Best ways to make money as an artist: Nine top ideas
To monetize your artistic skills, teaching art through an online course or a YouTube channel is a lucrative way to leverage your art education and experience and pass it on to others.
Teaching art establishes your credibility in the industry and can help you build connections with other artists, define your target audience, and make money online.
Start an art YouTube channel
Choose a niche to share your knowledge with, then start filming. You can create YouTube art tutorials offering a step-by-step guide for beginners wanting to learn a new skill.
Monetizing a YouTube channel can happen after you hit 1,000 subscribers and generate 4,000 hours of watch time (videos and other media content). Then you can apply to the YouTube partner program to monetize your channel through ads, member subscriptions, Super Chats, and more.
Create an online art course
Many artists opt to create online courses that teach people how to draw, paint, sketch, sculpt, and many other art forms. Online course platforms like SkillShare and Teachable allow artists and other creators to showcase their skills for a very generous fee.
However, online courses must solve a real problem for their target audience to sell. Whether your niche is "Sketching 101" or watercolor specifics, it's essential to carve out your identity and what value you bring to the table. If you're a graphic designer, you could create a course on graphics for beginners or how to use Photoshop and other design software.
Creating online courses is a lot of time and effort upfront, but the payout can be cost-effective in the long term. You'll also learn valuable skills like website coding, shooting, editing video, and talking to an audience (even if no one is in the room with you).
Once you create the course, you can sell it on your own website and promote it through your social media platforms. This can be another fruitful way for making money as an artist because once you create and launch the course, you'll have to do minimal work while the course will continue to sell and bring in a profit.
