so far this year I've made over fifteen
thousand dollars from the digital
products in my online store at several
points I have made a hundred dollars a
day or more from those digital products
and
realizing that was possible
completely changed the way that I think
about arts and business so today I want
to talk about the power of digital
products the options out there for any
artist and why you should heavily
consider implementing more passive
income streams into your business and
also thank you to Squarespace for
sponsoring this video but more about
them later
foreign
so I think one of the hardest things to
do as an artist is actually to sell
physical products
and that's kind of a weird thing to say
but it's really true right because the
effort scales linearly you have to
package and ship every single order that
comes in which means that you're kind of
punished for success or like the more
successful you are the more time you'll
have to spend packing orders the less
time you'll have to spend on Art and the
more pressure that will be on tenant you
have left to spend on art to actually
make something good and monetizable to
actually turn your art into products
more and more often and I see this
happening with artists all the time like
they hit a certain point of success and
they feel like they're drowning because
it's so so overwhelming to have to
package and ship everything and sure you
could hire someone on but I think what
people don't consider enough of is the
power of digital products like digital
products are kind of great in that you
just make them once and then they are
out there they just exist people can buy
them an infinite number of times and you
basically don't have to do anything
other than like the occasional customer
service email when your business model
is so tightly intertwined with your
constant labor it means that you're
going to feel really guilty about taking
time off and you're going to be really
stressed out and you're actually not
going to spend nearly as much time
making art as you did before and I think
that is a tragedy and I think digital
products can help ease some of that
burden like
when I realized this was an option for
me that kind of changed everything and
it has meant that I can take my time
offering prints and digital products and
make sure that when I do release those
things they are high quality and it also
means that I get to spend a lot more
time in making art than if I had to pack
200 orders a week or something and
obviously your business can never really
run a hundred percent on full autopilot
but that's not the point the point isn't
to like do no work right it's to do more
sustainable work to not be pushing
yourself to the brink all of the time
and to actually be able to take time off
and take sick leave and do all those
things that you would get at a normal
healthy job
like for your art career without feeling
guilty or overwhelmed without fighting
the urge to go back to work way before
you're ready and I know some of you guys
are already thinking okay that's great
Kelsey but I'm an XYZ type of artist and
I don't think digital products really
fit with that I don't think I actually
have anything to offer and here's the
thing I think you're wrong I think if
you spent more than 15 minutes thinking
about this problem you could list at
least like five really solid ideas but I
get it thinking of new product ideas is
really hard so what I want to do for the
rest of this video is actually
brainstorm some ideas with you I have a
couple of categories of like General
ideas and I think that you can take the
list that I'm about to share with you
and work at it you know try and come up
with your own version of things try and
make it work for the kinds of art that
you make the kind of value that you give
to your audience or whatever artist you
want to be and run with it because I
think that genuinely
this has a lot of potential and I wish
more artists were doing more of this
because we don't have to be packing
orders like
five hours a day it's just it's too much
and I think this can offer at least
partially a solution to that it's not
gonna like replace your entire business
or anything unless you want it to but
it's just another
piece of that income streamlit collage
that you're building with your business
but before we get into my list I want to
talk about the sponsor of this video
Squarespace because that fifteen
thousand dollars that I mentioned
earlier that would not have been
possible
fifteen thousand eight hundred and
twenty two dollars and 30 cents with my
Squarespace website this would not have
been possible without Squarespace who
are very kindly sponsoring this video so
let's talk about them for a second shall
we I think Squarespace is probably the
ideal website platform for artists they
have so many features that make them
incredibly easy to use their new fluid
engine is almost literally drag and drop
I am so enormously happy with my
Squarespace website I've been using them
for years long before they sponsored me
and I feel like my website really
perfectly embodies who I am as an artist
it has my vibe kind of perfectly
captured and what I love the most about
Squarespace is just how easy it is to
add digital products and manage them
it's very simple to set up a digital
product on Squarespace they manage all
of the file distribution for you so they
will send emails to your customers with
the files all you have to do is upload
it write the description the title adds
some images add it to a category if you
want to and you're good to go that
digital product can generate an almost
infinite amount of revenue for you which
is truly fantastic if you are new to
Squarespace and you want to give them a
try you can get 10 off your first
purchase of a website or domain using my
code Kelsey Rodriguez go to
squarespace.com Kelsey Rodriguez to get
10 off
okay so now that we've thanked
Squarespace let's dive straight into
this list the first category of product
idea I want to talk about is actually
printables so printables are basically
where like you the file that you would
normally get printed and sent as someone
physically you were just giving them the
file right and you obviously need to
have like some licensing agreement with
this right like it's just for personal
use you can't redistribute it blah blah
blah but printables are a really great
solution you can offer the exact same
things that you might normally ship to
someone like an art print or stationery
whatever
stickers even potentially but you don't
have to go through the Fulfillment and
shipping part this is great if you're
stuck in a country where international
shipping is really expensive or maybe
the postal times or like really long and
it takes months and months for mail to
get to your clients like
that is where this comes in that is
where this has the most potential so in
terms of product ideas with printables
you really do have just a ton of options
right you have art prints um stationary
recipe cards something more creative
like garlands or something
um coloring pages even if you were a
digital artists that relies a lot on
line art this could be really fun if you
like fandom related work fan art that
could be great too if you do comics and
you want to offer like
coloring pages people can like kind of
fill in their own versions that would be
a really cute idea Natalie Anderson
actually who I have on my gallery wall
she's a Riso graph artist she offered
coloring pages in the beginning of the
pandemic and I picked those up so fast
because I love her art and I wanted to
try my own hand like reimagining her
work in like my own personal preferred
color palettes like what I Gravity the
most and it was really fun to load those
up into procreate and like mess around
and
I really enjoyed that it was a great
activity and I think on her part that
was a killer business idea because it
took very little work for her to
actually do that I bet the next category
of digital products that I want to talk
about is actually the kind of
educational products this isn't for
everyone if you are not the kind of
artist that wants to teach people if you
don't want to give away your secrets
feel free not to these are just some
ideas but in terms of educational
digital product ideas you have things
like ebooks or digital guides there are
some artists that follow on Instagram
that offer guides to oil painting or
gouache or their preferred medium of
choice insert whatever you do here and
they've written up their tips about it
the materials they use where they get
them from their learning resources and
just collected all of that stuff
together in a digital guide for their
followers so on the off chance someone
was following them and interested in
trying to make the kind of art that they
make they could pick that up and read
about it and and gain access to that
knowledge and those resources and then
of course you have like the more
commonly used digital products things
like video tutorials or like lessons
real-time painting processes with
commentary maybe you have the PSD files
of your digital art so people can like
get them and then flip through the
layers to figure out how you work that
is always an option too and then again
of course I really want to reaffirm that
you should have like some kind of
agreement or like terms of use with
these things so people aren't stealing
your art and just like running with it
because that's bad and if you have like
a terms of use you can
go after them legally if you wanted to
so another option in kind of the same
educational Arena that is not really art
related but still is really useful is
things like templates like on my store
for example I offer a lot of notion
templates because I'm an anxious person
that relies super heavily on intense
organization to get anything done either
like in my personal life on YouTube or
in my art career and I
fastidiously and obsessively track goals
and that's super important and I
organize everything from like the art
books that I'm studying the classes that
I'm taking to the kind of paintings that
I want to make and so I offer templates
that are related to that that are like
are really intertwined and always call
back to who I am as an artist but
offer a thing that is not commonly
offered so when you are trying to think
of product ideas try to think of where
you could stand out and be a little bit
different compared to the competition
because that could make a difference
they don't have to be notion templates
though you could do things like email
templates like maybe you have this
really award-winning email template
strategy that you have used time and
time again to email your collector base
and get a bunch of sales that email like
the contents of that email how you craft
that or how you pitch galleries or
whatever could be really really valuable
information to someone and it's a very
low effort thing for you to offer them
okay and to close this off I actually
have a bunch of
non-educational more like miscellaneous
random ideas to share with you guys the
first one is of course digital art
brushes this is a classic in the digital
art space right like offering your
preferred brushes that you've designed
your yourself where you've customized is
a really great way to make money it's
again very low effort for you to offer
this but for your Die Hard tested like 1
000 true fans it will mean so much to
them to get their hands on the stuff
that you use all of the time in your own
art even if they can't perfectly
replicate the style or your techniques
just having those brushes can be a
really cool insight into the way your
favorite artists were and this is true
for things like krita procreate
Photoshop like whatever kind of program
that you use think of a way that you
could offer presets or brushes or
whatever thing that you can do
that would be really valuable and then
the next idea that I have actually is
digital wallpapers like Photo papers
desktop wallpapers laptop wallpapers
whatever device but
these would look really cute you know
like the right wallpaper it sets the
mood I recently changed my phone lock
screen to not be my vaccine card because
I was showing that all the time for a
long time and now I don't have to
anymore really so I have a really great
like cute little art piece on there and
I love that so much and
I am more than happy to support a really
amazing artist so when I want to deck
out my digital devices because digital
art is not a thing that I have a lot of
experience in so
when I'm customizing my phone or doing
like cute little icons or Discord or
twitch emotes and sub badges I
commission other artists or I get their
pre-made digital products because
they're really good at it and they have
really ingenious clever creative ideas
that I personally never would have
thought of or had the energy or the
motivation to execute as a more
traditional focused artist just wanted
to slide in here really quick and say
that digital products don't have to
replace
physical products for your business they
can just be the icing on the cake if
this is working great for you already
don't stop anything but digital products
I point more so is that like
they're a really low effort way to make
more money in your business and it
doesn't have to be like purely just art
related like you can give your audience
your customers things that they want
that are not just art chances are
they're actually really interested in
learning more about your process your
techniques your digital brushes like
whatever and that this is a great
complement to the things that you are
likely already doing so it's just like
you know extra like the reason that I
offer notion templates is because I talk
a lot about organization and it felt
like a very natural product for me to
offer so yeah okay back to the video and
yeah those are all of my ideas again I
do think it's really important to have a
following or an audience when you are
considering implementing these ideas
because you can't get sales if no one
knows that your products exist right so
I think it's really important to figure
out how these products fit into your
overall marketing strategy and if you
are interested actually in learning more
about marketing yourself as an artist I
have an entire playlist that will be
somewhere on the screen right now for
you to check out if you like this video
consider liking and subscribing and I
hope to see you there bye guys