The dark side of freelancing is — unstable income. I like being an independent artist and programmer. I wouldn’t want to work in someone else’s firm. But there’s one thing that people new to freelancing have a hard time dealing with. It’s the fact that income is so unstable that some months you might not…
[Continue Reading]Money
Sales are worth it
Websites, where I sell my designs, run site-wide sales every few weeks. Everything is discounted, sometimes as much as 50%. I know some artists complain about it. When there’s no sale we earn around 25% of the price of an item. When there is a sale we get less, often as low as 10%. But…
[Continue Reading]Making a children’s book – some notes
A few weeks ago, my brother and I started working on our first children’s book about cats. This is a good time to write a bit about the process and why we decided on this project. From the start it was a challenge: Both my brother and I are artists, but we make designs for…
[Continue Reading]“Spacing Out” design sales stats
I plan to share sales data of all my designs. Everyone always asks how much you can earn. Today, let’s see sales stats for “Spacing Out”. Sales Stats Average Monthly Earnings: $16 Total Earned: $655 It earns me only $16 per month. Not much. But that’s the thing about passive income — you make a…
[Continue Reading]“Zen Maze” design sales stats
I think it might be interesting to share how much each of my designs has earned. For today I have selected “Zen Maze”. “Zen Maze” is a moderately successful design, which means the sales are somewhat in the middle among my designs. Sales Stats Average Monthly Earnings: $58 Total Earned: $755 How long did it…
[Continue Reading]Passive income with one hour a day
I am having a difficult time convincing my friends that they too could make designs and earn money. They say they don’t have time. You don’t need that much time. One hour a day is enough to start. You don’t even need any tools. I use a graphic tablet, and if you want you can…
[Continue Reading]How 50% off sale punishes an artist
It doesn’t. But we will get to it in a moment. First, let’s see why so many artists think that it is wrong and unfair when there is a site-wide sale and items with their art are sold for a discounted price. Every few weeks every website that sells clothes runs a sale. And when…
[Continue Reading]Designers give up on passive income
Earn passive income. Upload your designs to one of the websites that will sell your art and you won’t have to spend any more time on that.
[Continue Reading]Make your first sale in the next 3 weeks
Tomorrow is Black Friday and after that the best 3 weeks for all the artists who sell their art online. Everyone shops for gifts and so artists make the majority of their income in November and December. Conversely, January and February are very slow months and I earn very little in those months. Good thing…
[Continue Reading]Can you make money on Threadless?
Artists often ask me: can you make money on Threadless? I’ve been selling my art on Threadless for 5 years. So I can answer that.
[Continue Reading]7 websites that send me money
In March of 2012, I quit my job. I had a three-month notice period but my boss feared that a mistreated employee might sabotage the company so he told me not to come to work anymore. Then an assistant accompanied me to the kitchen and watched closely while I retrieved my teacup, and that was…
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