Starving Artists & Designers

We’ve all heard the term Starving Artist and if you’re an artist or designer you may have lived the term in the past or perhaps you’re living it right now.

The trouble with making money as an artist is simple, it’s enjoyable work which means lots of competition. Don’t let that discourage you because I’m here to say there’s enough work to go around if you know where to look.

Take on just one idea and you’ll earn some extra money or you could group several together and create an entire income.

Decorative Window Painting Small business for Artists

Window painting is done all year to attract customers and bring in business. Window painting is a form of advertising most often use to promote special prices and sales. You’ll notice this at car dealerships on an almost constant basis. More

Freelance Designers

If you’ve got the time there’s a large number of freelance work available on the web and if you have the skill and desire you can get started right now.

One of the largest providers of creative freelance work on the web is Guru.com (lots of work for every kind of artist) They have a diverse line-up. Whether you’re a Cover Page Designer or a 3d Modeler, illustration artist, or a Photoshop pro, you should have no problem finding work right away.

Some artist are making a few thousand a year on guru part-time and others are making much much more. In fact with a little effort you could easily go to work full time on Guru alone. I’ve seen incomes in excess of 100,000 a year.

Digital Designers

If your a digital designer, Flash or Photoshop expert you may want put your feeler out on these sites as well oDesk.com, eLance.com and limeExchange.com they all have an extensive line-ups of available work.

Logo Design and Templates on eBay

Logo Design is an exciting business for designers on eBay. The business allows artists to express their creativity and make ends meet at the same time. If your a decent designer you can put your talent to work on any one of these sites

Artists and designers love to make money with there work and why not? You’ll get to display your creativity and have fun while doing something you enjoy.

Many artists and designers don’t realize there is an entire customer base waiting for them on eBay More

Etsy.com

Etsy.com is an auction style website for creative individuals to offer there work online. With Etsy you’ll find everything from custom oil painting to hand made jewelry and just about everything in between. Most artist have been quite happy with the results they’ve achieved selling on Etsy.



You may also want to take a look at Artnet.com and Fada.com as well.

Ad Designers

If you feel you could design a catchy advertisment people would want to click on consider ToonieAds.com. Designing ad templates for the ToonieAds Ad Library will generate a $ 15.00 fee for the designer and will also generate residual income of $ 2.00 every time a template is purchased for an advertising campaign.

A few more places to keep your eyes out for design work.

Logoworks.com DesignOutpost.com & Freelanceswitch.com

Making Money with WordPress Templates

Extremely lucrative for the programmer designer. Just look at the success of the Thesis theme. WordPress is quite popular but many are still making the switch everyday. Consider creating WordPress templates or Themes for the WordPress design library or launch your own campaign. If you create quality designs optimized with SEO an other options gain some notoriety you’ll not only receive a ton backlinks to your website due to the the credit that appears at the bottom of the template and in the code but you could also gain various donation via a Pay-Pal donation button as well. See the WordPress Themes Directory for an example.

Important Note about the WordPress and GPL License

If you’re planning on creating themes for WordPress it’s important to know that it all open source. That means you can feel free to make derivitive work from existing templates and others can create derivatives from your work. This can be quite helpful when getting started creating themes. Take a look at the WordPress licence for more information.

Because of the nature of the GPL you’ll also have the freedom to sell any template you create and in fact it’s not only ok but it’s actually encouraged. You can read more about the philosphy here. Of course if you do intend on selling you have to grant the customers who buy the template the same rights. That’s the beauty of the GPL. Most won’t be interested as they are simply looking for quality designs for their own websites.

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