Episode 3: How Much Do You Really Make From Just Your Artwork?

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The really cool thing about art licensing is that once you create a piece of artwork, you can monetize it and it can return an income or revenue to you for years and years to come. I'm Bonnie and this is where all things creativity, design, business, and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town, tucked right inside the Smokey Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today, I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success.

I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast. In episode one, I very vulnerably shared my business's revenue with you every year for the last 13 years.

And of course, every time I do, so a hot topic that always comes up is, “Well, how much are you making from licensing alone?” People love to ask this because when I teach about art licensing, honestly, they wanna know if I'm selling a lie, which is always a fair question to ask your educators. They also wanna know if they can only design and make a living from it because everything else feels too overwhelming.

And I think some of them just want a good excuse to not pursue their big goal because let's be honest, it's a lot of work. Some of you said, Is it really possible to make money in surface pattern design alone? Someone else said, I would love to know what percentage of your business is earned from education versus income earned directly from art licensing?

Is it possible to earn a six figure income? Another person said, Realistically, is it possible to make a decent living in surface pattern design? And someone else said, I would love to know if it's possible to make a decent living doing just surface design. No teaching, no content creation, no writing, nothing else. Just design. Are you feeling like this as well?

In this episode, I'm going to be completely transparent with you about my overall licensing income alone. But something else that you need to know is that I honestly haven't pursued licensing my own work in the last four or five years, which honestly is completely embarrassing. And I'm also actively working on a new portfolio to start pitching again. So when you hear what's been possible for me, I need you to know that I've also not been focusing on it. And had I been, it would look very different. Before I dive into all of my numbers, let's just start at the beginning. What is art licensing? I remember the first time I learned about this and my mind was blown. So art licensing is basically the practice of letting a company or brand almost rent your artwork.

So typically there's a bunch of different ways to work, but typically you would create a piece of artwork, you would own the copyright, and you would sign a contract with a company that would allow them to use your artwork in a specific industry for a specific amount of time for a specific payment to you. Generally, these are considered royalty payments, so you get paid based on how many products are sold from the company.

I'm sure we'll get into contracts and what actually goes into looking at a art licensing contract later on in this podcast. But I wanted you to understand what it is that we're talking about. The really cool thing about art licensing is that once you create a piece of artwork, you can monetize it and it can return and income or revenue to you for years and years to come.

So now that you understand what art licensing is, let me share my numbers with you. So the very first time that I began licensing my artwork was in 2012. And so I often talk about art licensing from the perspective of playing the long game because it can be hard or a little bit slow to get started. But once you do begin to start, things start to snowball and layer on itself. 

I will never forget the moment that I learned what surface pattern design is and that it was actually an incredible career opportunity. I mean, doodle and draw for a living. Yes, please. Surface pattern design is the work of creating artwork in the form of repeating patterns for products that need it, like fabric wallpaper and gift wrap, and literally any product that has a surface. After working professionally for over 13 years and teaching thousands of others how to create their career, I've made the Ultimate Guide to Surface Pattern Design, and I'm giving it to you for free. This guide will take you from start to finish on how to jumpstart your career in surface pattern design. You'll learn how to set proper goals, build a solid foundation, find inspiration, work in collections, pitch your portfolio, and create a career while doing something that you love. Head on over to surface pattern designers.com/guide to get your copy today. Again, that's surface pattern designers.com/guide to get your copy. 

So the first contract that I signed took about 12 months before I saw my very first paycheck. And honestly, this makes a lot of sense, right? So you sign a contract and then you start working on making tweaks to the artwork and fulfilling the artwork, just so you know, exporting it for the, you know, saving your files and just the right way for the production. And then you have to actually wait for production to take place. And if it's a product that gets distributed into stores, you have to wait for it to be distributed and then you have to wait for people to start buying it. And typically when you art license, you get paid four times a year, so quarterly. So you can see why when you start at the very beginning, it can take a few months up to a year in order to start seeing revenue from it.

But once the revenue starts, it continues to go and you can license one license on top of another, on top of another. So that's what you needed to know. The first year that I started art licensing I made around $12,000. Now, that was a lot for us. That was actually a huge amount. I thought that I had made every one of my dreams come true with that much.

Now I have, I would need to go count like maybe seven or eight different licenses that I accumulated over the years, which honestly isn't that much. But from 2012, fast forward to 2015 and I was making around $90,000 a year just from art licensing alone in 2016. I hit six figures for the first time from art licensing. So is it possible?

Yes, it's absolutely possible since 2016. So let's move on to 2017. My income was around 62,000 and then since then it's been between 50 and 65,000 every year pretty consistently. Now, don't forget, these are really kind of minimal licenses, and I haven't been actually trying to get anymore in a while, and still 50 or $60,000 a year is incredible.

Now, the really cool thing about art licensing is that it works for you, meaning it will work for you no matter where you are in your life, no matter where you are in the world, it's truly making money while you sleep, right? And I feel like I love it so much because it, if you work like I do, it can really ebb and flow with your life.

So when you have some free time, maybe you wanna update your portfolio and start pitching and sign some new licenses, and then maybe when you go into a really heavy busy season, you can pull back while your current licenses all still create revenue for you. One of my favorite things about licensing is that it can also really begin to snowball. So what I mean by that is that you sign contracts that are industry specific, which means that you can create one piece of artwork and license it in an industry, let's say wallpaper. Well, then you can take the same piece of artwork and license it in another industry, let's say gift wrap, and then another one, let's say rugs, and another one fabric, and another one stationary, and over and over and over again.

So one piece of artwork will really work for you for years and years and years to come, let alone when you start adding more and more artwork to your portfolio. So it can be an incredible way to work from wherever you want and whenever you want, because one piece of artwork can live on and on and on and on. 

So I know I just shared some numbers,and I'm excited to dive back into pitching my portfolio this upcoming year. But if you want to know exactly how I did this, I'm gonna be sharing that with you in the very next episode, episode number four, where I'm gonna teach you how to map out your own path to success. But in addition to teaching you how to do that, I'm actually gonna use myself as an example and tell you every single thing I did, going from Absolute zero to my first licensed contract, you'll walk away with big milestones and tiny take action items if you wanna follow in a similar pursuit. And so the answer is yes, you can absolutely make a living from design alone. Is it a lot of work? Yes. But isn't everything in life that's worth something a lot of work, I think so.

So thank you so much for tuning in on this episode of The Professional Creative.