Making a living as an artist has never been an easy task, but today’s internet culture has changed the game. To be sure, it’s a crowded field, but the path to making income from your passion is different today than ever before.

Now, you don’t need to be approved by a corporate gatekeeper to begin publishing your work and turning it into a revenue stream. Please keep reading to learn more about how today’s creatives make money online.

Print on Demand

For decades, musicians have sold merchandise at concerts to augment their ticket sales. In a sense, creatives of all sorts are taking this approach but modernizing the business model for the online world.

Industry leaders like Printify Canada make it easy to create and sell your own brand of merchandise by linking merchants with print providers. You don’t need to be a designer or fashion maven, as the platform makes it easy to upload your designs or use a generator to make your own quickly.

Dropshipping means creatives don’t need to handle logistics and sales, as fans purchasing your swag or merchandise deal directly with the producers. It’s also a Green solution that lets you make money while refining your art and growing your brand.

Ad Money

Creatives can get paid for allowing ads on their content, but there are multiple types of arrangements between artists and advertisers. You can get paid each time someone clicks on your ad or get paid according to “impressions.”

The right approach depends on factors like the size of your audience and the nature of your art. The optimal way to navigate ad money online is a complex question since there are many ways to do it, and this dynamic space keeps changing.

Paid Subscriptions

Selling access to your art is also a popular way to generate revenue. Like many things online, it’s not quite as straightforward as it sounds.

Many writers now are using platforms that let them publish articles, think-pieces or even fiction and control access to what their audience can read for free and what they need to pay for. This flexible approach accommodates all types of artists whose needs differ based on various factors.

For example, a political writer or activist may want their articles to be as widely accessible as possible. They can make money by charging on a pay-what-you-can basis. It may make more sense for another writer to have subscribers in different tiers with increased access to articles the more the reader pays in monthly fees.

Creatives have been online for years now, and the ways to make money have increased and been refined. Artists often have their own ways of looking at things, which is why it’s great that the internet has so many paths people can take. Consider what your art stands for, then find the way forward that lets you make some money without sacrificing any of your artistic, creative, or political goals.