One of the most exciting things about being an artist is that you can make money from your own art website. In fact, it's not just about selling your artwork anymore—there are many other ways to monetize your website. Here are seven of them:
Making money on art websites with display advertising
One way to make money from your art website is by using display advertising.
Display advertising is a form of advertising that uses images, animation, or other visual elements to draw attention to a website. It can be used for branding purposes or direct responses (including sales). Display ads may be displayed on web pages without necessarily distracting from the primary content of the page, or they may be placed in an ad pod they show when you view the site on your computer screen. Display ads are often sold on a cost-per-thousand impressions basis (CPM), unlike search ads which are charged based on keyword relevancy.
In order to monetize your artwork sales website with display advertising decide on the ad size and ad position. If you’re confused about monetizing your site with ads, consider getting help from top AdOps companies like MonetizeMore which have been helping 1000+ art publishers maximize ad revenue with their expertise.
Making money on art websites with native advertising
Native advertising is the most popular option for art blogs, but it can also be a good opportunity for e-commerce sites selling digital artwork. Native ads are viewed 55% more than banner ads and they don’t interrupt the user experience of your site. They’re also less intrusive than other types of advertisements like popovers or slide-ins that appear underneath the content on your website.
Native ads will be related to artwork or digital art so that they blend in with what you write about, which means it doesn't look like an ad at all!
Making money on art websites with sponsored posts
Sponsored posts are an excellent way to make money for sites with decent amounts of traffic and solid credibility. With sponsored posts and reviews on art, bloggers can charge a company to review their product on the blog. This comes in the influencer marketing category which is being leveraged by the majority of brands these days.
As an example, I have a friend who runs an online zine called The Zine Quarterly (ZQ). She has a lot of followers on Instagram, especially in her niche which is arts & crafts-related content. She's been approached several times over the last few years by companies who want to sponsor her site or want her to write about their products/services as part of their paid campaign.
Making money on art websites with Affiliate marketing
When you’re first starting out, it can be difficult to figure out what marketing strategies are right for your business. But affiliate marketing is a great way to make money from your art website in 2022 beyond just selling artwork.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is where you promote other products and services on your website or social media pages. When someone clicks through to the company’s site, buys something, and gets charged by that company (the merchant), they pay a percentage of the sale back to you as an affiliate marketer. The more people who click through your website/social media account and buy things, the more money you make!
By 2022, the art industry is projected to increase by 60 billion dollars, with an extra $100 billion coming from online sales. With so many potential buyers online, it would be a shame not to make the most of this opportunity. After all, what's better for an artist than a website that can funnel buyers directly to their work?
Art websites are great for passive income because they are easy to maintain and grow. The biggest benefit of having a nice-looking site is that people will visit just to take a look at your art. Once they see how all of the pieces fit together into your overall brand, they will want more—and they can get it by clicking through any affiliate links you have posted on your site.
In fact, there's really no downside to having an affiliate marketing program on your art website—you don't need to buy any products, you don't need to deal with customer service issues or returns, and you don't even have to worry about shipping! On top of these benefits, you also have instant access to a growing number of products that are related to your art and its interests. Affiliate links let you make money from anything from art-related books and journals to canvases and paintbrushes.
When looking at affiliate programs, look for offers that revolve around art or writing-related products and services. Design websites like ThemeForest and GraphicRiver will be great sources to find art-related offers.
Making money on art websites with art tutoring
Art tutoring is a great way to monetize your art website. If you're an artist and want to make money from your art website, then consider offering art lessons. You can teach people how to paint, draw or sculpt anything from scratch with step-by-step instructions. Plus, this is a great way for you as an artist to reach out to a whole new audience who may have never heard of you before!
Art tutoring will allow you the opportunity to share your knowledge and experience that only comes from years spent working in the field. People will learn valuable skills that they can apply directly in their own lives or businesses through their own creations. Moreover, it's much easier for students because there will be no need for any complicated set-up beforehand; just jump right into your art tutoring webpage without any hassle whatsoever!
Transition your artwork into NFTs
If you’re a digital artist, why not try selling your artwork as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) instead of just traditional images? This is where things get really interesting. With the advent of ERC721 tokens (NFTs), it’s much easier than ever before for artists to sell digital work in ways that are unlike anything we’ve seen before. Nowadays, many people are selling their digital artwork as NFTs and making profits that have nothing to do with traditional sales of physical prints or framed pieces.
In fact, if you want to try making money from digital art in 2022 and beyond, selling it as NFTs is one of the best ways. One of the greatest things about the blockchain is that it allows you to tokenize digital art. Now you can convert your digital art into non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, and sell them as digital assets on your website.
With NFTs exploding and digital art selling out for thousands of dollars, converting your digital art into NFTs and selling it on your website has been one of the most profitable ways to make money from art since 2021. Now that there’s a huge demand for NFTs, you have a new opportunity to make even more money, beyond just selling artwork. The beauty of selling your NFTs on your own site is that you get to keep 100% of the profits!
Print on demand
I'm sure there are people out there who use their art website as a showroom for their artwork and prints, but most artists are using it to sell their work. With the rise in popularity of online print on demand services, a lot of artists have been able to make extra income from their online store beyond just artwork sales with print on demand products.
The Print On Demand (POD) industry is booming – according to Vat19, in 2017 it was worth $23.5 billion and is expected to reach $29.6 billion by 2022. That's a lot of merch.
How can you get your share of the pie?
The short answer: you create your own T-shirts, mugs, and posters, upload them to a print on demand website like Printify, and wait for the dosh to start rolling in.
For art bloggers who get a lot of organic traffic, this can be a great way to make money without having to spend hours doing something you don't enjoy. But it's potentially just as much work as anything else, so you should think carefully about whether it's right for you before you give it a go.
On the plus side, you don't need any qualifications or special graphic design skills to get started with print on demand – all you need is an idea and some artwork that people would be willing to buy on a mug or t-shirt (or whatever other products there are).
You also don't need to pay for the stock upfront – the print on demand company will take care of that for you, which means that once you share the design with the company, they stamp that onto a T-shirt, bottle, etc and share the link of the product with you so that you can display that on your site. Shipping is done by the print on demand company, so all you need to do is get your site visitors to buy the merch.
The other reason to consider print on demand is that it opens up another potential revenue stream. If you are an artist, your website is a really great place to display your artwork and take orders.
However, it's unlikely that you're going to make a full-time living off of sales of your original artworks alone, especially if the prices are fairly high. Print on demand products can be used to supplement your income since you don't have to create new pieces of artwork unless you run out of something in particular.
If you're not worried about having an inventory of products, but just want to capitalize on the image itself, this is a great way for artists to keep themselves afloat without having to produce a ton of work.
There is a lot more to monetizing your art website than just selling your artwork.
You may be surprised to learn that there is a lot more to monetizing your art website beyond just selling your artwork. You can make money by displaying ads, getting sponsored posts, doing affiliate marketing, getting started with NFTs, and Print on Demand. Out of all these passive income ideas, monetizing your site with ads will be the most sustainable way to make bank if you are already getting tonnes of organic traffic.
We hope this article has helped and given you some inspiration on where to start. As always, feel free to drop us a line if there's anything else we can help with.
This guest post was written by Aleesha Jacob.
