How to Monetize Art Skills Without Losing Your Passion

Artists invest time, money, and creativity into the content they share with the world. It is reasonable to expect some financial return to fund their efforts. Unfortunately, monetizing can also lead to some creative burnout. So how do you make money without losing your passion? Thankfully, this is simple with the right tools on your side.

1: Focus on Passive Income

Monetizing your work does not have to lead to creative burnout. Several financial outlets include passive income, which allows you to generate profits without any ongoing work. Let’s take a look at some passive income ideas for artists.

• Digital Products: Sell digital products, like art downloads, on an e-commerce site that automatically processes and delivers customer orders. 
• Online Courses: Create art instructional videos and online courses that can sell themselves. 
• Print-On-Demand Products: You can fulfill physical product orders through a print-on-demand service. After you sell a product in your online shop, these providers will print and ship the order directly to your customers—making physical art sales passive and profitable. 
• eBooks: Instead of producing new art, you can write a book or ebook sharing tips, techniques, processes, and creative solutions.

2: Take Plenty of Breaks

It is vital for artists to monetize at their own pace when avoiding creative burnout. While you might feel stressed to “go, go, go,”—researchers find that breaks can help fuel focus, creativity, and productivity. Take 15-20 minutes away from your email, computer, and social media throughout the day. 

• Get outside and take a walk.
• Do some meditation, yoga, or breathing exercises.
• Catch up with a friend or family member.
• Grab a coffee, snack, or meal.
• Switch up your workstation for a change of scenery.

Researchers also find that changing between tasks can protect your creativity. For example, if you are stuck on your creative work, switch to your monetization work. When feeling overwhelmed with monetizing, take a break or change over to your creative work.

3: Maximize Each Sale

As many artists know all too well, quality is better than quantity. This same principle applies to online sales. You can minimize your overhead effort by maximizing the value of each order. There are a few e-commerce features that can help:

• Upsells: Have you ever received an irresistible add-on deal immediately after checking out from an online store? This process is called upselling, and it is an incredibly effective way to increase a customer’s order value. 
• Order Bumps: Add-on deals and bundles before checkout can help increase your order value by 43%. These order bumps are easy to integrate and work independently to bring you profits. 
• Cross-Sells: Similar to order bumps, cross-sells are add-ons and bundles within the online course context. You can use this feature to sell additional courses or products to your students passively. 

As these tools seamlessly increase your revenue, you can focus less on sales and more on your art. 

4: Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help

When you feel overwhelmed, consider turning to friends and family for help. Can anyone in your life perform smaller business tasks, like packaging shipments or buying new supplies? You can also delegate some of the more technical sides of your online sales, like creating marketing campaigns and new product pages. 

In other cases, this support might involve alleviating other mental loads in your life. For example, balancing your art and online sales might make it harder to keep up with home maintenance or meal prepping.  

Another easy way to access the help you need is by partnering with another artist or creator. Guest content can be beneficial for both artists. Your guest will help keep your business moving while gaining extra exposure and experience. Meanwhile, you can take a creative break to avoid burning out. 

5: Take Advantage of the Latest Tools and Features

When monetizing your art skills, it can be easy to put your creative energy in all the wrong places. For example, if you expend your mental capacity writing emails and building landing page content, you might feel burnt out when it’s time to create new art. However, there are two tools that artists can use to knock out administrative tasks: AI content generators and e-commerce platform features. 

• You can leverage the power of AI to help you streamline sales processes. While you will still need to edit and review this content, it can save you valuable time, money, and headspace. 
• With the latest e-commerce tools, you can effortlessly build a new product page, introduce new selling features, manage your integrations, and more. 

Collectively, the combined power of AI content and advanced e-commerce features can help provide creative relief to artists. 

Artists Monetize with SamCart

SamCart makes it easy for artists to monetize without burning out. We have all the tools you need to seamlessly profit off your work—without all the unnecessary fees you might find on Etsy, Amazon, and other platforms. You can try SamCart with a free trial to get started today!

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