Artists - How to get an audience without social media?

[PALEOKNIGHT]

 Hello there! After commenting on another thread, it’s got me thinking… How can I build an audience without having social media?

 I recently got in college, and I don’t want to rely just on my parents money anymore. Problem is, I can’t get a job because my classes are full time! The only thing I could do at this moment would be setting up drawing commissions, but there is the OTHER problem: I haven’t found anywhere to promote my work.
 I do have a personal website, but it’s pretty barebones, and pretty much the only people who have accessed it are my friends. I don’t want to live off my art or earn big bucks, I just need to find somebody who’s willing to spare $15 for a doodle 


 So, there’s my question. I know a lot of people in this forum have no social media, so I want to know if any of you have words of wisdom, for me and any other beginners on selling their art.

 
 
[edited for clarification]

[Yoylecake420]

You could try making a poster for art commissions and advertise it across the college. As for contact, try using your email.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

I recently got in college, and I don’t want to rely just on my parents money anymore. Problem is, I can’t get a job because my classes are full time! The only thing I could do at this moment would be setting up drawing commissions, but there is the OTHER problem: I haven’t found anywhere to promote my work.
...
 So, there’s my question. I know a lot of people in this forum have no social media, so I want to know if any of you have words of wisdom, for me and any other beginners on selling their art.

Making any money with your art is difficult, even if you have a semi-professional skill and a rather good reach. A friend of mine had - at the time I talked to him about this - a PHD in media design, a number of followers on Twitter in the low thousands, and did digital art as his main occupation beneath work. Back then, he'd made 200€ with it, over the course of - I think - 3 years. So: If you want to make some money, and you aren't next-to-wondrously skilled, getting a job on the weekends will probably be less frustrating.

Also, I believe that most of the people active here do not make a living from their art - the majority of the users here consists of hobbyists, who - maybe - get some dime now and then through their creative work. Most people who try to get commissions are present at other social media sites (Instagram/Twitter/Thumblr/Bluesky).

We quit on all of the centralized/commercial SM sites; most of our traffic comes now from Mastodon, some from Itch (I do reviews on my blog put links to them under the reviewed games - that seems to bring back some attention to my site, and thus to our games), some from the Interactive-Fiction archives, and - a rather good part - from this forum and the adjacent sites. All of this brings me somewhat of an audience (~3500 unique views on our site atm, ~10 views and ~3 DLs on Itch, all roughly on average this year - which I consider good. We made ~300€ with all our projects the course of over 4 years, and had expenses of ~190€ (Steam and hosting), which comes down to roughly 25€ per year, just to give people who think about trying to make money with hobbyist art an idea - note that I'm not saying that it can't work out better for you). That being said: I think I never received a payment from somebody coming from Twitter/Reddit, even back when we used them. Most of our "donators" (for most of our stuff is pay-what-you-want) come from small, specialized communities (open source games or dungeon synth communities).

[Skykristal]

Selling art/Commissions etc is not easy. And it's even harder before the economy sucked the way it does now. The minority of people make proper income from art commissions.  Most artists are YouTubers, streamers and get most of it from these sources, rather than regular art commissions.

If you want just a few bucks on the side (which is realistic to totally possible) you gonna have to put yourself out and you NEED at least some type of site to promote on, otherwise people can't find you. I can ofc do it locally as well, but it gives you a much smaller amount of people/ potential customers.

I personally don't use mainstream platforms but niche places for the content I create. In my case, I draw original characters. So I promote on sites like toyhouse, forums and discord servers (Although I'm not the biggest discord fan...) to get my work out.

[small_cypress]

Can you make prints of existing drawings instead of just commissions?

I ditched social media recently and I sell prints (linocuts). If you only want to do commissions this is probably not helpful. My post-social media plan is to:

-revamp website + build an RSS feed in addition to my newsletter so people can keep up with me

-in-person sales! Art markets! Share a table with a friend. Keep your email signup on the table. You do not need a huge volume of people on your list. Even if you don't sell much, you are putting your work out there and building recognition. I am an extrovert though, so this may be a hell-no.

-brick and mortar stores - if your art isn't too niche or if you have some local-themed pieces, some gift stores will carry your work on commission. This gets your work/name in front of lots of eyes. The more times people are aware of your work, the more connected they are to it/you when they see a piece they really like.

Some events and art markets have live commissions - that would stress me out but a lot of people do portraits at them.

It's hard work and you have to market, some personalities enjoy that (I do) and some hate it. Good luck!!

[Kie]

From my knowledge, it's really hard to make money from commissions. Most people I know that take comms pull something like 50 bucks a month from it. If you want to make a genuine income out of comms, having a big following is a must. If you take NSFW comms you could get away with a bit of my smaller following to be honest, but you kinda still need to have social media to advertise your work.

Something that is a bit more feasable, from my understanding, is selling merch. Prints, stikcers, keychains, shirts or tote bags. This takes an initial investment, but you're more likely to actually make money out if it. You can set up an online store (although yes, having some form of presence on social media definelty would help), but also sell at in-person events. You can also rely on marketplaces with a built-in search feature (like Etsy) to help people discover your work.

I wish I had a real solution for you, but unfortunately making money out of art is hard right now