Taking a Hobby and Turning into a Profitable Career

Firstly I want to mention that I do not make a living just by selling my art. I still have a 40-hour per week job that is used to pay my bills. This is just an intro into my thoughts and processes into becoming, eventually, a full time artist.

From what I have read of other artist is that it can take up to 1-3 years of finding a targeted audience and marking before you are able to make enough money to live off of. My goal at the moment is to be able to create art solely for income within a year. This means that by January of next year I want to be rid of my mundane day job.

My first step into becoming a full time artist is to create more content. I have several pieces of art that I like very much, but one of my greatest faults is not finishing the work that I start. This is not a viable foundation to sell my work. I am taking this first year to create a lot of variety of art such as my wildlife and the more personal animal portraits. If you are a fellow artist you possible have an entire folder saved on your computer of ideas you’d like to complete later. (Hopefully its not just me who has one of these hahaha..) I am dipping into this deep well of references to produce many pieces to give an assortment to buyers.

My second step is to make sure I market myself and get my name into the mix of other artists out there. While this is my second step written this does not mean I am putting it on the backburner next to actually creating more art. I see it as a 50/50 split. I spend a few hours daily on my art but I also make sure I have equal time for my website, Facebook and other social media platforms to get myself out into the vast world.

My time is pretty well filled up every day and keeping a tight schedule is important. I work around my daily job and decide what I am doing before and after work. On my days off from that job I work on art and marketing myself exclusively with little free time. I am an avid list maker and find it very helpful in everything I do. Weekly I slit up my time as I figure it…

31% Art

31% Marketing

19% Day job

15% Sleep

4% Miscellaneous

This is an estimate as I am sure I get less sleep some nights and probably spend a little more on miscellaneous tasks at my home on occasion. Otherwise I definitely try to keep my art and marketing portion the biggest and most important in my life.

Let me know any tips tricks if you have any. Otherwise I will be keeping you posted on how well this is working for me and if I feel I need to adjust any of my processes to continue succeeding.