My Six Income Streams as an Artist

There are countless opportunities for artists to make money from their art without solely relying on selling original paintings, I think it’s a good strategy to diversify your income streams and leverage your artwork in various ways to generate revenue.

Until last year, commissions were my main source of income as an artist. While commissions are a great way to earn money, especially if you're a pet portrait artist like me, the downside is that you're essentially trading your time for money. About 18 months ago, I decided to focus on developing additional revenue streams to grow my art business, including exploring passive income options meaning that when I was painting commissions I was also making income through these passive streams at the same time.

In this blog post, I'll be sharing the revenue streams I've developed and the insights I've gained throughout the process. My advice is to avoid taking on too much at once. Instead, focus on opportunities that align with your business goals, interests, and existing skills. Trying to juggle too many things at the same time can spread you too thin and make it more challenging to succeed. That’s not to say it can’t be done but this is just speaking from my experience.

Diversify Your Income Streams

Adsense

My first revenue stream is earning through AdSense. This is something I achieved at the end of 2024. Currently you need 4000 watch hours and 1000 subscribers to get monetized on YouTube. This took me around a year to achieve.

Once you achieve monetization there are a couple of metrics that are used to work out how you get paid, The CPM which is how much advertisers are willing to pay for every 1000 times someone watches an advert in your video and RPM which is how much creators actually get paid once YouTube has taken their 45%.

I have made a whole video dedicated to my journey to monetization and although i’m not making big money from AdSense there are countless other opportunities having a YouTube channel can provide. Purely talking from a revenue point of view, as well as AdSense you also have the opportunity to collaborate with brands on sponsorship opportunities.

Affiliate Marketing

My next revenue stream is affiliate marketing. I am fairly new to this and it’s something that does take a fair bit of work initially to set up. I’ll try and briefly outline what it involves and how to go about starting. Affiliate marketing is basically linking to products using links that are unique to you and sharing these links with your audience. If someone then clicks on this link and makes a purchase then you get a portion of the sale. Normally between 5% and 10%.

Just make sure that any products you are endorsing you have tried and you recommend using. You don’t want to ruin your reputation by recommending products that aren’t very good and will cause people to loose trust in you.

If you’re interested in going down this route then you need to decide what companies you would like to work with and sign up to their affiliate marketing programmes. There are loads out there to choose from so choose ones that most align with your business and the products you use. I buy the majority of my art materials from Jacksons Art so I have have joined their affiliate marketing programme which is hosted by AWIN. I have also joined the Amazon affiliate marketing programme being the other place I use to buy my art materials.

I include the links to products in a few different places including my YouTube videos and website. Any money I have made through affiliate marketing to date (which has been very small) I have reinvested back into buying art materials for my business.

Selling at Craft Fairs and Art Markets

My third income stream comes from selling at craft markets and art fairs. This can be a great option if you create lower-priced items from your art, such as greeting cards, mugs, key rings, or Christmas tree decorations. Shoppers at these markets often buy on impulse, so smaller, more affordable items are more likely to sell than high-priced paintings.

That said, these markets are also a fantastic way for commission-based artists to connect with potential clients. For example, I choose fairs where my target audience is likely to be, such as dog festivals and outdoor events that welcome dogs. It's a valuable opportunity to showcase your work, meet potential clients, and allow them to see and experience your art in person, which helps build trust in your brand and increases the likelihood of sales.

In my first year of selling at art markets and craft fairs, I made over £2,000. My advice is to choose which fairs you attend carefully. It's a balance between finding events that will be busy and attract your target audience, while also ensuring they aren't too expensive, as high fees can make it difficult to cover your costs.

Teaching on Skillshare

If you are selling your handmade products then you likely have some creative skills that you can pass on to other people. Over the past year I've been developing classes that teach acrylic painting for beginners and intermediates. Although they take a lot of work up front to film and edit, once you have uploaded the class, it's passive income from that point on.

Recently I've been pretty bad at marketing my classes but that's why it's great to use a third party platform like Skillshare. You can ensure that there is high traffic on the site and as long as your classes are good quality, you could be found in search results by doing very little to promote your class.

I am now consistently earning over £100 a month from the platform, which may not seem a great deal but over time I want to create more classes and grow my audience. Taking Skillshare as an example, teachers earn based on the number of minutes someone watches their class. Teachers typically earn between 5 – 10 cents per minute.

Teachers will earn more if their classes are consistently getting great reviews and feedback, so it's definitely worth putting in the effort to make great quality classes. There are lots of other teaching platforms you can choose such Udemy and Teachable. You could also make your own stand alone classes and offer these to people as digital products via your website.

Selling Products Online

My final income stream comes from selling through an online shop and my website. I'm a strong advocate for having a website, as it's an excellent platform to showcase your portfolio and display testimonials from satisfied customers. More recently, I added a pet portrait booking form to my website, which has been a huge success. This form provides a convenient space for customers to order a pet portrait, offering all the necessary details for both the customer and myself, such as their information, canvas size preferences, and frame color. I also included a "How did you hear about me?" question to track where people are finding me—whether it’s through social media, YouTube, craft fairs, or a Google search. I believe it’s important to track this information to understand what’s working well in your business.

In addition, I’ve started selling more affordable art products like greeting cards and bookmarks on Etsy. Recently, I’ve been experimenting with Etsy ads, setting around 5-6 listings with ads for a couple of pounds per day over the course of a month. I monitor the performance of these ads and keep the ones with the most clicks or orders running, while turning off those that aren’t performing as well.

This year has been the busiest for my art business, and I believe that the combination of all these efforts is helping me build a slow yet sustainable business for the long term. It's crucial that I move at a pace I can manage and enjoy, to avoid burnout and resentment. I'm now fully booked with commissions until next April, and I’m confident that this success is due to the collective impact of everything I’ve been doing, rather than any single factor.

Final Thoughts