Make Money Selling Your Own Artworks

Make Money Selling Your Own Artworks

If you are artistic in any way, there are plenty of opportunities to make money from your talent. The biggest challenge is probably in finding the right way for you that allows your talent to shine and be seen by lots of people.

This can be done online or offline, depending on your preference and also largely whether or not you want to get involved with sending completed orders through the mail.

In any event this blog entry will help you to see just some of the possibilities that exist with this particular avenue of talent, and they might just spur you on to create a whole business around your art.

So, what kind of art are we talking about here? Well you could include photography, but we’re really concentrating on drawing, painting, sculpting, perhaps cartooning… that kind of thing. Not everyone has a talent for this (although there are good books which actually claim to teach you how to be a cartoonist) but if you have there are certainly lots of things you can do to earn money from it.

Let’s look at some of these first. Sculpting is a little more involved arguably than many other types of artwork and you have two main choices here if you want to make some money. You can either take on commissions from individuals for unique pieces of work (for which you can charge quite a high amount), or you can create a themed series of sculptures on a particular subject that you think would be popular, and make casts of them so you can produce them on a larger scale.

If you are great at painting, drawing or sketching then you have lots of options. For example you could do a series of sketches and have them made into posters, postcards, coasters and all manner of other things. Just one example of this kind of business is Cafepress, which has a large and basic range of gifts that you can personalize with your own designs. A basic shop is free but even the paid version doesn’t cost a lot of money compared to the benefits you get.

If you don’t want to sell online you can always ply your wares in your local area by offering to paint or draw pictures of people’s houses, their pets or even family members. There is no end to the other possibilities when you really start to think about it.

If you are quick at drawing you could set up a stall at a local craft fair and offer to sketch people for a fixed fee, right on the spot. This can do very well, particularly if you have tourists nearby who frequent the area.

Whatever kind of artwork you produce and whether you sell online or off, it always helps to have your own website – even if all you do is set up a home page, a gallery showing some of your images and a contact page so people can get in touch with you when they are interested in finding out more about what you do for a living.

The key here is to think about the type of art you are best at, and how you can turn that into a valuable commodity that people will pay good money for. Once you have the answer – which will be different for everyone – you will be well away.

If you aren’t sure how to start, try looking back at some of your previous artwork to see if there is a theme there that you could capitalize on. That could prove to be just what you need to get started.

Make Money Restoring Old Wooden Furniture

Make Money Restoring Old Wooden Furniture

Quite often people resort to buying brand new furniture when they could just restore their old items to looking as good as they did some years before. While this doesn’t work with all types of furniture, wooden furniture in particular is ideal for restoring back to its former glory.

Is this something you could do? You bet – because contrary to popular belief you don’t always need to be a joiner or an expert to be able to do this to a good enough standard to offer your skills to other people. It certainly pays to have some knowledge of course, but you don’t need to be a seasoned expert with years of experience to do a good job, although you will of course learn a lot as you become more established.

Chairs, tables and countless other wooden items of furniture… they can all be given a new lease of life with just a little care and attention. The great thing about doing this for people is that you can also market your service as being environmentally friendly. After all, you are giving people the chance to renew their existing furniture without having to bin it. What’s more they will save money too – so that gives you two strong selling points.

Depending on the condition of each item of furniture, it may need restoring in different ways. Sometimes a simple rub down with sandpaper and a treatment with oil or varnish may be suitable, but do ask the owner for as much information as possible before you do anything. It helps to have some kind of estimate or sales note containing notes of what work is to be done before you begin, which you can then get the owner to sign beforehand.

Some items of furniture may be rickety and need strengthening, and in this case you may need to replace bolts or screws, and replace dowels if necessary. The important thing to remember is only to do what you feel confident in doing. You could always start by offering a basic service and taking a night school course to learn more. This would develop your skills and enable you to offer more services and earn more as a result.

Obviously you don’t want to get involved with genuine antiques as these quite often shouldn’t be touched at all. This is another reason for having the customer sign something before you start, disclaiming any responsibility for anything the owner has failed to tell you. This might sound a bit frightening but it’s merely a way of protecting both you and the customer.

It’s obvious that it helps to have a good rapport with people if you are going to start doing this, as it will enable you to get a lot of information from them that will come in useful. Find out what the existing finish is if they want you to refinish it; they may want you to remove it and do something entirely different instead.

Practice does make perfect in this case but it does help to get some of that practice in before you begin. If you have a couple of pieces of furniture you can practice on then it’s a good idea to do just that, making sure you try out a lot of different techniques in the process.

As for where you can do the work, your garage will make an ideal place to start, although you should make sure you aren’t contravening any local laws by working out of your home. A lot could depend on the noise and smells that your business generates. If it is a success think about renting a small unit for people to visit, as you can buy a few old items of furniture and restore them to show your skills. Perhaps you could even offer those for sale?

In short this is a great long term business if you learn the right skills to offer to your customers. When it’s done right, furniture restoration can be an indispensable tool to have in your armory.

Make Money Rebuilding Expired Domains

Make Money Rebuilding Expired Domains

Some of the ideas in this blog are built around reaping the benefits from something that already exists instead of building something from scratch. A great example of this is rebuilding expired domains.

There are thousands upon thousands of people who don’t renew their domain names for some reason; either they simply forget or they no longer want to run the site in question. What we’re interested in here is the fact that some of these domains were previously pulling in a lot of traffic for the site concerned, and they therefore make it possible to replicate the previous success of that site by building one of your own.

The first step for this money making idea is to find expired domains that were already receiving a decent amount of traffic. There are several sites online that auction off expired domains to the highest bidder, and once you’ve got your first one you can then start to build a site very similar to the one that previously existed.

These domain name sites will tell you which domains are expiring on the day you visit the site, as well as presenting a list of names which have already expired. This makes it easy to see at a glance whether there is anything which would be of interest to you.

It’s important not to build an exact copy here; simply identify the elements that made the previous site successful (as well as the domain name of course) and create something of your own which is even better than what was there previously.

The great thing about rebuilding an expired domain is that you already know it has done well in the past. This gives you a head start on building something you know will attract traffic. By doing some keyword research (and researching the subject in general to see which aspects of it will prove to be the most popular) you can really hit the ground running and start drawing in traffic almost from day one.

Depending on the subject of the domain, you can monetize it by selling relevant items off the site. By joining Commission Junction or a similar affiliate website you will be able to sell anything from vacation packages, DVDs, toys, games, computer peripherals… you name it, you’ll be able to find a service or product that you can sell via your site in return for a portion of the profits. There is also Google Adsense of course, which will let you display relevant ads on your site and receive an income from the clicks you get.

The best way to make sure your site remains popular is to keep it updated frequently. Add new content and articles where appropriate and monitor the performance of different products and adverts to ensure you are getting the highest amount of revenue possible.

As far as building a profitable website is concerned, you can get into profit much faster by relying on an expired domain rather than choosing your own.