How to be profitable as an Artist?

And here for me Artist = Creative without clients projects :)

Hello my friends,

I hope you had a great week and that you are ready for your weekend break :)

Here I spent part of the week thinking about my current professional situation and looking at my bank account statements I realised something:

I spend too much time on things that don’t pay much.

Oh you feel the same about your own situation? Haha :D Well today, I would like to try to talk about each of my activities and try to see where I should put more focus.

1. Fonts

Making fonts is fun, or at least I like to make fun fonts. But let’s be realistic. It does not pay much. Why:

• I do experimental fonts for special projects so yes, I don’t sell many of them. If I would like to sell more I should focus on more casual stuff, even text fonts maybe. I read a lot about foundries revenues and each time, when people share their revenues, you can see that where they make most money is for text fonts or casual display fonts. This is what people need the most. I work on that during my Practica Program. But this requires a lot of time and patience. Which I don’t have. Also, I like the fun fonts, not really the corporate ones. So I am not sure I would like to spend even more time on fonts right now that are not so cool and without being sure I could make money out of it. Last week I launched Jazzman, which took around a month to do, and for now I made 60€ out of it.

• I talked about it many times but I am not good at constant product promotion. If you don’t communicate about your product, nobody is going to buy it.

• I should probably sell my fonts on more websites. I tried to avoid Myfonts for some time. I have ethics issues with Monotype who owns it. But let’s face it. That is not easy to avoid 60% of the market sales.

2. Prints

I sell cheap prints and I want them to be cheap because I want people to be able to buy Art. But on the other side, When I sell a 30€ print, I make max 15/18€ of benefits. I have to sell tons of them to make a living. Maybe I should make more of them, or make more "specific” high end products which would be more expensive.

Another issue with prints, and it is the same for t-shirts, and I will talk about it later, is logistics. It takes A LOT OF TIME to print, pack and ship. Really this is a PAIN IN THE ASS. I try to be organised and do shipping once a week but I tell you, this is not fun at all to do. I have been contacted by the company Lama some months ago. They print and ship your posters for you. This is a kind of drop shipping, but quality one. Sometimes I wonder if I should not do that and focus on my core work, which is creating.

3. Tshirts

Ok, here this is a new activity. Pretty similar to prints, I would like to develop a small collections of t-shirts I would screen print and sell. The whole process is mostly the same than the prints. But people always tell me that “people buy more t-shirts than prints” haha :D Ok, maybe that would be more profitable. But again, not enough to make a living out of it. But prints + fonts + t-shirts, if I communicate well around them, could be a correct revenue.

4. Wholesaling

Another idea came out in spring: Sell to creator/small shops, around the world. There is a great place for that: Faire. Faire is a platform to help creators to wholesale to many shops around the world. These shops buy 10 or more stuff from you to sell in their store.

That could be a good solution because you just don’t ship one tshirt or one print but several of them. So it is better for revenues and also time spent on printing/shipping.

I did not setup my shop there yet. But it is planned within the next weeks and we will see how it goes. Again, there will be a big part of communication here, which I have to take into account.

This is where you realise that creating is 50% of the work, communication being the other 50%. You are an entrepreneur.

5. Art Licensing

I talked about it earlier but recently I did setup my website to showcase many of my designs and make same available for apparel companies. They can buy or licence my designs. I think I have between 30 and 40 designs already available.

I already have a few licensing deals and I do sell regularly pre existing designs. This is consistent revenues even if not a massive one. But I plan to contact more than 50 companies I would like to work with to see if they would be interested in my designs.

If you sell designs, this is cash right now but if you licence them, you get between 5 to 15% of the sales made for the product that has your design. Royalties are usually paid quarterly. This is a more long term revenue. But the potential can be huge if you work with large companies.

6. Workshops

I do less and less trainings and workshops. But when I do some, they pay very well. Always. Otherwise I don’t do them. This is fun but it has to be limited for me. I used to do a lot of workshops and it drains a lot of energy. But this is a good source of revenues. Really if you are looking to make good side revenues, this is the best idea you can have.

I plan to continue as I did the last years. I try to do 3/4 workshops max during the year and it helps me being more profitable. I sell my day 600€ without transport/food/accomodation, etc. This is 600€ pure revenue. Imagine how many prints or fonts I would have to sell to do just 600€. And doing that stuff would cost my WAY MORE time than preparing a workshop. Especially when you know that the first one will take time but you already have your training ready for the next ones.

7. Painting

I will be honest with you, this is the activity I enjoy the most. Painting includes for me murals and canvases. Mural pay very well. Each one for more pays between 1000 and 2500€ for max 3 days of work. I did not do larger project yet. But they are really fun and being outside is so rewarding.

Painting on canvas is new and not new for me. I used to be a painter between 2003 and 2008. I stopped to get a more “normal” job as graphic designer and WordPress dev. But now I am back to it and I have my first exhibition in 15 years in November.

I don’t know yet if it will sell but just as murals, the potential is way more interesting than passive income I mentioned above.

Here communication will be more tricky as I may have to contact galleries, agents, collectors, etc. We will see. But I do see great potential here. And again this is what I like to do the some. Painting is so good for my mental health.

fran6

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fran6

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8. Others

I did not talk about client projects because I try to not do any. But it happens I do some for already existing clients. I know how to work with them and they pay well. This is good money to do, but really occasionally.

Also I did not mention book royalties. I published a book in 2018 and I receive royalties once a year. This revenue tend so be less and less but this is is still interesting. But as for many book projects, I will never make it profitable as I spent almost 10 months working on it.

Conclusion

Let’s keep it simple, the newsletter is already long enough.

I need to change my focus. I would like to spend more time painting murals and canvases, make a few training here and there, and try to develop my Art Licensing and Wholesale activity. I will keep making fonts but for now just for the fun and when I feel like it. And for the prints, I might reach Lama to see if they would still be interested in working with me.

Making fun stuff is fun but you have to find a good balance between this stuff and making money. I takes time. I started this nearly 2 years ago, and I continue to push the cursors in different directions. Sometimes you also need experience and time to see what works and what does not. Be patient.

What do you think? Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts, I love to have discussions :D

Inspiration of the week

Let’s start with that great video of Timothy Goodman killing it. This guy is so amazing:

timothygoodman

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Great project from Cihan Tamti. I think I would love to do that kind of project sometimes :)

cihantamti

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cihantamti

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festdervielen

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Great illustration work from Conor Nolan, birds and type :)

cheesenolan

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This is it for this week!!

This one was a long one. Thanks for reading it. Don’t hesitate to share it please. This can be useful to many people. We don’t share enough these days so if you liked it, please share it :)

Have a nice weekend and as usual go enjoy a nice walk in the woods.

Take care,

Francis