Passive Income as an Artrepreneur : Selling art as a digital product.

Passive Income as an Artrepreneur: Selling art as a digital product.

For many artists and designers, selling artwork is a lucrative way to earn passive income.

This isn’t a new concept. Royalty-free image libraries have been around for decades. But things have changed. Oh, dramatically. Artists now have more control over how they sell their work.

Given the relatively new nature of the digital product boom, it can be difficult to understand how to earn passive income as an artrepreneur. I’m often asked by people who want to start selling online. What should I sell?

What is the best thing to sell? Who am I selling to?

Many artists don’t identify their customers. We hate having to think about marketing! Without a market, you don’t have any business.

Just get a clear idea of who your target customer is and focus on their needs, wants, and likes.

Don’t try to please all online buying customers. Aim to please the customer base you think is best suited to your style and the type of products you love creating.

If you don’t know what you love, then experiment. At some point, you’ll have to focus on creating products for a particular customer.

Your market could be designers who create wedding stationery. And perhaps crafting customers who love dabbling and creating projects like cards, invites, etc. This market would be ideal for creating beautiful floral watercolor graphics suited for these projects.

You love designing logos. You can sell pre-made logo templates to customers who are new business owners or designers who need a quick logo.

Knowing your customer basically tells you what to sell. You do some research. I want to find out what my ideal customer wants.

How do you know if a product is going to sell or not?

You don’t! I have no guarantee that my product will sell. What I do have is an experience in my customers ‘ wants, needs, or likes. You don’t have to solve all three of them.

I’ve been using a loose formula since I started selling online.

Create a product that can’t be found anywhere else.

Or create a product that solves the problem they frequently have.

Or better yet, both.

Do it in your own style.

Create something you love to create.

Successful product.

Every time I create a product, my aim is to help my customers with their own work or projects by creating resources that they will love using. I don’t love creating myself. For me, that defeats the whole purpose. No one else will if you don’t love it.

The last tip I can offer regarding the success of a product is to be unique. Just because another artist’s product did well doesn’t mean you’re not successful. That’s not a sustainable business model. If you create unique products in your own style, you’ll gain a lot of followers and stand out more.

Instead of piggybacking on others, come up with your own ideas. Lead or follow? The number one marketing strategy you can apply to your business.

It’s easier to create products with a specific customer in mind rather than relying on random ideas.

I decided to write an honest article to give you the pros and cons of selling artwork online in the form of digital resources or print-on-demand products.

This isn’t a step-by-step guide on how to upload artwork. This is an article on my first-hand experience selling digital products online as a passive income. Trust me, there’s a lot of ugly.

What is the best way to make a passive income as an artrepreneur?

Oh, yes, absolutely. How much you earn depends on how hard you work.

Wait for sales to trickle in and upload a few products. But it’ll be a trickle. Chances of success with little to no effort on your part are very slim.

Online selling can earn you a decent living.

I ran my own graphic design business. I earned a living. I quit my graphic design work and focus full time on illustrating and selling digital products after only a year of dedicated work on my online business.

By the end of the year, I was earning the same income as my graphic design business. It took huge commitment, sacrifice and hard work.

If you’re a one-man show selling graphic design services, your entire business relies on you.

How much you earn depends on how many hours you work. Selling online is a great way to scale up without hiring more staff. If you’re creating something and selling it over and over, your earning potential increases exponentially.

You’re not relying on what you can achieve in an hour.

This has nothing to do with bunnies. Just for his cuteness.

About passive income as an artrepreneur, there’s nothing passive.

Many people believe passive income means no work to earn a living. How hard is that? It’s passive for a reason.

This may shatter your dreams of earning a fortune. Automated sales is the only passive income. Yes, exactly! I think you might be thinking.

You earn while you sleep. But to get to a point where you’re earning enough while in deep slumber takes hard graft.

You’re basically working all the time. That ain’t entirely true. 7 days a week I work. It’s some days longer than others, okay?

I haven’t done anything related to my business in a day. Whether it’s writing a blog post, answering emails, preparing product preview images, etc. All are related to building a successful passive income as an artrepreneur. That excludes the main part of the business, which is creating products.

How much you put into your business is up to you. It’s the beauty of being your own boss, right? Effort = outcome, as I’ve already mentioned several times.

How much do you think I should charge?

Oh, uh. Million dollar question. It’s more like a ten-dollar question.

Essentially selling work for as little as $10 that took you weeks to create and prepare is one of the concepts you might struggle with when first starting out. It’s hard to wrap your head around.

That’s a business model that many successful companies use. Your passive income as an artrepreneur comes from selling the same low-priced product over and over. It may take a while to make money back.

Once you’ve reached that point, everything you earn is profit. If your product isn’t trend-driven, it can continue to give you returns for years to come.

Digital products are increasingly competitive. Customers are bombarded with all-in-one bundles that seem too good to be true. Sometimes they are. When products are churned out for a song, quality is often compromised. I chose not to follow this strategy early on in my online business.

I made a conscious decision not to try and compete with the mass-market, super-low-priced products, but rather create quality over quantity and focus on building my own unique style and use that to help me stand out from the crowd.

Undercharging for your work in the hope of attracting more sales will be detrimental to your business.

Do you want to be seen as a cheap clipart store? Why or why not? What is the quality, unique digital resource artist? This affects the value of art and the perception of the industry. It creates a culture of “race to the bottom” among designers and artists.

Charging too much for what you do is akin to turning customers away. As your confidence grows in your work and you gain more experience each time you put a product out, you’ll learn to balance the two.

Respect your time as an artist and in turn, your customer’s money.

What is the best place to sell?

Not all marketplaces are created equal.

If you are selling your work on a site that has its own end-user license agreement, then it will have its own license agreement. Do your homework. You must read their license terms carefully. Make sure you’re happy with what you do with your work.

By law, the end user is bound by the agreement they make with the supplier. You can’t impose your own license on a person whose license you bought the item from.

My license and the license of the other marketplaces I sell on are almost identical.

I sell my digital products on Etsy, Creative Market, DesignCuts, and other online marketplaces. For me and my products, they all work well.

I’m often approached by other marketplaces to join their site, but I’ve resisted the urge. My work is scattered all over the internet. It makes me feel scattered too.

For me personally, it will become overwhelming and my customer service will probably take a knock, something I’m not willing to let happen.

I have tried several other online platforms that I can’t remember. Why do some people work while others don’t? It’s because I spread myself too thin.

Uploading regularly would give them the focus they need. I’m on social media. When there’s a sale, send out newsletters. I’m just reminding customers that you exist.

If all of your online shops sell the same product, you’ll be able to sell different products. If you sell design templates on one, art prints on another, and digital goods here and there, you can’t market them all. The more time you spend on creating, the longer you have to hop from shop to shop.

In my passive income as an artrepreneur business, I have noticed that the most successful are the shops, product types, and platforms I spend the most time on. If you’re starting out selling print-on-demand products or digital resources, I’d say keep it simple. Which platform is best for your product? Put all your energy into it. Once you’re established, you have more freedom to experiment.

Not all customers are the same within your chosen marketplace. For example, the customer base on Etsy is very different from that on Design Cuts. Do your research. You read the forums. What sells well? What is your style and product?

Then there’s the ugly part.

The internet has brought together people from all over the world. Your work has the potential to reach anyone. It could end up in the hands of despicable people.

There are thousands of torrent sites that pirate music from artists, musicians, etc. Your work will probably end up on at least one of those sites.

I was devastated when I saw all of my products on Amazon.com. It took me some time and several unsuccessful attempts to get it down. The more popular my work became. And still is.

If you want to find the owner of the original site, you can spend hours searching for the IP address. You track down the host. Just send them a DMCA. They ignored the first one. You’re trying to plug a hole in the wall with teddy bear gum. You’ll get your stuff back within days. It’s time-consuming and soul-destroying.

I’ve given up on trying to get my work removed from these sites. People who use these sites don’t buy from me. It doesn’t make it easier.

Legitimate customers who intentionally or unintentionally breach the terms of the license agreement.

Licensing graphic resources can be confusing to end users. Many unintentionally use your resources incorrectly. This in turn creates more work for you as you constantly need to educate customers about their obligations and terms of use.

This can have a negative impact on your work.

Recently I had to deal with a large international company selling my original files. They are available in all major online retailers and supermarkets. I wanted to give up when I first found out. Like the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m still licking my wounds. I want to fight for my dream of illustrating full-time. I’ve worked hard to get where I am today.

I haven’t even scratched the surface. There are countless people copying and selling my art. Let it get to you.

But I’m learning to see it as a liability cost. I need to build in theft and license infringements like the corner shop owner build in losses.

That’s the ugly part of an otherwise great job. I promised you honest insights into selling online, so if you think you’ll be destroyed, then this may not be for you.

If you can see your work as a gift meant to be shared, then it can be an extraordinary career choice.