Tripping Over Canvases

How To Become a Successful Artrepreneur

Dontae T Muse

• Publisher: The Art Life Publishing Company LLC
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781637958018
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

• Are you a creative?
• Are you ready to take your creative "business" to the next level?
• Do you fear being a starving artist?
• Do you have a skill or talent you were given that you want to give to the world?
• Would you spend your time focusing on creating if it paid all your expenses?
• Would you like guidance on transitioning into or reviving your full-time creative career?

Above Art Studios gallery owner Dontae T. Muse has published this book to help you along your way. While on our life's journey we live and we learn, often the hard way. With the proper mentors, mistakes can be avoided and progress can be realized sooner. This book is a mentor that you can keep with you at all times and not have to worry about whether or not you're being bothersome or asking silly questions.

This book covers launching or finally making your creativity an official business and goes from business entity formation to marketing to business administration to ways to be consistently profitable under different circumstances. Take good notes and get ready to go from "hobby" to career. Get ready to become an artrepreneur.

Art Money

This is probably the part that most of us will find the most enjoyable, getting to the money. Income is important for both businesses and individuals and is typically required to eat unless you are someone’s dependent. If you are like me then long gone are the days when you were a child and did not have to worry about bills and where your next meal was coming from. Now that you are an adult you have to figure out how to keep income coming in.

There are many avenues that you can explore in finding what works best for you to produce substantial sustainable income in the world of creatives. Most creatives have found a combination that works for them and they work with different mediums and funding sources for their projects as only having one might not produce sufficient income. For example, a painter might not only create/sell original and/or commissioned works but also teach painting classes through a school or private workshops to supplement income.

In the following sections, I am going to go through some ways to make money as a creative. Some will be tried and tested by time, some might be new to you and possibly more trendy, while the last batch might fall into the category of a reminder of some things we might take for granted or have forgotten about.

Originals

Creating original work is the oldest way of creating income as an artist/creative. You make something, you sell it. Simple. Repeat that process over and over. While creating for the sake of creating can be liberating as an artist the problem that can occur is that the artist is only creating for themselves. That artist now has to find or already know potential customers that have similar tastes or interest in that subject matter. This could lead to chunks of time passing in between finding buyers for your creative pieces and respectfully chunks of time passing in between good meals.

While I will always encourage an artist to create for themselves and whatever is inspiring them at that moment I will also always encourage an artist to create what someone is specifically asking for. Painting an original, commissioned piece guarantees that the piece will be sold, as it is already agreed upon before production even begins. When the agreement is made a deposit is typically given by the client before the work even begins relieving the artists of the responsibility of purchasing the materials needed and taking the risk of those materials going to waste by the work produced with them not being sold. Being paid beforehand can be a stress relief for most artists. Knowing that there is guaranteed money once the project is done can also help motivate the artist to complete the project sooner.

Prints/Licensing

The problem with producing an original “one-of-one” piece is that you usually only get the opportunity to sell it once. No matter how many hours, days, weeks, or months you put into it whatever you received from it has been received even if it is resold for a higher price in the future. What if you can be paid multiple times for producing the same work just the one time? Well, you can.

Making duplicates allows you to do just that. You can produce as many as you see fit and multiple people can have a piece of your work to suit their needs. The downside to this is that originals are valued higher than duplicates so the price points will be lower. The upside is that the price point allows for greater volume and often far surpasses just selling the one original piece, performance, or concept. If you want to limit the number of prints available you can set the limit and then number each piece to show the exclusivity. For example, you would write 1/10 or 3/10 on the back so the buyer understands that ten pieces exist and that they now own one of the only ten in the world. Limited prints also help raise/retain the value of your duplicates. If you want to get fancy you can also add special embossments on each piece to make it different from the others. Some buyers like the personalization.

Duplicates also cover digital images and other intellectual property. These can be licensed out to individuals or companies that are required to pay you either one lumpsum fee or per every time they use your intellectual property (royalties). So if you create an image and it is used on someone’s product you can get paid per product which can be very lucrative if the product is selling well. There is also the option to sell the image outright with all licenses included to stock image companies such as www.gettyimages.com, www.depositphotos.com,

www.istockphoto.com, or www.shutterstock.com. If done wisely with quality work, this can be a steady stream of income that can quickly add up.

There is also more than one way to include prints into your inventory. You can either decide to invest and potentially tie up your money by paying to produce prints and then recouping your money later once they are sold or you can set up a print-on-demand service. With print-on-demand, you do not have to come out of pocket upfront for the print. Once an order is placed the print is produced and the cost of the production is deducted from your profit. This is the most budget-friendly option but is pretty much only effective in online marketplaces.

Classes

I wanted to make this section for my creatives that also possess the ability to teach. I know that the saying is “those that can’t do, teach” but those that can do can also teach as well. In fact, if you can exhibit the skill set yourself it makes you even more credible and valuable as a teacher. More people will feel that they can learn from you if your skills are more advanced than theirs or you have achieved accomplishments/accolades in your career.

The teaching artist is highly valued these days. Being able to teach means that you can duplicate. Duplication can be a huge component of efficiency. If you can teach two people how to do what you can do there will now be three people who can do it which means more can get done in the same amount of time. This makes you valuable to an organization.

Teaching artists, also known as artist-educators or community artists, are practicing professional artists who supplement their incomes by teaching and integrating their art form, perspectives, and skills into a wide range of settings. I myself have taught art history, graphic arts, drawing, painting, and stage play set design. According to www.ziprecruiter.com as of October 2020, an average salary for a teaching artist is $67,000 annually. That’s not bad for barely working (because when you do what you love to do it seldom feels like work).

The Teaching Artist may perform for the students and teachers, may work in long term or short-term residencies in classrooms or in a community setting, or may lead in program development through involvement in curricular planning and residencies with school partners. The Teaching Artist is an educator who integrates the creative process into the classroom and the community.

Just a reminder, if you want to teach in most public school districts you will probably be required to obtain a teaching certificate. The schools I taught at were private schools, a vocational school, and a specialized school for music and arts that functioned more like special programming and operated after regular school hours and full-time during the summers.

If you cannot find somewhere that will pay you to teach what you have learned and/or been naturally endowed with then you can go to “plan B”. You can create your own classes/workshops and offer them to the public. If you can secure a space to hold your classes in (or you are doing them virtually) then you can produce income by selling admission to your classes. This is easier if you are already known as a talented creative and people are interested in learning how to do what it is that you do. This can work with pretty much any medium. Photography (exposure, composition, lighting, editing), drawing (scaling, shading), painting (oil, acrylic, abstract, pop-art, knife work), sculpture (form molding, carving), poetry (cadence, imagery), crafting, writing, speaking, etc.

If you do not have a space, another good idea might be to conduct a destination workshop. You can have people meet you at the place that you will paint or take photos at or meet up and then travel there together. This can add the peaceful element of nature that reinvigorates and inspires a lot of creatives and also justify you not being inside of a building.

You can offer to teach pretty much anything that you can establish yourself as an authority on or at least prove that you know more than those you are trying to teach. Each creative form has multiple facets that you can run individual classes or workshops on so that you can teach more of the nuances and things that you would only gain through experience. Breaking them down allows you to increase your offerings as a teaching artist and increases your value.

Youtube

This goes right in-line with teaching classes. Youtube is a great platform to conduct instructional videos so others can learn from. Even better is the fact that you can both invite people you know or find to view your videos and random people that you didn't even know existed will also watch your videos. Even better than that is the fact that after a certain number of subscribers, views, and comments your video is monetized and you then receive royalties from youtube and/or advertisers.

Most YouTubers make their money off of Adsense, sponsorship, and affiliate links. Once your video is produced and published you can still be paid for it indefinitely as long as you live. This is great for passive income if you can make engaging videos on subjects people are interested in. Any traffic that you receive can be directed to your videos. You can also embed your videos into your websites and receive the video view once someone watches the video as well as the lick count for your website, so you score twice. Below are steps to follow that can help you along your path.

• Set your channel up for success. Choose a niche that you have experience in. Even if they do not know how to do something themselves most people can sniff out whether or not someone else knows what they are talking about. If you choose something you actually know not only can you provide valuable information in a video but you can ma...