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Artists of TikTok – how do you choose to make money?
I am a graphic designer and as my account grows I’m exploring ways to drive traffic and monetize outside of TikTok but I’m not sure if the demographic even gets converted to purchases of any kind since it’s on the younger side?
Some ideas I’ve had so far:
-Selling prints/merch on Society6 with link in TikTok bio
-Start teaching online courses (although I’m no super expert so this might translate to Youtube to start in all honesty)
-drive traffic to my portfolio website and get clients through email (although the audience just might not be there for this method)
I don’t sell anything physical (with the exception of the Soceity6 avenue) so Etsy wouldn’t be a possibility. Instagram I can barely even give the time of day right now because it feels so slow. Is YouTube worth doing still?
I want to be on a steady upward climb over the next few years but I want to build it up in the best way possible. Any advice? I have 20k followers but my account is about a week and a half old, so I’m very new to this. My content is exclusively graphic design/artwork and design software education.
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All new posts need a flair going forward
byu/JonODonovan insocialmedia -
Every social media or other platform you DON’T use does two very harmful things:
1. It leaves money on the table.
2. It allows other artists to build fanbase and funnel customers away from you!In a marketing MBA class I had, we had to work on a project for a local pro football team. The professor asked the class what other “attractions” in direct competition with this pro team. A lot of the class kicked other regional pro teams, and then some local major college teams. Finally I raised my hand and said, “Netflix, local PeeWee baseball teams, the Opera, and anything else where people must spend their limited resource of time, or money, being entertained.”
The professor looked at the rest of the class and said, “That is correct–all entertainment venues are in direct competition with ALL other entertainment venues. People only have so much free time, and only so much disposable income.”
Your problem is you need to build a solid fan base, and get them purchasing your goods. In a good plan, every venue that you are on steers customers either to sales of your products, or to your presence on other venues. Think of it like a Las Vegas casino–they are designed so that the entrance is a grand area, but once you enter, the gaming area is set up to steer foot traffic into other gaming areas, and away from the exits.
The exits are there, but you will not often randomly stumble upon them. They pay behavioral psychologist tidy sums to designing the lights, colors, carpet patterns, and games arrangements to subconsciously steer you around and around the gaming area. They know that if you stumble to an exit, you might leave, so the games area is set up so you never stumble upon an exit–you must make a conscious decision to leave and then you find it.
They also pump oxygen into the gaming area under the pretext of “flesh air” but the realty is when the O2 level is higher, you have more energy and stay awake longer–so you play a few more hours.
Your art is a product. Your social media sites should be designed to reinforce and steer to each other. Your goal is simultaneously offensive (sell product) and defensive (steer fans away from other artists–after all, you don’t want them buying someone else’s work when they could be buying yours, right?)
You should also being doing strategic alliances with OTHER artists and commercial establishments.
I know that is a lot of work, but if you want to make it big, you need to either focus on your art and have someone else manage the social media business, or you need to work 18 hours a day and devote half to art and half to business.
Or, you could just be like James Patterson–you do the business and slap your name on other people’s work 🙂
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As long as you are using social media as your primary base for your content, you’re subject to really unpredictable algorithms, trends, and platform shifts.
1 year ago I took all my viral Instagram content, backed it up to a WordPress site, and started writing long format articles (800+ words) about each art piece, how I made it, and the inspiration for it. My art income exploded this year and I quit my day job over the summer to do it full time.
A lot of artists neglect their own site to push content out to places where people just consume their portfolio and move on to the next creator, but using my social media to funnel to my website, which then offers merch and prints and patreon access, has worked really well for me.
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Last thing: there’s a little bit of a Society6 hack I learned way too late: According to their TOS, you’re allowed to post affiliate links to your own art. Sign up as an affiliate and then create affiliate links anytime you post the link to your society6 art/store. That alone boosted my society6 income by 30%
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