How I Make Money as an Artist

As a kid, I always loved art and being creative, but I never thought I could make a living from it.

I believed the myth that making a living as an artist is impossible. Now, I'm on a mission to bust that myth and show others how to succeed as professional artists.

Today, I want to share where my income comes from.

The image below breaks down how I make money as an artist and how each income stream contributes to my overall income.

This income breakdown clearly shows me several things:

1. I need to continue working on building a more diverse income stream for my business. While I have seven main streams of income for my business, only the top three are significant. My goal this year is to learn how to use Pinterest to drive more sales through my website. I am also working on increasing my income through workshops and commission work.
   

2. This also shows me that my business is not quite aligned with how I want my life to feel. With 23% of my income coming from art markets, I can’t yet afford to scale back on in person markets yet. However, doing four to five markets a month during the busy seasons is exhausting. Building my other avenues of income will help me have more free weekends with my husband and friends.

3. Building up the other streams of income also helps keep my business more sustainable. If one area underperforms, I can fall back on the other areas of my business and keep my income more consistent.

That's how I like to use my income breakdown to analyze how my business is working within my life and find ways to improve.

I'll dive deeper into how I find these opportunities in future emails. What areas are you curious about? Do you struggle with diversifying your income streams? Comment below, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

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