This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey friends, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. Your host, Chris Guillebeau, here with you. Today we're gonna hear from a caller from Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is Rosa.
She is a talented watercolor artist who is setting herself a challenge to paint and publish a new piece of artwork every day for an entire year. I'm a big fan of streaks. I'm a big fan of building up something where you do it consistently. Lots of different ways to do it, but often every day for a year or every day for a long period of time. There's a fitness challenge called 75 Hard.
I have my own fitness streak going on my Apple Watch, which I think is more than 1,500 days at this point. I just think the power of committing to something and doing it over and over, like this podcast, for example, can help give you accountability, can help give you structure in your life. So when I heard about Rosa's project, a different piece of artwork every day for an entire year, I was like, well, that's cool. And as you'll hear, she's not just looking to deepen her artistic practice, but she's also keen to explore how she might monetize this venture. Guess what?
She's come to the right place. This is side hustle school, of course. I admire the ambition and the commitment to the craft as well as trying to make it work financially. So let's see if we can find some strategies that might help Rosa and anybody else out there who's thinking of a consistent project or an artistic project or just some general inspiration. So we can do that too.
Daily painting for a year, detailed question and my answer coming right up. [Music]
Hello, my name is Rosa and I'm reaching out from Santa Fe, New Mexico. I'm a longtime artist specializing in watercolor paintings inspired by the breathtaking landscapes around me. I've been toying with the idea of challenging myself to create and publish a new painting every day for a year as a way to deepen my practice. Recently, I've set myself a challenge to create and publish a new painting every single day for an entire year.
It's an exciting prospect and I'm eager to share my artistic journey with others. However, as enthused as I am about this project, I can't help but wonder how I could turn this venture into a profitable business. My primary concern is figuring out the best strategies to monetize these daily paintings. How can I make a sustainable income from this project? Your advice would be invaluable to me.
[Music]
Rosa, it sounds like a fun project. Let us know the link when you have it. I can share it online on my social perhaps, send some folks your way. So one of the most direct ways to monetize a daily painting project or any kind of daily creative project where there is a specific output or a deliverable, in this case, it's the painting, would be through sales of the original artwork, right? So offering each daily painting for sale through a website or an online marketplace, that's the most direct answer.
But you don't wanna just sell to one person, ideally. So you've got the original artwork, but then consider limited edition prints as well. And of course, the original artwork is priced higher, prints are often more affordable and accessible to a larger customer base. And there's lots of different ways to do that, with signed and numbered prints, anything that adds a collectible aspect, again, limited edition. So you're like, I'm only making 25, I'm only making 50 or a hundred, whatever you think the market can bear.
Generally, a smaller number is gonna be better if you want it to be truly limited edition. Let's see, what else could you do? Subscriptions or memberships, some kind of ongoing support like Patreon. That would allow you to receive monthly financial support from fans, maybe in exchange for exclusive content or early access to the new painting, or maybe being part of a monthly conversation, a digital art club, let's say. Maybe you're even showing like mini tutorials, sneak peeks of upcoming works, whatever seems to make sense to you.
And then the last thing is to consider ancillary products, perhaps printing your art on postcards, calendars, t-shirts, using a print on demand service to be clear. So you don't have to actually figure out how to do all the screen printing yourself, but just making that available through a print on demand option. Aside from all that, probably the biggest thing to keep in mind for this whole venture success, it's gonna depend on your ability to market your work and build a dedicated audience. So you really wanna make sure you're building anticipation for this project. And then as the project goes along, sharing it every day, really taking some time, even just 15 or 20 minutes a day to actively share and try to do some marketing.
So Reza, I think it's a cool project. Let us know how it goes, best of luck. Listeners, sidehustleschool.com/questions. If you have an idea or a question or something you're trying to figure out, we'll continue to feature them each week, along with updates from listeners as they launch their projects. New episode every day, in fact.
My name's Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
