02: From Passion to Profit: How to Turn Your Art Hobby into a Business

So you wanna sell your art, great. But now what?

This episode's got you covered. You'll learn how to know if you're actually ready for a full-blown creative business and also the essential components that you'll need to build a sustainable art from your creativity.

So whether you're just having that little inkling, that little voice telling you to make this a business, or you've been doing this for a little bit, this episode is for you.

Hey, artist friend. This is Mariana Durst from the Liberated Artist Podcast, a space for unvarnished conversations about selling art online from a place of artistry, integrity, and courage. So whether you've got yellow ochre under your fingernails or clay dust on your jeans, I'll be your go-to guide as you bridge the gap between art and entrepreneurship. Your art isn't meant to stay stacked against the studio walls. Ready to walk this path together? Let's get started.

Hey, liberated artist. All right, it's time for some real talk because I have been taking Nicholas Wilton's Creative Visionary Program, which I highly recommend if you really wanna dive into the essentials of art making in terms of going in depth of design, value, color mixing, texture, etcetera. So I joined because I used to have a painting practice way back when, and it just kind of went dormant. I've worked with quite a few artists who have taken that program, and they are fired up after they graduate. So, it's always been on my dream list to take that course. This year I pounced on the opportunity to join Nick and his team of coaches and reinvigorate—and I mean like bring back to life—that painting practice of mine. It is quite the incredible journey so far.

Right now, you know, my business is not making art and selling my art. I haven't done that in a while, actually, but I'm starting to think about the future. And while I'm not doing CVP because I want to sell my work. I know myself and my inner serial entrepreneur might not be able to be stopped when the time is right.

So today I wanted to talk about this whole thing of turning your art hobby into an art business, because I've done it before. and know what it feels like when you have that little seed in you that starts kind of wiggling inside its husk and wanting to sprout into a full-blown art business.

So this is for you if you are either thinking about having an art business or if you're just starting or even if you've already been like in a year or two of business. This will kind of bring you back to the roots—and every so often, even if you are further down the line—it's so good look over your shoulder and address where you are, where you came from, and then say, “do I still want to go where I was going in the beginning or do I need to switch gears?”

First things first, you have that little seed and it's wanting to burst out of the husk and throw down roots and unfurl out of the earth. But how do you really know if you're ready to turn that art hobby into a business? I know it's hard to see canvases or panels or whatever it is that you're working with stacked against your studio walls or accumulating on every surface available. Maybe even that is causing you to feel a little bit more motivated to have a full-blown business. But the fact of the matter is that that's not enough. Simply wanting to sell the stuff that you've made, that's great. And you can do it. Have a sale for friends or family. It can be really informal, the way that you sell that work, if you're not ready for a full-blown business, and to go into being a professional artist.

However, if you are consistently producing high-quality work that you know people are willing to pay for, that is one of the signs. It doesn't mean that you need to have sold something, but you have that idea that people might want to do it. In fact, before you go in, like all in on building a business, I do suggest like, you know, offer and sell it to your friends and family, see what the response is. And if you make a couple sales, you might have something good in there. You might have found something that people want to hang on their walls or have in their space. And that's worth noting it as a reason to open a business.

Another way to know if you're ready to have an art business is if you're comfortable with the idea of selling your art and you are comfortable with the idea of talking about it. A lot of artists that come to me are like, yes, I am ready to sell my work, and they pay me loads of money for this beautiful brand and website with copy and a strategy built around it. But when the rubber meets the road, they're not ready to be seen. They are not ready to. put themselves out there. And we all have our process, even me. I am not ready to show what I'm doing right now. Maybe I'll show snippets here and there. But to put it out there as like, I'm selling this, buy it… I'm not comfortable yet.

So. before you go and make a huge investment in any of the areas that we're going to be talking about, make sure that you feel that comfort of being seen and having your art seen, talking about your art, and putting it out there. Seth Godin has this phrase that I really love that he talks about shipping the work, and that is part of doing the work. That’s when you are risking something, that's also something that Nicholas Wilton, that I've heard him say, you have to be willing to risk something creating the art. But I'm also adding to that, that you also have to feel some risk in sharing it. There has to be an element of vulnerability in order to really call yourself an artist. And so if you are on this artistic path, consider ways that you can put yourself out there, even if it's taking little baby steps. But I'm kind of going off of the topic here.

Another way that you can know if you're ready to have a full-blown business is having a clear idea of what you want to achieve with sharing and selling your art. And this can be whatever you want it to be. It can be a financial goal. That's totally valid. It can be society level goal, or it could be a personal goal, but what is at stake here? What will happen if you do the thing and you're successful? If you can answer yes to any of these questions, then you're probably ready to start thinking about turning this art hobby of yours into a business.

Okay, so let's talk about the essentials.

These are the things that you need to have in order to turn that hobby into a business. And we're going to start in my favorite place to start always, even with my clients, it's that big vision. And this is the big dream that you have. I want you to really dig deep in your heart. Like imagine you taking a beautiful journey inside the core of your heart. and pulling that little kernel of an idea or a dream that feels so wild and so daring that it's almost hard to say it out loud. And if you're alone right now, I want you to say it out loud. I want you to say out loud what it is, that big vision of yours. Like what is that big dream for your future? So I'm gonna give you here just like a couple seconds. Okay. So if you're not alone, then I hope you were still thinking of it inside of your mind. Because this big vision of yours that feels kind of like butterflies in your stomach is the guiding light that is going to help you navigate the ups and downs of building your business. Because as much as I would love to tell you like, hey, yeah, this is so easy… you can totally have a business… It's going to be smooth sailing. I can't do that in good conscience. I just can't. So take some time if you didn't come up with anything right now to really think about what you want to achieve with an art business. Is it personal fulfillment, artistic fulfillment? Do you want to be renowned? I mean, anything really is valid. Having a million dollars, that is valid too. Then once you have that big vision of yours. Once you've taken time to really create it and craft it, don't worry, I'm not gonna send you off to the craft store to get supplies to make a vision board. That's not what I'm gonna do. Think about why this big vision matters to you. I want you to really get in touch of what's in it for you. What do you get out of it? And then ask yourself, why is that important? And keep asking and digging further deeper down to why, like the essential why of this big vision of yours is so important to you. And if you can write it down in a journal, or again, say it out loud and put it out there as sound waves in the universe, go ahead and do it. Because you are a human being and your desires and your dreams are very valid and they're very welcome… especially here in this space. And the more that we can get accustomed to putting these things out there and feeling and like we're embodying these things, the more motivation and drive we're gonna have to get this done, right? Because if the big vision is giving you a target to hit, acknowledging why this matters is going to give you the gasoline to get there. It's going to fuel your journey.

Okay. So next, another really essential thing that you need to build a business is time. You're going to need a lot of resources when you're building a business, but I feel like time requires its own little section in this podcast because sometimes we have busy lives, right? We might have kids with busy schedules of their own. or maybe we have a full-time job or a part-time job. But the fact is that we're going to need time to do work, right? If you don't have enough time or if you feel like you don't have enough time and you keep telling yourself that, just check in with yourself and see, like, ask yourself, is this a limiting belief? Is this something like a story that I'm telling myself to keep myself from doing something that's hard and exciting and vulnerable? Or do I literally not have that resource? Am I out of that resource? I don't want to dissuade you from creating a business, but I do want to give you that unvarnished look into what it takes. Because here's the deal, wanting to make a full time income or just a substantial income from your art is a very valid dream, like I said. And I'm not going to tell you that it's not possible. However, I do want to give you just a heads up that by saying yes to this dream, you might also be saying no to other little things, or maybe even medium or big things. So if you have the right vision and that fuel behind this, then that trade-off is negotiable. It's just part of the gig. But if not, it may be very hard to go all in and gather the drive to do the thing.

This brings me to another essential part of creating a business. This is something that a lot of entrepreneurs have in common. They have the right mindset. So when it comes to mindset, that could be a whole other episode just on mindset. But I'm going to fire at you just a few things that are really, really important at this stage of building a business in the first few years. The number one is having a curated inner dialogue. That means being really mindful of how you're talking to yourself. Because if your inner voice is a bully, if it's jealous, if it has envy, if it tears you down every single time, then working on that inner dialogue and checking in with yourself and catching yourself when you're doing it is so important. Otherwise, any time that you feel that energy and that burst to move forward and take action, your little inner dialogue monster is going to come in and just kind of dampen the whole thing. So work on that inner dialogue and make sure it's really curated, it's really kind and gentle and generous.

Next, it's also really important to hone your intuition when you are taking the leap into not going to be that big of a deal for you if you're already doing it with your artwork, right? If you are making work that is true to you, that feels vulnerable and risky, then you can bring that vibe into the business building side of making an art business. Next, I kind of touched on this before, is the attitude that you bring to the table. Entrepreneurship is a bumpy road. And if you are not resourceful and have that figure it out attitude, then you're going to stop before you even get very far. Having that figure it out attitude is essential for entrepreneurship because you are going to be faced with a lot of things that you don't know how to do. That is like the adventure of entrepreneurship is that you are navigating the navigation itself is imperfect and you have this big vision and it might be a vision that you are coming up with on your own and there's no prescribed path to get to where you are. And even if you are looking at an established artist and say, I want what they have, the way that you do it and your starting line is so different that you're still going to come up with a bunch of unexpected circumstances or things that you're going to have to learn how to do or adapt to. And having the right attitude and being resourceful and not letting it stop you is key.

And I mean, talking about the unexpected, you are going to be doing a lot of things that are uncomfortable, that might feel vulnerable, like marketing can feel very uncomfortable at first. You might need to do things scared. You might need to do things even if they're very difficult and seem impossible. You might need to put things out there that are imperfect. And that is totally okay. So being comfortable with discomfort is another great skill to start building and also that of taking imperfect action of knowing that everything that you do in business is an experiment. You are trying things out and that is okay. You can always reassess and create a different iteration or you can say, oh, okay, I learned that this didn't work for me, so I'm not gonna do this again, I'm gonna do this other thing.

Entrepreneurship is a great experiment. It's not really the same path for everybody. Everybody has their own way of getting there. They have their own shoes. They have their own surface that they're walking on. They have a different journey and location that they're going to, and they have their own baggage that they bring to it. Right. So being resilient is also going to be extremely helpful as you embark on creating this art business.

All right, so now that we covered the mindset of an artist entrepreneur, we're gonna move into a more practical side of the conversation because in order to have a business, we need something to sell. So we're gonna talk about the offer that you are going to be putting out there. If you're listening to this, I'm willing to bet that you have some type of original artwork that you've created. And that is... great, you can sell that. I've also worked with artists who say, I don't want to sell my original work, I just want to sell prints, and that's totally valid. But having an idea of what you're going to start with is so important. And also understanding that you don't have to have all of your offers created is... key because it can be so overwhelming to launch a business with just one product. But when you want to add on two more product lines and maybe a service here, commissions there, it can get really complicated to navigate at all. So I recommend starting small with maybe one or two things that you can get started on this journey. And then as you find your footing with that, you know, oh, I have time to do this thing or I have the desire to add this other offer to my offer ladder. And that's totally fine. But if you just super pack the offers that you're going to be offering when you first set up your business, it can get really dicey.

I think about the deadliest catch. I was super into the Deadliest Catch a few years ago. It kind of comes in, and I don't mean this, but it's a pun now-It comes in waves. I watch it every so often with my husband. We love it. But it reminds me of when the sea gets choppy up there in the Arctic. And there are these huge crab fishing vessels that are out there in tornadoes and massive storms. And they don't quit. It gets dicey. And if they have all of their fishing crates on the vessel, the vessel can collapse. And that is what throwing a bunch of offers at the beginning of your business can be like. You are navigating in choppy seas with a fully stacked fishing vessel, and you better hope that there's not like an ice storm because that ice is gonna make your boat so top heavy and it can... collapse over to the side. I recommend, again, one product, two product lines, and then once you find your footing, you can start adding another product line or some services.

And aside from an offer, you're also going to need, you know, we need to talk numbers here. And this is so scary for me. I mean, seriously, the first thing that I did when I had enough income was get myself a wonderful, beautiful bookkeeper and an accountant. These are two different people, professionals that I pay happily, give my money to so that they can take care of the numbers of my business because they are so overwhelming. But in the beginning, keeping things really simple with your offers. can help keep your bookkeeping really simple. Basically, you need a way to track the money that's coming in and out. I mean, a simple spreadsheet is great. I know that there's, I'm gonna put some resources in the show notes for a wonderful resource that my bookkeeper, she's also a money coach called Gigi Bier that you can just start tracking that money, money in and money out.

You also need a way to keep your business money separate from your personal money. This will make it so less complicated to track and to file for taxes and all of that stuff because if you have everything as much as you think that you're gonna be able to have an easy time separating everything, it's still going to be really cumbersome. So I truly recommend having a separate business bank account. In fact, if you are setting up a business in the United States and you want an LLC, one of the things that protects you is having your business money separate from your personal money. And if you I mean, I can't give legal advice or accounting advice. This is just for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you marry those two, then that protection that an LLC affords you kind of goes away.

You also need a way to get paid, right? It's not enough, like not everybody's going to come to your door and hand you a wad of cash. You also want to make sure that you have a way to collect money via credit card or some kind of PayPal or Venmo or something. The ones that I prefer using are Stripe to take credit card, but PayPal is a pretty popular one too. I know that there's others out there, but I think that those are the ones that people use the most. Something to note is that these payment services incur a fee per transaction. It is totally normal and... My mastermind and I always talk about this, that it is not okay to charge people or to prevent people from paying you using those professional portals because you want to save the fees. Just pay the fees. That's why you have, you know, you can write them off as an expense on your taxes so that you're coming across super professional to your collectors. The last thing that you want to do is come across as unprofessional because if you're selling your artwork online, they're going to be like, oh, this person doesn't have their shiz together. So I better not, you know, give them my credit card digits.

And next, the final essential that I'm going to be talking about is marketing and promotion. I wish it was as easy as setting up a website to sell your art, but it's not. Selling art requires these different mechanisms that are all working together in cohesion. And at the beginning, it might be a little imperfect, but once you hit your stride, you'll see that things get more harmonious and easy. So in order to market your work, you'll need a way for people to see your art. And what most people use is some sort of social media tools, such as Instagram or Facebook, or I don't know, there's probably a lot more others. TikTok, that is just the very basic, because that puts your art in front of a big audience, and those who are attracted to what you're doing can follow, and those who don't, then they just move on.

Next, you're gonna want a way... for them to take it a level deeper. Because being on social media is just kind of very on top of the surface. It's just superficial. They're not really that invested in you. So while you can use social media to sell your art, having another home that is yours to sell your art and to tell your story is another one of those essentials. So by that, I'm talking about a website. A lot of people get away without having a website by having Etsy or some other online presence like that. But the reason that I really love having your own website is that you kind of stake your claim on the internet and you're not relying on another platform with lots and lots of distractions and competitions to sell your work. It's almost like... Yeah, even if you use Etsy or another e-commerce platform to sell your art, having your own website is like having a backup. And this became so important.

One of my clients, who was a ceramic artist, she had a brick and mortar shop and, you know, it was all going really well. That place had a collection of a lot of artisans and artists and craft people. working all in this building and it was busy on the weekends, there was lots of foot traffic. But once the pandemic hit, crickets, right? We were all shut down. And it was so easy for her to shift into selling her artwork online. And I remember her putting out like some kits of little ceramic totems, she calls them, to hang on people's walls. And she put these kids out there as activities for people to do, and she sold them on her website, and man, did those sales come in. She was ready, even though the pandemic shut down her brick-and-mortar shop, where she was selling all of her work, she could then easily pivot into her website. And the same thing goes for us, virtual entrepreneurs, that we might lose access to our Instagram, Or we might be too much noise on Etsy, but we can always fall back and have the security of having an online presence. If you ask me what website builder I prefer, I really like Squarespace because artists can begin and even evolve their business and sell different kinds of offers on there. If you're envisioning your business as more of an e-commerce heavy, Like you want to have different products, drop ship options, you want to ship all over the world and have complex selling situations and Shopify can be really great. But for most artists that come to me, Squarespace is a really, really good option.

Next, you're also gonna want a place to have a portfolio of that quality work, right? And your website is great for that. You can put beautiful pictures of how your art has evolved. Or you can choose just to start from where you are right now with that work that you are really proud of. You don't have to showcase anything that you don't love or that doesn't represent who you are. You'll also need a way to collect emails from your most eager patrons. These are the people who are raising their hands and say, hey, I wanna take this even a level deeper. I want to hear about your sales, your offers, your story, anything you have to say, so I'm going to give you my email.

I use Flodesk. I've been using them for a really long time and I like them. They're not super complicated. They're very easy to use. They don't have all the bells and whistles that other more advanced email marketing software has, but that's also a really good thing if you're just starting out. If you go to flodesk.com and check out and they work for you, use my code marianadurst to get a discount off of your first yearly payment. So if you want to support me and my art fund, then that is a really great way to do it.

And that is a wrap, my friend. I am so excited to have shared all of this information and this. podcast with you. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you are finding that little seed take root inside your heart and I hope you feel a little bit more prepared to take the leap when the time comes.

I'm your host, Mariana Durst, reminding you that your art isn't meant to stay stacked against the studio walls.

Today's episode was brought to you by Mariana Durst Studio's Prolific and Profitable Artist™ quiz. A quick quiz to assess your marketing prowess, learn your superpowers, and get a personalized plan to overcome overwhelm and get your art seen and sold. Your art visibility plan awaits at marianadurstudio.com/quiz.

So until next time, my name is Mariana Durst cheering for you on your Liberated Artist journey and reminding you not to drink the paint water.

Thanks for listening to the Liberated Artist Podcast. Be sure to visit liberatedartistpodcast.com for show notes, bonus materials, and to subscribe to get new episodes dropped straight into your pretty little inbox when they're published. If you enjoyed today's podcast, I invite you to follow or subscribe to the show wherever you're listening so that new episodes magically appear on your feed. If you have any artists in your life who desire to or are selling their art online, then please be sure to share this episode with them. Want to connect? Me too. Let's continue the conversation on my Instagram @marianadurstudio.