If you've read our article on the biggest challenges as a college student, then you know that managing your finances can be difficult. Sometimes you can't afford to part with that last bit of money to spend on yourself either because you got rent to pay or you got food to put on your table. What if I told you, in the underground world of furries, furry artists have been making a killing right under your nose and if you're any good at art, you can too.
What Are Furry Artists?
If you've spent enough time on the Riverfront Times there's a good chance you've heard of furries or the furry fandom. What you may not have noticed though is that they are a ripe opportunity to make a good amount of cash on the side.
If you don't know what furries are, they are people who are interested in cartoon anthropomorphic animals and oftentimes they have what is known as a fursona which is a cartoon animal depiction of either themselves or any persona. So, someone has to be making these fursonas and sometimes the furry themselves can draw their own but not everyone is that confident in their artistic abilities. This is where furry artists come in.
Furry artists like those at Fursonafy make their money by offering to make these peoples fursonas for them through a commission based service.
How Do They Make Money?
Now, of course furry artists exist outside the scope of Fursonafy and you can find a lot of them on Twitter or Instagram. Socials are a great place for artists who already have a bit of a following to promote their work and encourage other furries to commission their very own artwork. This way they can link to their own websites (if they have one), share previously complete commissions and negotiate prices with customers over DMs all in one place. The only thing it doesn’t offer is the security against scamming when selling art.
To solve this problem, many artists also offer their service on Fiverr. This way, Fiverr takes care of the whole scamming thing and all the artist has to worry about is completing the piece for their customer. Freelancing sites like Fiverr also offer a place for customers to review the work of furry artists and therefore improve their credibility. The only downside of using freelancing services like this as an alternative Twitter is that artists must charge higher rates to accommodate for the commission that they take on each purchase.
These kinds of artists who accept custom paintings and designs are very popular today since people are seeking personalization. Some artists have their own online stores. In addition to providing customized painting and design services, artists will also make their design works into handicrafts such as custom soft enamel pins, custom stickers,custom lanyards, etc, and sell them online. The artists may also consider crowd-funding if they don’t have enough money to make the products. They will cooperate with the best custom pin makers like enamelpins.com and sell the best designs or products to their fans. For artists, this is also a good way to make money.
Furry artists can use enamel pins as a medium to showcase their artwork and as a way to market their work to a wider audience.Enamel pins are a great way for furry artists to monetize their work. Artists can create a series of designs based on their existing artwork or characters, or they can create new designs specifically for enamel pins. The pins can be sold at conventions, online shops, or social media platforms, and can be a great way for artists to earn money from their work.
How Well Does It Pay?
As for how much these furry artists are making, considering that a full time furry artist typically makes between $8000 – $10,000 a month, if you do this on the side you can easily be making between $1000 – $2000 a month just for drawing a few cartoon animals. Some of the higher end artists make between $100 – $200 an hour simply because of the name tied to the art.
How Can I Make This My Side Hustle?
Now the big question, how do you make a start? It can be demoralizing to begin with as you might feel like you aren't getting any commissions and that this is just a dead end. However, if you can throw together a few mock pieces and start advertising yourself on every platform available whether it be Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Fiverr, Upwork and you continue to promote yourself you will start getting commissions. If you have the know-how or the money, make it official and get a website going for your service.
Once you start getting commissions and building yourself up as a reliable furry artist, your commissions and income growth will be exponential.