It’s every artists dream to do what they love and get paid for it, but there is a reason “starving” is usually followed by “artist”. Since I want more artists creating more cool artwork, here is a list of services that can hopefully help alleviate some of your food troubles.
PrintFection - Apparell. Allows you to setup a store with multiple products and designs for free.
Cafepress - Apparell, posters, calendars, mugs, buttons, stickers, and more.
Zazzle - Pretty much the same stuff as Cafepress.
Spreadshirt - T-shirts and apparell.
PrintMojo - T-shirts and apparell. A different approach to the same thing. They only do screen printing rather than print on demand. So you must pay for a minimum of 24 garments at a time, but they handle the order fullfillment. So there are big up-front costs which may increase profit margins and quality, but I don’t know. Screen printing limits your color choices also.
DeviantArt Shop - Prints, mugs, calendars, jigsaw puzzles.
ImageKind - High quality prints and large formats.
LuLu - self publishing book service.
Ebay - Sell your originals or your prints… or anything else.
So where do you start? That’s a tough one. I found an article comparing Cafepress, Printfection, and Zazzle and another guy complaining of Cafepress Mugging. If your only concerned with promotion rather than making money, these print-on-demand services are great, but the base prices on many of them will eat your profit margin a lot. The benefit is that they are quick, easy, cheap, and most provide some level of marketing and promotion. They will also handle any returns or complaints about the product. That could be good or bad depending on how they handle them.
With these services you can test the market with your artwork while building your exposure. If you notice demand for a product, you can stick with them or try to increase your profit margin by going with a more independent store like your own PayPal store or eBay store. Keep in mind this may mean packing your own orders and paying up front costs, but you can build a more personal relationship with your customers.
Another alternative that just came to me is to ask your visitors what they would buy before you ever setup the store. Set up a page with a poll asking your users what design they would like to see on a shirt or if they would buy a sketchbook. Tell them you will get the product printed when it reaches a certain number of votes like 100 or more. You can also have a newsletter sign up next to the poll which will announce the winner and how to order the product. Kind of like your own personal Threadless page. Threadless users submit designs and the ones with the most votes get printed.
When a product gets a certain number of votes you can get it printed at a print shop, make a store page, and send out a newsletter announcing the product for sale. This seems like a good way to maximize your profit margin while being able to recoup your costs somewhat quickly. It also builds a relationship with your visitors. Seems like a win-win to me, but it’s untested, more time consuming, and there is always risk.
Advertising Income
This ranges from banner ads to text links ads like Google Adsense and Amazon Affiliation. The article How to Make Money with Your Blog Site goes through most of these options. If you do web comics, there is a good article about Webcomics Business Models.
If You Build It, They Won’t Come
Your income will depend on the market for your artwork and your exposure to that market. You can start by setting up your website with a blog and doing some self-promotion on other websites. It’s a lot easier to create income when there is consistent and good amounts of people viewing your work. Marketing techniques are so vast that a book with several authors still won’t cover everything. Just try to get your work out there, drive eyes toward your site, and if they like what they see, they will stick around… Maybe. In essence, it really boils down to the quality of your work. Unfortunately, residual income as an artist looks to be very difficult.
If anyone knows of more services or ideas, please mention them. Maybe some people have some experience with these services and could comment on how good the quality of the products are and the profit margins. Marketing and self-promotion is probably the hardest part. More on that later hopefully.