How I Made $60 From My MSPaint Art Without Paying Ads
I’m a starving artist who can’t afford to buy ads to acquire more leads
I create digital art using MSPaint.
MSPaint is an “ancient technology” compared to Adobe. It’s simple to use, but it is not user-friendly. It may not be meant for designers but it’s more than just a “PrintScreen + mark it” software. I use it to create personalized art — and made a little bit of money with it. The “made a little bit of money” in that sentence was not easy, specially these days when everyone is an “artist”.
I do not disagree with that notion, but that makes it difficult to stand out in the market.
NFT made the digital art industry even more crowded
NFT brought back the interest in digital art, especially when you realize there are a lot of creators out there who are making tons of money with it.
I see a lot of “beginner” artists out there with profiles that include contact info for commissions. But I sometimes wonder how many people (online) bother to contact them? Art is subjective, and so, I’m not in the position to say whether an artwork is good or bad.
A digital piece of work is only good if the person looking at it appreciates it the same way the artist did.
But the world is filled with so many great artists (much greater than me)!
I admire their work, but I never considered myself buying their work. To me, their work is “eye candy” — good to look at, it inspires, but not so much that I’m inclined to buy it. That awareness made me wonder if I should even worry about making big bucks from my artwork.
I mean, if these great pieces of art can’t get me to buy them, what chances do I have of making money from mine?
I’m a “starving (unknown) artist”. The online world made it possible for anybody to be discovered. There are no gatekeepers that prevent you from being noticed.
While that reality gives hope to my desire to make money from my art, it still isn’t as easy simply because everyone is in the same position.
Simply sharing your work online on a social platform doesn’t do much in terms of gaining attention. The platform’s algorithm decides whether or not your work is “worth sharing”. But there’s an expensive solution to that problem: ads.
Ads have the power to get your work in front of a target audience. However, I’m too poor to buy ads.
If you can’t buy ads, then what are your chances of standing out?
Ads can pave the way to get the attention you need, however, it’s gonna cost you money.
Acquiring attention online is hard these days — especially if your work is not as jaw-dropping as the other artists out there. It can easily squash down the hope that you’re going to make money doing the thing you love. The starving artist will keep starving until the artist learns how to market their work.
It helps to remember that marketing is different from creating.
Creating art does not require money, but marketing does (typically). And because I have zero budget for ads, I figured I’d learn how to get others to talk about my work without asking them to market it for me. We’ve all heard about the value of “word of mouth”, however…
“Word of mouth” is generic advice that doesn’t mean much.
How I strategically applied marketing through “word of mouth”
I’ve been sharing my work on social media for a long time now.
Those likes and nice comments don’t really convert to revenue. But more importantly, I’m not getting enough engagement to tell myself that “This is the idea that will help me generate side income”. Then that made me wonder, “How come others make it, while I can’t?”
The answer is simple: they are doing something different.
Now, that obvious and very valuable but worn-out advice is only as powerful as your creativity to make the advice work for you.
Here’s how I did it: I leveraged the ‘Secret Santa’ we had at work.
Instead of buying a “thoughtful” gift, I decided to use one of my old designs, then personalized it to include the name of the person I picked. Not only that her name was embedded in the design, but I also made sure the design aligned with her personality (she’s a cat lover).
Luckily, she is someone who has been in the company for a very long time.
The longer you stay in a company, the wider your network is. If it’s worth sharing, then she’ll share it with her network. Otherwise, it’s a signal that what I’m making isn’t good enough that someone would consider buying.
The ‘Secret Santa’ was an opportunity to validate my idea. It led to my very first sale.
I was paid $30 for creating a design for someone’s fundraising tickets. Then a month after, I made another $30 for a personalized design. But sadly, the request to create more ended there. The power of word-of-mouth fizzled out during the pandemic due to the lack of human interaction. Now, I’m back to the same problem I originally had…
How do I market myself out there if the online world is too crowded, I don’t have an ad budget and human interaction is limited?
The only difference now is that I realized there’s almost always a way to market yourself.
Of course, the answer is not going to be handed to you. It requires another form of creativity — creativity in finding opportunities to show your work. After all that, one truth I was able to prove to myself is this:
If whatever you offer is that great, people will talk about it. Otherwise, it may not be as good as you think it is. And if what you have to offer is not good, then buying ads won’t help it become better.
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