Becoming a Full-time Artist
In today’s video & blog, I wanted to discuss my current circumstances as an artist trying to go full time and the strategies that I am using moving forward.
The Goal
Ultimately the goal is to be a full-time independent artist doing my own projects. This means that I don’t want to take on freelance work or work for any clients. I want the creative fulfillment that comes with working on drawings that are deeply personal while building a strong business and brand around that honesty.
$1300
That is the number I need to hit consistently per month (in profit) to sustain my living and also have a little bit of money to reinvest into the business. This isn’t a long term number but its enough so that I can keep making more work and growing the project as a whole. The focus in the short term is to develop momentum.
The main income source to achieve this number will likely be the sale of original drawings. The value proposition of an original is easy to understand because it’s a handcrafted item and is usually a higher-ticket item, at least compared to prints.
I am trying to sell my originals at $150 right now and I can make about 12-16 originals per month. If I can generate sales at this price point and actually sell out regularly then I will be in the position to keep making more work for the project. I might have to drop the price and just push to create more originals per month if this price is too high.
It is really important for me to be able to spend most of my time creating personal drawings because if I start to take on freelance work or any other side income, the momentum will drop drastically. Creating more art gives me more content to use for marketing which leads to a larger audience, which then leads to more sales and hopefully sustainability.
Biggest Hurdles
These are the biggest hurdles that are actually within my control, focusing on anything outside of my control would be a waste of time so I don’t have any of those listed.
Marketing
So my current struggle is that I need to find the people who would actually be interested in buying original art. Art isn’t a common necessity like food or shelter so people are only willing to buy work that resonates with them on a deep level. This means that I have to get my work in front of a lot more eyes so I can find the ones that are interested in purchasing original art.
Quality
The second hurdle for me is drawing quality and to be specific I struggle with faces. The faces on my characters tend to be all over the place and not very consistent in their appeal. I will be solving this problem by taking the time to do more drawing studies. The only problem with studies is that it takes time away from finished work but I need to strike a balance between the two to increase the quality of the work.
Audience Growth
This past month I have been getting a lot of traffic to my personal website through Google SEO. The increase is mainly due to inktober because my work is mainly done in ink. My Instagram has been growing quite substantially, I have gotten about 1000 followers in the past 30 days and my posts are consistently getting 1000-2000 likes.
The only downside with Instagram is that it doesn’t convert very well over to the website. I am going to focus more energy on Pinterest because it has a much higher conversion rate so I am more likely to find the right customers there.
Backup Plan
To be frank, my only real backup plan is to drop the price on the originals and make more of them. The long term value of creating your own work is so much greater than freelance. With freelance work, you might get paid more upfront but there is no long term value there.
With independent projects, every time you create a new piece it increases the value of previous pieces. This might seem confusing at first but if you think about it in terms of youtube it will make a lot of sense. The first few videos a creator will make might not get a lot of traction, but as the library of videos increases the more people will find each video. If the work is of quality, people will then go and look at the backlog of videos which then gives the previous work more value.
Each added video means that the previous videos will be seen more times and it works the exact same way with the artwork. This only works with evergreen content, which is very easy to make as a visual artist because it just has to be honest to resonate with any human being at any time in history.
This is why Im setting bar pretty low at $1300 (Canadian), this isnt enough for the long term but I know that spending time on the project will pay dividends into the future so it doesn’t matter if I don’t make a huge living upfront. This whole project is about sustainability and a future that I actually want to live, I’m totally fine making sacrifices in the present to have the future that I want.
If it becomes necessary to make even more sacrifices in other parts of my life to bring down my expenses, then I will gladly do it as long as I get to keep drawing. My plan for the long term is to put the work into an artbook, which means that any work I create today can make me more money in the future.
Art Book
To get an artbook made I need the leverage of both a large body of work and an audience. The audience growth is dependent on content marketing so it all circles back to creating more art. Even if I invest more energy into marketing better and increase the quality of the work, I still need to create consistently to make this happen.
All of this ripple effect is only possible if I can make this sustainable in the next few months. I know its possible to take on a part-time job or take on a little freelance work while working on my personal project but I honestly don’t want to. I am going to do whatever I have to for this project and I don’t want to postpone this thing.
I know it sounds slightly entitled but I’m determined to utilize this opportunity to the fullest. Artists didn’t have the type of freedom and business opportunity that we have now because of the internet. Patreon is a great example of the shift that is being seen in our culture, people are willing to support artwork and creative content that resonates with them. I want to part of this shift so I will pay whatever price is necessary.
It is possible that I could increase the quality of my artwork and also increase the price so that I have to sell fewer pieces to cover a larger portion of my expenses. I really dont know what will work when it comes to all this, all of it is unexplored territory for me.
I will be sharing the entire process both here on the blog and through the videos because I think this could become a valued resource for anyone else that also wants to do this. I will be doing monthly check-ins where I talk about how much I am making both in terms of money and art. We will go over different metrics that I am tracking and ill be as transparent as possible because I want to help more artists to take this direction.
I believe that we are in an empowering time in history because the internet allows direct person-to-person support and that is manifesting itself into artists making a living off their true work. Personal work is valuable to the world because it can connect so much deeper than commercially done work. Companies have to satisfy a very wide net of people while a singular artist can focus on making a few people happy and still make a great living.
If you want to follow me on this journey consider joining the mailing list, social media algorithms can change at any moment but the mailing list a safe place to stay connected. Feel free to check out more of the blog posts because I will be doing my best to create resources that are of value to people.
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