How Do Fashion Illustrators Make Money?
Breaking news! You can make a living from art, despite what everyone’s parents & teachers think🌝
If I had a penny every time someone replied ‘But what’s your job, job?’ When I say I’m an artist… offft💰
I think it’s time to put an end to the starving artist trope because it perpetuates the myth you can’t make a living off art, and art isn’t something that has enough worth to make a living off of…
And the way we do that is by being a bit more transparent about the money side of things!
Put some respect on our paint brushes!
I've been a full time Fashion Illustrator now for nearly 3 years. I wanted to share a breakdown of where my income comes from.
I want to highlight the importance of multiple income streams, most months I have income coming from a variety of sources.
The more you diversify your income the more likely you are to continue to succeed, because any one of those incomes could be cut off at any time, and if you're reliant on a single source then your income immediately dries up.
So with that in mind, over the last 4 months my income came from 7 different sources, and this is what they are...
Also, hope you appreciate my attempt at making a pie chart fashion…
48% - Courses
Over the past 4 months I’ve launched 3 courses so it’s been a big part of my focus and therefore, the biggest slice of my income!
41% - Events
Events are usually my bread and butter work, it’s what brings me the most consistent work, so this one’s always a big percentage.
5% - Studio Work
I had an event where I needed to illustrate a few looks prior and get them printed Then after the event, the brand wanted a few more guests drawn which I completed at my studio.
4% - Project Work
This can be a variety of things, this time it was a project to design some garments for a brand collaboration. Project works fun because it’s always something a little different!
1.5% - Mentoring
Alongside my courses I run 1on1 mentoring for illustrators wanting more tailored bespoke advice and feedback!
0.3% - Affiliate Codes
I’m no influencer but there’s an affiliate link I forgot about on my course when people sign up to Squarespace, so occasionally this money will pop up.
0.2% - Social Media Questionnaires
I genuinely don’t remember how this started, but over the past few years I occasionally get emailed by a company asking social media users to fill out some questionnaires. As payment you can pick a gift card for online stores, it’s a nice little gift for 10 minutes of moaning.
I did this breakdown a couple years ago and it wasn’t this course/event heavy, normally my incomes split into thirds: events, course and projects/commissions. But I’ve been much more course focused these few months.
There are other income streams that I earn from, they haven’t popped up in these couple months as I’ve been concentrating on other things, but personal commissions, sponsored posts on socials, the odd bit of graphic design work and selling originals also bring in funds.
As I said in the beginning I just wanted to showcase how important it is to have different income sources. If I solely relied on events and one day they just stopped, I’d be screwed! So it’s good to have your income split between multiple sources and try not to let any one of them get too big, because if that balloon is popped then you’re going down!
Think of it like the house from Up, if it was floating by just one big balloon and that evil guy shot it, Carls going down, but because he had lots of smaller balloons, losing a few didn’t hurt. I’m defo paraphrasing and combining different plot points but you get the analogy…
Anyway, I’ve just finished my portfolio course which was born from me wanting to explore more editorial/project based work, so I’ll do another one of these income breakdowns in a few months time and see how that’s affected things!
Peace!
x
