How To Make Money As A Freelance Artist

One of the nearly difficult things about beingness a freelance artist is finding work.

Finding freelance illustration jobs online is not an piece of cake task either. Search whatever popular freelance platform and you'll find less than 100 outdated job postings for illustrators.

And waiting for commissions can exist quite depressing also.

No need to be discouraged. There are many different means yous can brand money online equally an illustrator.

In this post, I'll bear witness you some of the ways other freelance illustrators brand money online. And prove to you that yous tin can actually make money drawing and selling your art online.

Go on reading to find out how.

How Much Do Illustrators Make?

How much can y'all really brand as an illustrator?

According to a slightly dated survey done by the 3×3 magazine, there are illustrators in the US that earn equally much as $948,000 per year. But, $530,000 of that corporeality came from other sources such equally selling prints and deputed work.

The average income of the best illustrators in New York is effectually $100,000 per year. Only, in that location are besides many who brand lower than $1K per twelvemonth.

Indeed Salaries show that boilerplate freelance illustrator in the US charges a rate of effectually $25 per hour.

Of course, there are other freelance illustrators out there who brand over $66,000 selling stock illustrations alone.

Here are some of the strategies they employ to make a ton of money.

#one Notice Online Gigs

At that place are many ways to make money online from dwelling. However, the quickest and the easiest way to make money as an illustrator or as any other type of freelancer is to look for gigs on freelance marketplaces.

Unfortunately, popular sites such equally UpWork and Freelancer.com rarely get jobs related to illustrations or drawings.

And then, you need to bring together niche marketplaces or browse job boards to observe analogy jobs.

All-time Freelance Sites For Illustrators

Here are some of the all-time freelance sites and job boards y'all can use to observe illustration and design jobs.

• Behance Jobs
• Bang-up Jobs
• Dribbble Jobs
• 99Designs
• Indeed
• Guardian Jobs (not remote)
• Simply Hired
• Hire an Illustrator

#2 Do Art Commissions

Commissions are a popular strategy many kickoff illustrators utilize to make money online.

This is peculiarly pop amongst the users of DeviantArt, a community for artists. On DeviantArt, clients can either pay artists with money or DeviantArt points.

At that place are also other illustrators who utilise different types of platforms to connect with clients and do commissions. It works like this: A client comes to you with a asking for an illustration, you concord on a toll, and gets paid when it's done.

How To Find Art Commissions

The deviation between freelance gigs and commissions is that y'all have to promote your work and wait for clients to come up to you.

However, there are a few sites dedicated to art commissions as well.

• ArtCorgy
• ArtFinder
• Artists&Clients

#3 Sell Your Vector Designs

Selling your work online is the best approach to make a assisting income while generating recurring acquirement while you sleep.

You tin can get started by joining marketplaces like Creative Market place, GraphicRiver, and Envato Elements.

These sites allow you to sell all kinds of artworks, from illustrations, graphic symbol designs, logo designs, mascots, icon packs, along with various other types of graphics and templates.

However, you can't expect to sell anything on these sites. The fundamental to making many sales is to notice a profitable niche.

Visit those platforms and meet what types of illustrations and vectors are selling like hot block. And figure out a way you can contribute to those categories with even improve illustrations.

#4 Sell Posters & Prints

Some other not bad way to sell your piece of work online is to sell impress versions of your drawings and illustrations.

Although, in order to sell your art as posters and canvas prints, you need to build some reputation and promote your piece of work online to attract an audience.

Many artists utilise DeviantArt to sell posters while promoting their work using the same platform.

Yous can also utilise other sites such equally Society6 and Printful, which handle all the heavy work, including press the posters and shipping to buyers. All you have to practice is upload the illustration on the website and you'll receive a royalty for each sale.

#5 Sell T-Shirts

Selling T-Shirts? Doesn't that require working with factories and manufacturers? Not really!

Yous tin actually blueprint your ain T-Shirts using your ain illustrations and sell them online without even having to touch a T-Shirt.

This works the same as selling posters. Sites like Printful, RedBubble, and Blueprint By Humans allows y'all to upload your art and employ them to design products like T-Shirts, mugs, and phone cases. Then the sites promote your work and give yous a percentage of each sale.

#6 Use Twitter, DeviantArt, & Instagram

Staying active on social media is a crucial part of promoting your work as an illustrator. Information technology's as well a great way to find freelance work likewise.

But a quick search on Twitter is all it takes for y'all to find a gig.

Instagram is the other platform you should be using regularly. Use it to upload your all-time work and also to promote your services

My sister is also an illustrator. She gets most of her clients from her Instagram folio. Whenever someone sends her a asking, she redirects them to her DeviantArt commissions folio.

Most of her clients are the people who are looking for character designs and create cartoon versions of themselves. She's non doing freelance work full-time but she makes a little over $100 per calendar month from these gigs while working part-time.

#7 Participate In Competitions

Joining design contests is a nifty way to improve your skills and besides testify off your skills and stand a take a chance to win some money at the same time.

I don't commonly recommend freelancers to bring together contests because the contest benefits the clients more than the freelancers. However, if you're a beginning freelancer, these contests can assistance you lot build your reputation.

Plus, if y'all manage to win a competition, yous can ever employ it as bragging rights as well.

Try looking for contests in these sites.

• Blueprint Contest
• Freelancer Contests
• 99Designs
• Graphic Competitions

#8 Acquire Hand Lettering

Hand lettering is quite a pop trend these days, generally surrounding website design, branding, T-Shirt designs, and greeting card designs.

Learning hand lettering will certainly brand y'all an indispensable designer and you tin utilize that skill for many other tasks also.

For example, you can blueprint beautiful wedding invitations and greeting cards using your paw lettering skills to sell online.

Or, make friends with a few spider web designers. Let them know about your skills and ask to send any clients looking for hand lettering work your way. Yous can sweeten the deal by offering to pay a small percentage of your payment for the referral.

Here are a couple of courses you tin follow to acquire hand lettering.

• Hand Lettering Essentials for Beginners
• Mitt-Lettering Workshop: Illustrating with Lettering
• The Gilded Secrets of Hand-Lettering
• Nuts of Paw Lettering Serial
• Mitt Lettering Basics: Beginner Guide

Use this link to join Skillshare Premium for gratuitous and y'all tin can watch all these classes gratis for ii months.

#nine Create & Sell A Font

Y'all tin also put your hand lettering skills to good use by designing your own handmade fonts.

Creating a font requires a little bit of technical knowledge, but information technology can exist quite rewarding. You lot can generate recurring revenue by but selling a font on a market like MyFonts, Creative Market place, and Envato Elements.

These platforms will accept care of bringing in sales and promoting your fonts, all you accept to exercise is create and upload your font.

Hither are a few courses for learning how to create fonts.

• Design Your Own Fonts: From Paper to Screen
• Turn Hand-Painted ABCs Into Versatile Vectors
• Manus-Drawn Typography: Create Your Ain Font
• Type Pattern: Build a Unproblematic Display Font

#x Create An Online Course

It may seem like a lot of work but you can really make more money selling online courses than any other strategy.

All yous have to do is record a screencast while showing how your depict a grapheme or a affiche and people will pay to watch information technology.

There are professional illustrators out at that place who brand thousands of dollars selling online courses on platforms like Udemy and Skillshare.

This particular course has been sold more than than 22,000 times. If information technology sells at $10 each, that'south $220,000. Fifty-fifty if Udemy takes 50% of the sales, you'll get $110,000.

Corking for recording a few videos, correct?

There's also a new platform called Tutpad. It's dedicated to artists. Y'all can become a instructor at 1 of these sites to hands sell a form and make some extra greenbacks.

Bonus: Cold Emailing

Another way to find work online is simply cold emailing.

If you can detect a skillful business or a company that could use your skills, you can reach out to them and ask if they have whatsoever open positions.

For case, you can do some enquiry to find a client who could utilise a new social media campaign and y'all tin can design illustrations and art for unique social media posts. Yous can pitch this thought via an e-mail.

I talked virtually this process in a recent article. You can read information technology here.

Look For Other Opportunities

Keep your middle out for other opportunities. For case, scan online forums and look for jobs. Many companies, like video game developers, ofttimes postal service jobs for game level designers and character designers.

What other strategies do you apply to find work online? Leave a comment and let me know.

Images via Freepik.com

Did you discover this article useful? Then you should check out my volume Freelance Like A Pro. Information technology includes 21 lessons and 5 secrets from my freelance career to assistance you supercharge your journey as a freelancer. Click here to larn more.

Source: https://freelancinghacks.com/ways-freelance-illustrators-make-money-online/

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