Make $10k/Month With Your Art… Or Probably Not

Why The Sellable Pixel isn’t selling you hype. And why that’s a good thing.

When you are a creator on the internet looking for ways to sell your works you have probably seen a lot of headlines like this, especially when browsing Pinterest. Some hype bloggers claim, “Make $10k/month selling [X],” while others brag about making “$50k from a single $3 PNG”. They all promise massive passive income for what they call a “side hustle”, usually while you sleep. But that’s not how it works. Not for most of us.

What the Hype Bloggers Don’t Tell You

I don’t want to imply that they are lying to you. But they’re just not being completely honest. They make it sound like all you need to do is set up a blog or an Etsy shop, and after posting a couple of items the money will start flooding in. But in reality you need patience and persistence. And you need lots of both.

1. They’ve Built a Thriving Business Empire, And It Took Them Years

These bloggers are smart people. They have managed to carve themselves out a niche in a rather saturated market that generates a sustainable income for them. But they know perfectly well that starting from scratch is a tedious and often frustrating task. And it can take months or even years until a budding online venture gets a little traction which may eventually lead to a business that is seriously growing.

When they are bragging about how much they have made selling a simple product on Etsy, always keep in mind they may have already listed 5000 products in their Etsy shop and that likely thousands of people have bookmarked or favorited them. So it should be quite obvious that with a shop on this level, it is ever so slightly easier for them to sell in the four or even five figures than it is with your own modest presence of maybe 20 products shortly after launch.

Hype bloggers usually have a very good instinct to see emerging trends before most of their competitors, giving them the decisive edge to have the products ready even before most of their potential customers know that they want to have them. If you don’t do it like them and use any possible information source to identify such trends, you will always be outsmarted. And once they tell you, it’s already too late. You need to tap into profitable niches on your own, otherwise you will only ever play second fiddle.

And here’s another thing: While hype bloggers will promise you Big Money from a side hustle, their own ventures are usually far from that. Most of them are running a full-time business with multiple income streams. They may have started with an Etsy shop and then diversified. They may have a monetized Youtube channel and a blog with traffic from Pinterest which then is converted into income via affiliate links, pay per click ads or courses where they teach their success story.

2. They want your money

And the courses are where things are getting muddled. Hype bloggers don’t just want to pass on their knowledge to potential future competitors for free. It’s the “Make money on the internet by telling others how to make money on the internet” scheme that is almost as old as the World Wide Web.

This is not to say that such courses are necessarily offered out of insincere motifs. But if you are considering spending serious money on a “How to make money on the internet” course, you should be aware of the fact that investing in such a course is by far not a guarantee that you are going to make any significant amount of money in applying what you have learned.

The Sellable Pixel Won’t Promise You Riches

This is not a threat, it is a guarantee. In its essence, the blog is about helping you to find your own way to – let’s hope so – success. There are plenty of ways to create and monetize digital images, and there are also many ways of doing it wrong, so I want to offer some guidance. But I won’t give you “recipes for success”, I will just provide the ingredients.

I firmly believe that ultimately a no-bullshit approach this is the better way to navigate these waters. Better to know beforehand that it’s probably going to be a rough ride than to be disappointed when overblown hopes and expectations fail to materialize.

I know some of your will be scratching your heads now. Haven’t I mentioned in my About page that this blog is also supposed to generate income? Yes indeed, but there is an important difference, I don’t want the money of artists who want to learn how to navigate the market for digital imagery. Most people looking for a side hustle or considering starting a small business don’t have a lot of money to begin with. Rather they need every penny they can spare. So the vast part of helpful information The Sellable Pixel has to offer will always be free.

I do have plans to sell deeper market anyalyses as downloadble PDF files, but these will be more tailored to people who already have their buinesses running but who may want to look into ways to expand or refine their approach.

But if you are just starting out, always remember: First peel the banana, then eat the banana.