How To Make Money With Digital Art
First off this is a big topic! There are many ways to make money with digital art.
If you are an artist and you make your own digital art than you can make money selling your art. If you are not an artist and don’t make your own digital art don’t fret. You too can make money with digital art…other people’s digital art.
I’ll just assume you already know how to make digital art.
For those of you that are not artists you will need to figure out how to get digital art you can use to make money with in the first place. Go check out 7 Best Places To Buy Commercial Use Clipart Graphics. You will find excellent places to buy lots of digital art cheap that you can use to make money yourself!
For those of you that are planning to use other people’s digital art to make money there are two main ways. You can become an affiliate of a marketplace that sells digital art or you can use digital art you buy to make new art that you put on products to sell, either on your own site or on sites like Etsy and such.
Hey Wait! If you like commercial use clipart free than you need to sign up for my Goodie Bag! Once you sign up for the Goodie Bag you will have access to free clipart and lots more.  You also get access to discounts and promotions on my full collections for signing up for the Goodie Bag.
6 Tips To Make Money Online With Digital Art
Become an Affiliate
Make Money With Other People’s Digital Art.
To become an affiliate of a marketplace go to the website of the marketplace, like Creative Market for example, and look if they have a link in their header or footer on how to become an affiliate. Simply follow the instructions and wait to become approved. If you become approved then you will be given an affiliate link. In many cases you may have to sign up for an account and once you are logged in you can browse different digital art packages that you like or think will sell and, in Creative Market’s case, they will generate an affiliate link for you for that specific product that you can use.
If you have a newsletter or perhaps you own website you can drive traffic to the affiliate link you have and every time someone clicks on that link and buys something you will get a commission. It’s pretty cool and is a great way to make money with other people’s digital art.
Sell Your Own Products
If you buy other people’s digital art that you can use for commercial use than you can also make money that way. Many of the digital art packages that you will find on places like Design Cuts and Creative Market come with a variety of elements and illustrations. You can use the elements in various combinations to make a new design like a floral bouquet, scene or logo. The cool thing about the digital art collections on most of the marketplaces is they come with standard commercial licenses. This means that once you have created a new design that you can usually put it on a product like a t-shirt, mug, hat, wall art, wedding invitation etc that you can sell.  The standard commercial license usually allows you to sell up to 500 units of one project. The licensing stuff can get a little scary and if you are in doubt you can always contact the marketplace you purchased from for help or often times the artist themselves.
If In Doubt Get Professional Advice
I know it shouldn’t have to be said, but in this day and age it does, so don’t take the above as legal advice. We are not lawyers and you should never take your legal advice from an artist. Check with a professional!
For Those That Make Their Own Digital Art…
Build Your Portfolio
Before you go trying to get accepted to marketplaces take the time (perhaps months) to make a really fantastic portfolio. You should have an extensive portfolio that shows off your best work and the genres of art that you are capable of. Want to know how we know this? Well as Kris shared in her podcast, Pretty Little Design Show, she applied to many marketplaces to sell her digital art without having a portfolio and promptly was rejected by all of them.
A Portfolio Showcases Your Talents.
As a result, she spent a few months just working on her portfolio and creating lots of art to go in it before re-applying to these marketplaces. Once she had a healthy portfolio it was much easier to get accepted to many of the marketplaces because they could see what type of art she created and how it fit into their marketplace.
Taking time to build a portfolio can also be used to help you put together your first collection to sell at the same time.
Apply To Marketplaces
Here’s another piece of advice that should do you well. Don’t wait for your digital art or portfolio to be perfect before you submit it. Perfection is an illusion. If you are waiting for your work to be perfect before you submit it you will never submit it because it will never be perfect!
Should it be good? Should it be WOW? YES! Does this mean it is perfect? NO!
Once you have a portfolio that is really good it is easy to apply to have your own store on many of the different marketplaces. So go do that!
Applying To A Marketplace Can Be Scary
Expect to apply more than once!
You may have your heart set on getting on a certain marketplace because they are the biggest and you just know you will start making money. This is not always the case. There is nothing wrong with getting accepted on smaller marketplaces. You can still make sales and in some cases you will have a better chance of people even finding your art than on bigger marketplaces where there is so much to choose from that a customer seeing your work is like a person finding a needle in a haystack.
Besides, as you will find out…
often the majority of your income doesn’t just come from once place. If you make a little from a lot of places that can really add up!
The advantage of having a store on different marketplaces is they are already doing a lot of marketing to drive traffic to their site so that means more potential of eyeballs seeing your art. They also may take care of a lot of the other things like payment, technical stuff and helping the customer.
The downside is they take 30 to 50% of every sale you make.
Get Your Own Website
Maybe you can build your own website or know someone that can do it for you. You could even set up a site on Shopify if that is easier and if you want to keep all the money for your hard work to yourself than you want to have your own website.
Your website should be used to sell your products and help build your audience.
Build Your Audience
How do you build your audience you ask?
Well it takes a lot of hard work and consistent effort over years to build an audience. Often it requires a multi-pronged approach of blogging, Instagram, Youtube videos, facebook, cold calling and chain letters. Well maybe not cold calling and chain letters!
I won’t get into all that can go into building an audience in this post but really what you want to do is focus on ways to drive traffic to your website and give that traffic a reason to sign up to your list and then treat those people like gold.
Traffic comes and goes…
You might get kicked off a marketplace or lose a ranking. This is why it is important to have your own site and build a list of customers that you control. You don’t actually control your customers but you do control your list and that can’t be taken away from you so take the time to start building your audience and your list right away.
Provide Value To Your Customers
This may go without saying but it is something many people overlook or don’t put enough emphasis on. Create an offer, a free gift or a free section of your website that only people on your list have access too. This will get them on your list. You keep them on your list by providing them with great value. This doesn’t mean always selling to them.
Give Them Free Stuff
Sometimes give them free stuff like maybe some of your art or a tutorial perhaps. This employs the rule of reciprocity and will make them more likely to buy from you in the future.
Your Customers Are Gold
Take time to create a relationship with the people on your list. Think about a person you may already follow. Would you buy something from them? Even though you don’t know them personally you might be more likely to buy from them because you feel like you know them and can trust them since they have shared so much of themselves with you, provided you value and built trust.
Lastly, remember it’s a grind not a sprint. That’s right. A grind! Make a 5 year plan and grind it out. Compounding interest on your efforts is what will pay off huge in the long haul.
Happy grinding!
For even more kernels of wisdom on this check out How To Sell Digital Art…and keep your sanity!
