The modern age has brought in both the best and the hardest times to be an artist. While the internet has made selling and sharing art to wide swaths of people trivial, oversaturation and advancements in AI have risked many budding art careers. As such, it can be tricky to learn how to make money as an artist online–though there are still plenty of opportunities.
Let’s look at some of the key ways you can start making money as an artist in 2025:
- Be active on social media
Reclusive artists like Van Gogh or Steve Ditko used to be relatively common due to the quiet nature of artwork in the past. However, the internet has shown that having a substantial follower base and actively displaying your art is often key to gaining success in the art industry.
If you haven’t already, open up official art accounts on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter or even TikTok. These sites have massive art bases that can open you up to a community of like-minded artists as well as hungry fans–all of whom are often more than willing to support your endeavors.
That being said, you’ll need to stay active to grow your following. Different platforms have different ideal posting times, so try to follow the rhythm of their algorithms. Feel free to reuse old drawings, show off WIPs, or even post lazy sketches to boost your visibility further.
You can also capitalize on memes and popular phenomena to gain traction. Join in on drawing trends and attach relevant hashtags when you can–all of this will contribute to your following over time.
- Sell your art
Let’s say you’ve built a sizeable audience. Congratulations! Now what?
Learning how to make money as an artist online is a constant experiment in different streams of revenue. We’ll talk about the other streams, but the main one most artists will capitalize on is selling individual pieces of artwork. This typically comes in two forms:
- Art prints
Art prints are what it says on the tin can–prints of your artwork. Clients typically buy prints to hang up as posters or frame as personal paintings in their homes. Alternatively, modern artists also sell prints of original characters or fandom projects as memorabilia in artist alleys.
When selling art prints, make sure to use the right paper for your purposes. Paper quality can greatly affect the final image, so it’s best to test out a few samples before opening shop.
- Merchandise
While merchandise needs a little more capital than art prints, they’re some of the most profitable ways to make money as an artist online. Print-on-demand services like Shirtual have also greatly simplified the process of selling apparel merchandise like shirts and hoodies for beginners.
Why are these merchandise options so popular? The short answer is that they’re used more often and more widely than regular prints. You can print your artwork on shirts, sweaters, hats, and everything in between, and your clients can sport their art everywhere they go.
Worried about finding the right manufacturer and distributor? Modern print-on-demand services make distributing your work as easy as posting a mockup online for your clients to purchase. If you’re looking for an all-in-one merchandising option, check out our Shirtual services for more details.
- Be open to patrons and requests
When you get big enough, you’ll often have dedicated supporters who want to see you thrive and make art of your own accord. You’ll even find quite a few requesting certain subjects or artistic models. For these patrons, you can offer them two ways of supporting your art:
- Commissions
When you open commissions, you let people pay to request illustrations, sketches, or other forms of artwork. Commissions can be the bread and butter of how to make money as an artist online, though they often take more time and effort than prints. It takes a lot of communication and back and forth to set the price, pin down what your client wants, and decide how to best express it.
As such, be mindful to charge what your art is worth. Illustrator Christopher Cant offered a good calculation for digital art commission prices that you can check out here.
- Patronage platforms
If you create consistent and/or serialized work (like YouTube videos or a webcomic), a patronage platform comes as a great way to ask for monthly support from your fans. There are quite a few platforms you can use, but here are a few of the more popular ones:
- Patreon: Particularly popular for Youtubers and webcomic serializations.
- Ko-fi: Better suited for short-term projects or random donations, like a tip jar.
- Kickstarter: Working on a massive project that needs funding? Kickstarter is best known for funding numerous successful art projects, including games like Exploding Kittens and animated features like Loving Van Gogh.
- Join art contests
Art contests have been around since before the internet, but social media has allowed many of them to reach international scales. Many of them carry massive amounts of prestige and substantial cash awards for their victors.
Though they may not be a consistent form of income, they’re a great way to build a portfolio and potentially award your future resume and collections. You can look through some art contests right now here.
- Host art courses and workshops
Have a lot of art skills? Have your fans ever asked for advice on how to mimic your style, draw the correct anatomy, or pick the right colors? When asking how to make money as an artist, setting up workshops and courses is one of the more straightforward ways to get ahead.
Nowadays, you can open classes on platforms like Skillshare or Coursera to share tips and tricks on how to improve on art. You’ll have a relatively stable passive income from supporters purchasing your courses, though it’ll be a little slower to start than other forms like merchandising.
When your art career takes off, it’s often easier to build a larger business selling various merchandise for a wide range of clients. But with the constant struggle of juggling art, social media, marketing, and brand management, it can be difficult to find time to package and distribute your art merchandise all over the world.
Take time to focus on cultivating your artistry–Shirtual’s one-stop solutions give 80% of our customers more time to focus on their brand and growth. Contact us for more details on how to make money as an artist online and create your own successful business.
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