[Home Business] Local Artists Can Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck Thanks to This App

Consider this: Is emoji creation the new frontier for local artists?

In 2015, there were more than 20,000 artists making a living in Minneapolis alone — that’s about 4% of the city’s population. But this statistic doesn’t count many of the artists who work from home and struggle to get their art public exposure. It’s one of the universal problems fine artists face in cities around the U.S.: They pour their heart and soul into their art, only to not get paid for it.

MojiLaLa, a global emoji marketplace, is tackling that very issue head-on by monetizing artwork through original emojis and stickers. And it’s doing it by asking a simple question: How can we bring unique emojis to iMessage users while helping local artists make a living?

MojiLaLa’s business model is simple: Artists design emoji packs and deliver their work to the app’s team of experts. Normally, an artist would have to know how to code to disseminate their emojis to iMessage users. However, MojiLala provides automation software that builds an iMessage App for the package and sends it to the iMessage App store. This makes it possible for non-technical artists to access a huge segment of their audience they might have otherwise never been able to reach.

And that audience segment is larger than you might think. Emojis have drastically changed the landscape of texting — they’ve become as vital as the period or the comma. In fact, 6 billion emojis are sent daily around the world. That’s an incredible amount of exposure for a local artist. But MojiLaLa’s artists get paid in more than just exposure.

In exchange for their artwork, artists receive 50% of the profits of sales of their emojis. This ensures they get compensated for their art immediately — even while the rolling exposure their emojis get ensures they’ll be paid in the future.

While the app is still fairly new, its unique artists-first approach has been validated. MojiLaLa artists have created over 17,000 original stickers and emojis. It’s been dubbed the ‘Netflix’ of digital stickers. And it’s become the most downloaded sticker distributor for iMessage on the Apple App Store.

The lesson we can learn from MojiLaLa is simple: Businesses can succeed while still compensating artists fairly. That’s worth a thumbs-up emoji.

Source: Home Business Mag

Photo Credit: Girlydesignblog