How I Made My First $100 in Art Income
When I tell the story of how I got started teaching watercolour online, I always talk about that first hundred dollars in YouTube ad revenue and the impact it had on me. To see that kind of money in a month’s worth of ad revenue meant something. I had started out that year wanting to share what I’d learned in years of figuring out how watercolour worked, and 2013 was the year I really let myself invest not just my time, but my heart into watercolour. So when it popped up in my Facebook feed today as a memory, I just had to share it with you.
Teaching art online isn’t for every artist. One reason I’m still growing after seven years is that this is something I truly love to do. I love seeing my students succeed and I’m incredibly fulfilled in knowing that what I’m sharing as a teacher is helping people and encouraging them.
In order to teach well online, you need some pretty specific gifts; to be great at explaining as you paint - it’s hard to talk and paint simultaneously! You want to be able to share what’s in your head as you coax it onto the paper. You need to have an ability to anticipate the questions students will have; with a video lesson, you don’t get a live audience asking questions. You need to be comfortable operating a camera and editing video, or have someone in your life who’s available to do it for you. And you have to love to talk about what you’re up to; some people call it “marketing,” but I prefer “good communication.” My talkative ways have paid off and made me uniquely suited for this job, not to mention my nerdy comfort with technology.
YouTube wasn’t my first venture into an art career; I tried a lot of different things before I fell on teaching art online. We don’t always get it right the first time! I thought at first that maybe I would be a children’s book illustrator. My drawing skills still aren’t good enough to come close to that, nor do I have the attention span to work on a single project for months at a time!
I tried selling custom paper dolls on Etsy for a while; my sister and I opened a shop on there with products for kids, we called it “Anklebiters.” I looked into designing licensed products (think calendars, mugs and giftwrap). I tried freelance writing, paper crafting (I was published in a few magazines) and thought briefly about photography. Nothing really flew until I realized that watercolour was “my” thing more than anything else.
The cool thing about artists is that we are good at and interested in a lot of things, and the art world is so broad that it can be hard to narrow down one’s interests into one niche. The one thing I’ve learned is that a degree of fearlessness and a willingness to pivot meant that I could always find something I enjoyed doing. I never expected to make money from my art, and I knew that being fulfilled as an artist wasn’t a matter of money. Sometimes I think I would be happy working at a Tim Horton’s, knowing that serving coffee with grace and a smile is making a difference in people’s lives.
I think it’s always important to ask, “What is holding me back from investing in something I’ve always wanted to do?” Sometimes, it only takes a few small changes to start moving in the direction of making a dream come true.