computer and you have images already that you think you know what I think my stuff would look great on here this is a really brilliant way to make money right now will it still be this opportunity five years from now probably not is it an opportunity right now that you could jump on absolutely so number six way that you could make money from your art this year we're staying in the print on demand and you might be going but it's all one thing and the reason I've sectioned these off because they're going to suit different types of art so number six is also print on demand but this is more about posters stickers digital downloads if you are more of a surface designer you make repeating patterns or you already perhaps have tried making stickers you know how to create stickers you use procreate you use digital art then this is a great income stream for you again digital downloads stickers and posters are super popular right now so it's along the same lines you're going to use Etsy as your storefront and your print on demand partner something like printful or printify printifies my preferred stickers are hugely popular right posters also to and especially those are downloadable at home so if your customers creating one of those walls that's got lots of different images on it and they can quickly and easily say I love that I love that I love that and they can buy them for an affordable amount they can print them at home they've got an instant wall they're happy and you've made lots and lots of little amounts of money which all add up by the way all right especially if this is an income stream alongside another income stream okay now this is going to work even better with you if you can keep up with the trends if you understand and know what's trending this year in terms of design then colors then you can get ahead of the market and you can start creating some things that you know people are going to want for this season again will this way of making money be around in five years who knows could be even bigger or we could be onto something else by that and that's why I'm making this video right now because this is about an opportunity for you right here right now number seven ways to make money last one in this series but hear me out also print on demand we're back into solid products again and this is things like mugs tote bags notebooks and yes phone cases why because I happen to know that all five of those products are going to be trending this year they're already starting mugs is still huge phone cases is peaking this year bags and notebooks too so again now if you're somebody who's more of a surface designer somebody who's easy with making repeat patterns and can create your design specifically to fit the sizes of these products because when you think about it if you make a piece of artwork and you try and do what I did way back in the day which is take a section of it and put it on my phone it's okay for me but it's not great right but if you're somebody that can create something in the size of the phone case and upload it you make a lovely pattern looks great on the phone case and you can upload that then this is another way to make money so exactly the same you're going to use Etsy or Shopify as your storefront and you're going to use Printful ideally and the reason why I recommend them I'll make another video around this but the reason I recommend them is because they have the lowest cost to produce and the highest customer service and the highest quality out there and a huge and ever-growing variety of products don't put this one aside if you think you know what I could probably do that I've seen some of these things and I think I could make that too all right so look out for more videos helping you with that stuff and again all of these print-on demands are passive income you set them up you understand how to list them correctly Etsy will show them to the right people and you'll have to do very little work ongoing and you can sit there in the morning and go oh look this amount of money is heading to my bank account today how nice is that okay number eight ways to make money from your art this year now we're switching gears all together this is still online courses online courses are still massive where do people like to get their information online they want a well-structured easy course something that's short and sweet and really nice to do all right some people like the meteor courses other people like those short and sweet courses but the people really still like to learn online so if you teach and you're capable of teaching you can create online courses that can very quickly mount up to become a full-time income so think about things like short 30-minute courses think skill share or Domestika third party sites that skill share you can simply apply and put yourself on there I think Domestika come looking for you but you could reach out and see if you're a fit right or you could make that course yourself you could also create something that's a little bit longer a bit more in-depth and then you can easily even work up to what I call your key signature course that's your two three thousand dollar course that you launch once a year and honestly there are plenty of people including artists in fact artists are doing incredibly well right now in terms of high price point courses why more and more and more people want to get out of the office and be creative more and more people want to hone their artistic skills so if you're sitting there thinking I have a course in me I'm just not sure if I can make any money I'm telling you definitely can at the end of this video I'll put a link to the playlist on courses and workshops and I'll be also more videos coming this year on that topic as well so again you create once sell forever huge profit margins all you're really paying for is the software that's hosting the course right and some marketing maybe you run some ads down the track you can build a six or seven figure business doing this number nine and we're keeping in the teaching thing but we're now going offline away from the computer and we were going at workshops and retreats now who doesn't love an in-person workshop right we couldn't do those during COVID and if you're going to build your business around it you need to make sure that you have a good backup plan for something like that would happen again but right now I think more and more people are looking actually for real things they can attend right these are going to make remain popular not everybody wants to be online some people like to attend some people like to have a real experience so depending on the material on the material costs your venue you should still be able to make it really good profit running workshops and say five or seven day retreats they do take up however quite a bit of your time and your effort and anyone who's delivered on those will know how exhausting it can be after the fact so you need to make sure that you're making good money when you set them up so you can also consider running retreats through a third party retreat company there's more and more of those popping up all over the place and why not run them in beautiful parts of the world that you've always wanted to go to think Tuscany painting retreat in Tuscany I'm in right who isn't so you definitely want to think about those higher price point items if you're running regular workshops or classes it's nice to offer people say once a year he come to Tuscany and do my seven day painting retreat and last but not least the model that I've adopted and that is the membership model and this is absolutely brilliant for your customers because you can charge a really small amount for them each month like on the subscription think Netflix or Amazon Prime and then it's definitely scalable right you do the same amount of work each month no matter whether you've got five members 50 members 500 members 5,000 members well at that point you probably need some help but at the end of the day think about patreon if you've come across that already same thing you follow an artist you watch what they're doing you learn from every month there are different membership tiers you can pay according to what you want you can set up your own membership on sites like kajabi that's the site I have my courses in my membership site set up on it's actually like a business in a box if you like I will do a video on that as well it's just been the best thing it runs my entire business I've got all my courses and my membership and my email all my sales pages all my customers all my taking of the money everything in one place and it's absolutely perfect for people like us who don't want lots of different platforms to deal with all right so memberships are brilliant because they are recurring income so you've got passive income which some of these print-on-demand things are once they're set up then you've got recurring income so people are paying you every month so you need to keep delivering good content so that they stay and then you've got active income which is things like delivering on workshops and retreats and I think you know a good mix of those three things is kind of a perfect business so I hope that you've been enjoying all these ways and you've been watching me slowly melt into the chair it's building up to another 40 degree day outside and although I tried to have the air con on in the last video it made too much noise so I don't have it on so I'm literally melting think a snowman with a lamp going on it I'm melting into my stall I'm melting down into the ground of the studio I have boxed up even more of my art materials to take home and sit under the air con so that I can work at home because it is way way way too hot to be in here anyway let's talk about money for the last time I really hope you've enjoyed these income streams don't forget to let me know in the comments below which one or two that you think you're going to focus on which one is a bit of an eye-opener and you'd like to know more about now thank you for those people who said they'd like Pinterest videos and other videos it's all gone into the plan I promise you they're coming I normally have a plan for most of the year but I've slotted those in so all of those videos that you've asked for are coming all right so keep them coming keep asking and if you are on my mailing list which you can easily do by grabbing one of my free bees below this video then you have the opportunity obviously to email me back and ask for more assistance there and I share top tips and links to things I'm doing and more things about running your business so if you'd like that make sure that you grab a freebie below this video and look out for the playlist that's on the screen now because that's about courses and workshops because I still think this is a really easy and fast way right some of those platforms take a bit of time to get going workshops you could put them up for next month money in the bank and on you go all right so that's the playlist on here and like I said I will be adding more videos to that this year as well all right thank you so much for watching me melt in my stall I'm now going to put the aircon back on go and get an iced coffee and get on with my day thank you so much for watching bye bye