How Artists Can Grow Alongside a Day Job (Without Burning Out)

In this modern, expensive world balancing a passion project with a 9-5 job is not a compromise, it’s a necessary and strategic advantage that you can utilise to propel your creative endeavours into reality.

A steady income can give an artist breathing room to explore, discover a niche, grow their skills and build something that will provide a sustainable income without the damning pressure of instant success and monetisation.

Creative side hustles should run alongside your everyday life, and benefit you financially without taking over your spare time; so how can you achieve this?

The key is taking control of your projects, being selective, and ensuring the projects you take on are furthering your skills, protecting your creative energy, and opening doors for you, rather than burning you out.

From getting your work out there to flexible client work, here are five strategies and possibilities that could help you to flourish as an artist, whilst maintaining a stable and fulfilling life.

Let’s avoid turning every spare moment into a grind, instead build artistic momentum alongside your day job with a few simple side hustles tips that will work for a budding artist.

Build a Digital Home for Your Work

Before diving headfirst into ideas that will make you money, you need to consider your visibility; if people can’t easily find your work it will be much harder to turn creativity into income.

This is where a simple, well-structured online portfolio will be priceless. Not only does it give you credibility, it will allow you to display your work in the way you want it to be seen. You’ll be presenting your vision to your clients in a structured and useful way, allowing them to make a money spending decision on you.

Whether you’re a visual artist, an illustrator, a designer, or a photographer, having a central space that showcases your style, your method and your vision, will help you position you amongst serious artists online. Try the likes of Portfoliobox for a clean, easy to use platform with a super professional finish.

In creating a professional, sleek and presentable online portfolio, you’ll be allowing the software to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Once you’ve got the foundation in place, everything else will follow with relative ease, and your ideas will be easier to execute.

Gone are the days of aligning with the hobbyists’ social media trends and artists’ forums; you’ve honed your skills and are ready to be seen as a professional.

Freelance Bite-Sized Skills

Many people are afraid of the term ‘freelance’; particularly when it comes to anything creative. It normally means lots of work for a small amount of pay, but not if you’re the one in control.

Experienced artists build a sustainable income by offering very clearly defined, limited scope services that you can easily fit around your day job.

Smaller jobs like:

• Logo refreshes
• Single illustrations
• Album artwork
• Social media graphics
• Pattern designs
• Short animation loops

These are all examples of jobs you can complete efficiently, quickly and at scale, if necessary.

The key is preserving your energy and not eating into your free time too much. It’s no use earning lots of extra cash if you haven’t got the time or energy to enjoy it.

The solution? Set well defined parameters and stick to them; not only will you build an efficient selling system for your artwork, but you’ll start to learn how to correctly cost your time and effort, a valuable skill in an artist’s arsenal.

It’s also super important to remember that once you’re in control of your work, it’s okay to say no.

Digital Products That Work, While you Don’t

Selling an item that requires effort once to create it, then is infinitely sellable - sounds like a pipe dream; right?

Well, it’s actually a strong business model for artists with a specific niche. But there is a major trap to avoid.

Don’t wriggle your way into a niche that you don’t have a passion for just because it’s an existing cash cow.

Consider this; ‘The Lord of Rings’ is one of the biggest and most influential merchandise machines in history, and it has built such a passionate and knowledgeable army of fans around itself that it would be impossible for a non-fan to imitate being a fan.

You would be spotted right away with a mistake in your themed map, or a canonically incorrect colourway. So what’s the message here?

Find a niche, follow a passion, use your skills and your love of your format to create something new, unique and inspiring. Don’t jump on a bandwagon. Be original and show your passion.

Once you have found your thing, turn it into a digital piece of art or something similar, price it reasonably and list it in an e-store. If you hit the right market you’ll find an infinitely sellable item that requires little to no work.

Imagine including ‘5,000 units sold’ in the achievements section of a future CV or application; it certainly would go down well in the search for collaborations.

Teach What you Know

There will come a point in your life where you have acquired a huge amount of knowledge centred around your form of artistry.

If you have a passion, regardless of its nature, you will actively absorb relevant information as you move through life. Each time you engage with your passion you will be learning something new about it.

So, why not share that knowledge?

You don’t need a huge following or a marketing team; many artists underestimate the value of the skills they’ve collected from simply enacting their craft over the years, and these skills are incredibly valuable to those just a few steps behind you.

Start workshops, record tutorials, do live drawing sessions and paid critique groups, all of which can be fitted nicely around your existing schedule.

Teaching can also reinforce your material in a fresh and exciting way, and by opening yourself up to the ideas of others, you could do some learning too.

This kind of teaching is certainly not limited to art either, if you’ve got a way with words, or are a tech whizz, you can help artists around you present their best selves online.

Sharing knowledge with your community is a superb way to make some extra cash, and in all likelihood it won’t feel like work as you meet new people, share important tips, and help others to develop.

Collaborate, Don’t Depreciate

One of the absolute key things you can do to boost your visibility is to collaborate with another artist. You can use this as a method of tapping into a fresh audience, a vehicle to learn new skills, or a way to get more eyes than ever on your work. You can even reference collaborations as a form of education in some cases, perfect for your skills library and artistic CV.

Unfortunately however, it’s not all plain sailing.

Artists will collaborate in a lot of different ways and have been doing so for centuries, this is not a bold new idea; it is however, incredibly important to only collaborate with those that align with your brand or image.

A collaboration with the wrong person could actually damage your perception with an audience. Your methods don’t need to align necessarily, although this would make sense, your mode does not even need to be the same, but your message and the meaning behind the pieces you create need to align to your artistic soul.

Don’t let your work, or your message, get swallowed up by another's, and don’t compromise on the values you hold dear. Your message should be authentic and untouched, always.

This will shine through in any work you do in the future, and will allow your people to make an emotional connection with you and your work.

The Last Word: Growth is Growth

The ‘side hustle’ is so common nowadays it seems that pretty much everyone has one, but for yours to be deemed ‘successful’ it does not need to replace your day job; at least not right away.

Your side game can be a superb testing ground, it can help you refine your niche, collaborate with like-minded creators, develop your skills, and teach you to manage your time.

Choose projects that you can control with ease; believe us when we say that this will become the most important element of your side project as you will stop over extended, be more present and not ruin your spare time. Treat your work with quiet professionalism and create opportunities without sacrificing stability and watch your productivity increase.

Remember, your project has not failed if you don’t make a pile of money. These things take time, stick with it and try to learn from the information you're gathering as you go.

Take these tips and make small, controlled and intentional steps on the road to establishing your creative freedom; not overnight, but sustainably and in a way that is truthful to yourself and your message.