The hard road to monetization as an artist
Monetization is a word that, at first hear, conjures nightmares for me from the corporate world I used to work for. It is, however, something every artist that has an online or social media presence today will eventually need to deal with. Monetization is hard to achieve in free social media platforms and it will continue to become harder and harder as the field saturates.
Selling your art is hard. Period. No way around it. The market is saturated. So you can’t rely on print of original art sales alone. At the moment, I sell downloadable printable files of my work in high resolution. This is, to me, the most cost effective way to let someone hang my work on their walls.
I tried selling physical prints and original artwork and although I did sell some, the process, logistics and cost of shipping and packaging really was not sustainable for the prices I had to keep my work in order to sell.
What works for me so far…
Etsy
Etsy became one option for me and it still is. Even after all the fees they collect for listings, the ads they run using your products, and ultimately your organic sales, it remains a very convenient way to put your work in front of billions of customers. Although my art does not sell well yet (I’ve only just added those), I have other products that do, so I know the platform can turn things around. This might be the easiest way to get started small.
This Website
Having your own website is not easy and it is an expense, yes. But the benefits will begin to slowly reveal themselves. I have sold several pieces directly to happy customers through this site. It is cumbersome to do at first, but you just keep going. This is by far the way you can make the most income after expenses with minimal fees, depending on the platform you use to set it up.
A website also allows you to do things on your own terms, and test things around without spending too much money. I started selling physical products and the only ones that actually sold were original watercolors. That however was incredibly expensive to do, so the net income was minimal. I pivoted and decided to only offer downloadable printable art instead for the time being to see how things go.
You also need to ensure you have tools setup to help you understand what your visitors are doing when they reach your site so at a bare minimum, you should have Google Analytics or some sort of analytics insight into what is happening. You can take this effort further and setup content ads on your site.
Blogs are excellent candidates for unobtrusive ads that can make passive income. I think most users will tolerate them in order to help you. Don’t forget about the good old and proven marketing email campaigns. An excellent way to engage with your customers and trigger sales with direct promotion.
At the moment I am focusing on getting the marketing pieces together and I know things will take off here at some point. I just need to be patient.
Patreon
I also recently started my Patreon membership program. It allows me to at least start recovering some of the money I spend creating art and online content. Membership has started to take off and that makes me very happy. I can also leverage my YouTube channel tools. My process videos are released to my Patreon members 72 hours ahead of the YouTube publishing. I will also start raffling original art amongst paid members who stay with me for more than 3 months. I can see this community growing and I am excited for what that can bring.
What doesn’t work for me so far…
I started my social media journey as an artist back in 2022. My very first account was an Instagram account where I started sharing my work as I progressed with my mixed media art, mostly watercolor and ink work.
At the time, Instagram had a 10K follower requirement before you could begin earning anything. It still does I believe. Needless to say, that is a humongous task for any artist that is unknown. Furthermore, the platform is riddled with fake, spammer and counterfeit accounts which make your daily life as a content creator a nightmare. Almost every month I see a fellow artist reporting that their work has been stolen to fake accounts pretending to be them or pretending to be the artists behind their work. Sadly, Meta’s AI customer support often ignores such reports and removes the real artist claim as a violation of the very same rules that instead should be applied to the stealer. A nonsense of vicious circle blaming the victim.
After two years of consistent work on the platform, I am still at 1,800 followers. It is fair to say that the platform has made a decision to make the process of monetization harder than it should so I simply stopped giving it priority. I have placed as many safety mechanism to prevent my account from being stolen but there is nothing stopping those bots from doing so; certainly not Meta.
I am making $0 from Instagram as of today. You’ve been warned.
YouTube
Enter YouTube. Part of the joy of being an artist in 2024 is how easy it is to show your process in multiple formats which used to be very complex to master, video for example. These days, any smart phone has incredible photography and video recording capabilities. Most connect directly to social media and allow you to share on the spot in beautiful, effortless, high-quality media.
I started a YouTube Channel on February of 2023. Just over a year. YouTube requires 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours (within a 365 day period) in order to allow you to monetize from ads. My channel did very well and still does. I met my 1k subs requirement within 8 months.
The watch hours is another story. While I was able to reach close to 2, 900 hours before February of 2024, the number began to drop rapidly as soon as I reached the the first 365 day cycle. After that the counter resets to the prev 365 days from the current date and unless you pop out 2-3 videos weekly, and have managed to consistently increase your viewership, which is incredibly hard to do, the rate of watch hours will continue to drop.
They basically want to turn you into a hamster on a wheel chasing that goal. Also a humongous task for an artist that does not do art full time.
Sadly, another effort that will most likely take a very long time before it shows any income. The jury is still out on this one. Stay tuned.
Conclusion
I really hope that this ad-hoc insight into my experience so far helps you make some decisions and avoid frustration.
What you end up doing depends on your available time, your budget and determination.
I think the most important takeaway here is not giving up. If your work resonates with a lot of people, then the most important ingredient is taken care of: Talent. The rest is business and your ability, desire and determination to make it work.
Good luck!